The Indian Raid on the Cascades in March, 1856

"The morning of March 26, 1856, broke with clear sky and with steady wind amounting almost to a gale, blowing straight down the river…

Hydrostatic extrusion of BSCCO/Ag composite wire

The application of hydrostatic extrusion processing to composite wire fabrication offers several advantages over conventional reduction techniques. These include enhanced uniformity, increased reduction capability, and successful extrusion of normally brittle materials. Specifically, this work involved an experiment to screen the effects of seven extrusion process parameters on the uniformity and density of as-extruded BSCCO-core wire, and the required extrusion pressure. Results suggest the following factors to be potentially significant: (1) back pressure, extrusion ratio, and die angle on core uniformity, (2) packing method, extrusion ratio, silver powder additions, and temperature on density, and (3) extrusion ratio and temperature on extrusion pressure

A Better Index of Body Adiposity

Obesity is a growing problem in the United States and throughout the world. It is a risk factor for many chronic diseases. The BMI has been used to assess body fat for almost 200 years. BMI is known to be of limited accuracy, and is different for males and females with similar %body adiposity. Here, we define an alternative parameter, the body adiposity index (BAI = ((hip circumference)/((height)1.5)–18)). The BAI can be used to reflect %body fat for adult men and women of differing ethnicities without numerical correction. We used a population study, the “BetaGene” study, to develop the new index of body adiposity. %Body fat, as measured by the dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA), was used as a “gold standard” for validation. Hip circumference (R = 0.602) and height (R = −0.524) are strongly correlated with %body fat and therefore chosen as principal anthropometric measures on which we base BAI. The BAI measure was validated in the “Triglyceride and Cardiovascular Risk in African-Americans (TARA)” study of African Americans. Correlation between DXA-derived %adiposity and the BAI was R = 0.85 for TARA with a concordance of C_b = 0.95. BAI can be measured without weighing, which may render it useful in settings where measuring accurate body weight is problematic. In summary, we have defined a new parameter, the BAI, which can be calculated from hip circumference and height only. It can be used in the clinical setting even in remote locations with very limited access to reliable scales. The BAI estimates %adiposity directly

Far-IR/Submillimeter Spectroscopic Cosmological Surveys: Predictions of Infrared Line Luminosity Functions for z<4 Galaxies

Star formation and accretion onto supermassive black holes in the nuclei of galaxies are the two most energetic processes in the Universe, producing the bulk of the observed emission throughout its history. We simulated the luminosity functions of star-forming and active galaxies for spectral lines that are thought to be good spectroscopic tracers of either phenomenon, as a function of redshift. We focused on the infrared (IR) and sub-millimeter domains, where the effects of dust obscuration are minimal. Using three different and independent theoretical models for galaxy formation and evolution, constrained by multi-wavelength luminosity functions, we computed the number of star-forming and active galaxies per IR luminosity and redshift bin. We converted the continuum luminosity counts into spectral line counts using relationships that we calibrated on mid- and far-IR spectroscopic surveys of galaxies in the local universe. Our results demonstrate that future facilities optimized for survey-mode observations, i.e., the Space Infrared Telescope for Cosmology and Astrophysics (SPICA) and the Cerro Chajnantor Atacama Telescope (CCAT), will be able to observe thousands of z>1 galaxies in key fine-structure lines, e.g., [SiII], [OI], [OIII], [CII], in a half-square-degree survey, with one hour integration time per field of view. Fainter lines such as [OIV], [NeV] and H_2 (0-0)S1 will be observed in several tens of bright galaxies at 1<z<2, while diagnostic diagrams of active-nucleus vs star-formation activity will be feasible even for normal z~1 galaxies. We discuss the new parameter space that these future telescopes will cover and that strongly motivate their construction.Comment: Accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal on 20/10/2011, 17 pages, 13 figure

CCAT optics

CCAT will be a 25 m diameter, submillimeter-wave telescope. It will be located on Cerro Chajnantor in the Atacama Desert, near ALMA. CCAT will be an on-axis, Ritchey-Chrétien design with an active primary to compensate gravitational deformations. The primary mirror will have 162 segments, each with ~0.5 × 0.5 m reflecting tiles on a ~2×2 m, insulated, carbon-fiber-reinforced-plastic subframe. CCAT will be equipped with wide-field, multi-color cameras and multi-object spectrometers at its Nasmyth foci. These instruments will cover all the atmospheric windows in the λ = 0.2 to 2 mm range. The field of view at the Nasmyth foci will be 1°, so CCAT will be able to support cameras with a few ×10^4 detectors (spaced 2 beamwidths) at λ = 1 mm to a few ×10^6 detectors (spaced half a beamwidth) at λ = 350 μm. Single instruments of this size are probably impractical, so we will break the field into smaller pieces, with a separate sub-field camera for each piece. The cameras will require some relay optics to couple the fairly slow beam from the telescope to the detectors. A reflective relay for 1° field of view is too large to be practical, so we plan to use a compact, cold, refractive relay in each sub-field camera

A Food Frequency Questionnaire for the Assessment of Calcium, Vitamin D and Vitamin K: A Pilot Validation Study

The study objective was to validate a food frequency questionnaire (FFQ) to assess calcium, vitamin D and vitamin K intakes in overweight and obese postmenopausal community-dwelling women. The FFQ was validated against intakes derived from a 5-day diet record (5DDR) that also included assessment of supplement intake. Strong correlations between methods were observed for all nutrients (r = 0.63, 0.89, 0.54 for calcium, vitamin D and vitamin K, respectively) and cross-classification analyses demonstrated no major misclassification of participants into intake quartiles. Bland-Altman analysis showed that the FFQ overestimated intakes for calcium, by 576 mg/day (95% CI, −668 to 1,821 mg/day), for vitamin D by 75 IU/day (95% CI, −359 to 510 IU/day), and forvitamin K by 167 mcg/day (95% CI, −233 to 568 mcg/day). This pilot study showed promising validation evidence for the use of this FFQ, which focuses on calcium, vitamin D and vitamin K intakes in postmenopausal women, as a screening tool in clinicaland research settings

Fish Bioenergetics 4.0: An R‐Based Modeling Application

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/141352/1/fsh0586.pd