Review of The Minds of the West: Ethnocultural Evolution in the Rural Middle West, 1830-1917. By Jon Gjerde

Although this highlys tructuredb ook is in some respectsn arrowlyb ased, it is also a synthesiso f considerable magnitude that coordinates the thought and research of many historians who, since the late 1960s, have studied the assimilative experiences of European immigrantsin the United States.J on Gjerde, whose first book brilliantlyan alyzed the emigrationf romB alestrand,N orway, to the upper Middle West, now centers on the cultural contrasts and conflictst hate volvedb etween northernE uropean immigrants and native-bornm igrantsf romt he northeasternU nited States as the Middle West was settled in the nineteenth century

Review of Contours of Discovery: Printed Maps Delineating the Texas and Southwestern Chapters in the Cartographic History of North America, 1513- 1930

It is unusual to review a book that is a decade old, as Contours of Discovery is, but this is an unusual publication. As fresh and vital today as it was ten years ago, it consists of two parts: The first is a portfolio of twenty-two historical maps reproduced in color, all of which relate to Texas history; the second is a paper-bound user\u27s guide that offers both an essay on cartographic history as it pertains to Texas and a section of commentaries on each of the maps included in the portfolio

Review of Victorian West: Class and Culture in Kansas Cattle Towns

Since Robert Haywood retired from the academic administration of Washburn University some years ago, he has become a major historian of the Great Plains region. Although he has been interested chiefly in Kansas history, he has produced books of general interest. His latest, Victorian West: Class and Culture in Kansas Cattle Towns, may also be his best

The Origins of Thomas Jefferson\u27s Anti-Clericalism

Cannibals - mountebanks - charlatans - pious and whining hypocrites - necromancers - pseudo-Christians - mystery mongers. These are among the epithets which Thomas Jefferson applied to the clergy of the Protestant denominations and of the Roman Catholic Church as well. It was they who perverted the principles of Jesus into an engine for enslaving mankind ; it was the Christian priesthood who had turned organized religion into a mere contrivance to filch wealth and power for themselves; they were the ones who throughout history had persecuted rational men for refusing to swallow their impious heresies. This attitude of Jefferson, with its sweeping condemnation of all clergymen everywhere, has been largely ignored by historians, even though, as Merrill Peterson has pointed out, Jefferson\u27s religion has been the subject of more articles in the twentieth century than any other topic about him except politics. Most of these have been in response to a growing appreciation of Jefferson\u27s importance in the development of religious and political freedom in America; the majority of them have sought to show that Jefferson was no atheist or infidel, not even a deist, but rather some kind of Christian.1 Hence it is not surprising that studies of his religious ideas usually have glossed over his anti-clericalism and that none of them have given it systematic investigation. It will be the purpose of this paper to show that Jefferson\u27s attitude toward the clergy had its origin in his campaign for the Presidency of the United States in 1800 and that it was a reaction to the slanderous attacks of Federalist clergymen on his personal character and religion

Introduction to \u3ci\u3eThe Great Plains: Environment and Culture\u3c/i\u3e

In the pages that follow I have summarized the views of certain selected scholars whose emphases seem to illustrate changing and contrasting interpretations of the interaction of environment and culture on the Great Plains. I have grouped their writings into two inclusive categories. First come those whose conceptual schemes suggest the primacy of environmental variables. I refer to these scholars, perhaps simplistically, as environmentalists, even though this term has acquired a different meaning in recent years. In the second group are several scholars, selected more arbitrarily than the first, whose writings seem to accord more importance to cultural factors. For present purposes I refer to them as culturalists. Then follow brief introductions to the essays included here, in which I suggest relationships to the environmentalist and culturalist views. Because of the diversity of concept and method employed by the. several essayists, I make no effort to derme the Great Plains or to delineate its boundaries

