DaCosta’s Syndrome History

Max Banfield’s complete history of

Da Costa’s syndrome

See my article here

also called Neurocirculatory Asthenia, the Effort Syndrome, Soldier’s Heart, Anxiety Neurosis, and a type of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, depending on the time in history, and the beliefs and medical funding or specialty of the person giving the opinion.

The symptoms are lower left-sided chest pains, palpitations, breathlessness, and fatigue.

My version of the history

I provided Wikipedia with a summary of Da Costa’s syndrome which included a painting of the typical patient who was generally a sedentary person who had a thin and stooped physique and a long, narrow chest. I explained that such a physique placed the weight of the head and shoulders forward and downwards to cause strain and occasional pains in the lower left side of the chest, and put pressure on the lungs and breathing muscles to cause a chronic type of breathlessness, and pressure on the air in the chest to impede the flow of blood between the feet and brain to cause a chronic type of fatigue, and that a person with a small chest would be more likely to feel their heart beating. I also provided references to verify that physical and physiological abnormalites were discovered in the 1940’sand 50’s, and a 20 year follow-up study of 173 patients which showed the the ailment was chronic.

The Wikipedia version preferred by my two critics

While I was writing that article I had two critics who wanted the readers to believe that the symptoms are caused by anxiety, where the heart races and pounds and the chest aches with fear, and the patient hyperventilates and puffs and pants and becomes exhausted with panic.

In order to create that impression they argued that main alternative label was “Soldier’s Heart“, and placed it on the top line, and in the first paragraph, and called it an “anxiety disorder“, and a “post-war syndrome“, and a “post-traumatic stress disorder“, and a type of “mental illness” which is classified as a “somatoform autonomic dysfunction“, where somatoform refers to symptoms caused by the mind.

They didn’t want the readers to see the painting of the “typical” patient, and they didn’t want them to know that the ailment was common amongst civilians and that most of the soldier’s who developed the problem already had the minor symptoms before enlisting in the army. They didn’t want the readers to know that the symptoms are “similar to” but “not the same” as the symptoms of fear. They also argued and implied that there were no physical or physiological abnormalities to explain any of the symptoms.

The complete history that I provided for Wikipedia can be seen here

See 80 other labels for the same condition here

The version that is left after my two critics deleted two thirds of it can be seen here.

My summary of what happened can be seen below.

How and why I wrote the complete history of Da Costa’s syndrome

In 1975 I was experiencing extreme symptoms which were difficult to describe, but which were essentially extreme exhaustion, and I had been told by several doctors and specialists that there was nothing physically. wrong with me which could account for those health problems.

Amongst the statements made was that there there was nothing on blood tests or x-rays to show evidence of disease, and I was led to believe that the symptoms were a complete mystery and were “all in the mind”.

Over a period of several years I had been treated with a series of pills which were all essentially ineffective, including valium, and some drugs called Beta blockers, and then with a barbiturate called sodium amytal, starting with a dose of 250mg. and increased to 500mg. per day. However, after several weeks the effect diminished, and when I was prescribed 750mg, I realised that the affect would only be temporary, and then I would have worse problems.

I had been told that sodium amytal could become addictive so I decided to get off that drug, and deal with the withdrawal symptoms by taking a less addictive drug called Mogadon.

Many people will be familiar with the extreme difficulties involved in getting off a prescribed but addictive drug.

I also decided to leave work and try to study medicine and find out the nature of the ailment for myself, and at the same time to join a fitness class at the South Australian Institute for Fitness Research and Training.

While reading an A-Z medical dictionary I reached the letter “D” and found Da Costa’s syndrome which mentioned the “left-sided chest pains”, palpitations, breathlessness, and fatigue which were typical of the ailment, which were virtually an exact description of the symptoms, so I had found the name of my ailment. I have since found that it is a quite common condition which affects 2-4% of the population.

I also had my fitness level measured at the research institute which showed that my levels were much lower than anything that could be explained by ‘lack of exercise”, and I developed a way of exercising which improved my health. After completing three 12-week fitness training periods I damaged a knee cartilage and had to stop.

In the next five years I found that there was a “blind leading the blind” situation, where the researchers who were studying this problem knew a lot about blood tests and x-rays, but nothing about the symptoms because they didn’t experience them, and that the patients who knew what the symptoms were like, didn’t know anything about medical literature, and so neither of those groups could determine how everything fitted together.

