The development of alum rates to enhance the remediation of phosphorus in fluvial systems following manure spills.

Following the remediation of animal manure spills that reach surface waters, contaminated streambed sediments are often left in place and become a source for internal phosphorus (P) loading within the stream in subsequent flow. The objective of this study was to develop treatment rates and combinations of alum and CaCO(3) to mitigate P from contaminated sediments of different particle size distributions following a manure spill. Sediment specific alum and CaCO(3) treatment rates were developed based upon the resultant alum treatment ranges established for each sediment type.

Ulnar nerve component to innervation of thumb carpometacarpal joint.

Purpose: Thumb carpometacarpal (CMC) joint arthritis is one of the most common problems addressed by hand surgeons. The gold standard of treatment for thumb CMC joint arthritis is trapeziectomy, ligament reconstruction and tendon interposition. Denervation of the thumb CMC joint is not currently used to treat arthritis in this joint due to the failure of the procedure to yield significant symptomatic relief.

Annual report on health care for children and youth in the United States: focus on trends in hospital use and quality.

Objective: The aim of this study was to describe selected trends in hospital inpatient care for children between 2000 and 2007.

Study Design: Analysis was conducted of administrative data from annual nationwide databases of hospital discharges from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality's Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project, along with survey data from a nationally representative random sample of children from the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey. Hospital utilization rates and expenses, risk-adjusted rates of potentially avoidable hospitalization, and safety indicators in the hospital are calculated and tracked with established and downloadable software.

An approach to teaching general chemistry II that highlights the interdisciplinary nature of science.

The need for a revised curriculum within the life sciences has been well-established. One strategy to improve student preparation in the life sciences is to redesign introductory courses like biology, chemistry, and physics so that they better reflect their disciplinary interdependence. We describe a medically relevant, context-based approach to teaching second semester general chemistry that demonstrates the interdisciplinary nature of biology and chemistry.

Public directory data sources do not accurately characterize the food environment in two predominantly rural states.

Communities are being encouraged to develop locally based interventions to address environmental risk factors for obesity. Online public directories represent an affordable and easily accessible mechanism for mapping community food environments, but may have limited utility in rural areas. The primary aim of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of public directories vs rigorous onsite field verification to characterize the community food environment in 32 geographically dispersed towns from two rural states covering 1,237.

Built environment predictors of active travel to school among rural adolescents.

Background: Most studies of active travel to school (ATS) have been conducted in urban or suburban areas and focused on young children. Little is known about ATS among rural adolescents.

Purpose: To describe adolescent ATS in two predominantly rural states and determine if school neighborhood built environment characteristics (BECs) predict ATS after adjusting for school and individual characteristics.

Torture, sex and military Orientalism.

This article revisits the debate about recent American torture practices, particularly the use of discredited anthropological texts to validate long-held Orientalist assumptions about the sexual vulnerability of Muslim males. Such practices are placed in an historical context of older imperial constructions of sexually deviant Muslims as well as of more general forms of gendered and sexual subordination required for war. American torturers intended to produce very particular objects of torture—ones willing and able to confess their 'true' orientation in terms of a binary hetero/homo sexual code established in 19th-century Europe.

Defining and measuring successful emergency care networks: a research agenda.

The demands on emergency services have grown relentlessly, and the Institute of Medicine (IOM) has asserted the need for "regionalized, coordinated, and accountable emergency care systems throughout the country." There are large gaps in the evidence base needed to fix the problem of how emergency care is organized and delivered, and science is urgently needed to define and measure success in the emerging network of emergency care. In 2010, Academic Emergency Medicine convened a consensus conference entitled "Beyond Regionalization: Integrated Networks of Emergency Care.

Upper extremity fractures in pedestrian versus motor vehicle accidents: an underappreciated concern.

Background: Though pedestrian versus motor vehicle (PVMV) accidents are a common cause of trauma admission and subsequent orthopaedic consult, the prevalence of upper extremity fracture (UEF) in such events and its association with lower extremity injury (LEI) is unknown. We sought to describe UEF in PVMV accident patients at the time of orthopaedic consult.