Care Gaps and Recommendations in Vestibular Migraine: An Expert Panel Summit

Vestibular migraine (VM) is an increasingly recognized pathology yet remains as an underdiagnosed cause of vestibular disorders. While current diagnostic criteria are codified in the 2012 Barany Society document and included in the third edition of the international classification of headache disorders, the pathophysiology of this disorder is still elusive. The Association for Migraine Disorders hosted a multidisciplinary, international expert workshop in October 2020 and identified seven current care gaps that the scientific community needs to resolve, including a better understanding of the range of symptoms and phenotypes of VM, the lack of a diagnostic marker, a better understanding of pathophysiologic mechanisms, as well as the lack of clear recommendations for interventions (nonpharmacologic and pharmacologic) and finally, the need for specific outcome measures that will guide clinicians as well as research into the efficacy of interventions. The expert group issued several recommendations to address those areas including establishing a global VM registry, creating an improved diagnostic algorithm using available vestibular tests as well as others that are in development, conducting appropriate trials of high quality to validate current clinically available treatment and fostering collaborative efforts to elucidate the pathophysiologic mechanisms underlying VM, specifically the role of the trigemino-vascular pathways

Identifying a Window of Vulnerability during Fetal Development in a Maternal Iron Restriction Model

It is well acknowledged from observations in humans that iron deficiency during pregnancy can be associated with a number of developmental problems in the newborn and developing child. Due to the obvious limitations of human studies, the stage during gestation at which maternal iron deficiency causes an apparent impairment in the offspring remains elusive. In order to begin to understand the time window(s) during pregnancy that is/are especially susceptible to suboptimal iron levels, which may result in negative effects on the development of the fetus, we developed a rat model in which we were able to manipulate and monitor the dietary iron intake during specific stages of pregnancy and analyzed the developing fetuses. We established four different dietary-feeding protocols that were designed to render the fetuses iron deficient at different gestational stages. Based on a functional analysis that employed Auditory Brainstem Response measurements, we found that maternal iron restriction initiated prior to conception and during the first trimester were associated with profound changes in the developing fetus compared to iron restriction initiated later in pregnancy. We also showed that the presence of iron deficiency anemia, low body weight, and changes in core body temperature were not defining factors in the establishment of neural impairment in the rodent offspring

25th annual computational neuroscience meeting: CNS-2016

The same neuron may play different functional roles in the neural circuits to which it belongs. For example, neurons in the Tritonia pedal ganglia may participate in variable phases of the swim motor rhythms [1]. While such neuronal functional variability is likely to play a major role the delivery of the functionality of neural systems, it is difficult to study it in most nervous systems. We work on the pyloric rhythm network of the crustacean stomatogastric ganglion (STG) [2]. Typically network models of the STG treat neurons of the same functional type as a single model neuron (e.g. PD neurons), assuming the same conductance parameters for these neurons and implying their synchronous firing [3, 4]. However, simultaneous recording of PD neurons shows differences between the timings of spikes of these neurons. This may indicate functional variability of these neurons. Here we modelled separately the two PD neurons of the STG in a multi-neuron model of the pyloric network. Our neuron models comply with known correlations between conductance parameters of ionic currents. Our results reproduce the experimental finding of increasing spike time distance between spikes originating from the two model PD neurons during their synchronised burst phase. The PD neuron with the larger calcium conductance generates its spikes before the other PD neuron. Larger potassium conductance values in the follower neuron imply longer delays between spikes, see Fig. 17.Neuromodulators change the conductance parameters of neurons and maintain the ratios of these parameters [5]. Our results show that such changes may shift the individual contribution of two PD neurons to the PD-phase of the pyloric rhythm altering their functionality within this rhythm. Our work paves the way towards an accessible experimental and computational framework for the analysis of the mechanisms and impact of functional variability of neurons within the neural circuits to which they belong

The Germans

IN 1928, MIDWAY BETWEEN the two world wars, H. L. Mencken observed that with few exceptions the leaders of the Germans in America were an undistinguished and unintelligent lot, a collection of mediocrities, most of whom had something to sell. The few national German ethnic organizations still in existence, he noted, were led by entirely unimportant men. Moreover, the leaders of German immigrant churches were nonentities, unknown to the general public. The blame for this lamentable dearth of leadership, in Mencken\u27s view, rested upon the German Americans themselves, who displayed an unfortunate tendency to follow inferior men. As Catholics they are slaves of their priests, he said; as Protestants they are slaves of their pastors; and when they leave the church they become slaves of the first political buffoon they encounter. During World War I, in Mencken\u27s judgment, they had turned almost instinctively to fools for leadership.