Caesarian birth: conflict in maternity services.

This study investigates the history of caesarean section and women's experience of the operation today. There has been no systematic collection of historical data on caesarean section since 1944. This study now constitutes the most comprehensive compilation of the history of the operation to date. It illustrates the development of the medical ethos concerning women as patients and provides the background to the next phase of research: the experience of caesarean section. Previous research on caesarean section has exhaustively analysed the indications for the operation, reasons for the increasing rate and women's perceptions of abdominal delivery. This study differs in eliciting responses from women on a range of issues relating to caesarean birth in order to assess the quality of information given to women in hopital regarding the necessity for caesarean operations and analyse the effects of abdominal birth on women. Women's experiences were examined in a sample of 300 women who had delivered by caesarean section. Significant differences were found in reactions between women who had emergency operations and those whose caesareans were elective. The emergency caesarean women suffered more in all negative measures including increased feelings of pain and depression. Negative sequelae was found to relate to the unexpected nature of emergency operations and the use of general anaesthesia. Subjectively women report that they do not suffer as a result of caesarean birth, yet objectively it is clear that they do. This anomaly is attributed to the unequal relationship between women and doctors. Women feel grateful for the treatment offered by the doctors and therefore do not express dissatisfaction with their care. Recommendations are made suggesting practical ways in which maternity services, in respect of caesarean birth, can be improved

Children’s physic: medical perceptions and treatment of sick children in early modern England, c. 1580-1720

Historians of medicine, childhood, and paediatrics, have often assumed that early modern doctors neither treated children, nor adapted their medicines to suit the peculiar temperaments of the young. Through an examination of medical textbooks and doctors’ casebooks, this article refutes these assumptions. It argues that medical authors and practising doctors regularly treated children, and were careful to tailor their remedies to complement the distinctive constitutions of children. Thus, this article proposes that a concept of ‘children’s physic’ existed in early modern England: this term refers to the notion that children were physiologically distinct, requiring special medical care. Children’s physic was rooted in the ancient traditions of Hippocratic and Galenic medicine: it was the child’s humoral makeup that underpinned all medical ideas about children’s bodies, minds, diseases, and treatments. Children abounded in the humour blood, which made them humid and weak, and in need of medicines of a particularly gentle nature

Evolution of Maine Place Names

The article provides great detail about the Native American, English and French names of Maine places as well as information about the movement of the various groups and its impact on place names

Kinematics of Circumgalactic Gas: Feeding Galaxies and Feedback

We present observations of 50 pairs of redshift z ~ 0.2 star-forming galaxies and background quasars. These sightlines probe the circumgalactic medium (CGM) out to half the virial radius, and we describe the circumgalactic gas kinematics relative to the reference frame defined by the galactic disks. We detect halo gas in MgII absorption, measure the equivalent-width-weighted Doppler shifts relative to each galaxy, and find that the CGM has a component of angular momentum that is aligned with the galactic disk. No net counter-rotation of the CGM is detected within 45 degrees of the major axis at any impact parameter. The velocity offset of the circumgalactic gas correlates with the projected rotation speed in the disk plane out to disk radii of roughly 70 kpc. We confirm previous claims that the MgII absorption becomes stronger near the galactic minor axis and show that the equivalent width correlates with the velocity range of the absorption. We cannot directly measure the location of any absorber along the sightline, but we explore the hypothesis that individual velocity components can be associated with gas orbiting in the disk plane or flowing radially outward in a conical outflow. We conclude that centrifugal forces partially support the low-ionization gas and galactic outflows kinematically disturb the CGM producing excess absorption. Our results firmly rule out schema for the inner CGM that lack rotation and suggest that angular momentum as well as galactic winds should be included in any viable model for the low-redshift CGM.Comment: Accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journa

Superconductor-Nanowire Devices from Tunneling to the Multichannel Regime: Zero-Bias Oscillations and Magnetoconductance Crossover

We present transport measurements in superconductor-nanowire devices with a gated constriction forming a quantum point contact. Zero-bias features in tunneling spectroscopy appear at finite magnetic fields, and oscillate in amplitude and split away from zero bias as a function of magnetic field and gate voltage. A crossover in magnetoconductance is observed: Magnetic fields above ~ 0.5 T enhance conductance in the low-conductance (tunneling) regime but suppress conductance in the high-conductance (multichannel) regime. We consider these results in the context of Majorana zero modes as well as alternatives, including Kondo effect and analogs of 0.7 structure in a disordered nanowire.Comment: Supplemental Material here: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1742676/Churchill_Supplemental.pd

