Remote Frontier Research Articles

Characterization of the viral genome of Omicron variants of SARS-CoV-2 circulating in Tripura, a remote frontier state in Northeastern India.

From 2020, with advent of COVID-19 pandemic, Tripura has experienced SARS-CoV-2 viral evolution in accordance with other parts of India. Since January 2022, the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 virus became the predominant lineage circulating in India and neighboring countries. This study characterizes the viral genome of the omicron variant circulating in the state since its inception to June, 2023. The current study was performed on nasopharyngeal and oropharyngeal samples received from the various departments of AGMC, as well as eight district hospitals from Tripura. The positive samples with a cycle threshold value of 25 or less for the E and/or N gene were considered for whole genome sequencing using Illumina Miseq NGS platform. Majority of the sequences belonged to Clade 21L, with BA.5.2 being the major sub variant detected during the study period. Majority of the mutations were detected in the Spike protein region, including L24-, P25-, P26-, V213G, G339D, S371F, S373P, S375F, T376A, D405N, R408S, K417N, S477N, T478K, Q498R, Y505H, Q954H and N969K. All the sequences uniquely showed the mutations A27S and G142D in N terminal domain in Spike protein, not being reported from other Indian sequences like BA.5 variants. T9I, A63T and P13L were major substitutions in E, M and N protein regions respectively. Escape of mutants from vaccine induced immunity was mostly observed in BA.2 sub variants, majority endowed with the triplet mutation of K417N + E484K + N501Y. The current study indicates that Omicron variants circulating in the state of Tripura is comparable to other regions of India and the neighbouring country of Bangladesh. Genetic mutations increasing viral transmissibility have been identified in the circulating viral genomes.

Creation of an Emergency Care Capacity Assessment Tool for Facilities in Austere Environments.

Facilities in austere environments may consider emergency care beyond their scope. Often patients with high-acuity conditions have no other choice than to present to these facilities. The disconnect between the intent of health systems planners and the reality faced by providers manifests as facilities unable to manage such cases.The Indian Health Service, with a range of stakeholders, developed an emergency care delivery assessment tool for facilities in austere environments, designed to identify deficiencies in facility readiness for emergency care delivery across four areas: 1. Procedural2. Human resources3. Non-pharmacologic material resources4. Pharmacologic material resources. The tool's underlying architecture is a resource matrix similar to hospital-based tools, using the "Facility" component of the WHO Emergency Care Systems Framework as the Y-axis and undifferentiated presentations taught by the WHO basic emergency care course, advanced trauma life support, and advanced life support in obstetrics as the X-axis. The tool was piloted at a remote frontier clinic. We found 48 deficiencies: 7 procedural, 1 human resources, 31 non-pharmacologic materials, and 9 pharmacologic materials. We aggregated deficiencies by facility function to assess the capacity to perform each. We also aggregated deficiencies by clinical presentation to identify targets for educational interventions. We successfully created a novel emergency care capacity assessment tool for use in austere environments using materials with broad international consensus. The successful pilot found deficiencies across all 4 areas. This tool may be useful in many other remote domestic facilities and rural health posts in low- and middle-income countries.

Exploring the geothermal potential of Peut Sagoe volcano using Landsat 8 OLI/TIRS images

