The First Publicly Funded, Government Sponsored Natural Medicine Clinic : A Descriptive Case Study

The Natural Medicine Clinic (NMC) is the first publicly funded, government sponsored clinic of its kind in the United States to integrate natural medicine and conventional medicine at the public health level. The purpose of this thesis was to provide a holistic, contextually-based, in-depth, and meaningful description of the emergence and development of the NMC. For the purposes of illuminating and understanding the formation of the NMC, a descriptive case study was chosen. The case study approach is considered an excellent strategy for describing in-depth a unique, real-life phenomenon such as the NMC, and when posing how or why research questions. Inquiring was guided by two questions: 1) Why is the NMC emerging at this particular place and point in time?; and 2) In the development of the NMC, how will full practitioner collaboration and service integration be made possible? Data collection consisted of document review, observation, and taped interviews with key individuals. Analysis methods employed included open coding and subsequent categorization resulting in themes grounded in the experiences of participants key to the emergence and development of the NMC. The case study report includes a national and local analysis of factors enabling the emergence of the NMC, including consumer demand, uniqueness of the Northwest, roles of key individuals, and the persuasive power of personal experience. Factors enabling successful collaboration and integration are explored, as well as an analysis of challenges to integration and subsequent strategies employed. Results also include a description of the conceptualization of the NMC and its development process. The NMC is considered a new model in health care that will potentially have a revolutionary impact on the health care system. Providing a richly detailed and descriptive account of the formation and development of the NMC may generate understanding and interest in future collaborations between natural and conventional medicine, serving as a useful guide for other health care professionals who are either working with clients interested in utilizing an integrated approach, or who are seeking to bring together the worlds of natural and conventional medicine to provide integrative care

Multi-wavelength modeling of the spatially resolved debris disk of HD 107146

(abridged) We aim to constrain the location, composition, and dynamical state of planetesimal populations and dust around the young, sun-like (G2V) star HD 107146}. We consider coronagraphic observations obtained with the Advanced Camera for Surveys (HST/ACS) onboard the HST in broad V and broad I filters, a resolved 1.3mm map obtained with the Combined Array for Research in Millimeter-Wave Astronomy (CARMA), Spitzer/IRS low resolution spectra, and the spectral energy distribution (SED) of the object at wavelengths ranging from 3.5micron to 3.1mm. We complement these data with new coronagraphic high resolution observations of the debris disk using the Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (HST/NICMOS) aboard the HST in the F110W filter. The SED and images of the disk in scattered light as well as in thermal reemission are combined in our modeling using a parameterized model for the disk density distribution and optical properties of the dust. A detailed analytical model of the debris disk around HD 107146 is presented that allows us to reproduce the almost entire set of spatially resolved and unresolved multi-wavelength observations. Considering the variety of complementary observational data, we are able to break the degeneracies produced by modeling SED data alone. We find the disk to be an extended ring with a peak surface density at 131AU. Furthermore, we find evidence for an additional, inner disk probably composed of small grains released at the inner edge of the outer disk and moving inwards due to Poynting-Robertson drag. A birth ring scenario (i.e., a more or less broad ring of planetesimals creating the dust disk trough collisions) is found to be the most likely explanation of the ringlike shape of the disk.Comment: 15 pages, 9 figures, accepted for publication in A&

Direct Measurement of Interstellar Extinction toward Young Stars Using Atomic Hydrogen Lyα Absorption

Interstellar reddening corrections are necessary to reconstruct the intrinsic spectral energy distributions (SEDs) of accreting protostellar systems. The stellar SED determines the heating and chemical processes that can occur in circumstellar disks. Measurement of neutral hydrogen absorption against broad Lyα emission profiles in young stars can be used to obtain the total H i column density (N(H i)) along the line of sight. We measure N(H i) with new and archival ultraviolet observations from the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) of 31 classical T Tauri and Herbig Ae/Be stars. The H i column densities range from log_10(N(H i)) ≈19.6–21.1, with corresponding visual extinctions of A_V =0.02–0.72 mag, assuming an RV of 3.1. We find that the majority of the H i absorption along the line of sight likely comes from interstellar rather than circumstellar material. Extinctions derived from new HST blue-optical spectral analyses, previous IR and optical measurements, and new X-ray column densities on average overestimate the interstellar extinction toward young stars compared to the N(H i) values by ~0.6 mag. We discuss possible explanations for this discrepancy in the context of a protoplanetary disk geometry

2006 SQ372: A Likely Long-Period Comet from the Inner Oort Cloud

We report the discovery of a minor planet (2006 SQ372) on an orbit with a perihelion of 24 AU and a semimajor axis of 796 AU. Dynamical simulations show that this is a transient orbit and is unstable on a timescale of 200 Myrs. Falling near the upper semimajor axis range of the scattered disk and the lower semimajor axis range of the Oort Cloud, previous membership in either class is possible. By modeling the production of similar orbits from the Oort Cloud as well as from the scattered disk, we find that the Oort Cloud produces 16 times as many objects on SQ372-like orbits as the scattered disk. Given this result, we believe this to be the most distant long-period comet ever discovered. Furthermore, our simulation results also indicate that 2000 OO67 has had a similar dynamical history. Unaffected by the "Jupiter-Saturn Barrier," these two objects are most likely long-period comets from the inner Oort Cloud

Complete genome sequence of Planctomyces limnophilus type strain (Mü 290).

Planctomyces limnophilus Hirsch and Müller 1986 belongs to the order Planctomycetales, which differs from other bacterial taxa by several distinctive features such as internal cell compartmentalization, multiplication by forming buds directly from the spherical, ovoid or pear-shaped mother cell and a cell wall which is stabilized by a proteinaceous layer rather than a peptidoglycan layer. Besides Pirellula staleyi, this is the second completed genome sequence of the family Planctomycetaceae. P. limnophilus is of interest because it differs from Pirellula by the presence of a stalk and its structure of fibril bundles, its cell shape and size, the formation of multicellular rosettes, low salt tolerance and red pigmented colonies. The 5,460,085 bp long genome with its 4,304 protein-coding and 66 RNA genes is a part of the Genomic Encyclopedia of Bacteria and Archaea project