The Health Status of African Americans in Allegheny County-A Black Paper for the Urban League of Pittsburgh

This report examines the health conditions of African Americans in Allegheny County (hereafter referred to as “the County”). It documents the leading causes of death of black men and women, infant mortality, rates of firearm injuries and fatalities, and rates of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). The data reported serves to benchmark the current health status of African Americans and, by way of comparison, whites in the County. It is an important initial step towards achieving the Healthy People 2010 goal of eliminating racial/ethnic health status disparities in the County

Growing Chinese Chestnuts in Missouri (2009)

Chinese chestnut is an emerging new tree crop for Missouri and the Midwest. The Chinese chestnut tree is a spreading, medium-sized tree with glossy dark leaves bearing large crops of nutritious nuts. Nuts are borne inside spiny burs that split open when nuts are ripe. Each bur contains one to three shiny, dark brown nuts.By Ken Hunt, Ph.D. (Research Scientist, Center for Agroforestry, University of Missouri), Michael Gold, Ph.D. (Associate Director, Center for Agroforestry, University of Missouri), William Reid, Ph.D. (Research and Extension Horticulturist, Kansas State University), and Michele Warmund, Ph.D. (Professor of Horticulture, Division of Plant Sciences, University of Missouri)Includes bibliographical reference

Growing Chinese Chestnuts in Missouri (2012)

"Chinese chestnut is an emerging new tree crop for Missouri and the Midwest. The Chinese chestnut tree is a spreading, medium-sized tree with glossy dark leaves bearing large crops of nutri-tious nuts. Nuts are borne inside spiny burs that split open when nuts are ripe. Each bur contains one to three shiny, dark-brown nuts. Nuts are "scored" then microwaved, roasted or boiled to help remove the leathery shell and papery seed coat, revealing a creamy or gold-en-colored meat. Chestnuts are a healthy, low-fat food ingredient that can be incorporated into a wide range of dishes - from soups to poultry stuffing, pancakes, muffins and pastries (using chestnut flour). Historically, demand for chestnuts in the United States has been highest in ethnic markets (European and Asian, for example) but as Americans search for novel and healthy food products, chestnuts are becoming more widely accepted. The University of Missouri Center for Agroforestry conducts one of the nation's most comprehensive programs for developing the Chinese chestnut into a profitable orchard crop. There are multiple field studies, including a repository with 65 cultivars at the Center's research farm in New Franklin, Mo. Ongoing market evaluation and consumer research is also conducted by the Center."--First page.By Ken Hunt, Ph.D. (Research Scientist, Center for Agroforestry, University of Missouri), Michael Gold, Ph.D. (Associate Director, Center of Agroforestry, University of Missouri), William Reid, Ph.D. (Research and Extension Horticulturist, Kansas State University), and Michele Warmund, Ph.D. (Professor of Horticulture, Division of Plant Sciences, University of Missouri)Includes bibliographical reference

Recognition of lightning-induced trauma to the skeleton: a forensic taphonomic study

Lightning related deaths can be hard to recognize in most circumstances, unless explicitly looked for, and impossible when the remains are fully skeletonized. There is a crucial need for this for forensic authorities in South Africa, where there is a high incidence of lightning deaths and a high rate of recovery of unidentified bodies in the skeletonized state. The effects of a 15 kA, 8/20 I-Ls impulse current applied to a series of pig femurs was investigated as well as a comparison with a skeletal element from a giraffe struck by lightning. A distinct pattern of traumatization was observed and is described in detail. Further analysis and comparison to human results should be carried out and a method for accurately identifying lightning related fatalities should be created

