Emerald Ash Borer: Public Health, the Urban Canopy and Biochar

Jim Doten - Supervisor Environmental Services at the Minneapolis Public Health in Minneapolis, MN. The Emerald Ash Borer (EAB) can devastate the ash population in an urban canopy within six years of detection. Trees play an important role in urban air quality by reducing ozone and particulate matter. The loss of these services results in increased human mortality. Between 2002 and 2007 EAB-infected counties experienced 23.5 additional deaths per 100,000 adults from cardiovascular disease and respiratory-related mortality. The City of Minneapolis, Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community, Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board, and the University of Minnesota have teamed to study the potential role of biochar in restoring lost ecological services. The University of Minnesota developed a study using different ratios of biochar/compost soil amendment treatments on 600 replacement trees. The study will evaluate the effect on tree mortality and vigor over a five-year period. The goal is to speed the replacement of ecological services and minimize EAB public health effects.Ope

Presurgical and postsurgical neuropsychological assessment in epilepsy

Neurobiology and Medical Genetics Laboratory, National Center of Epileptology, Institute of Emergency Medicine, Department of Neurology No 2, Nicolae Testemitanu State University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Chisinau, the Republic of Moldova. The 75th anniversary of Nicolae Testemitanu State University of Medicine and Pharmacy of the Republic of Moldova (1945-2020)Background: Epilepsy surgery represents a valuable treatment for people with drug-resistant epilepsy, which often leads to a substantial improvement in the cognitive-behavioral domains and to a better quality of life, especially in children. A neuropsychological assessment is considered mandatory and should form an integral component of the presurgical evaluation and assessment of postoperative outcome for all epilepsy surgery patients. In this context, the presurgical neuropsychological assessment in combination, as well as other relevant neurological investigations are important for assessing the risk of potential postsurgical cognitive deficits, to determine the dominant hemisphere responsible for language function and to predict the risk of memory decline and of visual and motor deficits. A postsurgical neuropsychological assessment is necessary in assessing the outcomes because cognitive decline is one of the most significant sequelae of epilepsy surgery. Conclusions: The neuropsychological assessment remains an obligatory and valuable part of the presurgical and postsurgical assessment. This article provides a comprehensive overview of the role of neuropsychological assessment in the pre- and postsurgical evaluation of epilepsy surgery patients. The neuropsychological profile may have a predictive role for the identification of the cognitive risk, prognosis, and treatment. New researches about neuropsychological assessment may provide many relevant answers about the outcome of the epilepsy surgery as well as to influence the quality of life

Anxiety in epilepsy. Gender differences

Background: The aim of the study was to assess the prevalence of anxiety symptoms in women and men with epilepsy, and to evaluate their relationships with psychological variables: duration of the epilepsy disease, education, marital status, and urban/rural areas. Method: In this study, 281 patients with epilepsy were evaluated: 157 women and 124 men, aged 18 – 71. Anxiety symptoms were evaluated with Hamilton Anxiety Rating Scale. The study took place at the National Center of Epileptology, Chisinau, the Republic of Moldova in 2020 – 2021. Results: This study has demonstrated that anxiety symptoms are present in 56% of women and 35% of men. Anxiety is highlighted in 40% of women and 31% of men with higher education versus 64% of women and 36% of men with secondary education. Anxiety is present in 44% of single women, 60% – married, 70% – divorced, and 50% – widowed in comparison with men: 28% of single men, 40% – married, 33% – divorced. Anxiety is more evident in urban area – 31% of men versus 53% women in comparison with rural area 38% of men versus 59% women. With the progression of the epilepsy disease, the symptoms of anxiety are more pronounced in both men and women. Conclusions: These results confirm that anxiety is more common in women especially in those married and divorced; psychological assessment and interventions are recommended to all patients with epilepsy, to reduce anxiety, improve the social competency and the quality of life

A spatially distributed model for the dynamic prediction of sediment erosion and transport in mountainous forested watersheds

