[Review of] Joseph Bruchac, ed. Breaking Silence: An Anthology of Contemporary Asian American Poets

Bruchac has compiled an anthology of contemporary Amerasian poets who speak in clear and melodious voices. These poets of Hawaiian, Korean, Chinese, Japanese, and Filipino backgrounds present and affirm fresh ideas and viewpoints in poetic form. They offer an understanding of their backgrounds through variant ideas. Each one captures some sense of her or his background culture and shows how their individual lives have been affected by it

Falando aos vivos e aos mortos: a "Oda a Julián del Casal", de Lezama Lima

Este comentário ao notável poema de Lezama Lima (1910-1976), "Oda a Julián del Casal", detém-se sobre o modo como seis de seus principais atributos textuais - suas apóstrofes, os motivos verbais recorrentes, a obscuridade, os motivos históricos reconhecíveis, seus tempos verbais, bem como suas alusões míticas - interagem de forma a produzir um efeito retórico determinado. Julián del Casal (Cuba, 1863-1893) é atualmente considerado um dos mais importantes poetas hispano-americanos de seu tempo. Lezama, por seu turno, compôs seu poema em 1963, durante a celebração do centenário de nascimento de Casal.This commentary on one of José Lezama Lima's (1910-1976) most memorable poems, "Oda a Julián del Casal", focuses on how six of its textual features - apostrophes, recurrent verbal motifs, obscurity, recognizability, verb tenses and moods, and mythical allusions - interact to produce an overall rhetorical effect. Julián del Casal (Cuba, 1863-1893) is now considered one of the most important Hispanic American poets of his historical moment. Lezama composed his poem in 1963 during the celebration of the centenary of Casal's birth

Histocompatibility Antigens and Spondylitis

This is a transcript of a discussion about HL-A antigens and spondylitis at Medical Grand Rounds by the Department of Medicine, Surgery, and Ophthalmology on January 29, 1974, at the Medical College of Virginia, Richmond

Fecal Lactoferrin and Other Stool Markers during Normal Pregnancy and in Inflammatory Bowel Diseases: A Prospective Study and Review of the Literature

Introduction: Management of inflammatory bowel diseases (IBDs) - both Crohn's disease (CD) and ulcerative colitis (UC) - during pregnancy can be challenging since most monitoring tools available in nonpregnant patients are contraindicated.Objectives: The aim of the study was to test whether fecal inflammatory markers - specifically fecal lactoferrin - physiologically change during normal pregnancy as a prerequisite to use them to monitor IBD activity during pregnancy.Methods: Fecal lactoferrin was tested in healthy pregnant and nonpregnant women from the same geographic area and age range (18-40 years) - all negative for clinical gastrointestinal tract inflammation. A retrospective review of fecal lactoferrin levels contrasted with the Simple Endoscopic Score for CD, and the Disease Activity Index for UC was also performed in women with active IBDs within the same age range and geographical area.Results: In 30 nonpregnant subjects, fecal lactoferrin levels were 0.87 \ub1 1.08 mug/g. In 49 pregnant subjects, levels were 0.59 \ub1 0.83, 0.87 \ub1 1.13, and 0.85 \ub1 1.06 mug/g during the first, second, and third trimester, respectively (p = 0.64), with average levels for the 3 trimesters of 0.81 \ub1 1.04 mug/g (p = 0.61 compared to nonpregnant subjects). Sequential fecal lactoferrin levels (n = 26) did not differ from one trimester to the other in the individual subjects (p = 0.80). In 45 female IBD patients (27 with CD and 18 with UC), fecal lactoferrin levels were correlated with disease activity as defined by the endoscopic scores: 218, 688, and 1,175 mug/g for CD and 931, 2,088, and 2,509 mug/g for UC, respectively, for mild, moderate, and severe activity.Conclusions: Fecal lactoferrin levels during normal pregnancy are superimposable to those of nonpregnant women and significantly below levels in women of the same childbearing age with active IBDs. Additional published data - reviewed in this atricle - and our own indicate that fecal lactoferrin and other markers can be potentially used to monitor disease activity in pregnant IBD patients

A guide to sampling design for GPS‐based studies of animal societies

GPS-based tracking is widely used for studying wild social animals. Much like traditional observational methods, using GPS devices requires making a number of decisions about sampling that can affect the robustness of a study's conclusions. For example, sampling fewer individuals per group across more distinct social groups may not be sufficient to infer group- or subgroup-level behaviours, while sampling more individuals per group across fewer groups limits the ability to draw conclusions about populations. Here, we provide quantitative recommendations when designing GPS-based tracking studies of animal societies. We focus on the trade-offs between three fundamental axes of sampling effort: (1) sampling coverage—the number and allocation of GPS devices among individuals in one or more social groups; (2) sampling duration—the total amount of time over which devices collect data and (3) sampling frequency—the temporal resolution at which GPS devices record data. We first test GPS tags under field conditions to quantify how these aspects of sampling design can affect both GPS accuracy (error in absolute positional estimates) and GPS precision (error in the estimate relative position of two individuals), demonstrating that GPS error can have profound effects when inferring distances between individuals. We then use data from whole-group tracked vulturine guineafowl Acryllium vulturinum to demonstrate how the trade-off between sampling frequency and sampling duration can impact inferences of social interactions and to quantify how sampling coverage can affect common measures of social behaviour in animal groups, identifying which types of measures are more or less robust to lower coverage of individuals. Finally, we use data-informed simulations to extend insights across groups of different sizes and cohesiveness. Based on our results, we are able to offer a range of recommendations on GPS sampling strategies to address research questions across social organizational scales and social systems—from group movement to social network structure and collective decision-making. Our study provides practical advice for empiricists to navigate their decision-making processes when designing GPS-based field studies of animal social behaviours, and highlights the importance of identifying the optimal deployment decisions for drawing informative and robust conclusions

Doctoral Program Issues: Commentary on Companion Dissertations

A Doctoral Issues Presentation at the National Council of Professors of Educational Administration Lexington, KY, August 2, 200

Machine learning reveals cryptic dialects that explain mate choice in a songbird

Culturally transmitted communication signals – such as human language or bird song – can change over time through cultural drift, and the resulting dialects may consequently enhance the separation of populations. However, the emergence of song dialects has been considered unlikely when songs are highly individual-specific, as in the zebra finch (Taeniopygia guttata). Here we show that machine learning can nevertheless distinguish the songs from multiple captive zebra finch populations with remarkable precision, and that ‘cryptic song dialects’ predict strong assortative mating in this species. We examine mating patterns across three consecutive generations using captive populations that have evolved in isolation for about 100 generations. We cross-fostered eggs within and between these populations and used an automated barcode tracking system to quantify social interactions. We find that females preferentially pair with males whose song resembles that of the females’ adolescent peers. Our study shows evidence that in zebra finches, a model species for song learning, individuals are sensitive to differences in song that have hitherto remained unnoticed by researchers