Forward Serving Those Who Have Served

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is second only to the Department of Defense in the size of its budget and bureaucracy, and the current administration\u27s budget request for the 2015 fiscal year is almost 164 billion dollars.\u27 The VA\u27s annual budget will continue to increase in the coming years as Vietnam War veterans grow older and those who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan return to the civilian population. Virginia alone is home to over 840,000 veterans. Despite the VA\u27s massive budget and our country\u27s growing veteran population, many veterans\u27 issues are not being adequately addressed, and the legal needs of our veterans require our increased attention

Forward Serving Those Who Have Served

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is second only to the Department of Defense in the size of its budget and bureaucracy, and the current administration\u27s budget request for the 2015 fiscal year is almost 164 billion dollars.\u27 The VA\u27s annual budget will continue to increase in the coming years as Vietnam War veterans grow older and those who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan return to the civilian population. Virginia alone is home to over 840,000 veterans. Despite the VA\u27s massive budget and our country\u27s growing veteran population, many veterans\u27 issues are not being adequately addressed, and the legal needs of our veterans require our increased attention

Serving Those Who Served

Forward from Richmond Journal of Law and the Public Interest, Vol. XVII, regarding the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). Despite the VA\u27s massive budget and our country\u27s growing veteran population, many veterans\u27 issues are not being adequately addressed, and the legal needs of our veterans require our increased attention

Merchants, 'saints' and sailors: The social production of Islamic reform in a port town in western India.

This thesis analyses Islamic reform as a social process interwoven with apprenticeship, work and learning in shipyards in the port of Mandvi in western India. Those owning shipyards and the ships built in them are engaged in active campaigns of Islamic reform and proselytisation in the town that are intimately related to trade routes and their experiences overseas, especially in the ports of the Gulf States. Assuming that religious reform movements are defined by what they oppose as well as by what they represent the thesis presents an analysis of rhetorical, daily and occasionally violent opposition to Hindus and other Muslims in an ethnographic exploration of David Hume's 'flux and reflux' hypothesis. These oppositions it is argued are products of the historically contextualised biographies of those who patronise the reform process, rather than a random expression of religious identity. The thesis contrasts the social organisation and economic engagements of ship owners with Hindus and other Muslims in order to demonstrate the socially meaningful nature of communal antagonism in the process of religious reform. This exercise is conducted through an exploration of varying conceptions of ethnicity, race, social segmentation, migration, nationalism and diaspora. The ethnography of shipbuilding, skill acquisition and hierarchy, in the workplace demonstrates that apprenticeship and the division of labour that surrounds it reproduce a reformed social and religious order. This involves a discussion of issues that relate local Islamic social and ideological practices to wider geographical and doctrinal perspectives. Throughout the thesis runs a concern with the role of charismatic leaders and their constituents which, it is concluded, points to the fact that Islamic reform movements more generally contain within them the potential to reproduce the same social and religious orders they oppose

Processes controlling metal transport and retention as metal-contaminated groundwaters efflux through estuarine sediments

Factors affecting the transport and retention of Cd, Cr, Cu, Ni, Pb and Zn in acidic groundwaters as they pass through estuarine sediments were investigated using column experiments. Acidic groundwaters caused the rapid dissolution of iron sulfide (AVS) and other iron and manganese phases from sediments that are important for metal binding and buffering. Metal breakthrough to overlying water occurred in the order of Ni\u3eZn\u3eCd\u3e\u3eCu\u3e\u3eCr/Pb. Metal transport increased as the sediment permeability increased, reflecting the low resistance to flow caused by larger sand-sized particles and the decreased abundance of metal adsorption sites on these materials. Metal mobility increased as the groundwater pH decreased, as flow rate or metal concentrations increased, and as the exposure duration increased. Groundwater Cr and Pb were promptly attenuated by the sediments, the mobility of Cu was low and decreased rapidly as sediment pH increased above 4.5, while Cd, Ni and Zn were the most easily transported to the surface sediments and released to the overlying waters. For groundwaters of pH 3, metal migration velocities through sandy sediments were generally 0.5-2% (Cr, Pb), 1-6% (Cu) and 4-13% (Cd, Ni, Zn) of the total groundwater velocity (9-700 m/year). The oxidative precipitation of Fe(II) and Mn(II) in the groundwaters did not affect metal mobility through the sediments. The results indicated that the efflux of acidic and metal-contaminated groundwater through estuarine sediments would affect organisms resident in sandy sediments more greatly than organisms resident in fine-grained, silty, sediments

