1997- Stange Awrds for Meritorious Service Bestowed on Three Alumni

The Stange Award for Meritorious Service in Veterinary Medicine was instituted by the Awards Committee of the College of Veterinary Medicine at Iowa State University in 1970. The award is named in honor of Dr. Charles Henry Stange who entered the curriculum at Iowa State College in 1903 and graduated with the class of1907. He became the third dean of the Veterinary Division of Iowa State College in 1909 and continued in this position until his death on May 26, 1936. The Stange Award is the highest award offered to the alumni ofIowa State University and recognizes persons who have made outstanding professional achievements in the areas of education, government, industry, practice, or other professional endeavors in veterinary medicine. The recipients for 1997 are Dr. Dale W. Longtin, Class of 1958, Dr. J. Kenneth Roach, Class of 1961, and Dr. Gabor K. Vajda, Class of 1961

Becoming deafblind: Negotiating a place in a hostile world

This study addresses the situation of adults who become deafblind. To date, their everday lives have received little attention in the research literature. Of the few studies conducted many involve surveys, the findings of which present the characteristics of people who are deafblind such as their rates of employment, need for support, or use of equipment. There are also a small number of qualitative studies that have explored the effects of having dual sensory impairment, and particularly in relation to communication and psycho-social wellbeing. Important as these research efforts have been, there is little empirical information available about the everyday lives of people who become deafblind and their concerns, nor any systematic attempt to theorise their experiences. There are however many personal anecdotes typically presented at conferences or through community publications and newsletters. This project aimed to redress the gap in the literature by developing a theoretical framework to explain the everyday experiences of adult who become deafblind. In doing so, it built upon the research and anecdotal literature with an overall purpose of presenting, through rigorous research, the experiences of adults who become deafblind and to do so within the broader discourse on disability and disablism. The study was informed by the social relational understanding of disability developed within the Nordic countries. Grounded theory was the method of choice to examine the lives of adults who become deafblind from their own perspective.Participant observation was employed through direct engagement in shared experiences with adults who have become deafblind both at a social group and via an e-mail list group. Mulitple in-depth interviews were undertaken both face to face and by e-mail with a smaller group of eight participants.The core finding from this study is that people who become deafblind are rendered interactionally powerless in a society predicated on seeing and hearing. The powerlessness that they experience comes from having this dual impairment in a world in which being able to see and hear are expected both in the physical and social environment. The inability of people who become deafblind to 'know and be' in the world in the same way as others results in them feeling, and experienceing, interactional powerlessness. In response, people who become deafblind actively engage in trying to minimise or remove their powerlessness. They do so by working to negotiate a place in this hostile world. They adopt four interrelated strategies, namely, doing things differently, managing support relationships, survivings others' perceptions and presenting sides of self.This study, with its central tenet that interactional powerlessness drives ongoing attempts to negotiate a place makes a theoretical contribution to understanding the experience of becoming deafblind. The findings support the concept of disbaility as social relational. Disability is not the same as the sensory impairment, rather it is expressed in the organisation of personal relations in society which render some more powerful than others and in this case, some less powerful due to their inability to use the natural means of communication of hearing and sight. Moreover, the study findings propose that professionals working with people with this dual sensory impairment must endeavour to reduce their part in the hostile world by providing information about options and support available; recognising the complexity of these adults support requirements; and considering the link between psycho-emotional issues and disablism. Further research is needed to understand empirically and theoretically the relative contribution of personal relationships vis a vis organisational or structural relationships in disabling people who become deafblind

IICAB: A Little Known International Resource at ISU

It may not surprise you to hear that Ames, Iowa, is well known across the United States as a center of veterinary knowledge. It may surprise you, however, to learn that Ames, Iowa, is even better known outside the United States for its animal health expertise. This is due, in part, to the work of the Institute for International Cooperation in Animal Biologics (IICAB). What,you may ask, is IICAB

College Obtains Confocal Microscope

Iowa State University recently acquired a Laser Scanning Confocal Microscope. The microscope is located at 1082 Veterinary Medicine in the Image Analysis facility. Confocal microscopy is an improvement over conventional light and fluorescence microscopy in that a finely focused laser beam that rapidly scans the specimen at a single depth illuminates the specimen. Only a thin plane is illuminated within the object, and objects outside of the plane have little effect on the quality of the image. The result is a crisp, blur-free image. Images from optical sections taken at different depths can be stored in a computer and used to reconstruct a three-dimensional image of the entire object

Using distributional similarity to organise biomedical terminology

We investigate an application of distributional similarity techniques to the problem of structural organisation of biomedical terminology. Our application domain is the relatively small GENIA corpus. Using terms that have been accurately marked-up by hand within the corpus, we consider the problem of automatically determining semantic proximity. Terminological units are dened for our purposes as normalised classes of individual terms. Syntactic analysis of the corpus data is carried out using the Pro3Gres parser and provides the data required to calculate distributional similarity using a variety of dierent measures. Evaluation is performed against a hand-crafted gold standard for this domain in the form of the GENIA ontology. We show that distributional similarity can be used to predict semantic type with a good degree of accuracy

Increasing incidence of dementia in the oldest old: evidence and implications

The oldest old are the fastest growing segment of the US population but accurate estimates of the incidence of dementia in this age group have been elusive. Corrada and colleagues present data on the 5-year age-specific rates of dementia incidence in persons 90 years and older from The 90+ Study. Their findings show a continued exponential increase in dementia incidence after age 90 that mirrors the increase observed in persons aged 65 to 90, with a doubling every 5.5 years. This contrasts with previous smaller studies reporting a slowing of the increase in incidence after age 90. If confirmed, the continued increase, rather than a plateau, in the incidence of dementia in the oldest old has implications for proper healthcare planning. Strategies for prevention and treatment will require more information regarding risk factors and the etiopathogenesis of dementia in the oldest old

Factors Associated with the Use of Dietary Supplements among African-American Adults

The purpose of this study was to examine the prevalence and factors associated with the use of dietary supplements among African-American adults. One hundred and ninety-five (195) African-American adults ages 18 and older completed a self-administered survey that consisted of questions regarding use of supplements, perceived knowledge of supplements, perceived dietary adequacy, sources of information for nutrition and supplement knowledge and demographic information. The overall prevalence of vitamin and mineral use was 63%, the most popular being a multivitamin supplement. The prevalence of nonvitamin and non-mineral supplement use was 41%, the most popular being green tea. Perceived knowledge was a significant factor associated with use; the likelihood of using dietary supplements was significantly higher among those who were perceived to be knowledgeable compared to those who were not knowledgeable. After adjusting for age, sex, income and perceived dietary adequacy, perceived knowledge and education were significantly associated with the use of all types of dietary supplements. The primary sources of supplement knowledge of the participants came from healthcare professionals and the media. Nutrition educators should pay particular attention to the current information sources of the dietary supplements used by their clients

Paleomythologies: The Spiritual Persuasion of Evolution

A current rise in so-called “caveman” diets, books, exercise regimes and other trends demonstrates a cultural attempt to reclaim idealized prehistoric conditions for the modern human. In a rhetorical analysis of texts from this modern paleo culture, we identify what we call a “paleomyth” and illustrate how such lifestyle trends not only offer truncated understandings of evolutionary science, but more importantly how they offer a mythological narrative for paleo believers