A Soldier and His Many Hats: The Evolution of American Military Headgear

Military headgear is a fascinating topic. It exists on a spectrum from the gaudy to the protective, but how did headgear evolve with the military? Interestingly, changes from the decorative to the practical can be examined through this blog’s favorite topic, the 1800s and the American Civil War. By tracing key changes in American military headgear in the 1800s, ideas about the nature of war, as well as how the United States was distancing itself from Europe, become clear. [excerpt

Right to Serve, Right to Lead: Lives and Legacies of the USCT

This is a catalog for an exhibit that follows the evolution of African-American participation in the Civil War, from slaves, to contrabands, to soldiers of the United States Colored Troops (USCT), as well as the lives of black veterans beyond the war, and their ultimate military and social legacy. Using a variety of period items, it creates a narrative that stretches from the Antebellum Period to the current day. In doing so, the exhibit shows how black sacrifice on the battlefield redefined the war\u27s purpose throughout the divided nation, how Jim Crowe suppressed the memory of black participation after Reconstruction, and how the illustrious African-American military tradition left by the USCT endures to this day in their modern heirs

Enhancement of dye regeneration kinetics in dichromophoric porphyrin-carbazole triphenylamine dyes influenced by more exposed radical cation orbitals

Reduction kinetics of oxidized dyes absorbed on semiconductor surfaces and immersed in redox active electrolytes has been mainly modeled based on the free energy difference between the oxidation potential of the dye and the redox potential of the electrolyte. Only a few mechanisms have been demonstrated to enhance the kinetics by other means. In this work, the rate constant of the reduction of oxidized porphyrin dye is enhanced by attaching non-conjugated carbazole triphenylamine moiety using iodine/triiodide and tris(2,2′-bispyridinium)cobalt II/III electrolytes. These results are obtained using transient absorption spectroscopy by selectively probing the regeneration kinetics at the porphyrin radical cation and the carbazole triphenylamine radical cation absorption wavelengths. The enhancement in the reduction kinetics is not attributed to changes in the driving force, but to the more exposed dye cation radical orbitals of the dichromophoric dye. The results are important for the development of high efficiency photo-electrochemical devices with minimalized energy loss at electron transfer interfaces

The Grizzly, March 2, 1984

Reagan Proposes to Cut Student Aid: 62% Ursinus Students Could Feel Bite • Tray Offenders Discussed • Students Elect New USGA Officers • Writing Seminar Features Alumni • Presidents Corner: Frats Move in Desirable Direction • Letters to the Editor: USGA Concerned With Student Apathy; Get in Gear • Board Elects Two New Members, Appoints Seven • Women\u27s Club Plans Events • WRUC Gets Technician • The Lantern Seeks Contributions • Cogger Heads State Study • Fall Registration Looms on Horizon • Learn While You Work • Sports Profile: Mo Gorman Excels • Basketball Team Wraps Up 83-84 Season • Bears Make Tracks • Grapplers Shine At MACs: Doyle Crowned 150lb Champ; Racich Named Coach of the Year • Doyle and Paolone Successful in MAC Competition • Satisfied with Nationalshttps://digitalcommons.ursinus.edu/grizzlynews/1114/thumbnail.jp

The Grizzly, March 2, 1984

Reagan Proposes to Cut Student Aid: 62% Ursinus Students Could Feel Bite • Tray Offenders Discussed • Students Elect New USGA Officers • Writing Seminar Features Alumni • Presidents Corner: Frats Move in Desirable Direction • Letters to the Editor: USGA Concerned With Student Apathy; Get in Gear • Board Elects Two New Members, Appoints Seven • Women\u27s Club Plans Events • WRUC Gets Technician • The Lantern Seeks Contributions • Cogger Heads State Study • Fall Registration Looms on Horizon • Learn While You Work • Sports Profile: Mo Gorman Excels • Basketball Team Wraps Up 83-84 Season • Bears Make Tracks • Grapplers Shine At MACs: Doyle Crowned 150lb Champ; Racich Named Coach of the Year • Doyle and Paolone Successful in MAC Competition • Satisfied with Nationalshttps://digitalcommons.ursinus.edu/grizzlynews/1114/thumbnail.jp

Stimulus site and modality dependence of functional activity within the human spinal cord

Chronic pain is thought to arise because of maladaptive changes occurring within the peripheral nervous system and CNS. The transition from acute to chronic pain is known to involve the spinal cord (Woolf and Salter, 2000). Therefore, to investigate altered human spinal cord function and translate results obtained from other species, a noninvasive neuroimaging technique is desirable. We have investigated the functional response in the cervical spinal cord of 18 healthy human subjects (aged 22-40 years) to noxious thermal and non-noxious tactile stimulation of the left and right forearms. Physiological noise, which is a significant source of signal variability in the spinal cord, was accounted for in the general linear model. Group analysis, performed using a mixed-effects model, revealed distinct regions of activity that were dependent on both the side and the type of stimulation. In particular, thermal stimulation on the medial aspect of the wrist produced activity within the C6/C5 segment ipsilateral to the side of stimulation. Similar to data recorded in animals (Fitzgerald, 1982), painful thermal stimuli produced increased ipsilateral and decreased contralateral blood flow, which may reflect, respectively, excitatory and inhibitory processes. Nonpainful punctate stimulation of the thenar eminence provoked more diffuse activity but was still ipsilateral to the side of stimulation. These results present the first noninvasive evidence for a lateralized response to noxious and non-noxious stimuli in the human spinal cord. The development of these techniques opens the path to understanding, at a subject-specific level, central sensitization processes that contribute to chronic pain states

