Is Massage Effective As A Non-Pharmacologic Treatment For Individuals Suffering From Migraines?

OBJECTIVE: The objective of this selective EBM review is to determine whether or not massage therapy is effective as a non-pharmacologic treatment for individuals suffering from migraines. STUDY DESIGN: Review of all English language primary randomized controlled trials from 1996-2011. DATA SOURCES: Three randomized controlled trials were found using Pubmed, CINAHL, and Cochrane databases. These compared massage therapy trials in patients suffering from migraine headaches. OUTCOMES MEASURED: Each trial measured the outcomes in slightly different ways. The Hernandez et al study used the VITAS pain scale, symptom checklist, headache log, and a sleep log to record outcomes. The Lawler et al study used patient daily diaries of headache frequency, intensity, medication use, and sleep behavior. The Lemstra et al study used a headache diary to record pain intensity, duration, frequency, quality of life, functional status, depressive symptoms, medication use, work status, and health status. RESULTS: There were statistically significant differences between control and intervention groups that received massage therapy in all three studies. Though each study measured different outcomes, all three showed a statistically significant decrease in migraine frequency for those who received that treatment. Hernandez et al study showed a statistically significant decrease in somatic symptomatology and the pain scale. Lawler et al showed an increase in sleep quality. Lemstra et al showed a decrease in pain intensity, pain duration, and depressive symptomatology as well as an increase in functional status for these patients. CONCLUSIONS: The results show that massage therapy is an effective non-pharmacologic treatment for those who have migraine headaches. It shows a decrease in migraine frequency, duration, somatic symptomatology, and sleep quality. Additional research is needed on the longterm effects of patients to quantify the impact it has on functional status

Purification of Pharmaceutical Grade Salmon-Derived Thrombin and Fibrinogen for Hemostatic Bandages

Hemorrhage due to trauma is the leading cause of preventable death among American soldiers, according the National Institute of Trauma. Uncontrollable bleeding is also seen regularly in civilian incidences of trauma and is a common major surgical complication. The human blood clotting process involves a complex cascade of tightly regulated enzymatic reactions. Two of the most important proteins in this cascade are fibrinogen and thrombin. Thrombin is an enzyme that activates fibrinogen monomers to form a polymeric fibrin network, forming the basis of a blood clot. During trauma, a state of consumptive coagulopathy, the body depletes these two proteins causing severe bleeding. A novel way to counteract hemorrhage is to supply additional thrombin and fibrinogen to the focal injury site. However, as of yet fibrinogen has proved technically challenging to produce recombinantly, and mammalian-based proteins carry the risk of pathogen transmission and immune response. Salmon-derived proteins, on the other hand, overcome both of these obstacles. DiamondStat is a novel hemostatic bandage that delivers fibrinogen and thrombin purified from salmon blood. It is a 4 x 4 inch adhesive bandage that delivers 10 mg/cm2 of fibrinogen and 90 units/cm2 of thrombin to effectively stop hemorrhage. The production of DiamondStat bandages begins with harvesting blood from salmon. Through a series of centrifugations and precipitations, prothrombin (a zymogen precursor to thrombin) and fibrinogen are extracted from the blood. Additional precipitations and filtrations further purify the fibrinogen solution to pharmaceutical-grade. The prothrombin is converted to thrombin in an immobilized snake venom catalyst column. Thrombin is then purified through an affinity column and ultrafiltration. Both thrombin and fibrinogen solutions are run through endotoxin removal columns and then sprayed onto pieces of gauze. The proteins are lyophilized onto the gauze and 2 the final bandage, which consists of fibrinogen and thrombin gauze pieces and an adhesive backing, is assembled. Bandages are sterilized via gamma irradiation and ready for use. At a capacity of 300,000 bandages per year and $800 per bandage, DiamondStat production is very profitable. It will yield an internal rate of return of 289.76$489 million. Extensive sensitivity analysis indicates that the project will be profitable in all likely scenarios. Investment in the DiamondStat processing plant is highly recommended. It is an economically viable project with the potential to save the lives of hundreds of thousands of American servicemen and women

