Book Review: Dangerous Places: Health, Safety, and Archaeology edited by David A. Poirier and Kenneth L. Feder

Book Review: Dangerous Places: Health, Safety, and Archaeology edited by David A. Poirier and Kenneth L. Feder, 2001, Bergin and Garvey, Westport, CT, 264 pages, 15 figures, 13 plates, $65.00 (hardback)

The effect of Kalman weighted filtering and in-situ pre-amplification on the accuracy and efficiency of ABR threshold estimation

Auditory brainstem responses (ABRs) are important for acquiring frequency specific information for determination of the degree and type of hearing loss for infants and difficult-to-test populations when behavioral audiometry cannot be carried out. This study investigated the effects of Kalman weighted filtering and in-situ pre-amplification employed by the Vivosonic Integrity V500 ABR system on threshold accuracy and efficiency in an environment of high physiologic noise in comparison to a conventional ABR system which employs a standard artifact rejection paradigm. Auditory brainstem responses were collected using the Vivosonic ABR system and a conventional ABR system both in quiet and in noise using tonal stimuli at 500 and 4000 Hz (eight total conditions). ABRs were administered to twenty adult participants with normal hearing acuity (behavioral thresholds better than 20dB HL). Physiologic noise was created by having the participant chew gum to emulate the movement of an infant sucking on a bottle or pacifier. Results indicated that there was a statistically significant main effect for equipment when examining all data (both quiet and noisy) with the exception of “No Responses” at 4000 Hz indicating that the Vivosonic measured significantly lower, more accurate, ABR thresholds than the conventional system regardless of activity level. There was no significant main effect for equipment noted when examining all data (both quiet and noisy) with the exception of “No Responses” at 500 Hz indicating that each system measured similar thresholds at this frequency. When dividing the data into subsets by frequency, no statistically significant differences were found for threshold accuracy measurements between the Vivosonic and the conventional systems in quiet or in noise at either 500 or 4000 Hz. At 4000 Hz, the Vivosonic equipment was found to be significantly more efficient at acquiring threshold than the conventional ABR system, but again no difference between systems was noted at 500 Hz. Findings suggest that neither system was particularly accurate or efficient at 500 Hz as it appears that physiologic noise is problematic at this frequency with either traditional artifact rejection of with Kalman weighted filtering and in-situ pre-amplification. Further exploration into the effects of Kalman weighted filtering and in-situ pre-amplification are warranted based on the findings of this study. Trends indicated in this study suggest that Kalman weighted filtering and in-situ pre-amplification may lead to more accurate and more efficient ABR acquisition without the need for sedation, at least for higher frequencies

Contributions of Women to the Acquisition, Maintenance, and Discard of Portable Estates

As we heighten our focus on the constituents of households, archaeologists are increasingly aware of the role females have to play in compiling and transmitting their portable estates. Women bring in dowries from their natal home, and they participate in choosing and buying household items such as teawares, tablewares, furnishings, and carpets. In Portsmouth, New Hampshire, several features have been discovered with substantial household inventories left behind as de facto refuse when a female head of household departs from the site. This paper explores the gendered nature of acquistion and abandonment behaviors at 19th-century urban sites to better reconstruct socioeconomic status of households

Interview with Margaret Unruh

An interview with Margaret Unruh regarding her experiences in a one-room school house.https://scholars.fhsu.edu/ors/1040/thumbnail.jp

The Nutritional Value of Selected Vegetarian Meals

The complementary effect of various vegetable proteins as eaten by humans in vegetarian meals was evaluated using the PER method in rats. In addition, the quality of leaf protein as the only protein source in one of the diets was evaluated. Five diets were formulated consisting of a typical breakfast menu, a typical lunch, a typical supper, a combination of the three meals, and a mixture of green leafy vegetables. The diets were isocaloric and isonitrogenous and consisted of 10% protein, 8% fat, 69% carbohydrate, 7% cellulose, 4% mineral mixture, and 2% vitamin mixture. The control diet was prepared using casein at a 10% protein level. Sixty male, weanling Sprague-Dawley rats were divided into six groups of ten each and fed one of the six diets. Five weeks were used to study the protein efficiency ratio (PER) of the test and control diets. The PER of the control diet was significantly (p (.01) higher than all other diets during the first four weeks of the study, but during the fifth week, was not statistically different from the test diets. There was no significant difference among the PER\u27s of the five test diets. The combination diet had PER values that averaged the PER values of the breakfast, lunch, and supper diets. It appears that the protein quality of leafy green vegetables is similar to that of a mixed vegetarian diet. The reasons for the exceptional high PER values for the casein control diet cannot be adequately explained

Mitochondrial Intergenic Spacer in Fairy Basslets (Serranidae: Anthiinae) and the Simultaneous Analysis of Nucleotide and Rearrangement Data

