Native Soil: A History of the DeKalb County Farm Bureau

Review of: "Native Soil: A History of the DeKalb County Farm Bureau," by Eric W. Mogren

Locale and Universe: The Shared Story of the Heartland\u27s Lucas County, Iowa, and the American Nation, 1846-2012

Review of: "Locale and Universe: The Shared Story of the Heartland\u27s Lucas County, Iowa, and the American Nation, 1846-2012," by Franklin D. Mitchell

Review of \u3ci\u3eGateway to the Northern Plains: Railroads and the Birth of Fargo and Moorhead\u3c/i\u3e by Carroll Engelhardt

One worries about the editorial staff at the University of Minnesota Press in determining to accept the manuscript for Gateway to the Northern Plains. You can almost see them scratching their heads, frustrated with the job of marketing a volume that could belong in every section of every bookstore and could find an appropriate home on the shelf of any scholar of the American experience. Indeed, that is the delightful challenge of Carroll Engelhardt\u27s labor of love. Engelhardt, an emeritus professor of history at Concordia College, Moorhead, Minnesota, clearly devoted years of research and writing to the preparation of this worthy book

Review of \u3ci\u3eGateway to the Northern Plains: Railroads and the Birth of Fargo and Moorhead\u3c/i\u3e by Carroll Engelhardt

One worries about the editorial staff at the University of Minnesota Press in determining to accept the manuscript for Gateway to the Northern Plains. You can almost see them scratching their heads, frustrated with the job of marketing a volume that could belong in every section of every bookstore and could find an appropriate home on the shelf of any scholar of the American experience. Indeed, that is the delightful challenge of Carroll Engelhardt\u27s labor of love. Engelhardt, an emeritus professor of history at Concordia College, Moorhead, Minnesota, clearly devoted years of research and writing to the preparation of this worthy book

The Oral History Manual

Review of: The Oral History Manual. Sommer, Barbara W. and Quinlan, Mary Kay

Flood Stage and Rising

Review of: Flood Stage and Rising. Varley, Jane

Review of \u3ci\u3eDakota Circle: Excursions on the True Plains\u3c/i\u3e By Tom Isern

Tom Isern\u27s Dakota Circle marks the inauguration of North Dakota State University\u27s Institute for Regional Studies Pathmaker Series. Begun as a collection of new reflective or creative works that address the question of identity on the Great Plains of North America, the series intends to follow the pathways of daily living and to help us think about who we are .... Culled from his syndicated Plains Folk column, and augmented by further ponderings, Isern\u27s contribution to the achievement of this goal is significant. By way of introduction, Isern notes that his musings are not intended to argue fine points or push grand theses. And while he hopes that careful readers will notice some strong themes threaded through the work, they are ancillary to the main purpose of the book. The main purpose of the book is not conversion, but delight. The Great Plains are a neat place. We need to remind one another of that now and then. Isern\u27s celebration of the Great Plains is laced with a sense of optimism; survival, renewal, and a strong undercurrent of the spiritual beauty of this place we call home run through Dakota Circle. The volume, however, is not so much ethereal in the sense of Kathleen Norris\u27s Dakota, as it is earthly and experiential in the form of John Steinbeck\u27s Travels with Charley, William Least Heat Moon\u27s Blue Highways, or Bill Bryson\u27s A Walk in the Woods. Along the pathway to the understanding of place that Isern provides, we meet the likes of Ernie Zahn (Velva, North Dakota), skunk trapper and coyote hunter extraordinaire; Bill Krumwiede (Voltaire, North Dakota), collector of Rumely oil-pull tractors and threshing machines; Elmer and Ardy Wilhelm (Arthur, North Dakota), fence post decorators; the Kuehn clan (Glendive, Montana), harvesters of paddlefish caviar; and the residents of Lemmon, South Dakota, loving conservators of a village of petrified wood. Beyond the residents of the Great Plains, Isern presents the region’s physicality. Stucco structures, creep feeders, chokecherry syrup, cable cars, round barns, and giant renderings of Vikings, gorillas, Holsteins, cowboys, Indians, buffalo, pheasants, and empty oil cans take their place alongside stories of blizzards, windbreaks, and crested wheat grass. Although comments could be made about too frequent editing errors and infinitesimally small photographs, Isern\u27s Dakota Circle: Excursions on the True Plains should find a welcome home on the book shelf of any Great Plains Quarterly reader and anyone interested in the pageantry of the American experience

