The Effects of Cattle Enclosures on Small Mammals

An investigation to determine the effects of cattle exclosures on the habits and activities of small mammals within and surrounding these protected areas was conducted from September to November of 1958. Four exclosures located in a 750 acre moderately grazed mixed prairie near Hays, Kansas that were sampled included a shortgrass exclosure, a little bluestem exclosure, and two exclosures diagonally dissected by a transition area. Live-traps were placed inside each exclosure in a grid with 10 feet intervals. The species, sex, and approximate age of each individual were recorded. Each exclosure was live-trapped from 10 to 14 days. Snap-traps were used outside each exclosure to determine the distance the marked rodents travelled from within the exclosure. Four concentric rings of snap-traps were placed around each exclosure. The rings were 10 feet apart and the intervals between traps varied from five to 10 feet. The snap-traps were checked daily at each exclosure for a period of seven to 14 days. The point contact method was used to determine the percentage composition and basal cover of the vegetation within and surrounding each exclosure. The principle species of small mammals captured during the study were (Peromyscus maniculatus nebrascensis), (Microtus ochrogaster haydenii), (Sigmodon hispidus texianus), and (Onychomys leucogaster leucogaster). Peromyscus were the most commonly captured mammals at the four exclosures, and were generally taken in sparsely vegetated hillside areas. Microtus and Sigmodon were captured almost exclusively in the heavy vegetation within or adjacent to the protected areas. When Microtus and Sigmodon were found together, Sigmodon occupied the more favorably vegetated areas. Onychomys occurred in greatest numbers within or adjacent to sparsely vegetated hillside areas

Rendering assistance to best advantage: the development of women's activism in Kansas City, 1870 to World War I

Title from PDF of title page, viewed on May 31, 2013Dissertation advisor: Max J. SkidmoreVitaIncludes bibliographic references (pages 331-344)Thesis (Ph.D.)--Dept. of Political Science and Dept. of History. University of Missouri--Kansas City, 2013This study examines the rise of women's activism in Kansas City between the opening of the Hannibal railroad bridge in 1869 and World War I. Women's efforts over the course of nearly 50 years to emerge from the domestic sphere and claim space as full participants in the American polity through activism on behalf of benevolence, reform, and equality form the core of the study. The social construction of gender, class, and race, the effects of political philosophy in shaping responses to poverty, and the role of the political structure in shaping the interactions of local women with national organizations in an emerging Midwestern metropolis constitute its focus. Before the Civil War, Kansas City grew rapidly in spite of regional tensions and a Southern population that often mixed uneasily with the growing number of Northerners who passed through and often settled in the community. Both before and after the war, however, Kansas City business leaders championed a civic philosophy of unity over the divisiveness of politics and community development. The new, unformed frontier society provided an opening for women to found a single organization in the early 1870s that embraced the tripartite structure of women's activism - benevolence, reform, and sexual equality. By the late 1870s, the affluent members gained prominence and narrowed its scope to include only benevolence. As a result, the organization contracted its activities to the gender-approved role of serving women and children. With the founding of the Women's Christian Temperance Union and other national organizations with local chapters, women interested in the reform and equality found outlets activism that increasingly pushed the limits of the feminine sphere, involved women in public leadership roles, and built support for equality through suffrage. Examining women's activism from the vantage point of an emerging Midwestern metropolis provides new ways to look at women's activism during this period. This study illuminates how women's activism in Kansas City was shaped by, and helped to shape, women's activism at the national level. It also informs the scholarly understanding of how activist women interacted with male-led organizations and political structures.Introduction -- The exploding Midwestern metropolis: carving out a city on the bluffs, 1856 to 1870 -- The quality and equality of mercy is strained: the rise and fall of the female-led General Relief Agency, 1870-1879 -- Back to their friends: the reluctant response of male-led relief, 1880- World War I -- Idiots, imbeciles, slaves and women: women's activism in Kansas City, 1880 to World War I -- Conclusio