Thermal infrared remote sensing is an emerging technique to determine thermal anomalies in geothermal and volcanic areas. This study investigates the potential of thermal infrared imaging to observe geothermal prospecting and thermal activity in the Peut Sagoe volcano. The volcano has not been completely studied because it is located in a remote frontier area surrounded by dense rainforest and high terrain conditions. We used operational land imager (OLI)/thermal infrared sensor (TIRS) images of Landsat 8 acquired from 2014 to 2020 to get the actual hydrothermal mineral alteration, vegetation changes (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index; NDVI), and land surface temperature (LST) of the volcanic areas, which correlate with geothermal characteristics, such as fumarole and warm ground that exist on the surface of Peut Sagoe volcano. The combination of band ratios such as 7/5, 5/4, and 6/7 effectively estimates the hydrothermal mineral alteration in the volcanic area, which is dominated by several minerals, such as clay, iron oxide, and OH/H2O-, SO4-, and CO-bearing minerals. Result analyses of low NDVI and high LST values are related to the vegetation changes and thermal status of the crater area, the top of the volcano, and the warm ground on the western side of the mountain. These identities demonstrate the geothermal potential of the Peut Sagoe volcano. The LST data of OLI/TIRS images indicate increased thermal activity of the volcano from 22–26°C in 2014 to 30–35°C in 2017. However, the temperature of the volcano relatively decreased to 25°C in 2015 and 2020. In order to reduce the solar effects, the LST data from Landsat were also validated with ASTER data using a combination of night and daytime images. The results show a pattern of high thermal anomalies from 2014 – 2020 in several areas suspected of having geothermal manifestations, such as craters and hot springs, the distribution of these anomalies corresponds to LST in Landsat 8 data. Moreover, NDVI values at the potential geothermal location also reduced in 2014 and 2017 due to an increasing underground volcanic activity. Results revealed that remote sense imagery is an effective approach to identifying the geothermal potential and monitoring the thermal status of volcanos in frontier areas.

Why Did a "Howling Wilderness" Become Michigan's Capital?

Why Did a "Howling Wilderness" Become Michigan's Capital? Eric Dobberteen (bio) In 1847, Michigan traded its capital for a swamp.1 Detroit had been Michigan's territorial and state capital since 1805 and had become the state's biggest city and a significant port. By the 1830s, it was also an entrepot for settler migration from the East Coast to the Great Lakes and the old Northwest Territory. So why move the capital at all? And why move it to a "howling wilderness" that only in time would become the city of Lansing?2 Considering the capital-placement experiences of the twenty-five states that preceded Michigan into the United States, moving the capital from Detroit was nearly inevitable. By the time Michigan became a state in 1837, many other states had moved their original capitals, some several times. These moves usually resulted from intra-state sectional pressures created as populations spread (usually westward) from the first settlements. Lower Michigan's three neighbors—Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois—had all moved capitals from their originally settled geographic edges to sites closer to the center of each state. There was little chance that Detroit, regardless of its size, wealth, and power, could remain Michigan's capital perched in the southeastern corner of a large and growing state. In contrast, the legislature's surprising 1847 selection of Lansing—little more than a sawmill on the Grand River—was not inevitable, and the reasons behind it were more complicated.3 It is important to examine Michigan's experience not just in terms of how pressure grew to move the capital from Detroit, but also why it was moved to Lansing. The state developed its own brand of sectionalism between and among the four east-to-west tiers of counties stretching across the southern half of the Lower Peninsula; a sectionalism that ultimately influenced the 1847 legislative process, allowing legislators from the two northern tiers to join forces and snatch the capital from more likely candidates. [End Page 107] Thanks in part to the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825, Detroit in the early 1830s was growing and vibrant, but its role as the capital came under attack as early as 1835, before Michigan officially became a state. In June 1835, delegates drafting what would become the state's first constitution debated the issue of moving the capital. Votes to move it, at least temporarily, to Ann Arbor in Washtenaw County or Barry in Jackson County ultimately failed, as did counter attempts to make Detroit the permanent capital.4 Though the delegates made no final decision during the convention, they specified in Section 9 of Article XII of the first constitution that Detroit continue as the capital until 1847 pending selection of a "permanent" site.5 By 1847, every state but Massachusetts had moved its capital at least once. While each state's circumstances varied, this history had common themes Michigan repeated.6 Moving a capital frequently resulted from the natural outward migration of a state's population from the originally settled area containing the capital to the more remote frontier. This demographic expansion created sectional tensions and political pressures to move the capital closer to a shifted population center. Christian Montès referred to this repeated process as a "westward/centrality" pattern that occurred in twenty-two different states.7 Michigan's nearest neighbors in the Northwest Territory—Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois—had experienced this centralizing process, moving their capitals from their first-settled edges toward their geographical centers.8 The westward/centrality pull on a capital was more than a desire for some abstract geographical symmetry. The outwardly dispersing population generally created a rural/urban divergence of occupation, class, wealth, and even religion between the older and newer regions. These differences engendered intra-state sectionalism frequently summarized as a rural distrust of cities, often including the original capital. One historian concluded that the westward movement of capitals was "almost exclusively a [intra-state] sectional issue."9 Michigan experienced this same pattern. As its population moved westward and northward from the southeast corner of the state, the same rural/urban divisions took hold. Many Michiganders soon concluded that Detroit wielded too much...