I knew that if I described each of the symptoms in great detail that I would be derisively referred to as a mentally ill hypochondriac with an obsessive interest in health, but if I did nothing I would never find a way of relieving the symptoms because the doctors who were treating the problem would never know what they were doing.

i began describing each symptom in great detail, andcomparing them to the details in the research literature, to see the associations, and make sense of them, and ultimately wrote several ideas on the cause of fatigue, and an essay to explain why the set of symptoms tended to occur together, which I have since referred to as “The Posture Theory”.

The head of the research institute was Tony Sedgwick, and when I met him in the early 1980’s to discuss my ideas. I explained that other researchers wrongly believed that the reluctance to exercise was due to laziness, or the fear of exercise, and were complaining that they were unable to get meaningful research data because the patients were refusing to train. I told him that I had this problem and was able to train, so if other patients used the same methods, then they “could” and “would” train, and then it would be possible to obtain data that no other research institute was able to get. He then invited me to design and co-ordinate a research project. The training was based on the idea that the symptoms were real, and not imaginary, and related to exercise, not anxiety, and that the patient’s had physiological limits to the amount of exercise they could do, and that if they stayed within those limits they could continue training.

The programme was successful in every way, and was widely reported in local, state, and interstate newspapers between 1982 and 1984, but I eventually left and wrote a research paper to summarise and report the results. It was, of course, aimed at making the details of the successful methods available to other researchers around the world so that they could easily confirm the findings. However it was not accepted for publication in medical journals – because it wasn’t written in the typical academic style.

Nevertheless the success and the methods would have been discussed at national, and international meetings and become widely known throughout the relevant research community, even if the source of the ideas was forgotten.

A few years later I saw reports in the newspapers about a brand new ailment called the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, and it was obvious that they were writing about the same sort of ‘fatigued’ patients that I was studying.

Since then I have published a 1000 page book on posture and health (between 1994 and 2000). I wrote it partly because the medical literature generally refers to the cause of poor posture being known in only 15% of cases, with the other 85% being loosely described as unknown, or “unique” to the individual, or due to general “environmental” factors, and of course there were others who implied or argued that ther 85% (which didn’t appear on x-rays) was due to psychological factors. The literature also tends to focus almost exclusively on posture and back pain, with only scant mention of the effect on breathing and fatigue, and no attempt to explain how poor posture was causing fatigue. No-one had studied, or tried to compile all of the real physical causes in detail, or brought all of the information into one publication, so I did.

I later joined an online publication called Wikipedia in 2007, where another editor presented a summary of my theory, but it was deleted, and then I started contributing to an article about Da Costa’s syndrome.

During a twelve month period there were only five significant contributors to the content.

I did 40 edits and provided 95% of the text, and 95% of the references. Two editors named WhatamIdoing and Gordonofcartoon took turns with 30 and 24 edits respectively, or a total of 54 beteen them, where one would disrupt my contributions by looking for a policy to use as an excuse to delete the information, and the other one would typically say “Yup, we the entire Wikipedia community agree so we have just removed the paragraph” etc.

The fourth contributor was Arcadian who made 11 edits, with ten in one day on 19th December 2007 which were mainly routine edits and links to lists of categories etc., and the fifth one was Guido den Broeder who made 33 edits in one week, but only added a small amount of information. He was generally agreeing with me, but was banned soon after in June 2008. He was the founder of the Dutch chronic fatigue society and has since changed his ID to Roadcreature.

My two critics were even more disruptive on the discussion page with 69 and 60 edits each compared to Guido den Broeder’s 51 and my 49, where essentially, I was adding on average about one paragraph of useful information per week, and they were teaming up to write two paragraphs of criticism.

When two neutral editors eventually asked me and my two critics to write a version of the article for them to oversee and merge into one, their objective was to ensure that it was unbiased, and that it complied with Wikipedia’s “neutral point of view” policy, WP:NPOV.

However, while I actually agreed and did write such an article, my two critics did nothing except cut and past my version and criticise and reduce it to one third of it’s size.

(The sensible objective was for the “neutral editors” to look at three separate versions of the article and make the decision independantlyabout which information to keep. However, I was the only one to write an essay, my two critics tag-teamed to reduce it to one third it’s size, and the neutral editors were denied the opportunity to make decisions, other than to defer to what my two critics “dictated”.)