The Literacies of Adolescents With International Experiences

This dissertation reports the findings of a study on how international experiences impact adolescents. Data were gathered from interviews with and writing samples from seven participants with varying international experiences. A critical perspective and existing research in New Literacy Studies (NLS), on study abroad programs, and on transnationalism framed the study and predicted much of what was found about the literacies of adolescents with international experiences. However, five new findings emerged as significant about adolescents’ utilitarian, oral, geolingual, critical, and cosmopolitan literacies uniquely impacted by travel. From these findings, new insights emerged about the importance of embracing multiple forms of travel as beneficial, of emphasizing the positive and advantageous impact of travel on literacies, and of recognizing the increasing frequency with which adolescents have international experiences. The findings and insights respond to calls to improve adolescents’ literacies and global competencies and have implications for innovative teachers, researchers, and stakeholders invested in empowering adolescents

The Significance of Hemosiderin Deposition in the Lungs and Organs of the Mononucleated Macrophage Resorption System in Infants and Children

Hemosiderin deposition is not often recognized on routine examination with hematoxylin and eosin staining; however, iron stains may be helpful in the evaluation of hemosiderin deposition in infant autopsies. This report describes the data obtained from autopsy of 86 infants and children whose deaths were investigated at the Forensic Medicine Council Bursa Morgue Department from January 2000 to January 2003. A histochemical technique was used to identify hemosiderin in lung, liver and spleen specimens, which was correlated with other descriptive variables such as the reported cause of death, postmortem interval, trauma history, gender, and age. There was a weakly positive but significant correlation between lung and liver hemosiderin scores (Spearman's rank correlation coefficient, rho=0.348, p=0.001); i.e., given an increase in lung hemosiderin scores, an increase in liver hemosiderin scores was also observed. Similarly, a marked positive correlation between spleen and liver hemosiderin scores (Spearman's rank correlation coefficient, rho=0.335, p=0.002) was observed. The probability of spleen hemosiderin-positive cases belonging to the age group under 6 months was found to be 4.3 times greater than those who were hemosiderin-negative (95% confidence interval, 1.6-11.8). After the major differential diagnoses were ruled out, this study demonstrated, that depending on the statistically assessed morphometric grounds, the presence of hemosiderin deposits in the liver and spleen were significantly higher in the age group under 6 months

Place-of-residence errors on death certificates for two contiguous U. S. counties

BACKGROUND: Based on death certificate data, the Texas Department of Health Bureau of Vital Statistics calculates age adjusted all-cause mortality rates for each Texas county yearly. In 1998 the calculated rates for two adjacent Texas counties was disparate. These counties contain one city (Amarillo) and are identical in size. This study examined the accuracy of recorded county of residence for deaths in the two counties in 1998. In our jurisdiction, the county of residence is assigned by funeral homes. METHODS: A random sample of 20% of death certificates was selected. The accuracy of the county of residence was verified by using a large area map, Tax Appraisal District records, and U.S. Census Bureau databases. Inaccuracies in recording the county or zip code of residence was recorded. RESULTS: Eighteen of 354 (5.4%) death certificates recorded the incorrect county and 21 of 354 (5.9%) of death certificates recorded the zip code improperly. There was a 14.4% county recording error rate for one county compared to a 0.82% for the other county. The zip code error rate was similar for the two counties (5.9% vs. 5.8%). Of the county errors, 83% occurred for addresses within a zip code that contained addresses in both counties. CONCLUSION: This study demonstrated a large error rate (14%) in recording county of residence for deaths in one county. A similar rate was not seen in an adjacent county. This led to significant miscalculation of mortality rates for two counties. We believe that errors may have arisen in part from use of internet programs by funeral homes to assign the county of residence. With some of these programs, the county is determined by zip code, and when a zip code straddles two counties, the program automatically assigns the county whose name appears first in the alphabet. This type of error could be avoided if funeral homes determined the county of residence from Tax Appraisal District or Census Bureau records, both of which are available on the internet. This type of error could also be avoided if vital statistics offices verified the county and zip code of residence using official sources

Deaths from heart failure: using coarsened exact matching to correct cause-of-death statistics

