The Iowa Homemaker vol.31, no.1

Finger or Fork, Doris Jean Coxon, page 3 Learn to Play, Floramae Gates, page 4 What’s Your Beef, Jackie Morrison, page 5 Born to Travel, Ruth Anderson, page 6 Hardships, Colene Ruch, page 7 The O’Bryan Touch, Nancy Voss, page 8 What’s New, Constance Cornwell, Harriet LaRue, page 10 Here’s An Idea, Darleen Bornschein, Jean McGhie, page 12 Alums in the News, Jane Novak, page 15 Trends, Anne Dallager, page 1

Hearing and dementia

Hearing deficits associated with cognitive impairment have attracted much recent interest, motivated by emerging evidence that impaired hearing is a risk factor for cognitive decline. However, dementia and hearing impairment present immense challenges in their own right, and their intersection in the auditory brain remains poorly understood and difficult to assess. Here, we outline a clinically oriented, symptom-based approach to the assessment of hearing in dementias, informed by recent progress in the clinical auditory neuroscience of these diseases. We consider the significance and interpretation of hearing loss and symptoms that point to a disorder of auditory cognition in patients with dementia. We identify key auditory characteristics of some important dementias and conclude with a bedside approach to assessing and managing auditory dysfunction in dementia

National trends in total cholesterol obscure heterogeneous changes in HDL and non-HDL cholesterol and total-to-HDL cholesterol ratio : a pooled analysis of 458 population-based studies in Asian and Western countries

Background: Although high-density lipoprotein (HDL) and non-HDL cholesterol have opposite associations with coronary heart disease, multi-country reports of lipid trends only use total cholesterol (TC). Our aim was to compare trends in total, HDL and nonHDL cholesterol and the total-to-HDL cholesterol ratio in Asian and Western countries. Methods: We pooled 458 population-based studies with 82.1 million participants in 23 Asian and Western countries. We estimated changes in mean total, HDL and non-HDL cholesterol and mean total-to-HDL cholesterol ratio by country, sex and age group. Results: Since similar to 1980, mean TC increased in Asian countries. In Japan and South Korea, the TC rise was due to rising HDL cholesterol, which increased by up to 0.17 mmol/L per decade in Japanese women; in China, it was due to rising non-HDL cholesterol. TC declined in Western countries, except in Polish men. The decline was largest in Finland and Norway, at similar to 0.4 mmol/L per decade. The decline in TC in most Western countries was the net effect of an increase in HDL cholesterol and a decline in non-HDL cholesterol, with the HDL cholesterol increase largest in New Zealand and Switzerland. Mean total-to-HDL cholesterol ratio declined in Japan, South Korea and most Western countries, by as much as similar to 0.7 per decade in Swiss men (equivalent to similar to 26% decline in coronary heart disease risk per decade). The ratio increased in China. Conclusions: HDL cholesterol has risen and the total-to-HDL cholesterol ratio has declined in many Western countries, Japan and South Korea, with only a weak correlation with changes in TC or non-HDL cholesterol.Peer reviewe

Contributions of mean and shape of blood pressure distribution to worldwide trends and variations in raised blood pressure: A pooled analysis of 1018 population-based measurement studies with 88.6 million participants

© The Author(s) 2018. Background: Change in the prevalence of raised blood pressure could be due to both shifts in the entire distribution of blood pressure (representing the combined effects of public health interventions and secular trends) and changes in its high-blood-pressure tail (representing successful clinical interventions to control blood pressure in the hypertensive population). Our aim was to quantify the contributions of these two phenomena to the worldwide trends in the prevalence of raised blood pressure. Methods: We pooled 1018 population-based studies with blood pressure measurements on 88.6 million participants from 1985 to 2016. We first calculated mean systolic blood pressure (SBP), mean diastolic blood pressure (DBP) and prevalence of raised blood pressure by sex and 10-year age group from 20-29 years to 70-79 years in each study, taking into account complex survey design and survey sample weights, where relevant. We used a linear mixed effect model to quantify the association between (probittransformed) prevalence of raised blood pressure and age-group- and sex-specific mean blood pressure. We calculated the contributions of change in mean SBP and DBP, and of change in the prevalence-mean association, to the change in prevalence of raised blood pressure. Results: In 2005-16, at the same level of population mean SBP and DBP, men and women in South Asia and in Central Asia, the Middle East and North Africa would have the highest prevalence of raised blood pressure, and men and women in the highincome Asia Pacific and high-income Western regions would have the lowest. In most region-sex-age groups where the prevalence of raised blood pressure declined, one half or more of the decline was due to the decline in mean blood pressure. Where prevalence of raised blood pressure has increased, the change was entirely driven by increasing mean blood pressure, offset partly by the change in the prevalence-mean association. Conclusions: Change in mean blood pressure is the main driver of the worldwide change in the prevalence of raised blood pressure, but change in the high-blood-pressure tail of the distribution has also contributed to the change in prevalence, especially in older age groups

Rising rural body-mass index is the main driver of the global obesity epidemic in adults