Their version has remained virtually unchanged since they managed to get me banned in January 2009. Their list of references included about 7 which I provided, or were by the same authors, and they added a dictionary, a couple of ‘volunteer’ websites, and a link to a children’s fiction novel called Soldier’s heart (e.g. see here)

They kept the early history section from 1871-1900 which I wrote, and deleted the important discoveries of physical and physiological abnormalities from 1900-2009, and portrayed it as a mental illness. They also kept the treatment section which I wrote, and which contains the methods which are all physical. – loosen belts, avoid bending, and exercise and maintain a lifestyle within limits etc.

While they were calling me a non-notable and ignorant fool and deleting information I noticed that exactly the same ideas and facts were being anonymously rewritten and added to other places in Wikipedia such as the page about the “Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome”, and to many pages related to posture. They also set up several new pages including “Posture (psychology)”, and put it out of order as the first on the top of the list of posture pages, to give the impression that the most important cause of postural problems was ‘depression’ and ‘low self-esteem’ and other psychological influences.

The exercise principles which I developed in 1982 have somehow entered the wider studies of the chronic fatigue syndrome, and are now used in the most successful research and treatment programmes in the world and are generally referred to as PACING, with some similarities to “Graduated Exercise Training” (GET), except that my principle involves limits.

It appears that there is some reluctance to acknowledge me as the source, probably because I am a patient rather than an academic. It seems that prejudice is phenominally powerful.

The complete history of Da Costa’s syndrome can be seen here

The version left after my two critics had reduced it to one third of it’s size can be seen here

A report on how they deleted the ideas and facts that I gave them and transferred it to other topic pages in Wikipedia can be seen here. They have also read my book and my website and copied some of that information as well.

My research programme about the effects of exercise training in patients who have chronic problems with fatigue can be seen here

They deleted scientific proof that the symptoms were real and physical, and not imaginary

I became interested in medicine in 1975 after doctors had been unable to explain or relieve any of my symptoms. I found that there was a general belief that it was impossible for there to be any one disease which could produce such a large number and diversity of symptoms, and that the only possible explanation was that they must be due to some sort of psychological factors where the mind was influencing the brain and causing symptoms in all parts of the body via the human nervous system.

It took me five years of detailed study to conclude that the cause was poor posture which strained the spine and disposed to a variety of backaches, and compressed the chest and disposed to breathlessness and chest pains, and the abdomen to cause a variety of abdominal symptoms. I called that concept “The Posture Theory“.

I was searching for the cause of my lower left-sided chest pains when eventually I found a book by Paul Wood O.B.E. which had been published in 1956. It had a full page picture of a life-sized painting of a patient who had a thin and stooped physique (exactly the same as mine), and the reports of experiments which showed that placing pain killing injections in the skin in the lower left side of the chest did not relieve the pain, but putting it slightly deeper into the muscle and tissue between the ribs did relieve the pain, which scientifically proved that it was a real symptom with a physical explanation, and not an imaginary pain. The author concluded that the pain could be due to “faulty posture”, or anxiety which strained the respiratory muscles and their attachments. From my own experience that symptom occurs randomly and has absolutely nothing to do with anxiety, and I have read other independent reports that some people get the pain when sitting in a chair and reading a newspaper on a sunny day.

I was also looking for an explanation of my breathing symptoms where I would often feel as if I could not get enough air, and would need to force a deep breath or two. That symptom may occur a couple of times a day or several hundred times a day. I knew it had a physical basis because I hadn’t experienced it prior to 1975, and since then it has been a regular feature of my breathing pattern.

While I was looking through some medical journals I found a research paper by S.Wolf which was published in 1947, where he reported his discovery of x-ray evidence that the symptom was due to spasm of the breathing muscles. In other words it had a real physical cause, and was not imaginary, and was not normal yawning. He also explained that the symptom could be induced by anxiety. While I have no reason to doubt that observation I can say from personal experience that the problem is associated with poor posture, and wearing tight shirts etc, or occurs for no apparent reason as part of the breathing pattern, and that most of the time anxiety has got nothing to do with it. I also found that in the nineteenth century it was common in women who wore tight waisted, and tight chested corsets, and could be relieved by unlacing the corset, and J.M.Da Costa, whose study defined the ailment, attributed it to tight straps about the waist and chest.