Effectiveness of earlier antenatal screening for sickle cell disease and thalassaemia in primary care: cluster randomised trial

Objective To evaluate the effectiveness of offering antenatal screening for sickle cell disease and thalassaemia in primary care as a way of facilitating earlier uptake of screening

Gentamicin compared with ceftriaxone for the treatment of gonorrhoea (G-ToG): a randomised non-inferiority trial

© 2019 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an Open Access article under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license. Background: Gonorrhoea is a common sexually transmitted infection for which ceftriaxone is the current first-line treatment, but antimicrobial resistance is emerging. The objective of this study was to assess the effectiveness of gentamicin as an alternative to ceftriaxone (both combined with azithromycin) for treatment of gonorrhoea. Methods: G-ToG was a multicentre, parallel-group, pragmatic, randomised, non-inferiority trial comparing treatment with gentamicin to treatment with ceftriaxone for patients with gonorrhoea. The patients, treating physician, and assessing physician were masked to treatment but the treating nurse was not. The trial took place at 14 sexual health clinics in England. Adults aged 16–70 years were eligible for participation if they had a diagnosis of uncomplicated genital, pharyngeal, or rectal gonorrhoea. Participants were randomly assigned to receive a single intramuscular dose of either gentamicin 240 mg (gentamicin group) or ceftriaxone 500 mg (ceftriaxone group). All participants also received a single 1 g dose of oral azithromycin. Randomisation (1:1) was stratified by clinic and performed using a secure web-based system. The primary outcome was clearance of Neisseria gonorrhoeae at all initially infected sites, defined as a negative nucleic acid amplification test 2 weeks post treatment. Primary outcome analyses included only participants who had follow-up data, irrespective of the baseline visit N gonorrhoeae test result. The margin used to establish non-inferiority was a lower confidence limit of 5% for the risk difference. This trial is registered with ISRCTN, number ISRCTN51783227. Findings: Of 1762 patients assessed, we enrolled 720 participants between Oct 7, 2014, and Nov 14, 2016, and randomly assigned 358 to gentamicin and 362 to ceftriaxone. Primary outcome data were available for 306 (85%) of 362 participants allocated to ceftriaxone and 292 (82%) of 358 participants allocated to gentamicin. At 2 weeks after treatment, infection had cleared for 299 (98%) of 306 participants in the ceftriaxone group compared with 267 (91%) of 292 participants in the gentamicin group (adjusted risk difference −6·4%, 95% CI −10·4% to −2·4%). Of the 328 participants who had a genital infection, 151 (98%) of 154 in the ceftriaxone group and 163 (94%) of 174 in the gentamicin group had clearance at follow-up (adjusted risk difference −4·4%, −8·7 to 0). For participants with a pharyngeal infection, a greater proportion receiving ceftriaxone had clearance at follow-up (108 [96%] in the ceftriaxone group compared with 82 [80%] in the gentamicin group; adjusted risk difference −15·3%, −24·0 to −6·5). Similarly, a greater proportion of participants with rectal infection in the ceftriaxone group had clearance (134 [98%] in the ceftriaxone group compared with 107 [90%] in the gentamicin group; adjusted risk difference −7·8%, −13·6 to −2·0). Thus, we did not find that a single dose of gentamicin 240 mg was non-inferior to a single dose of ceftriaxone 500 mg for the treatment of gonorrhoea, when both drugs were combined with a 1 g dose of oral azithromycin. The side-effect profiles were similar between groups, although severity of pain at the injection site was higher for gentamicin (mean visual analogue pain score 36 of 100 in the gentamicin group vs 21 of 100 in the ceftriaxone group). Interpretation: Gentamicin is not appropriate as first-line treatment for gonorrhoea but remains potentially useful for patients with isolated genital infection, or for patients who are allergic or intolerant to ceftriaxone, or harbour a ceftriaxone-resistant isolate. Further research is required to identify and test new alternatives to ceftriaxone for the treatment of gonorrhoea. Funding: UK National Institute for Health Research

Defining the Scope of Exposome Studies and Research Needs from a Multidisciplinary Perspective

The concept of the exposome was introduced over 15 years ago to reflect the important role that the environment exerts on health and disease. While originally viewed as a call-to-arms to develop more comprehensive exposure assessment methods applicable at the individual level and throughout the life course, the scope of the exposome has now expanded to include the associated biological response. In order to explore these concepts, a workshop was hosted by the Gunma University Initiative for Advanced Research (GIAR, Japan) to discuss the scope of exposomics from an international and multidisciplinary perspective. This Global Perspective is a summary of the discussions with emphasis on (1) top-down, bottom-up, and functional approaches to exposomics, (2) the need for integration and standardization of LC- and GC-based high-resolution mass spectrometry methods for untargeted exposome analyses, (3) the design of an exposomics study, (4) the requirement for open science workflows including mass spectral libraries and public databases, (5) the necessity for large investments in mass spectrometry infrastructure in order to sequence the exposome, and (6) the role of the exposome in precision medicine and nutrition to create personalized environmental exposure profiles. Recommendations are made on key issues to encourage continued advancement and cooperation in exposomics

The genome sequence of the Norway rat, Rattus norvegicus Berkenhout 1769.

We present a genome assembly from an individual male Rattus norvegicus (the Norway rat; Chordata; Mammalia; Rodentia; Muridae). The genome sequence is 2.44 gigabases in span. The majority of the assembly is scaffolded into 20 chromosomal pseudomolecules, with both X and Y sex chromosomes assembled. This genome assembly, mRatBN7.2, represents the new reference genome for R. norvegicus and has been adopted by the Genome Reference Consortium