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Incomplete information on death certificates makes recorded cause-of-death data less useful for public health monitoring and planning. Certifying physicians sometimes list only the mode of death without indicating the underlying disease or diseases that led to the death. Inconsistent cause-of-death assignment among cardiovascular causes of death is of particular concern. This can prevent valid epidemiologic comparisons across countries and over time.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>We propose that coarsened exact matching be used to infer the underlying causes of death where only the mode of death is known. We focus on the case of heart failure in US, Mexican, and Brazilian death records.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Redistribution algorithms derived using this method assign the largest proportion of heart failure deaths to ischemic heart disease in all three countries (53%, 26%, and 22% respectively), with larger proportions assigned to hypertensive heart disease and diabetes in Mexico and Brazil (16% and 23% vs. 7% for hypertensive heart disease, and 13% and 9% vs. 6% for diabetes). Reassigning these heart failure deaths increases the US ischemic heart disease mortality rate by 6%.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The frequency with which physicians list heart failure in the causal chain for various underlying causes of death allows for inference about how physicians use heart failure on the death certificate in different settings. This easy-to-use method has the potential to reduce bias and increase comparability in cause-of-death data, thereby improving the public health utility of death records.</p

Mesoscale Atlantic water eddy off the Laptev Sea continental slope carries the signature of upstream interaction

A mesoscale eddy formed by the interaction of inflows of Atlantic water (AW) from Fram Strait and the Barents Sea into the Arctic Ocean was observed in February 2005 off the Laptev Sea continental slope by a mooring equipped with a McLane Moored Profiler. The eddy was composed of two distinct, vertically aligned cores with a combined thickness of about 650 m. The upper core of approximately ambient density was warmer (2.6°C), saltier (34.88 psu), and vertically stably stratified. The lower core was cooler (0.1°C), fresher (34.81 psu), neutrally stratified and ∼0.02 kg/m3 less dense than surrounding ambient water. The eddy, homogeneous out to a radius of at least 3.4 km, had a 14.5 km radius of maximum velocity, and an entire diameter of about 27 km. We hypothesize that the eddy was formed by the confluence of the Fram Strait and Barents Sea AW inflows into the Arctic Ocean that takes place north of the Kara Sea, about 1100 km upstream from the mooring location. The eddy's vertical structure is likely maintained by salt fingering and diffusive convection. The numerical simulation of one-dimensional thermal and salt diffusion equations reasonably reproduces the evolution of the eddy thermohaline patterns from the hypothesized source area to the mooring location, suggesting that the vertical processes of double-diffusive and shear instabilities may be more important than lateral processes for the evolution of the eddy. The eddy is able to carry its thermohaline anomaly several thousand kilometers downstream from its source location

Circulation in the northwest Laptev Sea in the eastern Arctic Ocean: Crossroads between Siberian River water, Atlantic water and polynya-formed dense water

This paper investigates new observations from the poorly understood region between the Kara and Laptev Seas in the Eastern Arctic Ocean. We discuss relevant circulation features including riverine freshwater, Atlantic-derived water, and polynya-formed dense water, emphasize Vilkitsky Strait (VS) as an important Kara Sea gateway, and analyze the role of the adjacent ∼250 km-long submarine Vilkitsky Trough (VT) for the Arctic boundary current. Expeditions in 2013 and 2014 operated closely spaced hydrographic transects and 1 year-long oceanographic mooring near VT's southern slope, and found persistent annually averaged flow of 0.2 m s−1 toward the Nansen Basin. The flow is nearly barotropic from winter through early summer and becomes surface intensified with maximum velocities of 0.35 m s−1 from August to October. Thermal wind shear is maximal above the southern flank at ∼30 m depth, in agreement with basinward flow above VT's southern slope. The subsurface features a steep front separating warm (–0.5°C) Atlantic-derived waters in central VT from cold (<–1.5°C) shelf waters, which episodically migrates across the trough indicated by current reversals and temperature fluctuations. Shelf-transformed waters dominate above VT's slope, measuring near-freezing temperatures throughout the water column at salinities of 34–35. These dense waters are vigorously advected toward the Eurasian Basin and characterize VT as a conduit for near-freezing waters that could potentially supply the Arctic Ocean's lower halocline, cool Atlantic water, and ventilate the deeper Arctic Ocean. Our observations from the northwest Laptev Sea highlight a topographically complex region with swift currents, several water masses, narrow fronts, polynyas, and topographically channeled storms