On Second Thought

On Second Thought

On Second Thought

On Second Thought

Sleep quality and its impacts on quality of life among military personnel in remote frontier areas and extreme cold environments

BackgroundPoor sleep quality negatively affects the readiness of military operations and is also associated with the development of mental health disorders and decreased quality of life. The purpose of this study was to investigate the sleep quality of military personnel from remote boundaries of China and its relationship with coping strategies, anxiety, and health-related quality of life (HRQoL).MethodsA cross-sectional survey was performed among military officers and soldiers from a frontier defence department and an extreme cold environment. The participants were surveyed using the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI), Trait Coping Style Questionnaire (TCSQ), Self-rating Anxiety Scale (SAS), and Short Form Health Survey (SF-36).ResultsA total of 489 military officers and soldiers were included. The participants had a mean age of 22.29 years. The median overall PSQI score was 7.0 (IQR, 4.0 ~ 9.0), with 40.9% (200/489) of the subjects reporting poor sleep quality. The difficulties with sleep were mainly related to daytime dysfunction due to disrupted sleep, sleep latency, and subjective sleep quality. The median score of the SF-36 physical component was 83.5 (IQR, 73.0 ~ 90.5), and the median score of the mental component was 74.1 (IQR, 60.4 ~ 85.1). Significant correlations were found between the PSQI and SF-36 (r = − 0.435, P < 0.01). Anxiety symptoms, marital status, educational background, and global PSQI score were demonstrated as predictors of a low SF-36 physical component by multiple regression analysis (F = 17.06, P < 0.001, R2 = 0.117).ConclusionsSleep difficulty is a prevalent and underestimated problem in the military that negatively influences HRQoL, especially in physical and social functioning. Evaluation of and education on pain were recommended because of body pain and its negative impacts on sleep quality, coping strategies, anxious emotions and HRQoL.

Lithostratigraphy of Devonian basinal mudrocks in frontier areas of northwestern Canada augmented with ED-XRF technique

Rock materials from three Arctic wells drilled through Middle-Upper Devonian basinal mudrocks between 1969 and 1973 were surveyed with the energy-dispersive X-ray fluorescence tool (ED-XRF) Bruker Tracer IV-SD™. The logs of major oxides acquired from cuttings of two wells on Banks Island show that lithological signals can be seen through sample contamination, and therefore are capable of significantly increasing litho-chemostratigraphic resolution of old borehole logs. Survey of major and trace elements on a cored section through visually monotonous black shales of the Kugaluk N-02 well in northern mainland N.W.T. reveals new details, which allows for the correlation of this reference section with a better-studied succession in the central Northwest Territories, as well as the interpretation of anoxic horizons which correlate globally as the “Devonian anoxic events”. Despite shortcomings in accuracy, ED-XRF proves to be a rapid non-destructive technique to gain new information from old exploration wells in remote frontier areas.

Challenges in the use of potential field data for studies of remote, deep-water frontier basins

Given the sparsity of seismic data covering remote offshore frontier basins, Geoscience Australia?s studies of these areas rely heavily on gravity and magnetic data. These data complement 2D seismic reflection data by allowing interpretations to be extrapolated away from the generally widely-spaced seismic lines. However, interpreting potential-field data in frontier areas is challenging. Continuous gravity coverage is only available from satellite-altimetry-derived data, but the resolution of these data is often not sufficient for detailed geological interpretation and the data are subject to error in areas of shallow water or close to the coastline. Shipborne data provide higher-resolution data along track, but the sparsity of ship-tracks means that line levelling is difficult. Modelling gravity data to test seismic interpretations of sediment thickness is further complicated by poor constraints on the depth to the Moho. Efforts to understand frontier basins could be improved with better knowledge of the Moho (e.g. from seismic refraction data) and by better ship-track coverage. Extensive acquisition of airborne gravity and magnetic data over Australia?s margins would also provide better coverage and provide a seamless link between offshore and onshore areas.

