The Buzzel About Kentuck: Settling the Promised Land

Touted as an American Eden, Kentucky provides one of the most dramatic social histories of early America. In this collection, ten contributors trace the evolution of Kentucky from First West to Early Republic. The authors tell the stories of the state\u27s remarkable settlers and inhabitants: Indians, African Americans, working-class men and women, wealthy planters and struggling farmers. Eager settlers built defensive forts across the countryside, while women and slaves used revivalism to create new opportunities for themselves in a white, patriarchal society. The world that this diverse group of people made was both a society uniquely Kentuckian and a microcosm of the unfolding American pageant. In the mid-1700s, the trans-Appalachian region gained a reputation for its openness, innocence, and rusticity- fertile ground for an agrarian republic founded on the virtue of the yeoman ideal. By the nineteenth century, writers of history would characterize the state as a breeding ground for an American culture of distinctly Anglo-Saxon origin. Modern historians, however, now emphasize exploring the entire human experience, rather than simply the political history, of the region. An unusual blend of social, economic, political, cultural, and religious history, this volume goes a long way toward answering the question posed by a Virginia clergyman in 1775: “What a buzzel is this amongst people about Kentuck?” “Not only exposes fallacies and gaps in previous research but also presents new findings and draws revisionist conclusions.”—Arkansas Review “The book is not just for Kentucky history buffs, but anyone interested in knowing what early Kentucky was \u27really like.\u27“—Bourbon Times “Most readers are sure to find something of interest here and will, at a minimum, come away with an appreciation for the current dynamism of early Kentucky studies.”—Filson Club History Quarterly “This collection adds considerably to new scholarly literature concerning the settlement of western Kentucky, with the welcome addition of some of the voices silenced in the past.”—H-NET Book Review “The Buzzel About Kentuck renews one\u27s faith in the importance of social history. It will be greeted as a preeminent guide to the most recent work on the social history of frontier and rural American in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.”—John Mack Faragher “Brings into the mainstream of American history many stories that have been untold, and it is an excellent reference book.”—Journal of Illinois History “Thought-provoking. . . . A collection of fine-grained snapshots of the early social history of the first West and of the first South to the west.”—Journal of Southern History “In The Buzzel About Kentuck, 10 historians write about the dangers, hardships and uncertainties that befell those people who migrated to Kentucky, beginning in the 1770s.”—Kentucky Monthly “Readers who want to sample the new history now being written will find this well-edited volume an excellent introduction. It presents perspectives that will be new to many readers.”—Lowell H. Harrison, Bowling Green Daily News “Much needed and welcome. . . . Paints a picture of the early social history of Kentucky and the trans-Appalachian South that removes ‘the original oils of memory’ from the long, dearly held images of life on the Kentucky frontier.”—Register of the Kentucky Historical Society “No other state in the Early American Republic is currently blessed with such a large group of thoughtful and careful historians as Kentucky. It makes a strong case for the proposition that the history of Kentucky is central to any understanding of the history of North America in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.”—Andrew Caytonhttps://uknowledge.uky.edu/upk_united_states_history/1022/thumbnail.jp

Prognostic model to predict postoperative acute kidney injury in patients undergoing major gastrointestinal surgery based on a national prospective observational cohort study.