Growing and marketing Chinese chestnuts

"Chinese chestnut (Castanea mollissima) is an emerging tree nut crop for Missouri and throughout the eastern half of the United States. Chestnut cultivation for nut production in the Midwest and eastern U.S. is accelerating, with the number of farms increasing 57% between 2012 and 2017, and more than 600 orchards reaching bearing age (USDA, 2018)."--Page 1.by Ron Revord (Ph.D., Assistant Research Professor, UMCA), Michael Gold (Ph.D., Associate Director, UMCA), Nicholas Meier (Ph.D., Senior Research Specialist, UMCA), J. Bryan Webber (M.S., Senior Research Specialist, UMCA), Ken Hunt (Ph.D., Retired, UMCA), and Michele Warmund (Ph.D., Professor of Horticulture, MU Division of Plant Sciences)Taken from Extension website: Reviewed: August 2022

Flight Team Development in Support of LCROSS - A Class D Mission

The LCROSS (Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite) project presented a number of challenges to the preparation for mission operations. A class D mission under NASA s risk tolerance scale, LCROSS was governed by a $79 million cost cap and a 29 month schedule from "authority to proceed" to flight readiness. LCROSS was NASA Ames Research Center s flagship mission in its return to spacecraft flight operations after many years of pursuing other strategic goals. As such, ARC needed to restore and update its mission support infrastructure, and in parallel, the LCROSS project had to newly define operational practices and to select and train a flight team combining experienced operators and staff from other arenas of ARC research. This paper describes the LCROSS flight team development process, which deeply involved team members in spacecraft and ground system design, implementation and test; leveraged collaborations with strategic partners; and conducted extensive testing and rehearsals that scaled in realism and complexity in coordination with ground system and spacecraft development. As a testament to the approach, LCROSS successfully met its full mission objectives, despite many in-flight challenges, with its impact on the lunar south pole on October 9, 2009

Farmer Responses to Resistance Issues in Corn Rootworm to Bt Corn: Qualitative Analysis of Focus Groups

Western corn rootworm is an important corn pest in the U.S. Some farmers noted unexpected corn rootworm injury of transgenic hybrids as early as 2008; however, the full extent of product performance is still not fully understood. We conducted telephone focus groups with farmers in 2013 to gain their perspective of current and future issues for corn rootworm. Respondents were surprised how quickly corn rootworm injury escalated in their fields and were disappointed with incorrect diagnoses from consultants and seed companies. Most participating farmers saw university Extension as an unbiased source of information

Diabetes, Abdominal Adiposity, and Atherogenic Dyslipoproteinemia in Women Compared With Men

OBJECTIVE—To understand why atherogenic risk differs more between diabetic and nondiabetic women than between diabetic and nondiabetic men

Universal Features in Phonological Neighbor Networks

Human speech perception involves transforming a countinuous acoustic signal into discrete linguistically meaningful units (phonemes) while simultaneously causing a listener to activate words that are similar to the spoken utterance and to each other. The Neighborhood Activation Model posits that phonological neighbors (two forms [words] that differ by one phoneme) compete significantly for recognition as a spoken word is heard. This definition of phonological similarity can be extended to an entire corpus of forms to produce a phonological neighbor network (PNN). We study PNNs for five languages: English, Spanish, French, Dutch, and German. Consistent with previous work, we find that the PNNs share a consistent set of topological features. Using an approach that generates random lexicons with increasing levels of phonological realism, we show that even random forms with minimal relationship to any real language, combined with only the empirical distribution of language-specific phonological form lengths, are sufficient to produce the topological properties observed in the real language PNNs. The resulting pseudo-PNNs are insensitive to the level of lingustic realism in the random lexicons but quite sensitive to the shape of the form length distribution. We therefore conclude that “universal” features seen across multiple languages are really string universals, not language universals, and arise primarily due to limitations in the kinds of networks generated by the one-step neighbor definition. Taken together, our results indicate that caution is warranted when linking the dynamics of human spoken word recognition to the topological properties of PNNs, and that the investigation of alternative similarity metrics for phonological forms should be a priorit

Diabetes, Abdominal Adiposity, and Atherogenic Dyslipoproteinemia in Women Compared With Men

OBJECTIVE—To understand why atherogenic risk differs more between diabetic and nondiabetic women than between diabetic and nondiabetic men