Interview with Mr. & Mrs. W.C. Alcorn of Ionia, KS

An interview with William Cicero Alcorn and his wife Eva Paxton Moyer Alcorn from Ionia, KS regarding their various life experiences in the early 20th century. Jess Alcorn Long of Ellis, KS is also included in the interview. 00:00:30 - Biographical information 00:01:37 - A strange marriage arrangement and a fight in Ionia 00:03:41 - Moyer and Paxton family history 00:05:57 - Eva Alcorn\u27s arrival in Kansas 00:07:23 - School experiences 00:09:43 - William Alcorn\u27s arrival in Kansas and first jobs 00:13:45 - Early Ionia 00:19:01 - William Alcorn\u27s first marriage 00:21:05 - Buying the family home 00:23:16 - Traveling to Kentucky 00:31:48 - Coyote Hunting 00:38:10 - Badger story 00:41:39 - Taking kids to school 00:43:51 - Courting 00:44:43 - More on coyote hunting 00:49:17 - Blizzards and hard winters 00:52:40 - Saw accident 00:54:24 - Doctor Poffin 00:56:21 - The Alcorn Farm 01:00:18 - Making soap 01:02:43 - Making hominy 01:04:46 - Dust storms 01:10:45 - Lean years 01:13:25 - Hailstorm 01:16:07 - Bear story 01:20:08 - Hunting in Kentucky 01:21:48 - Working in a mill 01:25:25 - Swimming in the Cumberland River 01:27:35 - Rattlesnakes in Kansas and haymakinghttps://scholars.fhsu.edu/sackett/1025/thumbnail.jp

Beet-ing Muscle Dysfunction and Exercise Intolerance in Pulmonary Hypertension

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI)Background: Pulmonary Hypertension (PH) is a devastating disease characterized by pulmonary arterial remodeling, right ventricular dysfunction and ultimately right heart failure. Increased emphasis has been given to skeletal muscle dysfunction in PH, and to its implication in the severe exercise intolerance that is a hallmark of the condition. In this dissertation, skeletal muscle blood flow was measured via the microsphere technique at rest and during exercise (Aim 1), with an acute dose of dietary nitrate via beetroot juice (BRJ) gavage used to determine if supplementation could improve muscle blood flow and alter energetics (Aim 2). VO2max, voluntary running and grip strength tests were used to determine the effect of disease on performance, and to test for an ergogenic effect of BRJ vs. placebo (PL) in healthy and PH rats (Aim 3). Methods: A prospective, randomized, counterbalanced, placebo-controlled trial was used to examine the aforementioned aims across four groups; PH rats (induced with monocrotaline, MCT, 60mg/kg, s.q., 4 weeks) supplemented with BRJ (MCT BRJ, n=9); PH rats supplemented with placebo (MCT PL, n=9); healthy control rats (vehicle, s.q.) supplemented with BRJ (CON BRJ, n=8); healthy control rats supplemented with placebo (CON PL, n=9). Results: Monocrotaline induced a severe PH phenotype evidenced by increased RV wall thickness, RV hypertrophy, RVSP and reduced cardiac output and stroke volume compared to controls (p=<0.001). MCT rats demonstrated lower muscle blood flow at rest, and more prominently during exercise compared to controls (p=0.007-0.047), regardless of supplementation. MCT rats displayed a greater reliance on anaerobic metabolism, demonstrated by increased blood lactate accumulation (p=<0.001), and this was significantly related to reduced blood flow during exercise (r=-0.5879, p=0.001). BRJ supplementation resulted in increased plasma nitrate and nitrite compared to PL (p=<0.001), but at the skeletal muscle level, only nitrate was increased after BRJ. BRJ did not have a significant effect on blood flow, with no improvement during exercise shown vs. PL. Similarly, BRJ did not significantly improve exercise function in MCT or CON rats. Conclusion: MCT rats demonstrated a reduction in muscle blood flow, with BRJ supplementation not resulting in improved flow or exercise performance

