Religion, Politics, and Sugar: The Mormon Church, the Federal Government, and the Utah-Idaho Sugar Company, 1907 to 1921

One famous target of Progressive Era attempts to rein in monopolistic big business was the eastern Sugar Trust. Less known is how federal regulators also tried to break monopoly control over beet sugar in the West by going after the Utah-Idaho Sugar Company, a business supported and controlled by the Latter-day Saints church and run by Mormon authorities. As sugar beet agriculture boomed, the Mormon church\u27s involvement led directly to monopolistic practices by Utah-Idaho Sugar and to federal investigations. Church leaders encouraged members, a majority population in much of the intermountain West, to patronize the company exclusively, as suppliers and consumers. As early as 1890, Mormon church president Wilford Woodruff had called missionaries to raise money for the fledgling company and asserted divine inspiration for church support. Utah-Idaho bridged the cooperative, theocratic, self-sufficient economic model of nineteenth-century Mormonism and the integration of the Mormon West into the national market economy. Religion, Politics, and Sugar shows, through the example of an important western business, how national commercial, political, and legal forces in the early twentieth century came west and, more specifically, how they affected the important role the Mormon church played in economic affairs in the region.https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/usupress_pubs/1043/thumbnail.jp

Religion, Politics, and Sugar: The Mormon Church, the Federal Government, and the Utah-Idaho Sugar Company, 1907 to 1921

One famous target of Progressive Era attempts to rein in monopolistic big business was the eastern Sugar Trust. Less known is how federal regulators also tried to break monopoly control over beet sugar in the West by going after the Utah-Idaho Sugar Company, a business supported and controlled by the Latter-day Saints church and run by Mormon authorities. As sugar beet agriculture boomed, the Mormon church's involvement led directly to monopolistic practices by Utah-Idaho Sugar and to federal investigations. Church leaders encouraged members, a majority population in much of the intermountain West, to patronize the company exclusively, as suppliers and consumers. As early as 1890, Mormon church president Wilford Woodruff had called missionaries to raise money for the fledgling company and asserted divine inspiration for church support. Utah-Idaho bridged the cooperative, theocratic, self-sufficient economic model of nineteenth-century Mormonism and the integration of the Mormon West into the national market economy. Religion, Politics, and Sugar shows, through the example of an important western business, how national commercial, political, and legal forces in the early twentieth century came west and, more specifically, how they affected the important role the Mormon church played in economic affairs in the region

Octopus tetricus (Mollusca: Cephalopoda) como ingeniero de ecosistemas

The Sydney octopus (Octopus tetricus) occurs in unusual numbers on a shell bed of its prey remains that have accumulated as an extended midden where additional octopuses excavate dens. Here, O tetricus are ecosystem engineers, organisms that modulate availability of resources to other species and to their own species by causing physical state changes in materials. A community of invertebrate grazers and scavengers has developed on the shell bed. Fishes are attracted to the shell bed in numbers significantly greater than in nearby habitats. Large predators, including wobbegong sharks, were attracted to and fed on concentrations of fish, inhibiting the activities of the original engineers, the octopuses. Positive feedbacks included the accumulation of shell debris, increasing shelter availability for additional octopuses and aggregating fish. Negative feedbacks included reductions of nearby prey size and availability, aggression among octopuses, and predator limitation to octopus activity that would otherwise maintain the shell bed.El pulpo Sydney (Octopus tetricus) aparece en cantidades inusuales en un fondo de cascajo producido por los restos de sus presas que se han acumulado como un extenso estercolero donde otros pulpos excavan sus guaridas. Aquí, O. tetricus se comportan como ingenieros del ecosistema, organismos que modulan la disponibilidad de recursos a otras especies y su propia especie provocando cambios físicos en los materiales. Una comunidad de invertebrados herbívoros y carroñeros se desarrolló en el fondo de cascajo. Los peces son atraídos a dicho fondo en número significativamente mayor que en hábitats cercanos. Grandes depredadores, como los tiburones wobbegong son atraídos y se alimentan a partir de concentraciones de peces inhibiendo las actividades originales de los ingenieros de los pulpos. La reacción positiva a la acumulación de escombros incrementa la disponibilidad de refugio para los otros pulpos y la concentración de peces. Los efectos negativos incluyen la reducción de la disponibilidad y el tamaño de los peces, la agresión entre los pulpos, y la limitación de la actividad de los pulpos para mantener el fondo de cascajo como resultado de la presencia de depredadores

