Rain

The author reflects on how the blessings of God flow as rain. Sometimes it is gentle and caressing, sometimes it feels like punishment, but everything the Lord allows us to go through, it is always for our benefit. His presence sustains us

Girl with the Mask

Based on the style of Jamaica Kincaid\u27s Girl, Girl with the Mask maintains the structure and style that helps to shed light on where a woman\u27s worth and value is found. Though values may have been built and solidified though unhealthy messages, Girl with the Mask describes in great detail the source and message behind how many young women view themselves within our society and where they find their worth

Peach Production in Texas.

32 p

Attitudes Toward and Perceptions of Pollution by Residents of the Big Stone Lake Area

The objectives of the study were to determine: (1) the attitudes of local residents toward environmental problems; and, (2) whether these attitudes differ when the effects of selected socio-demographic characteristics such as age, education, and income are statiscally controlled in the analysis

Assessing the Vegetative Diversity of an East Texas Golf Course using Principles of Landscape Ecology

The objectives of this study was to determine the vegetative diversity and the effects of the edge between fairways (introduced patches) and out-of-bounds areas (remnant patches) to determine if such management activities influence plant diversity. This study was conducted at the Pineywoods Country Club in the Pineywoods Region of East Texas near Nacogdoches, TX, USA by assessing the spatial distribution of these matrices and patches and their influence on edge effect composition and structure in the matrix; and, if species diversity and composition differed between these edges and interior of the matrices. Nested plots were placed along transects and canopy cover, percent cover, number of individuals by species, tree density, and percent cover of ground cover materials were analyzed using ordination. Dbh, shrub and herbaceous percent cover, and canopy cover were tested for normality utilizing a Shapiro-Wilk normality test, Wilcoxon-Mann-Whitney was used to analyze edge plots and interior plots, and @RISK goodness-of-fit measures were utilized to identify percent cover data distributions. Statistical differences (0.05 α level) between the edge and interior dbh and shrub datasets and a similarity between the edge and interior datasets of the overstory and herbaceous strata were found. Many of the interior shrub plots had a higher H’ (Shannon-Wiener index) and D (Simpson’s index) than the edge plots. Canopy cover was often over 70%, and herbaceous species abundance was often higher (1-11 species) than that of the shrub stratum (1-3 species). Beta diversity indicated that the remnant patches were diverse ( between 0.19-0.30) within all three strata. Natural and anthropogenic disturbances altered the structure and function of the remnant patches: tree density decreased in edge plots due to management. Canopy cover was high over edge plots; however, light was able to reach the ground at an angle across the fairway. Past and current management practices combined with disturbance events have caused the interior of the remnant patches to be disturbed to the degree that they were not representative of the Pineywoods eco-region. The exceptional drought in 2011 may have influenced these results. It was not determined whether the fairway patches within the forest matrix resulted in edge effects

Postgraduate Symposium Positive influence of nutritional alkalinity on bone health: Conference on ‘Over- and undernutrition: challenges and approaches'

There is growing evidence that consumption of a Western diet is a risk factor for osteoporosis through excess acid supply, while fruits and vegetables balance the excess acidity, mostly by providing K-rich bicarbonate-rich foods. Western diets consumed by adults generate approximately 50-100 mEq acid/d; therefore, healthy adults consuming such a diet are at risk of chronic low-grade metabolic acidosis, which worsens with age as a result of declining kidney function. Bone buffers the excess acid by delivering cations and it is considered that with time an overstimulation of this process will lead to the dissolution of the bone mineral content and hence to reduced bone mass. Intakes of K, Mg and fruit and vegetables have been associated with a higher alkaline status and a subsequent beneficial effect on bone health. In healthy male volunteers an acid-forming diet increases urinary Ca excretion by 74% and urinary C-terminal telopeptide of type I collagen (C-telopeptide) excretion by 19% when compared with an alkali (base-forming) diet. Cross-sectional studies have shown that there is a correlation between the nutritional acid load and bone health measured by bone ultrasound or dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry. Few studies have been undertaken in very elderly women (>75 years), whose osteoporosis risk is very pertinent. The EVAluation of Nutrients Intakes and Bone Ultra Sound Study has developed and validated (n 51) an FFQ for use in a very elderly Swiss population (mean age 80·4 (sd 2·99) years), which has shown intakes of key nutrients (energy, fat, carbohydrate, Ca, Mg, vitamin C, D and E) to be low in 401 subjects. A subsequent study to assess net endogenous acid production (NEAP) and bone ultrasound results in 256 women aged ≥75 years has shown that lower NEAP (P=0·023) and higher K intake (P=0·033) are correlated with higher bone ultrasound results. High acid load may be an important additional risk factor that may be particularly relevant in very elderly patients with an already-high fracture risk. The latter study adds to knowledge by confirming a positive link between dietary alkalinity and bone health indices in the very elderly. In a further study to complement these findings it has also been shown in a group of thirty young women that in Ca sufficiency an acid Ca-rich water has no effect on bone resorption, while an alkaline bicarbonate-rich water leads to a decrease in both serum parathyroid hormone and serum C-telopeptide. Further investigations need to be undertaken to study whether these positive effects on bone loss are maintained over long-term treatment. Mineral-water consumption could be an easy and inexpensive way of helping to prevent osteoporosis and could be of major interest for long-term prevention of bone los