3D mapping and gravity modelling of Capel and Faust basins

The Capel and Faust basins lie at water depths of 1500- 3000 m, 800 km east of Brisbane. Geoscience Australia began a petroleum prospectivity study of these remote frontier basins with acquisition of reflection and refraction seismic, gravity, magnetic and multi-beam bathymetry data during 2006/07. The approach mapped a complex distribution of sub-basins via traditional 2D reflection seismic interpretation techniques and 3D mapping and gravity modelling. Gravity models were used to inform the seismic interpretation of basement. Gravity models had three sediment layers with average densities inferred from refraction modelling of 1.85, 2.13, 2.31 t/m3 overlying a pre-rift basement of density 2.54 t/m3, itself consisting in part of intruded older basin material. Gravity modelling of the simple density model arising from the initial interpretation of reflection seismic data indicated a first order agreement between observed and calculated data. Second order misfits were accounted for by adjustments to the sediment density values, localised adjustments to basement depths, and heterogeneity in the basement densities. The study concluded that sediment of average velocity 3500 m/s exceeds 6000 m thickness in the northwest of the area, which is sufficient for potential petroleum generation.

A Saint of Our Own: How the Quest for a Holy Hero Helped Catholics Become American by Kathleen Sprows Cummings

Reviewed by: A Saint of Our Own: How the Quest for a Holy Hero Helped Catholics Become American by Kathleen Sprows Cummings Catherine O'Donnell, William L. Portier, Patricia Appelbaum, Emma Anderson, and Kathleen Sprows Cummings A Saint of Our Own: How the Quest for a Holy Hero Helped Catholics Become American. By Kathleen Sprows Cummings. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2019. 336 pp. $28.00. I In this astute and lively book, Kathleen Sprows Cummings explores the history of saint-seeking—the complicated, often frustrating process through which Catholics seek to have someone recognized as a figure of heroic virtue and an intercessor with God—from the 1880s through 2015. The work's gracefully interwoven stories and analysis illuminate individual personalities, religious communities, and the transformations of "U.S. Catholics' understanding of themselves both as members of the church and as citizens of the nation" (4). Drawing on painstaking work in archives in Rome and throughout the United States, Cummings tells the stories of the people who became candidates for sainthood—Elizabeth Seton, Philippine Duchesne, Frances Cabrini, John Neumann, and many others—and of the men and women who dedicated themselves to the promotion of their causes. The argument that a community's choice of saint reflects its priorities, circumstances, and self-conception may seem straightforward (and Cummings demonstrates its veracity convincingly), but the relationships among saints, causes, and promoters turn out to be as complex as they are riveting. As Cummings explains, canonization involves people and events in Rome, in the United States, and often, because the candidates belong to Italian or French religious orders, in a third nation, as well (5). In campaigns for a figure's canonization, the [End Page 67] facts of the case mattered, but so did the energy and skill of a saint's promoters. And although women were in many cases the holy people around whom causes formed, the story Cummings tells is often about the decision-making power of men. Cummings divides her chronology into several overlapping phases, persuasively arguing that each of them—North American saints, nation saints, citizen saints, superpower saints, aggiornamento saints, and papal saints—sheds light on the Catholic Church, which she presents as simultaneously national and transnational, an institution and a set of communities. We learn, for example, that in the 1880s, the distinction between Canada and the United States was subsumed by a shared desire for a North American saint (there were already seventeen from Central and South America), but that by the early twentieth century, prominent Catholics insisted on the need for a saint tied more explicitly to the American nation. That this change became evident just as six Jesuits known as the North American martyrs were beatified, only to seem alien to Catholics in the United States, highlights one of Cummings's many insights: the society that begins a saint's cause is not the society that will witness the saint's canonization. To properly tell the stories of saint-making, Cummings must depict a fair amount of bureaucratic infighting, incompetence, and delay, yet because she keeps the stakes and the personalities in view, the narrative never lags. Her accounts of the causes of John Neumann and Elizabeth Seton are particularly rich and engrossing. Redemptorists doggedly promoted the cause of John Neumann, a polyglot immigrant from Bohemia who labored in Baltimore, Pittsburgh, and Philadelphia. The cause of Seton, an Episcopalian turned Catholic who lived from 1774 to 1821, was for its part taken up by an array of admirers, including her spiritual daughters of various communities, Archbishop James Gibbons of Baltimore, the Vincentian priest Salvator Burgio, and Catholic laywomen who signed petitions in support of her holiness. Both Neumann and Seton seemed suited to the "new ideal of sainthood" that emerged in the early twentieth century, which valued "saints who evoked transplantation of European Catholicism rather than the conversion of native people, who had braved Protestant scorn in urban centers rather than hostile heathens on a remote frontier, and who had, above all, embraced the nation rather than antedated it" (72). Yet neither cause ran smoothly. It's difficult not to picture an arcade-style race of the would-be saints...