Endometriosis in adolescence: A long-term follow-up fecundability assessment

OBJECTIVE: A long-term, follow-up study comparing mild and severe forms of endometriosis and their fecundability, on 28 women diagnosed with endometriosis in adolescence. METHODOLOGY: Twenty-eight patients were identified from a prospective cohort of 52 adolescents (ages 12 to 18 years) with operative diagnosis of endometriosis between July 1993 and December 1995. All patients presented with chronic pelvic pain unresponsive to conservative medical management. Diagnosis of pregnancy was made by sonographic identification of intrauterine pregnancy, positive serum human chorionic gonadotropin or pathological confirmation of products of conception. Patients were categorized as fertile or sub-fertile by having > 12 months of unprotected intercourse without conception. Follow-up was done for 8.6 years. RESULTS: Staging of endometriosis was performed according to the American Society for Reproductive Medicine standards. Stage I = 14.3%; Stage II = 39.3%; Stage III = 42.8%; Stage IV = 3.6%. Fecundability rates in each stage were statistically significant: Stage I (75%), Stage II (55%), Stage III (25%), Stage IV (0%) (p < .05). Rates of spontaneous abortion were not statistically significant. CONCLUSION: In our cohort, even at the earliest point in the natural life cycle of endometriosis there is an inverse relationship between stage of disease at diagnosis and fecundability

Class act

This site contains a large amount of information intended to improve existing teaching practice regarding “access” to learning for deaf and hard-of-hearing students in postsecondary classrooms. To do that we have clustered the information in a series of links; you’ll find these links on the right and at the bottom of most pages

Further Comments on Engineering Shape Anisotropy of Fe3o4-Γ-Fe2o3hollow Nanoparticles for Magnetic Hyperthermia

In their earlier paper, Niraula et al. (ACS Appl. Nano Mater. 2021, 4, 3148-3158) described the morphological, compositional, and magnetic properties of three different magnetite/maghemite or Fe3O4/γ-Fe2O3, hollow nanoparticles, referred to herein as nanorings, short-nanotubes, and long-nanotubes. Scanning electron microscopy indicates that these nanoparticles have lengths of 275 ± 51, 411 ± 92, and 515 ± 98 nm and outer diameters of 201 ± 55, 251 ± 46, and 229 ± 42 nm, respectively, dimensions that are all rather similar in view of their distributions, as is shown in a figure herein. Further, the lengths indicate that these nanoparticles are far larger than what are normally considered nanoparticles. Rietveld refinement of the powder X-ray diffraction patterns presumably reveals the presence of Fe3O4, γ-Fe2O3, and small amounts of α-Fe2O3in some of the nanoparticles; unfortunately, the lack of refinement details make the validity of these compositions at least problematic. The published iron-57 Mössbauer spectral analysis is marginal. An alternative analysis of both the reported X-ray lattice parameters and the Mössbauer spectral results for the three nanoparticles in terms of solid solutions of magnetite and maghemite, AFe3+[BFe1-3δ2+Fe1+2δ3+□δ]O4, where □ represents a vacancy, δ= 0 corresponds to magnetite, Fe3O4, and δ= 0.333 corresponds to maghemite, γ-Fe2O3, is proposed herein. In the presence of the expected magnetite Verwey transition, the Mössbauer spectral analysis is formulated with the stoichiometry AFe3+[BFe2(1-3δ)2.5+Fe5δ3+□δ]O4, and as far as we can tell, this model is consistent with the Rietveld X-ray diffraction analysis. The values of δ= 0.28(2) and 0.30(1) obtained from the X-ray diffraction and Mössbauer spectral analyses, respectively, indicate that the composition of the nanoparticles is very close to γ-Fe2O3, in contrast to the earlier conclusion. During the course of this reformulation, numerous errors in the mathematical expressions, and in some cases their subsequent misuse, have been discovered and corrected herein whenever possible