While I was contributing to the Wikipedia article about this subject I had two critics who deleted all information about my ideas by arguing that Wikipedia is not a place for “us” to be “promoting” our “pet” theories.

They deleted the information about the chest pain by arguing that they have “many, many, many rules” which are “very, very, very important” including their “original research policy” which “demands” that information comes from “independent review articles” not one persons research paper.

The breathlessness is one of the main symptoms experienced by more than 90% of DCS patients, but they deleted that research on the grounds that, in their opinion, it was an example of me adding information about my own theory, and was therefore a violation of their “Synthesis policy”.

I could have used a lot of independent studies to verify the information, but then I would have been accused of violating the “original research policy” each and every time, so I supplied them with a summary of one review which presented the relevant information in chapter 22 of a 1951 book by Paul Dudley White. In 1919 he was an assistant of Sir Thomas Lewis who had been knighted for his contributions to the subject. White later became an emeritus professor of Harvard University, and his chapter 22 was based on 27 research papers and books, and his own book was used in the libraries of medical universities all around the world.

However, after a neutral editor named Avnjay described my version of the article as being “a lot better” than my critics, this is what my main critic wrote . . .

“Avnjay, I realize that you’re not competent in the subject matter, but an editor of your experience should have noticed that . . . he lists the same thoroughly outdated (1951!) textbook eighteen separate times.” WhatamIdoing16:15, 5 October 2008 See here

You can see how it didn’t matter if the information was from my own theory, or from the researchers who made the most important discoveries about this subject, or from reviews by the world experts in this topic.

My two critics found a way of describng the information as nonsense and deleting it, as well as the references which verify those facts, and they found a way of banning me.

My main critics method of deceiving the uninvolved editors

Their no-win “trick”

If you had a close look at the way that individual argued you would be able to see that their strategy was to deceive all of the other editors and administrators into believing that every statement and every reference I used had something wrong with it.

You can see in the example above, that if I used 18 different references that critic would try to badger and convince them that I was violating the “original research policy” 18 different times. However, if I used the one “review” to provide 18 verifiable facts, then that critic would try to hound and badger all of the other editors into believing that I was at fault for getting all of the information from only one book.

When I started on the page my main critic had edited it twice, and there were no references, and a year later, when I was banned, there were more than 60.

How my two critics messed up the article

According to top quality medical research journals the typical Da Costa’s syndrome patient has a thin and stooped physique, a long, narrow, or flat chest, other chest wall deformities, and a sedentary lifestyle, usually because they have problems with exertion and so avoid sport and manual occupations. They are mostly poor swimmers and athletes. It is common in civilian life, and two thirds of patients are women.

The symptoms are lower left-sided chest pains, a type of breathlessness which involves a sense of not getting a full breath which tends to result in occasional ‘forced’ sighs or yawns, palpitations, and the fourth main symptom is a type of fatigue that can involve difficulty with exertion, sometimes slight exertion. I provided a photo of a painting of the typical patient and some comments about how poor posture could compress the ribs and chest to cause those symptoms.

My two critics systematically deleted almost all of that information over a period of weeks, bit by bit, in the hope that no-one would notice what the were doing. What they wanted to do was create the impression that these individuals had normal physiques, and that their symptoms were part of an anxiety disorder caused by the fear of battle. To achieve their objective they chose one of the many alternative labels called Soldier’s Heart, described it as the “chief” alternative label, and placed it on the top line of the page with a link to a novel.

I decided to check the relevance of that book which was available in the ‘children’s fiction section’ of my local library, so I went there to read it.

The ‘story’ is about a teenager who was a tall, strong, well-built, physically fit farm labourer who enlisted in the army and fought in four battles during the American Civil War, where, in some instances, he became exhausted by man to man combat.

Although there is some mention of Da Costa’s syndrome in the opening pages, the main character did not fit the description of the typical patient, and he did not suffer from the same symptoms as Da Costa’s syndrome.

There is another page in Wikipedia which reviews that book which is sometimes edited and changed but when I saw it recently it describes the story as an example of ‘battle fatigue’ caused by the psychological trauma of war. Battle fatigue is another label for Da Costa’s syndrome.

