Prospective investigation of complementary and alternative medicine use and subsequent hospitalizations

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The prevalence of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) use has been estimated to be as high as 65% in some populations. However, there has been little objective research into the possible risks or benefits of unmanaged CAM therapies.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>In this prospective study of active duty US Navy and Marine Corps personnel, the association between self-reported practitioner-assisted or self-administered CAM use and future hospitalization was investigated. Cox regression models were used to examine risk of hospitalization due to any cause over the follow-up period from date of questionnaire submission, until hospitalization, separation from the military, or end of observation period (June 30, 2004), whichever occurred first.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>After adjusting for baseline health, baseline trust and satisfaction with conventional medicine, and demographic characteristics, those who reported self-administering two or more CAM therapies were significantly less likely to be hospitalized for any cause when compared with those who did not self-administer CAM (HR = 0.38; 95% CI = 0.17, 0.86). Use of multiple practitioner-assisted CAM was not associated with a significant decrease or increase of risk for future hospitalization (HR = 1.86; 95 percent confidence interval = 0.96-3.63).</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>While there were limitations to these analyses, this investigation utilized an objective measure of health to investigate the potential health effects of CAM therapies and found a modest reduction in the overall risk of hospitalization associated with self-administration of two or more CAM therapies. In contrast, use of practitioner-assisted CAM was not associated with a protective effect.</p

Abandoning Colorblind Practice in School Counseling.

Drawing from three case vignettes and the extant literature, the authors seek to identify, problematize, and expand the discussion on colorblind approaches to diversity within the practice of school counseling. The authors discuss how such an approach to working with students from traditionally under-represented groups subtly blames the victim, limits the development of equity by positioning critical dialogues as counter-productive, and inhibits the understanding of within-group differences. The article concludes with suggestions for how school counselors can enhance the services they provide to students of various social locations by abandoning colorblind practices and choosing to remove their difference blindfolds

In search of Leonardo: Computer-based facial image analysis of Renaissance artworks for identifying Leonardo as subject

One of the enduring mysteries in the history of the Renaissance is the adult appearance of the archetypical "Renaissance Man," Leonardo da Vinci. His only acknowledged self-portrait is from an advanced age, and various candidate images of younger men are difficult to assess given the absence of documentary evidence. One clue about Leonardo's appearance comes from the remark of the contemporary historian, Vasari, that the sculpture of David by Leonardo's master, Andrea del Verrocchio, was based on the appearance of Leonardo when he was an apprentice. Taking a cue from this statement, we suggest that the more mature sculpture of St. Thomas, also by Verrocchio, might also have been a portrait of Leonardo. We tested the possibility Leonardo was the subject for Verrocchio's sculpture by a novel computational technique for the comparison of three-dimensional facial configurations. Based on quantitative measures of similarities, we also assess whether another pair of candidate two-dimensional images are plausibly attributable as being portraits of Leonardo as a young adult. Our results are consistent with the claim Leonardo is indeed the subject in these works, but we need comparisons with images in a larger corpora of candidate artworks before our results achieve statistical significance

Design, theory, and measurement of a polarization insensitive absorber for terahertz imaging

We present the theory, design, and realization of a polarization-insensitive metamaterial absorber for terahertz frequencies. We derive geometrical-independent conditions for effective medium absorbers in general, and for resonant metamaterials specically. Our fabricated design reaches and absorptivity of 78% at 1.145 ThzComment: 6 Pages, 5 figures; figures update

Structural variation on the human Y chromosome from population-scale resequencing.

AIM: To investigate the information about Y-structural variants (SVs) in the general population that could be obtained by low-coverage whole-genome sequencing. METHODS: We investigated SVs on the male-specific portion of the Y chromosome in the 70 individuals from Africa, Europe, or East Asia sequenced as part of the 1000 Genomes Pilot project, using data from this project and from additional studies on the same samples. We applied a combination of read-depth and read-pair methods to discover candidate Y-SVs, followed by validation using information from the literature, independent sequence and single nucleotide polymorphism-chip data sets, and polymerase chain reaction experiments. RESULTS: We validated 19 Y-SVs, 2 of which were novel. Non-reference allele counts ranged from 1 to 64. The regions richest in variation were the heterochromatic segments near the centromere or the DYZ19 locus, followed by the ampliconic regions, but some Y-SVs were also present in the X-transposed and X-degenerate regions. In all, 5 of the 27 protein-coding gene families on the Y chromosome varied in copy number. CONCLUSIONS: We confirmed that Y-SVs were readily detected from low-coverage sequence data and were abundant on the chromosome. We also reported both common and rare Y-SVs that are novel

Baseline self reported functional health and vulnerability to post-traumatic stress disorder after combat deployment: prospective US military cohort study

Objective To determine if baseline functional health status, as measured by SF-36 (veterans), predicts new onset symptoms or diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder among deployed US military personnel with combat exposure

Gobiid fish

10 p. : ill. ; 26 cm.Includes bibliographical references (p. 10).The bluenose goby, Coryphopterus lipernes Böhlke and Robins, was described in 1962 from three specimens collected in the Florida Keys; it has remained poorly known since that time. Recent collections and observations indicate that this species is widespread in the caribbean and Bahamas but at low population densities wherever it occurs. It is also one of the few species of western Atlantic reef fishes that lives in relatively continuous close physical contact with live corals. All the individuals, observed at night and during the day, spent most of the time resting on live corals, with only a few brief forays onto nearby algal mats, or off the coral to feed. In this respect the bluenose goby is an ecological counterpart of the Indo-Pacific clownfishes (Amphiprion). The mechanism by which the bluenose goby avoids being stung by the nematocysts of the coelenterates may not be the same as that of the clownfishes because clownfishes become acclimated to individual anemones, whereas the bluenose goby can move freely back and forth among coral colonies of both the same and different species. Other species of fishes associated with live corals in the West Indies share with the bluenose goby certain features that we interpret to be specializations for this way of life. Within the genus Coryphopterus, two divergent lineages show progressive specialization toward coral-dwelling, on the one hand, and toward sand-dwelling, on the other