Tracking the Economy of the City of Atlanta: Past Trends and Future Prospects

This report explores the changes in the level and composition of employment in the City of Atlanta over the last 25 years. FRC Report 17

First Discovery of a Four-Egg Clutch for Mountain Plover (\u3ci\u3eCharadrius montanus\u3c/i\u3e) in Nebraska

On 27 May 2010, the first documented Mountain Plover nest in Nebraska to contain a clutch of four eggs was documented in a fallow strip of a dryland crop field in southern Kimball County. Mountain Plover typically have a clutch size of 3 eggs, though clutches with 1 and 2 eggs are observed in approximately 15% of nesting attempts (Knopf and Wunder 2006). Clutches with 4 eggs are rare and have been reported to occur in less than 1% of the population (Knopf and Wunder 2006). Five 4-egg clutches have been reported in Colorado and one in Montana (see Knopf and Wunder 2006 for details), but this was the first 4-egg clutch reported in Nebraska, and it was located after 11 years of intensive study in which a total of 598 Mountain Plover nests were located

The Practitioner’s Guide to Properly Responding to Requests for Disclosure Under the Texas Discovery Rules

Discovery, a pretrial procedure used to obtain information relating to the litigation, generally is the largest cost of civil litigation. By its very nature, discovery also is intrusive and invasive. Many practitioners are quick to dispute discovery requests, slow to produce information requested, and all too-eager to object at every stage of the discovery process. This article relates to one of the most common types of written discovery—Texas Rule of Civil Procedure 194 disclosure requests, the responses to which are often incomplete and inadequate. Disclosure requests provide inexpensive, basic discovery without the delay relating to objections or work-product assertions. This article discusses (1) the differences between disclosure requests under the federal and Texas discovery rules, (2) the procedure for making disclosure requests under Texas Rule 194, (3) the contents of such requests, (4) proper responses to such requests, and (5) the proper use of responses to such requests. Because complete and full responses to Texas Rule 194 disclosure requests can greatly lessen the cost and delay inherent in civil litigation and foster the cooperation often absent from it generally and discovery specifically, it is imperative that Texas practitioners understand what information and documents must be disclosed and make such disclosures fully and completely

Overriding follicle selection in controlled ovarian stimulation protocols: Quality vs quantity

Selection of the species-specific number of follicles that will develop and ovulate during the ovarian cycle can be overridden by increasing the levels of pituitary gonadotropin hormones, FSH and LH. During controlled ovarian stimulation (COS) in nonhuman primates for assisted reproductive technology (ART) protocols, the method of choice (but not the only method) has been the administration of exogenous gonadotropins, either of nonprimate or primate origin. Due to species-specificity of the primate LH (but not FSH) receptor, COS with nonprimate (e.g., PMSG) hormones can be attributed to their FSH activity. Elevated levels of FSH alone will produce large antral follicles containing oocytes capable of fertilization in vitro (IVF). However, there is evidence that LH, probably in lesser amounts, increases the rate of follicular development, reduces heterogeneity of the antral follicle pool, and improves the viability and rate of pre-implantation development of IVF-produced embryos. Since an endogenous LH surge typically does not occur during COS cycles (especially when a GnRH antagonist is added), a large dose of an LH-like hormone (i.e., hCG) may be given to reinitiate meiosis and produce fertilizable oocytes. Alternate approaches using exogenous LH (or FSH), or GnRH agonist to induce an endogenous LH surge, have received lesser attention. Current protocols will routinely yield dozens of large follicles with fertilizable eggs. However, limitations include non/poor-responding animals, heterogeneity of follicles (and presumably oocytes) and subsequent short luteal phases (limiting embryo transfer in COS cycles). However, the most serious limitation to further improvements and expanded use of COS protocols for ART is the lack of availability of nonhuman primate gonadotropins. Human, and even more so, nonprimate gonadotropins are antigenic in monkeys, which limits the number of COS cycles to as few as 1 (PMSG) or 3 (recombinant hCG) protocols in macaques. Production and access to sufficient supplies of nonhuman primate FSH, LH and CG would overcome this major hurdle

Development and Initial Psychometric Evaluation of the Computer-Based Prostate Cancer Screening Decision Aid Acceptance Scale for African-American Men

BACKGROUND: To reliably evaluate the acceptance and use of computer-based prostate cancer decision aids (CBDAs) for African-American men, culturally relevant measures are needed. This study describes the development and initial psychometric evaluation of the 24-item Computer-Based Prostate Cancer Screening Decision Aid Acceptance Scale among 357 African-American men. METHODS: Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) with maximum likelihood estimation and polychoric correlations followed by Promax and Varimax rotations. RESULTS: EFA yielded three factors: Technology Use Expectancy and Intention (16 items), Technology Use Anxiety (5 items), and Technology Use Self-Efficacy (3 items) with good to excellent internal consistency reliability at .95, .90, and .85, respectively. The standardized root mean square residual (0.035) indicated the factor structure explained most of the correlations. CONCLUSIONS: Findings suggest the three-factor, 24-item Computer-Based Prostate Cancer Screening Decision Aid Acceptance Scale has utility in determining the acceptance and use of CBDAs among African-American men at risk for prostate cancer. Future research is needed to confirm this factor structure among socio-demographically diverse African-Americans

Effect of sarcoptic mange treatment on growth performance of pigs

Growth performance of 135 sarcoptic mange mite-infested pigs (8 pens of 15-20 pigs each) was evaluated for an 8-week period during June-August, 1985. Pigs in 6 pens were treated with the acaricide TAKTIC EC, whereas two pens were maintained as nontreated controls. Results indicated that although treatment for sarcoptic mange was effective, it did not improve average daily gains in TAKTIC EC-treated pigs.; Swine Day, Manhattan, KS, November 20, 198

Efficient tight-binding Monte Carlo structural sampling of complex materials

While recent work towards the development of tight-binding and ab-initio algorithms has focused on molecular dynamics, Monte Carlo methods can often lead to better results with relatively little effort. We present here a multi-step Monte Carlo algorithm that makes use of the possibility of quickly evaluating local energies. For the thermalization of a 1000-atom configuration of {\it a}-Si, this algorithm gains about an order of magnitude in speed over standard molecular dynamics. The algorithm can easily be ported to a wide range of materials and can be dynamically optimized for a maximum efficiency.Comment: 5 pages including 3 postscript figure