California's Safety Nets and the Need to Improve Local Collaboration in Care for the Uninsured: Counties, Clinics, Hospitals and Local Health Plans

Examines the state's safety net financing and infrastructure resources, with county and regional comparisons. Analyzes the care for the uninsured provided by county facilities, free and community clinics, hospitals, and Medi-Cal managed care programs

Constraining Prograde Metamorphic Paths in Archean High-grade Garnet-bearing Lithologies from the Eastern Beartooth Mountains, Montana, USA

Prograde metamorphic pressures and temperatures of Archean high-grade garnet-bearing lithologies from the eastern Beartooth Mountains of Montana provide an important constraint on the tectonometamorphic history of this terrane and the early Earth in general. A particularly useful means to approximate prograde metamorphic conditions is examining entrapment conditions of garnet mineral inclusions during garnet growth. Lithologies of the eastern Beartooth Mountains are well-suited to this approach because of the presence of abundant mineral inclusions within garnet porphyroblasts. Consequently, prograde metamorphic pressures and temperatures in the Beartooth Mountains, conditions that have only been broadly constrained previously, can be more accurately determined and used to constrain the tectonic environment responsible. Four high-grade garnet-bearing lithologies from the eastern Beartooth Mountains were examined to constrain prograde metamorphic paths: peraluminous migmatites, garnet-biotite gneisses, iron formations, and mafic granulites. Optical petrography and cathodoluminescence (CL) imagery were used to target areas for subsequent Raman and chemical analysis. Quartz inclusion entrapment pressures were calculated by measuring Raman spectroscopic peak position changes of quartz as a result of relative changes in strain. Mineral inclusions and matrix grains were chemically analyzed on an electron microprobe (EMP) and the data were used to calculate prograde entrapment temperatures and peak metamorphic conditions, respectively, using various geothermobarometers. Inclusion thermometry coupled with Raman barometry predicts prograde entrapment conditions of 675-775°C and 9-11 kbar. Predicted conditions of inclusion entrapment agree with the upper limits of calculated peak metamorphic pressures but are below calculated peak metamorphic temperatures. These data are interpreted to represent inclusion entrapment during isobaric growth of garnet hosts at peak metamorphic pressures as temperatures increased in a clockwise pressure-temperature path. Such prograde paths likely resulted from burial due to collisional tectonics followed by isobaric heating from emplacement of local plutonic bodies. These findings place new constraints on the tectonometamorphic evolution of Beartooth rocks. Additionally, these findings demonstrate that garnet mineral inclusion studies can be used to quantitatively constrain prograde conditions of Beartooth metamorphism

Attention Factors Compared to Other Predictors of Simulated Driving Performance Across Age Groups

Groups of young, middle-aged, and older adults performed a battery of computer-based attention tasks, the UFOV® and neuropsychological tests, and simulated low-speed driving in a suburban scenario. Results from the attention tasks were submitted to Maximum Likelihood factor analysis and 6 factors were extracted that explained more than 57% of the task variance. The factors were labeled speed, switching, visual search, executive, sustained, and divided attention in descending order of amount of task variance explained. The factor scores were used to predict simulated driving performance. Step-wise regressions were computed with driving performance as the criterion, and age, sex and the factor scores, the UFOV® scores, or the neuropsychological test scores as predictors. Results showed that the perceptual-motor speed and divided attention measures from the UFOV® and attention battery were more likely to explain driving performance variance than the neuropsychological tests

Tribute to Donald A. Winslow

This article is comprised of a series of tributes to Donald A. Winslow, who was a law professor at the University of Kentucky College of Law

Geomorphology in Iowa 1943-1968: An Annotated Bibliography of the Literature

A study of what has been written about the geomorphology of Iowa since the publication of the Kay volume, The Pleistocene of Iowa, in 1943, resulted in the compilation of an annotated bibliography. An examination of the subject material and procedures described suggests: studies since 1943 are process oriented rather than time oriented; increased use of paleosols and buried erosion surfaces; introduction of radiocarbon dating; and a lack of discussion about a framework for geomorphology

The hand of Homo naledi

A nearly complete right hand of an adult hominin was recovered from the Rising Star cave system, South Africa. Based on associated hominin material, the bones of this hand are attributed to Homo naledi. This hand reveals a long, robust thumb and derived wrist morphology that is shared with Neandertals and modern humans, and considered adaptive for intensified manual manipulation. However, the finger bones are longer and more curved than in most australopiths, indicating frequent use of the hand during life for strong grasping during locomotor climbing and suspension. These markedly curved digits in combination with an otherwise human-like wrist and palm indicate a significant degree of climbing, despite the derived nature of many aspects of the hand and other regions of the postcranial skeleton in H. naledi

Early Origin for Human-Like Precision Grasping: A Comparative Study of Pollical Distal Phalanges in Fossil Hominins

Altres ajuts: Generalitat de Catalunya 2006 FI 00065 i beca de viatge 2008 BE1 00370Background: The morphology of human pollical distal phalanges (PDP) closely reflects the adaptation of human hands for refined precision grip with pad-to-pad contact. The presence of these precision grip-related traits in the PDP of fossil hominins has been related to human-like hand proportions (i.e. short hands with a long thumb) enabling the thumb and finger pads to contact. Although this has been traditionally linked to the appearance of stone tool-making, the alternative hypothesis of an earlier origin-related to the freeing of the hands thanks to the advent of terrestrial bipedalism-is also possible given the human-like intrinsic hand proportion found in australopiths. - Methodology/Principal Findings: We perform morphofunctional and morphometric (bivariate and multivariate) analyses of most available hominin pollical distal phalanges, including Orrorin, Australopithecus, Paranthropous and fossil Homo, in order to investigate their morphological affinities. Our results indicate that the thumb morphology of the early biped Orrorin is more human-like than that of australopiths, in spite of its ancient chronology (ca. 6 Ma). Moreover, Orrorin already displays typical human-like features related to precision grasping. - Conclusions: These results reinforce previous hypotheses relating the origin of refined manipulation of natural objects-not stone tool-making-with the relaxation of locomotor selection pressures on the forelimbs. This suggests that human hand length proportions are largely plesiomorphic, in the sense that they more closely resemble the relatively short-handed Miocene apes than the elongated hand pattern of extant hominoids. With the advent of terrestrial bipedalism, these hand proportions may have been co-opted by early hominins for enhanced manipulative capabilities that, in turn, would have been later co-opted for stone tool-making in the genus Homo, more encephalized than the previous australopiths. This hypothesis remains may be further tested by the finding of more complete hands of unequivocally biped early hominins

Shock tunnel studies of scramjet phenomena, supplement 7

Reports by the staff of the University of Queensland on various research studies related to the advancement of scramjet technology are presented. These reports document the tests conducted in the reflected shock tunnel T4 and supporting research facilities that have been used to study the injection, mixing, and combustion of hydrogen fuel in generic scramjets at flow conditions typical of hypersonic flight. In addition, topics include the development of instrumentation and measurement technology, such as combustor wall shear and stream composition in pulse facilities, and numerical studies and analyses of the scramjet combustor process and the test facility operation. This research activity is Supplement 7 under NASA Grant NAGW-674