Connecticut in the American Civil War: Slavery, Sacrifice, and Survival

Understanding the Importance of Connecticut’s War Experience In 1965 John Niven published a well-researched book Connecticut for the Union as part of the centenary commemoration of the Civil War. The momentous African-American protest movements, a Second Reconstruction, were at ...

William Lloyd Garrison: Abolition, Democracy, and Radical Reform

Story of an Unlikely Duo Since the international entanglements commencing with the Second World War, an exclusive national history of the United States has proven to be a woefully parochial and an inadequate paradigm. Comparative analysis, particularly a focus on the Atlantic world, is n...

Encryption in human communication:image production in emotionally charged interactions

In this paper, we investigate the range and nature of infonnation contained within the verbal communications of individuals participating in a T-group class session in a university setting. We begin with the assumption that with human beings, as with other creatures, immediate interpersonal context exerts a powerful and continuing influence on perception, information processing, emotion, behavior, and communication. Most of this influence occurs outside of the awareness of the individuals involved. The specific components of every context carry the potential for importance, meaning and consequence. Some contexts have such special, and even extraordinary, implications that it matters greatly how one behaves or communicates within them. Therefore, we assume that every behavior and communication is the product of a chain of continuous ongoing conscious and unconscious monitoring, processing, and adapting to those particular characteristics of the environments that have significance for the individuals involved

Sister Mary Joseph's Nodule at a University Teaching Hospital in Northwestern Tanzania: A Retrospective Review of 34 cases.

Sister Mary Joseph's nodule is a metastatic tumor deposit in the umbilicus and often represents advanced intra-abdominal malignancy with dismal prognosis. There is a paucity of published data on this subject in our setting. This study was conducted to describe the clinicopathological presentation and treatment outcome of this condition in our environment and highlight challenges associated with the care of these patients, and to proffer solutions for improved outcome. This was a retrospective study of histologically confirmed cases of Sister Mary Joseph's nodule seen at Bugando Medical Centre between March 2003 and February 2013. Data collected were analyzed using descriptive statistics. A total of 34 patients were enrolled in the study. Males outnumbered females by a ratio of 1.4:1. The vast majority of patients (70.6%) presented with large umbilical nodule > 2 cm in size. The stomach (41.1%) was the most common location of the primary tumor. Adenocarcinoma (88.2%) was the most frequent histopathological type. Most of the primary tumors (52.9%) were poorly differentiated. As the disease was advanced and metastatic in all patients, only palliative therapy was offered. Out of 34 patients, 11 patients died in the hospital giving a mortality rate of 32.4%. Patients were followed up for 24 months. At the end of the follow-up period, 14(60.9%) patients were lost to follow-up and the remaining 9 (39.1%) patients died. Patients survived for a median period of 28 weeks (range, 2 to 64 weeks). The nodule recurred in 6 (26.1%) patients after complete excision. Sister Mary Joseph's nodule of the umbilicus is not rare in our environment and often represents manifestation of a variety of advanced intra-abdominal malignancies. The majority of the patients present at a late stage and many with distant metastases. The patient's survival is very short leading to a poor outcome. Early detection of primary cancer at an early stage may improve the prognosis

Habitat shifts in response to predation risk are constrained by competition within a grazing guild

Predators can affect prey not only by killing them, but also by causing them to alter their behavior, including patterns of habitat selection. Prey can reduce the risk of predation by moving to habitats where predators are less likely to detect them, less likely to attack, or less likely to succeed. The interaction of such responses to risk with other ecological processes remains relatively unstudied, but in some cases, changes in habitat use to avoid predation may be constrained by competition: larger, dominant competitors should respond freely to predation risk, but the responses of smaller, subordinate competitors may be constrained by the responses of dominant competitors. For large grazing herbivores, an alternative hypothesis proposes that smaller prey species are vulnerable to more predators, and thus should respond more strongly to predation risk. Here, we tested these two hypotheses with 775 observations of habitat selection by four species of obligate grazers (zebra, wildebeest, puku and oribi) in the immediate presence or absence of four large carnivores (lion, spotted hyena, African wild dog and cheetah) in three ecosystems (Greater Liuwa, Greater Kafue and Luangwa Valley). Patterns of predation within this set were described by observation of 1,105 kills. Our results support the hypothesis that responses to predation risk are strongest for larger, dominant competitors. Even though zebras were killed least often, they showed the strongest shift into cover when carnivores were present. Wildebeest, puku and oribi showed weaker habitat shifts, even though they were more frequently killed. These patterns remained consistent in models that controlled for differences in the hunting mode of the predator (stalking, coursing, or intermediate) and for differences among ecosystems. There was no evidence that smaller species were subject to predation by a broader set of predators. Instead, smaller prey were killed often by smaller predators, and larger prey were killed often by larger predators. Broadly, our results show that responses to predation risk interact with interspecific competition. Accounting for such interactions should help to explain the considerable variation in the strength of responses to predation risk that has been observed

The role of taxonomic expertise in interpretation of metabarcoding studies

Abstract The performance of DNA metabarcoding approaches for characterizing biodiversity can be influenced by multiple factors. Here, we used morphological assessment of taxa in zooplankton samples to develop a large barcode database and to assess the congruence of taxonomic identification with metabarcoding under different conditions. We analysed taxonomic assignment of metabarcoded samples using two genetic markers (COI, 18S V1–2), two types of clustering into molecular operational taxonomic units (OTUs, ZOTUs), and three methods for taxonomic assignment (RDP Classifier, BLASTn to GenBank, BLASTn to a local barcode database). The local database includes 1042 COI and 1108 18S (SSU) barcode sequences, and we added new high-quality sequences to GenBank for both markers, including 109 contributions at the species level. The number of phyla detected and the number of taxa identified to phylum varied between a genetic marker and among the three methods used for taxonomic assignments. Blasting the metabarcodes to the local database generated multiple unique contributions to identify OTUs and ZOTUs. We argue that a multi-marker approach combined with taxonomic expertise to develop a curated, vouchered, local barcode database increases taxon detection with metabarcoding, and its potential as a tool for zooplankton biodiversity surveys

Disentangling manual muscle testing and Applied Kinesiology: critique and reinterpretation of a literature review

Cuthbert and Goodheart recently published a narrative review on the reliability and validity of manual muscle testing (MMT) in the Journal. The authors should be recognized for their effort to synthesize this vast body of literature. However, the review contains critical errors in the search methods, inclusion criteria, quality assessment, validity definitions, study interpretation, literature synthesis, generalizability of study findings, and conclusion formulation that merit a reconsideration of the authors' findings. Most importantly, a misunderstanding of the review could easily arise because the authors did not distinguish the general use of muscle strength testing from the specific applications that distinguish the Applied Kinesiology (AK) chiropractic technique. The article makes the fundamental error of implying that the reliability and validity of manual muscle testing lends some degree of credibility to the unique diagnostic procedures of AK. The purpose of this commentary is to provide a critical appraisal of the review, suggest conclusions consistent with the literature both reviewed and omitted, and extricate conclusions that can be made about AK in particular from those that can be made about MMT. When AK is disentangled from standard orthopedic muscle testing, the few studies evaluating unique AK procedures either refute or cannot support the validity of AK procedures as diagnostic tests. The evidence to date does not support the use of MMT for the diagnosis of organic disease or pre/subclinical conditions

A systematic review of interventions to increase awareness of mental health and well-being in athletes, coaches and officials

Full search for the psychinfo database. (DOCX 16 kb