Methods: A retrospective chart review was conducted for all pedestrian hit by motor vehicle cases for which an orthopaedic consult was performed at Jackson Memorial Hospital between July 2006 and January 2008.

Reproductive responses to daily injections with porcine somatotropin before mating in gilts.

Litter size and progeny birth weights are lower in gilts than in sows. Somatotropin (ST) is an important regulator of ovulation, fetal growth and survival. We therefore investigated effects of pST treatment of gilts for two to four weeks before mating on ovulation rate, behavioural estrus, fetal growth and survival, litter size and birth weights.

Psychiatric discharges in community hospitals with and without psychiatric units: how many and for whom?

Objective: This study sought to describe the extent to which community hospitals, in a sample of states, are caring for patients with psychiatric disorders in medical-surgical beds (scatter beds) and to compare the characteristics of patients treated in scatter beds with those of patients treated in psychiatric units in community hospitals.

Methods: Information on hospital discharges in 12 states for patients with a principal psychiatric diagnosis was gathered from the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project State Inpatient Databases. Discharges of patients who were treated in community hospital psychiatric units (N=370,984) were compared with those of patients who were treated in scatter beds (N=26,969).

Acute care utilization and rehospitalizations for sickle cell disease.

Context: Published rates of health care utilization and rehospitalization by people with sickle cell disease have had limited generalizability and are not population based.

Objective: To provide benchmark data for rates of acute care utilization and rehospitalizations for patients with sickle cell disease.

Design: Retrospective cohort of sickle cell disease-related emergency department (ED) visits and hospitalizations from select states in the 2005 and 2006 Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP) State Inpatient Databases and State Emergency Department Databases.

Annual report on health care for children and youth in the United States: racial/ethnic and socioeconomic disparities in children's health care quality.

Objective: The aim of this study was to explore the joint effect of race/ethnicity and insurance status/expected payer or income on children's health care quality.

Methods: The analyses are based on data from a nationally representative random sample of children in the United States in 2004 and 2005 from the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) and pediatric hospitalizations from a nationwide sample of hospitals in 2005 from the State Inpatient Databases disparities analysis file from the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP). We provide estimates of differences in race/ethnicity within income and insurance/expected payer categories on key pediatric quality indicators to provide a more nuanced understanding of disparities in care for children.

Smart density: A more accurate method of measuring rural residential density for health-related research.

Background: Studies involving the built environment have typically relied on US Census data to measure residential density. However, census geographic units are often unsuited to health-related research, especially in rural areas where development is clustered and discontinuous.

Objective: We evaluated the accuracy of both standard census methods and alternative GIS-based methods to measure rural density.

Emergency department care in the United States: a profile of national data sources.

Study Objective: Emergency departments (EDs) are an integral part of the US health care system, and yet national data sources on the care received in the ED are poorly understood, thereby limiting their usefulness for analyses. We provide a comparison of data sources that can be used to examine utilization and quality of care in the ED nationally. DATA SOURCES AND COMPARISONS: This article compares 7 data sources available in 2005 for conducting analyses of ED encounters: the American Hospital Association Annual Survey Database(), Hospital Market Profiling Solution(c), National Emergency Department Inventory, Nationwide Emergency Department Sample, National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey, National Electronic Injury Surveillance System-All-Injury Program, and the National Health Interview Survey.

Transport and fate of phosphorus during and after manure spill simulations.

Animal manure spills contribute to P loading of surface waters and little is known about the effectiveness of the current manure spill clean-up methods to mitigate P contamination. Manure spill clean-up consists of containing, removing, and land applying the contaminated water column, while P-enriched fluvial sediments remain in place. Therefore, the objectives of this study were to (i) understand how P partitions between the water column and fluvial sediments during a manure spill, and (ii) evaluate the efficacy of current manure spill clean-up methods to remediate manure contaminated sediments.

Epidermal Smad4 deletion results in aberrant wound healing.

In the present study, we assessed the role of Smad4, a component of the transforming growth factor-beta signaling pathway, in cutaneous wound repair. Interestingly, when Smad4 was deleted in the epidermis, several defects in wound healing were observed in non-keratinocyte compartments. In comparison with wounded wild-type mouse skin, Smad4-deficient wounds had delayed wound closure and remodeling.