Taking the Plunge: Requiring the ETD

It made sense for Caltech, the California Institute of Technology (a private, technically focused, U.S. university, http://www.caltech.edu), to go electronic when it comes to theses. It took, however, more than three years: From March 1999 when Prof. Ed Fox of the Virginia Technical University spoke at Caltech to July 2002 when ETDs became required for all PhD candidates. How was it done and what are the lessons learned

Challenges to the Treatment of Malaria

Malaria remains a significant cause of morbidity and mortality. Successful treatment of malaria is threatened by widespread drug resistance and co-infections with HIV. This dissertation explored two challenges to malaria treatment. The first aim addressed outcome misclassification in antimalarial treatment trials. Without accurate classification of patients' outcomes, estimates of drug efficacy are flawed. We identified factors related to outcome misclassification: transmission intensity, the distribution of genetic variants in parasite populations, multiplicity of infection, and PCR-insensitivity to minority variants; then used our findings to develop a Monte Carlo uncertainty analysis. Using the uncertainty analysis, we found that misclassification of new infections as treatment failures was common and underestimated treatment efficacy in the high transmission area. The initial estimate of the cure rate in the high transmission area was 63.8%; after adjustment for uncertainty related to outcome misclassification, the 95% simulation interval of the cure rate was 74.6 to 83.3%. The initial estimate of the cure rate in the low transmission area was 94.0%; after the uncertainty adjustment the 95% simulation interval of the cure rate was 93.5 to 96.5%. The second aim was to assess the effect of a co-formulation of HIV protease inhibitors (PI) on incidence of clinical malaria among HIV-infected adults. Laboratory evidence has demonstrated that HIV PIs inhibit growth of Plasmodium falciparum, a malaria-causing parasite. We conducted an ancillary analysis of data collected by the Adult AIDS Clinical Trials Group in two trials comparing PI-based against non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor (NNRTI)-based antiretroviral therapy on the incidence of clinical malaria in study participants residing in areas with endemic malaria. We used pooled logistic regression to calculate hazard ratios (HR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI). There was no effect of PI-based therapy on incidence of clinical malaria (HR = 1.03, 95% CI (0.74 - 1.44)), nor was there modification of the HR by seasonality and use of concomitant medications. Successful treatment of malaria is a global health priority. This dissertation provides a novel way to estimate treatment efficacy and proposes that HIV PIs may not have antimalarial action in HIV-infected patients at risk of co-infection.Doctor of Philosoph

Beyond Neutrality: Navigating challenges and leveraging opportunities of staff unionization in social change nonprofits

Union organizing campaigns at Starbucks and Amazon have been making headlines, but there is another, less publicized increase in unionization that has broad implications for social change: Employees of social justice nonprofit organizations have been unionizing in record numbers.While very few organizations in this sector were unionized ten years ago, it is now considered commonplace for groups like Planned Parenthood, Working Families Party, and Sunrise to have collective bargaining agreements with their staff.This crucial development has the potential to reshape the relationship between nonprofit workers, leaders, and organizations in a sector seeking new approaches to workplace democracy, organizational equity, and justice. It also has the potential to help seed a resurgent and more progressive labor movement in this country— historically a bedrock for social change movements.This is a moment of opportunity for organizational leaders to go beyond neutrality and partner with their staff to transform the work environment and fuel mission impact. However, pain points and dissonance have emerged from these efforts, revealing gaps in information, resources, support, and preparation for both employers and unions