I read the paper back version of the novel, not the hardback, but I assume the text was similar. From my reading he was not suffering from battle fatigue when returning home. He had been felled by two bullets in the last battle and walked with a limp and bled from his bladder, and as such was unable to get, or keep a job. Although some people may think that he was depressed by his injuries, I got the impression that he just had to accept the problems, because there weren’t any cures at the time.

Regardless, he did not have the typical physique or symptoms of Da Costa’s syndrome, and anyone who reads the Wikipedia article about it, or that novel, or the review, will get a false impression.

The children’s fiction story may have been well written by a good author, but it was not about the medical condition called Da Costa’s syndrome.

My role in Wikipedia was to provide good quality information and make sure that it was sensible and accurate, but I was banned, and the two editors who messed it up are still there, presumabley messing up a lot of other artcles, and filling the encyclopedia with unreliable content.

Resistance to change, but change, from 1975, has happened

Before I started researching this subject it was popular to believe that patients with Da Costa’s syndrome were just imagining things, or were afraid of the normal symptoms of exercise, or were getting those symptoms because of anxiety, not because of the exercise, or were faking symptoms to get sympathy, or were lazy people who became exhausted because they were unfit simply due to the lack of exercise. In fact, the modern label of “deconditioning” refers to poor levels of fitness caused by a lack of exercise, and is believed by many researchers to be the cause of chronic fatigue.

Patients were, and some still are told that all they have to do to regain their health is to join a fitness programme and keep on gradually improving their level of fitness to normal and they will be ‘cured’.

However, in 1975, at the age of 25, I had enough common sense to know that my symptoms were real and physically based, and I was intelligent enough to evaluate the nature of my own symptoms, and to recognise from experience that there were limits to the level of effort that I could exert. I was aware that if I stayed within them I would have normal symptoms, and if I sprinted too fast from a standing position, or ran too fast for too long, I would get quite severe symptoms. I was also mature enough to ignore the social pressure to keep up with everyone else on the fitness training course.

Consequently I was able to scientifically prove that all of the popular medical theories of that time were wrong. My objective was to improve my own health, not to prove other people wrong, but that was a consequence of what I did, and it is obvious that some people in research don’t want that fact to become widely known.

They would like the world to think of me as an insignificant and worthless person who is riddled with anxiety, depression, and all sorts of other mental or behavioural disorders. Those people will have to remove every piece of information about me from the books, or wait until after I am dead to tell their ‘story’, because if they were to say such things to me on a public stage, while I was there to give a reply, I would easily make them look ridiculous.

As you can appreciate, I don’t particularly want to make my critics look ridiculous – but I could, and if they challenged me in person – I would. M.B.

Five hours of peace and quiet

Shortly after I made my first contribution to the Da Costa’s page I found that two editors had teamed up and put me on a watchlist, and within a few hours one of them would accuse me of violating a policy, and the other one would use it as an excuse to delete the information.

However, I later noticed something interesting and began editing in the following manner.

Between 5 and 6 p.m. on Sunday, Australian time, I would start the process of adding some information to the article, because I determined that it would be about 2 a.m. in the middle of the night U.S.A. time, where at least one of them lived, and when they would both be almost guaranteed to be sound asleep.. Five hours later it would be 7 a.m. in the morning U.S.A. time, and one of them would wake up, turn on their computer, delete or criticise the article as their first task of the day, and then presumably have breakfast..

On Monday I would have a look at their comments which would be an accusation of violating one policy the first week, and then a completely different policy almost each and every week for a year after that.

On Tuesday I would check the validity of the criticism. For example, if they told me that my references from 1950 had to be deleted because they were “old”, i would look at other medical pages to find that the reference lists contained a large number of items that were from the same decade or, even much older, and yet no-one had criticised or deleted them. I would also check the policy pages and find out that I hadn’t actually violated them, because, for example, older references are acceptable in the history section of articles.

On Wednesday I would spend some time looking for “new” references which complied with their latest requirements. I might also make a comment on the discussion page about Da Costa’s syndrome, but generally speaking, it didn’t matter if I made one or ten comments, because I would get one or ten stupid replies, so it was obvious that they were just being pests.

On Thursday I might go to the library at the Adelaide University and spend about an hour looking for relevant articles in research journals.

On Friday I would write a brief summary of those articles.

On Saturday I would tidy up the paragraph, and then do a spell check.