Body-mass index (BMI) has increased steadily in most countries in parallel with a rise in the proportion of the population who live in cities(.)(1,2) This has led to a widely reported view that urbanization is one of the most important drivers of the global rise in obesity(3-6). Here we use 2,009 population-based studies, with measurements of height and weight in more than 112 million adults, to report national, regional and global trends in mean BMI segregated by place of residence (a rural or urban area) from 1985 to 2017. We show that, contrary to the dominant paradigm, more than 55% of the global rise in mean BMI from 1985 to 2017-and more than 80% in some low- and middle-income regions-was due to increases in BMI in rural areas. This large contribution stems from the fact that, with the exception of women in sub-Saharan Africa, BMI is increasing at the same rate or faster in rural areas than in cities in low- and middle-income regions. These trends have in turn resulted in a closing-and in some countries reversal-of the gap in BMI between urban and rural areas in low- and middle-income countries, especially for women. In high-income and industrialized countries, we noted a persistently higher rural BMI, especially for women. There is an urgent need for an integrated approach to rural nutrition that enhances financial and physical access to healthy foods, to avoid replacing the rural undernutrition disadvantage in poor countries with a more general malnutrition disadvantage that entails excessive consumption of low-quality calories.Peer reviewe

Retained capacity for perceptual learning of degraded speech in primary progressive aphasia and Alzheimer's disease

This work was supported by the Alzheimer’s Society (AS-PG-16-007), the National Institute for Health Research University College London Hospitals Biomedical Research Centre, the UCL Leonard Wolfson Experimental Neurology Centre (PR/ylr/18575) and the Economic and Social Research Council (ES/K006711/1). Individual authors were supported by the Medical Research Council (PhD Studentship to CJDH and RLB; MRC Clinician Scientist Fellowship to JDR), the Wolfson Foundation (Clinical Research Fellowship to CRM), Alzheimer’s Research UK (ART-SRF2010-3 to SJC) and the Wellcome Trust (091673/Z/10/Z to JDW)

Wilson Tout, Secretary

Wilson Tout was secretary of the North Platte Bird Club from 1940 to 1944, and members looked forward to his reading of the minutes. They were hardly the kind most organizations would expect. Recently I was able to get copies of Mr. Tout\u27s minutes and two, selected more or less at random, are given below: NOVEMBER 16, 1940 The North Platte Bird Club met at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Wilson Tout with 14 members present. Mr. Webster called the meeting to order upon a nod from Mrs. Webster. The minutes of the last meeting were read amid general disapproval and the secretary was warned to suppress trivial incidents in future minutes. The secretary was afraid of losing the job so agreed to be more careful in the future

Lewis\u27 Woodpeckers in Western Nebraska

On 30 August 1980, Dr. Randy Lawson from Chadron State College reported to me that Lewis\u27 Woodpeckers (Asyndesmus lewis) were in a dead elm tree about eight miles south of Chadron on the west side of U.S. Highway 385. We observed them for about an hour, and in the afternoon, Marj Blinde and I watched them for about an hour more. They numbered at least 12 and flew from the elm to fence posts and telephone posts nearby. They performed the fly catching actions for which they are noted, but it seemed the attraction of this particular location was a chokecherry thicket about 100 yards west of the tree. The tree stood at the edge of another chokecherry thicket, but every time we saw them fly to chokecherries, they went to the farther one. We sat on a hill close to them and could see them pick the cherries, some of which they swallowed, some they carried back to the dead elm, and in a few instances, we could see them go to fence posts, where they seemed to examine all the cracks and later they went back to the tree with nothing in their beaks. Examination of the posts disclosed in one post five cherries in cracks that measured just one cherry wide. In two cracks were two cherries, and a single one was in another. Examination of every post for a distance of about a half mile yielded very few cherries. However, seeds were on tops of many and on the ground by them. One post had a bright green scarab beetle mashed in a crack, possibly put there by a Woodpecker. An interesting further fact was that many of the seeds on the ground had been opened by something, probably by mice, judging by what appeared to be teeth marks, and the contents were gone

Twenty-One Years of Say\u27s Phoebes

Mr. and Mrs. Carl Lindeken live 10.5 miles northeast of Chadron, Nebraska, in a home with a big picture window over the kitchen sink, a window that faces the Sheridan Gates, a formation which is in Sheridan County across the Dawes County line. Outside the window is a small platform on which Say\u27s Phoebes have nested for many years. The first year the Lindekens were aware of Say\u27s Phoebes was in 1958 when a pair nested in the garage, a building which is attached to the house. The birds were messy but they were allowed to remain through the summer. Before the next year Mr. Lindeken built a small platform at the angle where the garage and house meet. It is about 10 inches below a sort of overhang of the roof and is screwed to the north and east sidewalls. It is well protected. The platform itself is made of a 3-ply board about 7.5 x 7.5 inches with the outer corner mitered. The board is edged with a molding making a border which helps hold the nest together

The Mosquitoes of Nebraska

A survey of mosquitoes in Nebraska was conducted by the Nebraska Agricultural Experiment Station during 1942 and 1943. The object of the study was to determine the species, relative abundance, seasonal occurrence, and principal breeding places of mosquitoes in representative areas of the state. This report presents the results of the survey, and, in addition, some records and observations made in Nebraska by other workers during and previous to initiation of the project