Can Lost Maps Speak? Toward a Cultural History of Map Reading in Medieval China

ABSTRACTDespite the fact that virtually no Chinese maps have survived from the first millennium, it is nonetheless possible to reconstruct a rich context associated with their production, use and perception from a variety of written sources. Three cases from the Tang dynasty (618–907 ce) are presented in this article in which the characteristics of the missing maps emerge through their associated texts, which have outlasted them. These examples include two documents that once accompanied maps presented to the emperor and an anecdote that refers to a map of the remote southern frontier. They demonstrate that the maps were designed not only to encapsulate imperial territory but also to serve as guideposts for aspirational travel. They were also perceived by their users as invitations to experiences both desirable and undesirable.

Spatiotemporal mapping of soybean plantations in Rondônia, Western Brazilian Amazon

ABSTRACT Although soybean production has been increasing in the state of Rondônia in the last decade, soybean planted area has been estimated indirectly using secondary datasets, which has limited understanding of its spatiotemporal distribution patterns. This study aimed to map and analyze spatial patterns of soybean expansion in Rondônia. We developed a classification technique based on Spectral Mixture Analysis (SMA) derived from Landsat imagery and Decision Tree Classification to detect and map soybean plantations in 2000, 2005, 2010, and 2014. The soybean classification map showed 93% global accuracy, 23% omission and 0% of commission errors for soybean crop fields. The greatest increases of soybean cropped area in the state of Rondônia were observed between 2000-2005 and 2005-2010 time-periods (33,239 ha and 59,628 ha, respectively), mostly located in Southern Rondônia. The expansion of soybean areas to Northern Rondônia (25,627 ha) has mostly occurred in the 2010-2014 time period. We estimate that 95.4% of all newly created soybean plantations, detected by 2014, were established on lands deforested nine or more years earlier. We concluded that the incursion of soybean plantations on lands deforested for other land uses (e.g. ranching) is contributing to their displacement (pastures) from older colonization zones toward more remote frontier areas of the Amazon, exacerbating new deforestation there.

Finding God in Solitude: The Personal Piety of Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) and Its Influence on His Pastoral Ministry by Donald S. Whitney

