Writing The War

Two segments included in this issue of Civil War Book Review directly address the fact that the Civil War has been the focus of an enormous amount of literary and scholarly attention. In his Rediscovering Civil War Classics column, David Madden takes a look at The Unwritten War: American Writers ...

A Convergence Of Contexts

Civil War Book Review has been through its fair share of changes and upheavals over this past year. Early last summer I began my tenure as the new editor. In the fall we learned that our publishing partner could no longer afford to fund our journal. A few months later it was decided that the ...

A Holistic Approach

During my interview for the position of editor here at Civil War Book Review, the director, Leah Wood Jewett, described the United States Civil War Center and its publication as having the mission of promoting the multidisciplinary study of the United States Civil War. Throughout my inaugural...

Adventures of a Former Girlfriend: A Novel

This is a novel about a young woman trying to redefine herself after years of defining herself through her relationships with other people, most specifically her boyfriends, but also her family. The heroine faces many challenges: the end of a long-term relationship, the illness of her niece, complications with her best friends, and a revelation about her parent\u27s relationship. These ordinary obstacles of everyday living will propel the main character into a confrontation with her perception of herself and the world around her

The Benefits Of Change

There is a debate circulating in literary and academic circles regarding publishing on the Internet. Many purists fear that web publishing will tarnish the sanctity of language and literature while the avant-garde is embracing the excitement of hypertext and new age information sharing. There are pl...

Cwbr Author Interview: Compelling Images Enhance Narrative Histories: Interview With William C. Davis

William C. Davis is the author or editor of more than 40 books on the Civil War and Southern history, as well as numerous documentary screenplays. He has served as historical consultant on various television and film productions. Davis has twice been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in history and is currently professor of history at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. His most recent book, The Civil War in Photographs (Carlton 2002), served as the platform for this interview..

Correlation Of Terrestrial gamma flashes, Electric fields, and Lightning strikes (COTEL) in thunderstorms using networked balloon payloads developed by university and community college students

High energy gamma ray flashes from terrestrial sources have been observed by satellites for decades, but the actual mechanism, assumed to be thunderstorm lightning, has yet to be fully characterized. The goal of COTEL, funded by NASA through the University Student Instrument Project (USIP) program, is to correlate in time TGF events, lightning strikes, and electric fields inside of thunderstorms. This will be accomplished using a small network of balloon-borne payloads suspended in and around thunderstorm environments. The payloads will detect and timestamp gamma radiation bursts, lightning strikes, and the intensity of localized electric fields. While in flight, data collected by the payloads will be transmitted to a ground station in real-time and will be analyzed post-flight to investigate potential correlations between lightning, TGFs, and electric fields. The ground station system that will be used for COTEL was developed for the Eclipse 2017 ballooning project, and was used during flight operations on the day of the eclipse. The COTEL student team is in its second year of effort having spent the first year developing the basic balloon payloads and ground tracking system. Currently the team is focusing on prototype electric field and gamma radiation detectors. Testing and development of these systems will continue into 2018, and flight operations will take place during the spring 2018 Louisiana thunderstorm season. The poster will cover the student team effort in developing said system, an overview of the system architecture, balloon flight tests conducted to date, preliminary results from prototype detectors, and future plans

Is a previous unplanned pregnancy a risk factor for a subsequent unplanned pregnancy?

Objective: The objective of the study was to determine whether a history of unplanned pregnancy was a risk factor for a subsequent unplanned pregnancy. Study Design: We analyzed 542 women aged 14-35 years, enrolled in Project PROTECT, a randomized clinical trial to promote dual-method contraception use to prevent sexually transmitted diseases and unplanned pregnancy. Predictors of unplanned pregnancy were assessed by comparing women with and without a history of unplanned pregnancy. Results: More than 1 in 5 women (22.5%) experienced an unintended pregnancy. History of an unintended pregnancy was a predictor of unintended pregnancy (adjusted odds ratio, 1.91; 95% confidence interval, 1.09-3.34). Other factors that were significantly associated with unplanned pregnancy included young age and low educational status. Conclusions: Future efforts should focus on bridging the gap between identifying risk factors for unplanned pregnancy and interventions aimed at reducing the incidence in high-risk groups

New genetic loci link adipose and insulin biology to body fat distribution.

Body fat distribution is a heritable trait and a well-established predictor of adverse metabolic outcomes, independent of overall adiposity. To increase our understanding of the genetic basis of body fat distribution and its molecular links to cardiometabolic traits, here we conduct genome-wide association meta-analyses of traits related to waist and hip circumferences in up to 224,459 individuals. We identify 49 loci (33 new) associated with waist-to-hip ratio adjusted for body mass index (BMI), and an additional 19 loci newly associated with related waist and hip circumference measures (P < 5 × 10(-8)). In total, 20 of the 49 waist-to-hip ratio adjusted for BMI loci show significant sexual dimorphism, 19 of which display a stronger effect in women. The identified loci were enriched for genes expressed in adipose tissue and for putative regulatory elements in adipocytes. Pathway analyses implicated adipogenesis, angiogenesis, transcriptional regulation and insulin resistance as processes affecting fat distribution, providing insight into potential pathophysiological mechanisms

Smoking cessation and stress management: Applications of the transtheoretical model of behavior change

At the beginning of the new century, the focus of medicine and public health is shifting to the prevention and treatment of chronic diseases. A unique characteristic of chronic diseases is the importance of human behavior. The cessation of unhealthy patterns of behavior and the acquisition of healthy patterns are critical for both primary and secondary prevention and also for many treatments. The Transtheoretical Model is an integrative model of behavior change that can provide the conceptual basis for developing interventions to modify a problem behavior or acquire a positive behavior. The central organizing construct of the model is the Stages of Change. The model also includes a series of independent variables, the Processes of Change, and a series of outcome measures, including the Decisional Balance and the Temptation scales. The application of the model will be illustrated by two applications, smoking cessation and stress management. Smoking cessation is an example of a widely rese arched area where multiple tests of the model are available and effective interventions based on the model nave been developed and evaluated in multiple clinical trials. Stress management represents a problem area where research based on the Transtheoretical Model is in the formative stages