Generalized Sums over Histories for Quantum Gravity I. Smooth Conifolds

This paper proposes to generalize the histories included in Euclidean functional integrals from manifolds to a more general set of compact topological spaces. This new set of spaces, called conifolds, includes nonmanifold stationary points that arise naturally in a semiclasssical evaluation of such integrals; additionally, it can be proven that sequences of approximately Einstein manifolds and sequences of approximately Einstein conifolds both converge to Einstein conifolds. Consequently, generalized Euclidean functional integrals based on these conifold histories yield semiclassical amplitudes for sequences of both manifold and conifold histories that approach a stationary point of the Einstein action. Therefore sums over conifold histories provide a useful and self-consistent starting point for further study of topological effects in quantum gravity. Postscript figures available via anonymous ftp at black-hole.physics.ubc.ca (137.82.43.40) in file gen1.ps.Comment: 81pp., plain TeX, To appear in Nucl. Phys.

Pleistocene Brawley and Ocotillo Formations: Evidence for Initial Strike-Slip Deformation Along the San Felipe and San Jacinto Fault Zones, Southern California

We examine the Pleistocene tectonic reorganization of the Pacific–North American plate boundary in the Salton Trough of southern California with an integrated approach that includes basin analysis, magnetostratigraphy, and geologic mapping of upper Pliocene to Pleistocene sedimentary rocks in the San Felipe Hills. These deposits preserve the earliest sedimentary record of movement on the San Felipe and San Jacinto fault zones that replaced and deactivated the late Cenozoic West Salton detachment fault. Sandstone and mudstone of the Brawley Formation accumulated between ∼1.1 and ∼0.6–0.5 Ma in a delta on the margin of an arid Pleistocene lake, which received sediment from alluvial fans of the Ocotillo Formation to the west-southwest. Our analysis indicates that the Ocotillo and Brawley formations prograded abruptly to the east-northeast across a former mud-dominated perennial lake (Borrego Formation) at ∼1.1 Ma in response to initiation of the dextral-oblique San Felipe fault zone. The ∼25-km-long San Felipe anticline initiated at about the same time and produced an intrabasinal basement-cored high within the San Felipe–Borrego basin that is recorded by progressive unconformities on its north and south limbs. A disconformity at the base of the Brawley Formation in the eastern San Felipe Hills probably records initiation and early blind slip at the southeast tip of the Clark strand of the San Jacinto fault zone. Our data are consistent with abrupt and nearly synchronous inception of the San Jacinto and San Felipe fault zones southwest of the southern San Andreas fault in the early Pleistocene during a pronounced southwestward broadening of the San Andreas fault zone. The current contractional geometry of the San Jacinto fault zone developed after ∼0.5–0.6 Ma during a second, less significant change in structural style

Exotic Spaces in Quantum Gravity I: Euclidean Quantum Gravity in Seven Dimensions

It is well known that in four or more dimensions, there exist exotic manifolds; manifolds that are homeomorphic but not diffeomorphic to each other. More precisely, exotic manifolds are the same topological manifold but have inequivalent differentiable structures. This situation is in contrast to the uniqueness of the differentiable structure on topological manifolds in one, two and three dimensions. As exotic manifolds are not diffeomorphic, one can argue that quantum amplitudes for gravity formulated as functional integrals should include a sum over not only physically distinct geometries and topologies but also inequivalent differentiable structures. But can the inclusion of exotic manifolds in such sums make a significant contribution to these quantum amplitudes? This paper will demonstrate that it will. Simply connected exotic Einstein manifolds with positive curvature exist in seven dimensions. Their metrics are found numerically; they are shown to have volumes of the same order of magnitude. Their contribution to the semiclassical evaluation of the partition function for Euclidean quantum gravity in seven dimensions is evaluated and found to be nontrivial. Consequently, inequivalent differentiable structures should be included in the formulation of sums over histories for quantum gravity.Comment: AmsTex, 23 pages 5 eps figures; replaced figures with ones which are hopefully viewable in pdf forma

Generalized Sums over Histories for Quantum Gravity II. Simplicial Conifolds

This paper examines the issues involved with concretely implementing a sum over conifolds in the formulation of Euclidean sums over histories for gravity. The first step in precisely formulating any sum over topological spaces is that one must have an algorithmically implementable method of generating a list of all spaces in the set to be summed over. This requirement causes well known problems in the formulation of sums over manifolds in four or more dimensions; there is no algorithmic method of determining whether or not a topological space is an n-manifold in five or more dimensions and the issue of whether or not such an algorithm exists is open in four. However, as this paper shows, conifolds are algorithmically decidable in four dimensions. Thus the set of 4-conifolds provides a starting point for a concrete implementation of Euclidean sums over histories in four dimensions. Explicit algorithms for summing over various sets of 4-conifolds are presented in the context of Regge calculus. Postscript figures available via anonymous ftp at black-hole.physics.ubc.ca (137.82.43.40) in file gen2.ps.Comment: 82pp., plain TeX, To appear in Nucl. Phys. B,FF-92-

Production of ent-kaurene from lignocellulosic hydrolysate in Rhodosporidium toruloides.