Acoustically and visually tracked drogue measurements of nearsurface water velocities in Lake Huron, plus observations of a coastal upwelling

During July and August of 1980 our research group measured nearsurface water velocities near the eastern coast of Lake Huron by tracking drogues using acoustic travel time and compass sighting techniques. The velocity fields appeared to consist of two components. These have been termed: a sub-current, which varied slowly with depth (compared to the deepest drogue depth of 5.2 m) and, in most cases, was apparently in geostrophic balance with the cross shore pressure gradient; and, a surface layer-current (defined by the relative velocity from deeper to shallower drogues) which decayed rapidly with depth and was directed nearly parallel with the wind and waves. There was no discernable relationship between wind speed and relative velocity. There was, however, a direct dependence of relative velocity with estimated surface roughness, suggesting that Stokes drift may have been primarily responsible for the shear. The magnitudes of the observed relative velocities were approximately equal to Stokes drift magnitudes calculated from representative wave energy spectra. Also reported are measurements of current and temperature structure made prior to and following a coastal upwelling.Prepared for the Department of Energy under Contract DE-AC02-79EV10005 and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration under Contract 03-5-022-26

Anomalies in the carbonate system of Red Sea coastal habitats

© The Author(s), 2020. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Baldry, K., Saderne, V., McCorkle, D. C., Churchill, J. H., Agust, S., & Duarte, C. M. Anomalies in the carbonate system of Red Sea coastal habitats. Biogeosciences, 17(2), (2020): 423-439, doi:10.5194/bg-17-423-2020.We use observations of dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) and total alkalinity (TA) to assess the impact of ecosystem metabolic processes on coastal waters of the eastern Red Sea. A simple, single-end-member mixing model is used to account for the influence of mixing with offshore waters and evaporation–precipitation and to model ecosystem-driven perturbations on the carbonate system chemistry of coral reefs, seagrass meadows and mangrove forests. We find that (1) along-shelf changes in TA and DIC exhibit strong linear relationships that are consistent with basin-scale net calcium carbonate precipitation; (2) ecosystem-driven changes in TA and DIC are larger than offshore variations in >70 % of sampled seagrass meadows and mangrove forests, changes which are influenced by a combination of longer water residence times and community metabolic rates; and (3) the sampled mangrove forests show strong and consistent contributions from both organic respiration and other sedimentary processes (carbonate dissolution and secondary redox processes), while seagrass meadows display more variability in the relative contributions of photosynthesis and other sedimentary processes (carbonate precipitation and oxidative processes). The results of this study highlight the importance of resolving the influences of water residence times, mixing and upstream habitats on mediating the carbonate system and coastal air–sea carbon dioxide fluxes over coastal habitats in the Red Sea.This research has been supported by the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) (grant nos. BAS/1/1071-01-01 and BAS/1/1072-01-01) and the Investment in Science fund at WHOI

Shelf water and chlorophyll export from the Hatteras slope and outer shelf

© The Author(s), 2014. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans 119 (2014): 4291–4304, doi:10.1002/2014JC009809.Using high-resolution data acquired from a shipboard ADCP and a towed Scanfish equipped with a CTD and fluorometer, we examine the properties and transport of Middle Atlantic Bight (MAB) shelf water over a region of the Hatteras outer shelf and slope where MAB shelf water is commonly deflected offshore and entrained into the Gulf Stream. The data are from a period in early August 2004 when the seasonal pycnocline of the MAB is well developed and situated over a weakly stratified, near-bottom shelf water mass commonly referred to as the cold pool. Our data show chlorophyll-rich cold pool water carried rapidly southward over the slope and outer shelf, at a rate of up to 60 cm s−1, as part of the shelf-edge frontal jet. This southward transport of chlorophyll-rich cold pool water is shunted eastward and entrained into the Gulf Stream. However, the latitude band over which this export occurs varies significantly over the 7 day course of our study, a variation which is linked to an order 50 km shift in the latitude at which the Gulf Stream separates from the continental margin. The coupled rapid translation of the Gulf Stream frontal separation and the cold pool export zone is likely to have a significant impact on the movement and accumulation of biogenic material over the Hatteras slope and rise.This work was supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation through grants OCE-03–27249 and OCE-0926999