Predicting postoperative day 1 hematocrit levels after uncomplicated hysterectomy

ObjectiveTo develop a model for predicting postoperative hematocrit levels after uncomplicated hysterectomy.MethodsIn a retrospective study, data were analyzed from the Michigan Surgery Quality Collaborative for non‐emergent hysterectomies performed for benign indications among women aged at least 18 years between January 1, 2012, and April 4, 2014. Linear mixed models were used for univariate and multivariate analyses.ResultsThe model was developed with data from 4747 hysterectomies and validated on 1184 cases. In the mixed multivariate analysis, higher postoperative day 1 (POD1) hematocrit levels were associated with higher weight (B = 0.03222, P < 0.001), higher preoperative hematocrit (B = 0.6587, P < 0.001), and non‐vaginal hysterectomy (B = 0.2815, P = 0.0055). Lower POD1 hematocrit was associated with higher preoperative platelet count (B = − 0.00457, P < 0.001), greater estimated blood loss (B = − 0.00652, P < 0.001), and larger intraoperative crystalloid volume (B = − 0.3303, P < 0.001). The final model predicted POD1 hematocrit within 4% points of the actual value for 91.7% of cases in the validation set.ConclusionUse of the model after uncomplicated hysterectomy might help to support the practice of selectively conducting postoperative hematocrit tests after hysterectomy in a clinically thoughtful and cost‐effective manner.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/135182/1/ijgo19.pd

Kidney cell electrophoresis in space flight: Rationale, methods, results and flow cytometry applications

Cultures of human embryonic kidney cells consistently contain an electrophoretically separable subpopulation of cells that produce high levels of urokinase and have an electrophoretic mobility about 85 percent as high as that of the most mobile human embryonic kidney cells. This subpopulation is rich in large epithelioid cells that have relatively little internal structure. When resolution and throughput are adequate, free fluid electrophoresis can be used to isolate a broad band of low mobility cells which also produces high levels of plasminogen activators (PAs). In the course of performing this, it was discovered that all electrophoretic subpopulations of cultured human embryonic kidney cells produce some PAs and that separate subpopulations produce high quantities of different types of PA's. This information and the development of sensitive assays for this project have provided new insights into cell secretion mechanisms related to fibrinolysis. These advances would probably not have been made without the NASA program to explore fundamental questions of free fluid electrophoresis in space

Configural Scoring of Simulator Sickness, Cybersickness and Space Adaptation Syndrome: Similarities and Differences?

From a survey of ten U.S. Navy flight simulators a large number (N > 1,600 exposures) of self-reports of motion sickness symptomatology were obtained. Using these data, scoring algorithms were derived, which permit examination of groups of individuals that can be scored either for 1) their total sickness experience in a particular device; or, 2) according to three separable symptom clusters which emerged from a Factor Analysis. Scores from this total score are found to be proportional to other global motion sickness symptom checklist scores with which they correlate (r = 0.82). The factors that surfaced from the analysis include clusters of symptoms referable as nausea, oculomotor disturbances, and disorientation (N, 0, and D). The factor scores may have utility in differentiating the source of symptoms in different devices. The present chapter describes our experience with the use of both of these types of scores and illustrates their use with examples from flight simulators, space sickness and virtual environments