Prescription Drug Abuse

Background. In the United States, the leading cause of injury death is from prescription drug overdose. The most commonly abused prescription medications are (a) pain relievers (opioids), (b) CNS depressants (tranquilizers, sedatives, hypnotics), and (c) stimulants. Opioids are a class of drugs that includes both heroin and prescription pain relievers. CNS depressants are for managing anxiety and stimulates are used in ADHD. A consequence of abuse is drug overdose death, with opioids being the leading cause. Opioids are safe for short term use but have a strong potential to be abused resulting in addiction. In order to understand this crisis, it is critical to examine: (a) demographics, (b) reasons for abuse, and (c) the provider of drugs for targeted prevention. Methodology. Information was gathered utilizing the search engines (a) Journal of the American Medical Association, (b) EBSCO host, (c) Google Scholar, and (d) the LIU library database. Search terms included: (a) prescription drug abuse, (b) prescription drug overdose, (c) United States, and (d) demographics. All publications were from 2010 to 2018 and in English. Results. Mental health disorders put an individual at greater risk for abuse, especially when an opioid is prescribed in conjunction with: (a) an antidepressant, (b) antipsychotic, or (c) benzodiazepine. In examining specific demographics, (a) non-Hispanic males are more likely to abuse prescription stimulants and tranquilizers, (b) Hispanic males are more likely to abuse prescription painkillers, and (c) non-Hispanic females are more at risk to abuse prescription sedatives. Young adults from the age 18 to 25 years old were found to be the largest population that abuses (a) opioid pain relievers, (b) ADHD stimulants and (c) anti-anxiety drugs. From 2004-2011 emergency department visits related to prescription drug abuse rose 114%. Prescription drug abuse (28%) outpaces illicit drug (25%) use in emergency department visits. Among the prescription medicines, pain relievers have shown to be the most problematic with 75.2% of all pharmaceutical overdose deaths being from opioids. Prescription pain relievers are frequently abused to (a) alleviate pain inappropriately (62.3%), (b) feel good or get high (12.9%), (c) relax or relieve tension (10.8%), (d) as a coping mechanism (3.9%), and (f) aid in sleep (3.3%). Prescription pain relievers are typically received from (a) a friend/relative (53%), (b) a healthcare provider (37.5%), or (c) bought from a stranger (6%). Conclusions. Over 80% of Americans will see a healthcare provider within the year which provides them with the opportunity to screen for prescription drug abuse at the bedside. Patients must be counseled on the use and storage of their prescriptions to prevent redistribution to unintended audiences. Health practitioners should utilize the electronic prescription drug monitoring program before prescribing scheduled drugs and evaluate the patient’s medication history to prevent dangerous drug interactions. If prescription pain relievers are indicated, then it should be prescribed for short term use at a low dose without refills. Prescribers should offer close follow up and consider alternative methods for chronic pain relief such as acupuncture and physical therapy

Sea turtle hatchling sex ratios determined via hormone assay: implications of climate change?

Currently all species of sea turtles are listed as threatened or endangered with extinction under the U.S. Endangered Species Act. Due to their status, sea turtle conservation is a high priority for the U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. One major challenge conservationists face is the lack of a noninvasive, cost efficient method for determining the sex of hatchling sea turtles. Because secondary sex characteristics (i.e. males have longer tails) are not evident until turtles start to reach sexual maturity, the sex of hatchlings is not easily determined. The least invasive way to determine the sex is through hormone analysis of blood plasma. The testosterone enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) has been validated for use with all six sea turtle species plasma and has been shown to be an effective method of sex determination in juvenile sea turtles. We have validated two new high sensitivity ELISA’s (testosterone and estradiol) for use with loggerhead sea turtles (Caretta caretta) and will subsequently use these to explore whether sex can be assigned to live hatchlings. We will apply both ELISA’s to small plasma volumes from known-sex loggerhead hatchlings and examine the ratio of testosterone to estradiol to determine sex. If applied over multiple nesting seasons, this may facilitate subsequent studies to identify the degree to which climate change may impact sex ratios of annual hatchling cohorts at key beaches in the US and beyond