On Sunday I would wait until 5 p.m. (Australian time), and then start adding the paragraph and the top quality references to Wikipedia.

I knew that there were more than 100,000 other editors from countries all around the world who were editing Wikipedia, and that none of them had ever deleted any of my contributions from the Da Costa’s page, so that, as long as my two critics were asleep at 2 a.m. in the middle of the night (U.S.A. time), I would get five hours of peace and quiet before they woke up and started criticising me again.

They would then wake up at 7a.m. and turn on their computers, and criticise or delete everything I wrote, and then, on more that ten occasions, they would rush away to set up a new discussion page and tell their lies to a new group of editors in another attempt to get me blocked.

For example, one of them was “Gordonofcartoon”, and he would accuse me of violating a dozen or more polices and say

“We the entire Wikipedia community of ‘rule-abiding’ editors are thoroughly disgusted with Posturewriters disruptive behavior. He never does what we the entire community tell him to do so we need help getting him blocked and banned.

The other critic was “WhatamIdoing” who would pretend to be a casual and uninterested person by writing . .

“Bye the way, I’ve just returned from a little holiday when I noticed this discussion by pure co-incidence. I first saw this dispute a few months ago when I was routinely fixing spelling errors, and I agree, the entire Wikipedia community appears to be thoroughly disgusted with Posturewriters refusal to do what they are telling him to do. We are utterly frustrated and are rapidly losing our patience, but all we ever get from other administrators is that “he is a nice polite guy who makes useful contributions so leave him alone”. We need a solution to all this, We the entire Wikipedia community want him banned before we tear our hair out”

On rare occasions they would manage to talk an administrator into believing that I was at fault, and he would leave me a comment like this –

“Posturewriter, it seems to me, from the diffs provided by WhatamIdoing, that you have been disrupting the contributions of many individuals, so if you don’t voluntarily stop editing this article I will officially block you.”

After 12 months Gordonofcartoon would be arguing that I had been disruptive to the entire Wikipedia community, and all of the administrators involved in the case, and needed to be forced to “buckle down”, and “play the game”, and then WhatamIdoing would write an essay of criticism which was twice as long as my response, and argue like this . . . “Yep that’s right, everything that Posturewriter has done is wrong, and most, if not all of the references that he uses do not meet even or most basic standards, and he is interfering with the attempt of many, many rule-abiding editors to write a good article, so we want him banned.”

You might think that I was banned by some sort of sensible arbitration process which involved the consensus of a dozen independent and neutral referees but this is what happened.

My main critic had lost most of the previous arguments, and was about to lose the arbitration case, and so offered an administrator a secret bribe like this –

‘You will get a pretty barnstar called the Outlaw Halo Award if you use the ‘ignore all rules” policy to barge in on the arbitration page and tell the twelve editors to shut up and get lost, and then ban Posturewriter on your own.”

My main critic gave that administrator the barnstar three months after he banned me.

I had the opportunity of appealing the case but I couldn’t be bothered dealing with all of that nonsense again.

They told some of the editors in May 2008 that their aim was to annoy and harass me and drive me out of Wikipedia, so to some extent I stayed there to be amused by their silly antics. They were intelligent enough to know how to cut and paste information, but they didn’t have enough problem solving skills to figure out that I was deliberately adding information while they were asleep. They would say amusing things to give other editors the false impression that they were high status individuals of great cunning by saying that their . . . “existing attitude readjustment tools apparently don’t reach as far as Australia, and the editor remains unscathed”, e.g. here See also here.

They are probably silly enough to think that they have some crafty tactics that I can’t comprehend, but every strategy they use is full of sly distortion and misrepresentation of facts.

See also my report and evidence on how they created the illusion of consensus here

and see some statistics on their editing here

and my report and evidence on how they were the only two editors to replace my version of the article with theirs here

My two critics were prolific liars

Within a short time of me starting to edit the Wikipedia page called Da Costa’s syndrome it became apparent that my two critics were prolific liars who were going criticise almost every word I added. It wasn’t long before I would add information which complied with all the rules, and then sit back to wait with amusement at what rule they would accuse me of breaking next.

Some of their lies were presented in sets and were so complicated that it would be difficult to discuss them to readers who were not familiar with the topic so I will try to describe them in clear terms by giving some of the more obvious examples in the list below.