BACKGROUND:Rhodosporidium toruloides has emerged as a promising host for the production of bioproducts from lignocellulose, in part due to its ability to grow on lignocellulosic feedstocks, tolerate growth inhibitors, and co-utilize sugars and lignin-derived monomers. Ent-kaurene derivatives have a diverse range of potential applications from therapeutics to novel resin-based materials. RESULTS:The Design, Build, Test, and Learn (DBTL) approach was employed to engineer production of the non-native diterpene ent-kaurene in R. toruloides. Following expression of kaurene synthase (KS) in R. toruloides in the first DBTL cycle, a key limitation appeared to be the availability of the diterpene precursor, geranylgeranyl diphosphate (GGPP). Further DBTL cycles were carried out to select an optimal GGPP synthase and to balance its expression with KS, requiring two of the strongest promoters in R. toruloides, ANT (adenine nucleotide translocase) and TEF1 (translational elongation factor 1) to drive expression of the KS from Gibberella fujikuroi and a mutant version of an FPP synthase from Gallus gallus that produces GGPP. Scale-up of cultivation in a 2 L bioreactor using a corn stover hydrolysate resulted in an ent-kaurene titer of 1.4 g/L. CONCLUSION:This study builds upon previous work demonstrating the potential of R. toruloides as a robust and versatile host for the production of both mono- and sesquiterpenes, and is the first demonstration of the production of a non-native diterpene in this organism

Consequences of sexual harassment in sport for female athletes

Sexual harassment research was first undertaken in the workplace and educational settings. Research on sexual harassment in sport is scarce but has grown steadily since the mid-1980s. Even so, very little is known about the causes and/or characteristics and/or consequences of sexual harassment in sport settings. This article reports on the findings from interviews with 25 elite female athletes in Norway who indicated in a prior survey (N =572) that they had experienced sexual harassment from someone in sport. The consequences of the incidents of sexual harassment that were reported were mostly negative, but some also reported that their experiences of sexual harassment had had no consequences for them. “Thinking about the incidents”, a “destroyed relationship to the coach”, and “more negative view of men in general” were the most often negative consequences mentioned. In addition, a surprising number had chosen to move to a different sport or to drop out of elite sport altogether because of the harassment

Bodyweight Perceptions among Texas Women: The Effects of Religion, Race/Ethnicity, and Citizenship Status

Despite previous work exploring linkages between religious participation and health, little research has looked at the role of religion in affecting bodyweight perceptions. Using the theoretical model developed by Levin et al. (Sociol Q 36(1):157–173, 1995) on the multidimensionality of religious participation, we develop several hypotheses and test them by using data from the 2004 Survey of Texas Adults. We estimate multinomial logistic regression models to determine the relative risk of women perceiving themselves as overweight. Results indicate that religious attendance lowers risk of women perceiving themselves as very overweight. Citizenship status was an important factor for Latinas, with noncitizens being less likely to see themselves as overweight. We also test interaction effects between religion and race. Religious attendance and prayer have a moderating effect among Latina non-citizens so that among these women, attendance and prayer intensify perceptions of feeling less overweight when compared to their white counterparts. Among African American women, the effect of increased church attendance leads to perceptions of being overweight. Prayer is also a correlate of overweight perceptions but only among African American women. We close with a discussion that highlights key implications from our findings, note study limitations, and several promising avenues for future research

Energy In/Out of Place

This book, and the online workshop that preceded it, are attempts to intensify the sense of place within our scholarship and in our scholarly practices. They are formed from the efforts of five research teams examining energy cultures in five different locations around the world. Team members weren’t necessarily experts on their given places, but many were bound to these sites through time, kith, and kin