Erosion and sediment transport in a temperate forested watershed are predicted with a new sediment model that represents the main sources of sediment generation in forested environments (mass wasting, hillslope erosion, and road surface erosion) within the distributed hydrology-soil-vegetation model (DHSVM) environment. The model produces slope failures on the basis of a factor-of-safety analysis with the infinite slope model through use of stochastically generated soil and vegetation parameters. Failed material is routed downslope with a rule-based scheme that determines sediment delivery to streams. Sediment from hillslopes and road surfaces is also transported to the channel network. A simple channel routing scheme is implemented to predict basin sediment yield. We demonstrate through an initial application of this model to the Rainy Creek catchment, a tributary of the Wenatchee River, which drains the east slopes of the Cascade Mountains, that the model produces plausible sediment yield and ratios of landsliding and surface erosion when compared to published rates for similar catchments in the Pacific Northwest. A road removal scenario and a basin-wide fire scenario are both evaluated with the model

Comparison of Outcomes of antibiotic Drugs and Appendectomy (CODA) trial: a protocol for the pragmatic randomised study of appendicitis treatment.

INTRODUCTION: Several European studies suggest that some patients with appendicitis can be treated safely with antibiotics. A portion of patients eventually undergo appendectomy within a year, with 10%-15% failing to respond in the initial period and a similar additional proportion with suspected recurrent episodes requiring appendectomy. Nearly all patients with appendicitis in the USA are still treated with surgery. A rigorous comparative effectiveness trial in the USA that is sufficiently large and pragmatic to incorporate usual variations in care and measures the patient experience is needed to determine whether antibiotics are as good as appendectomy. OBJECTIVES: The Comparing Outcomes of Antibiotic Drugs and Appendectomy (CODA) trial for acute appendicitis aims to determine whether the antibiotic treatment strategy is non-inferior to appendectomy. METHODS/ANALYSIS: CODA is a randomised, pragmatic non-inferiority trial that aims to recruit 1552 English-speaking and Spanish-speaking adults with imaging-confirmed appendicitis. Participants are randomised to appendectomy or 10 days of antibiotics (including an option for complete outpatient therapy). A total of 500 patients who decline randomisation but consent to follow-up will be included in a parallel observational cohort. The primary analytic outcome is quality of life (measured by the EuroQol five dimension index) at 4 weeks. Clinical adverse events, rate of eventual appendectomy, decisional regret, return to work/school, work productivity and healthcare utilisation will be compared. Planned exploratory analyses will identify subpopulations that may have a differential risk of eventual appendectomy in the antibiotic treatment arm. ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION: This trial was approved by the University of Washington\u27s Human Subjects Division. Results from this trial will be presented in international conferences and published in peer-reviewed journals. TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBER: NCT02800785

Maintaining National Identities: Cuisine, Immigrant Exclusion, and Nationalism

Thesis (Master's)--University of Washington, 2013National identities are the sum of many different social characteristics. Nationalism collects many different traits to draw a boundary between members of the national community and outsiders or foreigners. Is traditional cuisine one of these boundary-marking distinctions? Cuisine is often used as shorthand for cultural identification with one's own group as well as identification other groups. Logistic regression analyses reject the idea that traditional foodways are a meaningful way nationalists assert their identity. Nationalism is much more grounded in exclusion of immigrants from participation in the national community than in solidarity through shared cuisine

Medieval Political Competition and the Attack on Ethnoreligious Diversity

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2020This dissertation examines urban expulsions of Jews in the Holy Roman Empire 1000-1520 CE. I argue that expulsions were policy changes undertaken within a political economy that placed increasing value on religiously-based concepts of political responsibility and Christian community reform. This project is designed as three papers combining quantitative and historical methods. To complete this work, I translated and digitized a German-language compendium of maps and city histories, building a new spatial database presenting the most up-to-date history of Jewish life in medieval German lands. In the first chapter, I use this database to investigate how local urban politics made Jews vulnerable to political violence. The patchwork landscape of overlapping jurisdictions created conditions of competition over legitimacy, supremacy, and rights to resources, and Jews were symbolic and material prizes in these conflicts. The second chapter asks what social processes guide the spread of persecution. Did an expulsion by one ruler affect another ruler’s choices about expulsion? Using event-history analysis methods, I document how religious change and spatially-structured economic and political incentives unraveled the norm against expelling Jews. The third chapter is focused on how different incentives, institutions, and actors link together in the process of expulsion. Using the first two papers’ quantitative analyses as a starting point, I work through narratives of non-expulsion and failed expulsion in the city of Constance, developing a generalizable theory of how expulsions of Jews fit into ongoing local and imperial political conflicts among Christians