Water Fluoridation: a Response to Critics in Australia and New Zealand

Recent questions about the effectiveness of water fluoridation have come from Diesendorf in Australia and Colquhoun in New Zealand. This report examines the arguments of both authors in detail and finds errors in each. Diesendorf employed an outdated view of how fluoride exerts its anticariogenic action and took a number of quotations out of context. Colquhoun's data are questionable. Neither author has produced evidence to challenge the established safety and effectiveness of water fluoridation.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/66160/1/j.1752-7325.1988.tb03201.x.pd

Maintaining standing stones benefits biodiversity in lowland heathland

The exploitation of natural resources by people generally has detrimental effects on nature but in some cases anthropogenic activities can result in changes to the natural environment that produce new habitats and increase biodiversity. Understanding and supporting such cultural aspects of land use is an important part of effective conservation strategies. The UK has a range of cultural landscapes that contribute to the landscape matrix and are often important for biodiversity. However, little research has been conducted on the relationship between various types of cultural landscapes or their effects on biodiversity. We examined the interaction between semi-natural sacred sites and lowland heathland in Cornwall, and the contribution these sites make to the overall biodiversity within the habitat. We found that semi-natural sacred sites had significantly higher levels of biodiversity compared to surrounding heathland; the existence and use of the sites created new and important habitats for rare and threatened heathland species; and the spiritual and cultural use of the sites aids the management of heathland. Promoting the use of semi-natural sacred sites could therefore contribute to biodiversity conservation. Furthermore, the cultural and spiritual importance of such sites potentially increases the availability of volunteer resources for their management. We highlight the importance of an integrated management approach for achieving effective biodiversity conservation in areas containing multiple types of cultural landscapes

President\u27s Council of Black Education Correspondence 1970

Correspondence between President of USF, Albert R. Jonsen, Herold L. Perry, Samuel L. Kountz, Terry A. Francois, and Burl A. Toler regarding the creation of the President\u27s Council of Black Education

Research Reports From Status Report: Identification of Appropriate Standards for Corrective Action for a Release from Petroleum Underground Storage Tanks

This document is a collection of research reports: Cost of Closure and Remediation for Petroleum Underground Storage Tanks Assessment of Number and Distribution of USTs Analysis of Potable Water Sources in Kentucky Analysis of Well Data and Soil Parameters as Related to the STATSGO Kentucky General Soil Map Petroleum Products: Chemical Composition, Tocxicological and Environmental Data Health Risk Analysis for Selected Petroleum Compounds Summary of Analytical Methods Soil Volume Calculations for UST Installations Generic Organic Containment Pathway Analysis for Components of Petroleum in Soil and Groundwate

Attention mechanisms in the CHREST cognitive architecture

In this paper, we describe the attention mechanisms in CHREST, a computational architecture of human visual expertise. CHREST organises information acquired by direct experience from the world in the form of chunks. These chunks are searched for, and verified, by a unique set of heuristics, comprising the attention mechanism. We explain how the attention mechanism combines bottom-up and top-down heuristics from internal and external sources of information. We describe some experimental evidence demonstrating the correspondence of CHREST’s perceptual mechanisms with those of human subjects. Finally, we discuss how visual attention can play an important role in actions carried out by human experts in domains such as chess

A joint computational and experimental study to evaluate Inconel-sheathed thermocouple performance in flames.

A joint experimental and computational study was performed to evaluate the capability of the Sandia Fire Code VULCAN to predict thermocouple response temperature. Thermocouple temperatures recorded by an Inconel-sheathed thermocouple inserted into a near-adiabatic flat flame were predicted by companion VULCAN simulations. The predicted thermocouple temperatures were within 6% of the measured values, with the error primarily attributable to uncertainty in Inconel 600 emissivity and axial conduction losses along the length of the thermocouple assembly. Hence, it is recommended that future thermocouple models (for Inconel-sheathed designs) include a correction for axial conduction. Given the remarkable agreement between experiment and simulation, it is recommended that the analysis be repeated for thermocouples in flames with pollutants such as soot

The Tuberculin Skin Test (TST) Is Affected by Recent BCG Vaccination but Not by Exposure to Non-Tuberculosis Mycobacteria (NTM) during Early Life

The tuberculin skin test (TST) is widely used in TB clinics to aid Mycobacterium tuberculosis (M.tb) diagnosis, but the definition and the significance of a positive test in very young children is still unclear. This study compared the TST in Gambian children at 4½ months of age who either received BCG vaccination at birth (Group 1) or were BCG naïve (Group 2) in order to examine the role of BCG vaccination and/or exposure to environmental mycobacteria in TST reactivity at this age. Nearly half of the BCG vaccinated children had a positive TST (≥5 mm) whereas all the BCG naïve children were non-reactive, confirming that recent BCG vaccination affects TST reactivity. The BCG naïve children demonstrated in vitro PPD responses in peripheral blood in the absence of TST reactivity, supporting exposure to and priming by environmental mycobacterial antigens. Group 2 were then vaccinated at 4½ months of age and a repeat TST was performed at 20–28 months of age. Positive reactivity (≥5 mm) was evident in 11.1% and 12.5% infants from Group 1 and Group 2 respectively suggesting that the timing of BCG vaccination had little effect by this age. We further assessed for immune correlates in peripheral blood at 4½ months of age. Mycobacterial specific IFNγ responses were greater in TST responders than in non-responders, although the size of induration did not correlate with IFNγ. However the IFNγ: IL-10 ratio positively correlated with TST induration suggesting that the relationship between PPD induced IFNγ and IL-10 in the peripheral blood may be important in controlling TST reactivity. Collectively these data provide further insights into how the TST is regulated in early life, and how a positive response might be interpreted