Effects of Estrogen and Progesterone on Serum Ionized and Total Calcium in Ovariectomized Rats

The effects of estrogen and estrogen plus progesterone on the serum ionized calcium levels were studied in ovariectomized rats. Concentrations of total and ionized calcium were measured in the serum of rats following three- and six-day treatments with estrogen (01μg daily). Concentrations of ionized calcium in estrogen- treated ovariectomized rats were significantly higher than in controls and significantly higher values were noted in the ionized: total serum calcium ratios in estrogen treated rats as compared with controls. The addition of progesterone to the estrogen treatment procedure resulted in increased total and ionized serum calcium with the ionized values remaining significantly higher than in the ovariectomized controls. The results clearly indicate an estrogenic effect on calcium metabolism resulting in a significant increase in the ionized serum calcium. Suggested possible estrogen and progesterone mechanisms of action are given

Differential Splicing of Skipped Exons Predicts Drug Response in Cancer Cell Lines

Alternative splicing of pre-mRNA transcripts is an important regulatory mechanism that increases the diversity of gene products in eukaryotes. Various studies have linked specific transcript isoforms to altered drug response in cancer; however, few algorithms have incorporated splicing information into drug response prediction. In this study, we evaluated whether basal-level splicing information could be used to predict drug sensitivity by constructing doxorubicin-sensitivity classification models with splicing and expression data. We detailed splicing differences between sensitive and resistant cell lines by implementing quasi-binomial generalized linear modeling (QBGLM) and found altered inclusion of 277 skipped exons. We additionally conducted RNA-binding protein (RBP) binding motif enrichment and differential expression analysis to characterize cis- and trans-acting elements that potentially influence doxorubicin response-mediating splicing alterations. Our results showed that a classification model built with skipped exon data exhibited strong predictive power. We discovered an association between differentially spliced events and epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) and observed motif enrichment, as well as differential expression of RBFOX and ELAVL RBP family members. Our work demonstrates the potential of incorporating splicing data into drug response algorithms and the utility of a QBGLM approach for fast, scalable identification of relevant splicing differences between large groups of samples

Direct Observation of Long-Lived Isomers in 212 Bi

Long-lived isomers in Bi212 have been studied following U238 projectile fragmentation at 670 MeV per nucleon. The fragmentation products were injected as highly charged ions into a storage ring, giving access to masses and half-lives. While the excitation energy of the first isomer of Bi212 was confirmed, the second isomer was observed at 1478(30) keV, in contrast to the previously accepted value of >1910 keV. It was also found to have an extended Lorentz-corrected in-ring half-life >30 min, compared to 7.0(3) min for the neutral atom. Both the energy and half-life differences can be understood as being due a substantial, though previously unrecognized, internal decay branch for neutral atoms. Earlier shell-model calculations are now found to give good agreement with the isomer excitation energy. Furthermore, these and new calculations predict the existence of states at slightly higher energy that could facilitate isomer deexcitation studies. � 2013 American Physical Society

Bridging Brain and Cognition: A Multilayer Network Analysis of Brain Structural Covariance and General Intelligence in a Developmental Sample of Struggling Learners.

Network analytic methods that are ubiquitous in other areas, such as systems neuroscience, have recently been used to test network theories in psychology, including intelligence research. The network or mutualism theory of intelligence proposes that the statistical associations among cognitive abilities (e.g., specific abilities such as vocabulary or memory) stem from causal relations among them throughout development. In this study, we used network models (specifically LASSO) of cognitive abilities and brain structural covariance (grey and white matter) to simultaneously model brain-behavior relationships essential for general intelligence in a large (behavioral, N = 805; cortical volume, N = 246; fractional anisotropy, N = 165) developmental (ages 5-18) cohort of struggling learners (CALM). We found that mostly positive, small partial correlations pervade our cognitive, neural, and multilayer networks. Moreover, using community detection (Walktrap algorithm) and calculating node centrality (absolute strength and bridge strength), we found convergent evidence that subsets of both cognitive and neural nodes play an intermediary role 'between' brain and behavior. We discuss implications and possible avenues for future studies