The Lost Futures of Simone Weil: Metaxu, Decreation, and the Spectres of Myth

This dissertation places literature and myth at the suture of two of Simone Weil's most important concepts: decreation and metaxu. Decreation, or the decanting of subjectivity to become one with God, has become a fixture in Weil scholarship. Yet, the link between decreation and metaxu, the bridges that collapse self and other, has yet to be theorized. This study brings metaxu to the forefront of Weil studies to emphasize its role within the domains of community and culture, thereby signalling its unseen potential to harmonize the political and mystical strains of her thought. I counter decreation's salvific consolation with metaxu's radical materialism and its privileging of hybridity, relationality, and metamorphosis. Weil's writing combines a critique of capitalism with a frequent entanglement of Greek and Christian myth. A discussion of metaxu is brought to bear on literary revisions of classical myths from the 1980s and 1990s, an important peak in capitalism's global dominance. I investigate revisions of myths of transcendence, but also transcendence as a key myth challenged by late twentieth-century literature. In Chapter 1, I outline the importance of metaxu to Weil's writings on mysticism and locate its roots in Platonic philosophy, Greek Tragedy, and the myth of Prometheusthe subject of her most important (but nearly forgotten) poem. In Chapter 2, I analyze metaxu's relationship to specific iterations of violence and sacrality in Weil's The Iliad: or the poem of Force (1939) and Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian (1985), which I interpret as an Americanized retelling of Homer's epic. In Chapter 3, I locate metaxu's connection to art and neoliberal globalism through Salman Rushdie's The Ground Beneath Her Feet (1999). Chapter 4 applies metaxu to issues of metamorphosis and hybridity through Octavia Butler's Dawn (1987). Butler deconstructs notions of mysticism, eroticism, otherness, and species that are to be read against the patriarchal aesthetics of Homer, McCarthy, and Rushdie. By reading these texts together, a subversive and disruptive potential for metaxu will be revealed, one that heralds an important re-reading of Weil's oeuvre, as well as an ability to reshape the intersection of literature, myth, and mysticism

Understanding and Integrating Resolution, Accuracy and Sampling Rates of Temperature Data Loggers Used in Biological and Ecological Studies

International audienceDuring the 5 th Workshop about Temperature-Dependent Sex Determination held in the 38 th International Sea Turtles Symposium (16-22 February 2018) in Kobe, Japan, we discussed the uncertainty of temperatures recorded by data logger and their calibration. We report here an extension of this discussion. First, we propose a way to estimate the uncertainty of the average temperature recorded using data loggers considering the accuracy of the data logger (repeatability of measurements), resolution of the data logger (resolution of its indicating device) and period of sampling temperature. Second, a general procedure of calibration is described. Functions to perform the estimates are provided in R package embryo growth freely available

Clinical Pathology Reference Intervals for an In-Water Population of Juvenile Loggerhead Sea Turtles (Caretta caretta) in Core Sound, North Carolina, USA

The loggerhead sea turtle (Caretta caretta) is found throughout the waters of the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans. It is a protected species throughout much of its range due to threats such as habitat loss, fisheries interactions, hatchling predation, and marine debris. Loggerheads that occur in the southeastern U.S. are listed as “threatened” on the U.S. Endangered Species List, and receive state and federal protection. As part of an on-going population assessment conducted by the National Marine Fisheries Service, samples were collected from juvenile loggerhead sea turtles in Core Sound, North Carolina, between 2004 and 2007 to gain insight on the baseline health of the threatened Northwest Atlantic Ocean population. The aims of the current study were to establish hematologic and biochemical reference intervals for this population, and to assess variation of the hematologic and plasma biochemical analytes by season, water temperature, and sex and size of the turtles. Reference intervals for the clinical pathology parameters were estimated following Clinical Laboratory Standards Institute guidelines. Season, water temperature, sex, and size of the turtles were found to be significant factors of variation for parameter values. Seasonal variation could be attributed to physiological effects of decreasing photoperiod, cooler water temperature, and migration during the fall months. Packed cell volume, total protein, and albumin increased with increasing size of the turtles. The size-related differences in analytes documented in the present study are consistent with other reports of variation in clinical pathology parameters by size and age in sea turtles. As a component of a health assessment of juvenile loggerhead sea turtles in North Carolina, this study will serve as a baseline aiding in evaluation of trends for this population and as a diagnostic tool for assessing the health and prognosis for loggerhead sea turtles undergoing rehabilitation

Dual positive and negative regulation of GPCR signaling by GTP hydrolysis

G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) regulate a variety of intracellular pathways through their ability to promote the binding of GTP to heterotrimeric G proteins. Regulator of G protein signaling (RGS) proteins increase the intrinsic GTPase activity of G-subunits and are widely regarded as negative regulators of G protein signaling. Using yeast we demonstrate that GTP hydrolysis is not only required for desensitization, but is essential for achieving a high maximal (saturated level) response. Thus RGS-mediated GTP hydrolysis acts as both a negative (low stimulation) and positive (high stimulation) regulator of signaling. To account for this we generated a new kinetic model of the G protein cycle where GGTP enters an inactive GTP-bound state following effector activation. Furthermore, in vivo and in silico experimentation demonstrates that maximum signaling output first increases and then decreases with RGS concentration. This unimodal, non-monotone dependence on RGS concentration is novel. Analysis of the kinetic model has revealed a dynamic network motif that shows precisely how inclusion of the inactive GTP-bound state for the G produces this unimodal relationship