We present the results of a study that implements a recently developed phylogenetic algorithm that combines fixed-states nucleotide optimization with breakpoint analysis to identify and examine the evolution of a mitochondrial intergenic spacer between the tRNAVal and 16S rRNA loci in a clade of fairy basslets (Serranidae: Anthiinae). The results of the analysis indicate that this spacer evolved once and that it may be increasing in size through evolutionary time. The resulting molecular hypothesis corroborates much of the previous morphological phylogenetic work.We would like to thank J. Smith (Los Alamos National Laboratory) and J. Faivovich, T. Grant, K. Pickett, J. Sparks, M. Stiassny, and K. Tang (all at or formerly at the American Museum of Natural History [AMNH]) for discussing aspects of this project with us. We are grateful to H. Endo (Kochi University), the Gahan Family, J. Leis and M. McGrouther (Australian Museum), Reef and Fin (Stamford, CT), and H. Walker (Scripps Institution of Oceanography) for providing specimens used in this study. This project was supported by funding from the AMNH Lerner-Gray Program for Marine Research, the NASA–Ames Fundamental Space Biology Program, the Field Museum of Natural History, and the National Science Foundation (DEB-0405246 and DEB-0732642)

Comparison of the transcriptomes of American chestnut (Castanea dentata) and Chinese chestnut (Castanea mollissima) in response to the chestnut blight infection

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background1471-2229-9-51</p> <p>American chestnut (<it>Castanea dentata</it>) was devastated by an exotic pathogen in the beginning of the twentieth century. This chestnut blight is caused by <it>Cryphonectria parasitica</it>, a fungus that infects stem tissues and kills the trees by girdling them. Because of the great economic and ecological value of this species, significant efforts have been made over the century to combat this disease, but it wasn't until recently that a focused genomics approach was initiated. Prior to the Genomic Tool Development for the Fagaceae project, genomic resources available in public databases for this species were limited to a few hundred ESTs. To identify genes involved in resistance to <it>C. parasitica</it>, we have sequenced the transcriptome from fungal infected and healthy stem tissues collected from blight-sensitive American chestnut and blight-resistant Chinese chestnut (<it>Castanea mollissima</it>) trees using ultra high throughput pyrosequencing.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We produced over a million 454 reads, totaling over 250 million bp, from which we generated 40,039 and 28,890 unigenes in total from <it>C. mollissima </it>and <it>C. dentata </it>respectively.</p> <p>The functions of the unigenes, from GO annotation, cover a diverse set of molecular functions and biological processes, among which we identified a large number of genes associated with resistance to stresses and response to biotic stimuli. <it>In silico </it>expression analyses showed that many of the stress response unigenes were expressed more in canker tissues versus healthy stem tissues in both American and Chinese chestnut. Comparative analysis also identified genes belonging to different pathways of plant defense against biotic stresses that are differentially expressed in either American or Chinese chestnut canker tissues.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Our study resulted in the identification of a large set of cDNA unigenes from American chestnut and Chinese chestnut. The ESTs and unigenes from this study constitute an important resource to the scientific community interested in the discovery of genes involved in various biological processes in Chestnut and other species. The identification of many defense-related genes differentially expressed in canker vs. healthy stem in chestnuts provides many new candidate genes for developing resistance to the chestnut blight and for studying pathways involved in responses of trees to necrotrophic pathogens. We also identified several candidate genes that may underline the difference in resistance to <it>Cryphonectria parasitica </it>between American chestnut and Chinese chestnut.</p

Predictors of Indoor Air Concentrations in Smoking and Non-Smoking Residences

Indoor concentrations of air pollutants (benzene, toluene, formaldehyde, acetaldehyde, acrolein, nitrogen dioxide, particulate matter, elemental carbon and ozone) were measured in residences in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada. Data were collected in 106 homes in winter and 111 homes in summer of 2007, with 71 homes participating in both seasons. In addition, data for relative humidity, temperature, air exchange rates, housing characteristics and occupants’ activities during sampling were collected. Multiple linear regression analysis was used to construct season-specific models for the air pollutants. Where smoking was a major contributor to indoor concentrations, separate models were constructed for all homes and for those homes with no cigarette smoke exposure. The housing characteristics and occupants’ activities investigated in this study explained between 11% and 53% of the variability in indoor air pollutant concentrations, with ventilation, age of home and attached garage being important predictors for many pollutants

The National Center for Biotechnology Information's Protein Clusters Database

Rapid increases in DNA sequencing capabilities have led to a vast increase in the data generated from prokaryotic genomic studies, which has been a boon to scientists studying micro-organism evolution and to those who wish to understand the biological underpinnings of microbial systems. The NCBI Protein Clusters Database (ProtClustDB) has been created to efficiently maintain and keep the deluge of data up to date. ProtClustDB contains both curated and uncurated clusters of proteins grouped by sequence similarity. The May 2008 release contains a total of 285 386 clusters derived from over 1.7 million proteins encoded by 3806 nt sequences from the RefSeq collection of complete chromosomes and plasmids from four major groups: prokaryotes, bacteriophages and the mitochondrial and chloroplast organelles. There are 7180 clusters containing 376 513 proteins with curated gene and protein functional annotation. PubMed identifiers and external cross references are collected for all clusters and provide additional information resources. A suite of web tools is available to explore more detailed information, such as multiple alignments, phylogenetic trees and genomic neighborhoods. ProtClustDB provides an efficient method to aggregate gene and protein annotation for researchers and is available at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?db=proteinclusters