AN INTRASEASONAL BIOECONOMIC MODEL OF PLRV NET NECROSIS

A bioeconomic model is developed as an IPM planning tool to combat PLRV net necrosis in the PNW potato industry. Environmental/biological and production processes are linked to marketing activities using discrete time control. We find that pesticides can be optimally timed to reduce applications and still protect against net necrosis.Crop Production/Industries, Environmental Economics and Policy,

The classical nature of nuclear spin noise near clock transitions of Bi donors in silicon

Whether a quantum bath can be approximated as classical noise is a fundamental issue in central spin decoherence and also of practical importance in designing noise-resilient quantum control. Spin qubits based on bismuth donors in silicon have tunable interactions with nuclear spin baths and are first-order insensitive to magnetic noise at so-called clock-transitions (CTs). This system is therefore ideal for studying the quantum/classical nature of nuclear spin baths since the qubit-bath interaction strength determines the back-action on the baths and hence the adequacy of a classical noise model. We develop a Gaussian noise model with noise correlations determined by quantum calculations and compare the classical noise approximation to the full quantum bath theory. We experimentally test our model through dynamical decoupling sequence of up to 128 pulses, finding good agreement with simulations and measuring electron spin coherence times approaching one second - notably using natural silicon. Our theoretical and experimental study demonstrates that the noise from a nuclear spin bath is analogous to classical Gaussian noise if the back-action of the qubit on the bath is small compared to the internal bath dynamics, as is the case close to CTs. However, far from the CTs, the back-action of the central spin on the bath is such that the quantum model is required to accurately model spin decoherence.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure

The importance of interaction for academic success in online courses with hearing, deaf, and hard-of-hearing students

This paper reports the findings of three studies within a program of research designed to better understand the factors contributing to the academic achievement of students in online courses and the contributions of interaction to online learning. The first study compared the academic achievement of students in the online and face-to-face (F2F) sections of multiple courses. In the second study, an online survey was used to obtain student perceptions of course satisfaction, learning, and communication. These factors were then related, using binary logistic regression analysis, to the amount of interaction that occurred in the students’ respective online courses; information from the myCourses course management system was used to quantify the amount of interaction that occurred in online courses. In the final study, both datasets were used to examine the academic achievement of students in online courses based upon the amount of interaction that had actually occurred. Whenever possible, a subgroup of deaf and hard-of-hearing students was included in the study to increase our understanding of the role that communication plays in the teaching-learning process. Our findings indicate that students enrolled in online courses, especially those designed with high levels of online interaction, receive higher grades and report greater learning than students in comparable F2F courses. In addition, online courses appear to provide deaf and hard-of-hearing students with special benefits in terms of academic achievement through online discussion. Overall, the studies illuminate how the quantity of interaction in online discussions relates to important success factors. Students in online courses with more interaction outperformed students in online courses with less interaction

Are topical nitrates safe and effective for upper extremity tendinopathies?

Q. Are topical nitrates safe and effective for upper extremity tendinopathies? A. Topical nitrates provide short-term relief with some side effects, especially headache. Topical nitroglycerin (NTG) patches improve subjective pain scores by about 30% and range of motion over 3 days in patients with acute shoulder tendinopathy (strength of recommendation [SOR]: C, small randomized controlled trial [RCT] with no methodologic flaws). NTG patches, when combined with tendon rehabilitation, improve subjective pain ratings by about 30% and shoulder strength by about 10% in patients with chronic shoulder tendinopathy over 3 to 6 months, but not in the long term (SOR: C, RCTs with methodologic flaws). They improve pain and strength 15% to 50% for chronic extensor tendinosis of the elbow over a 6-month period (SOR: C, small RCT with methodologic flaws). NTG patches used without tendon rehabilitation don't improve pain or strength in chronic lateral epicondylitis over 8 weeks (SOR: C, RCT). Topical NTG patches commonly produce headaches and rashes (SOR: B, multiple RCTs)