Background: Acute illness, existing co-morbidities and surgical stress response can all contribute to postoperative acute kidney injury (AKI) in patients undergoing major gastrointestinal surgery. The aim of this study was prospectively to develop a pragmatic prognostic model to stratify patients according to risk of developing AKI after major gastrointestinal surgery. Methods: This prospective multicentre cohort study included consecutive adults undergoing elective or emergency gastrointestinal resection, liver resection or stoma reversal in 2-week blocks over a continuous 3-month period. The primary outcome was the rate of AKI within 7 days of surgery. Bootstrap stability was used to select clinically plausible risk factors into the model. Internal model validation was carried out by bootstrap validation. Results: A total of 4544 patients were included across 173 centres in the UK and Ireland. The overall rate of AKI was 14·2 per cent (646 of 4544) and the 30-day mortality rate was 1·8 per cent (84 of 4544). Stage 1 AKI was significantly associated with 30-day mortality (unadjusted odds ratio 7·61, 95 per cent c.i. 4·49 to 12·90; P < 0·001), with increasing odds of death with each AKI stage. Six variables were selected for inclusion in the prognostic model: age, sex, ASA grade, preoperative estimated glomerular filtration rate, planned open surgery and preoperative use of either an angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitor or an angiotensin receptor blocker. Internal validation demonstrated good model discrimination (c-statistic 0·65). Discussion: Following major gastrointestinal surgery, AKI occurred in one in seven patients. This preoperative prognostic model identified patients at high risk of postoperative AKI. Validation in an independent data set is required to ensure generalizability

Reflections on the 'History and Historians' of the black woman's role in the community of slaves: enslaved women and intimate partner sexual violence

Taking as points of inspiration Peter Parish’s 1989 book, Slavery: History and Historians, and Angela Davis’s seminal 1971 article, “Reflections on the black woman’s role in the community of slaves,” this probes both historiographically and methodologically some of the challenges faced by historians writing about the lives of enslaved women through a case study of intimate partner violence among enslaved people in the antebellum South. Because rape and sexual assault have been defined in the past as non-consensual sexual acts supported by surviving legal evidence (generally testimony from court trials), it is hard for historians to research rape and sexual violence under slavery (especially marital rape) as there was no legal standing for the rape of enslaved women or the rape of any woman within marriage. This article suggests enslaved women recognized that black men could both be perpetrators of sexual violence and simultaneously be victims of the system of slavery. It also argues women stoically tolerated being forced into intimate relationships, sometimes even staying with “husbands” imposed upon them after emancipation

The James Webb Space Telescope Mission

Twenty-six years ago a small committee report, building on earlier studies, expounded a compelling and poetic vision for the future of astronomy, calling for an infrared-optimized space telescope with an aperture of at least $4m$. With the support of their governments in the US, Europe, and Canada, 20,000 people realized that vision as the $6.5m$ James Webb Space Telescope. A generation of astronomers will celebrate their accomplishments for the life of the mission, potentially as long as 20 years, and beyond. This report and the scientific discoveries that follow are extended thank-you notes to the 20,000 team members. The telescope is working perfectly, with much better image quality than expected. In this and accompanying papers, we give a brief history, describe the observatory, outline its objectives and current observing program, and discuss the inventions and people who made it possible. We cite detailed reports on the design and the measured performance on orbit.Comment: Accepted by PASP for the special issue on The James Webb Space Telescope Overview, 29 pages, 4 figure

SLIM: a numerical model to evaluate the factors controlling the evolution of intertidal mudflats in Venice Lagoon, Italy

Venice Lagoon is suffering from a deficit in sediment supply, which results in the progressive destruction of salt marshes and tidal flats [Consorzio Venezia Nuova, 1996]. Nevertheless, some of the intertidal areas are accreting showing morphological changes, which are in contrast with the general trend within the Lagoon. The morphological evolution of Palude della Centrega, a well-preserved and vegetated intertidal area located in the northern part of the Lagoon, was investigated over a period of 3 years. The short-term accretion rate was measured to be 1.52 cm/year and was used to calibrate a three-element box model, Simulation of LIttoral Morphodynamics (SLIM) constructed to predict which of the accounted factors are more relevant to the evolution of the accreting intertidal mudflat.Sensitivity analyses using SLIM on Palude della Centrega suggest that the evolution of the flats is controlled by the balance between wave erosion during Bora events and tidal sedimentation during fine weather. This balance is strongly affected by (1) turbidity of the waters flooding the tidal flats, (2) sea grass density that suppresses wave action and tidal flow and (3) biostabilisation due to microphytobenthos, which enhances stability