Reviewed by: Finding God in Solitude: The Personal Piety of Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) and Its Influence on His Pastoral Ministry by Donald S. Whitney Jonathan M. Yeager Finding God in Solitude: The Personal Piety of Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) and Its Influence on His Pastoral Ministry. By Donald S. Whitney. (New York: Peter Lang. 2014. Pp. vii, 178. $81.95. ISBN 978-1-4331-2444-0.) There seems to be an endless supply of books on Jonathan Edwards. Ever since the Harvard historian Perry Miller’s 1949 biography of the American minister and theologian, there has been a revived interest in the academy on Edwards, leading to an increasing number of journal articles, dissertations, and published books that appear annually. Edwards has been examined from nearly every possible vantage point, from George Marsden’s award-winning Yale University Press biography in 2003 to Gerald McDermott and Michael McClymond’s 750-page tome on The Theology of Jonathan Edwards published by Oxford University Press in 2012. In addition to the interest generated by historians and theologians, Edwards has been studied through the lens of psychology, literature, and pastoral experience. With so many books available on Edwards, one has to wonder if there is any aspect on the great American thinker that has not been explored. In Finding God in Solitude, Donald Whitney contends that Edwards’s piety has received scant attention from scholars, arguing that the American minister’s personal spirituality was the center of his ministry as a pastor and writer. Whitney’s monograph is organized into three main chapters along with a lengthy introduction and conclusion. Much of the first chapter is a rehashing of the biographical details of Edwards’s life supplied by Marsden and other historians, including Edwards’s conversion experience, his installation as a pastor of the Congregational church in Northampton, Massachusetts, his role as a revivalist during the Great Awakening, his move to Stockbridge, Massachusetts, as a missionarypastor to Native Americans, and his untimely death in 1758 shortly after becoming the president of a college that would later be renamed Princeton University. There are a host of secondary-source quotations of mundane information throughout this initial section that should have been paraphrased, and there is not much in the way of new information or new insight on Edwards’s life. Furthermore, although Whitney’s book was published in 2014, he somehow missed the latest scholarship provided by Ava Chamberlain on Edwards’s ancestors in her brilliant 2012 book on his paternal grandmother entitled The Notorious Elizabeth Tuttle, as well as important details on the most popular book that Edwards wrote that is developed in John Grigg’s 2009 monograph, The Lives of David Brainerd. There are also some glaring deficiencies in Whitney’s descriptions of Edwards’s publications. For instance, he makes the mistake of calling the 1738 Boston publication of A Faithful Narrative the “second edition,” when it fact it was the third edition of that book, following on the heels of two earlier editions published in London and Edinburgh. [End Page 155] Where Whitney’s monograph shines is in the last two chapters, devoted to Edwards’s personal piety and pastoral ministry. Whitney explains in fascinating detail how the Bible was the hinge on which Edwards’s piety turned. All Edwards’s spiritual practices, including meditation, prayer, fasting, solitude, and journaling, were formed out of his understanding of scripture. Edwards expected that his congregation should practice all the same disciplines of piety that he completed on a regular basis, relenting only on the amount of time that he expected each person to be able to devote toward these activities. The difficulty that Edwards had in transferring his expectations of piety to his congregation in Northampton is one of the major reasons why he was ultimately fired by his church in 1750 and forced to move to the remote frontier village of Stockbridge, Massachusetts, until being installed as the college president at Princeton in 1758. For those interested in understanding Edwards’s piety, Whitney’s book will be essential reading. Putting aside the introduction and first chapter, the second and third chapters offer deep insight into the relatively untapped field of Edwards’s...

New insights from geophysical data on the regional structure and geometry of the southwest Thelon Basin and its basement, Northwest Territories, Canada

Detailed analysis of gravity and aeromagnetic data covering the southwest Thelon Basin, Northwest Territories, Canada, has provided insight into basement geology that has significance to exploration for uranium and possibly other economic metals in a remote frontier region. Interpretation of basement geology has been constrained by the calibration of gravity and magnetic signatures with Precambrian geology adjacent to the basin and sparse seismic data within the basin, creating the first basement geologic map of the southwest Thelon Basin. The basement to the overlying sedimentary units is dominated by magnetic felsic and mafic bodies variably overlying and intruding the gneissic crystalline basement. Supracrustal belts located outside the basin margins are interpreted to continue below the basin fill. Major structures have been delineated geophysically including the Howard Lake Shear Zone and the Bathurst and McDonald fault systems. Northwest-trending structures forming part of the Bathurst fault system appear to control the unconformity surface morphology and the location of basin depocenters. The geologic interpretations are corroborated by joint gravity and magnetic modeling of profiles that reveal the deepest part of the Thelon Basin reaches depths of [Formula: see text] in an area of subdued magnetic and gravimetric response to the north. The basin is a focus of active exploration for uranium, and we have found that areas along the south and eastern margins underlain by U-rich granitoid rocks may have significant potential where intersected by reactivated faults.

Polio, public health, and the new pathologies of militancy in Pakistan

Since 2005, Pakistan has witnessed a net increase in polio, reaching a 15-year crest in 2014 when 306 cases were reported. Pakistan, along with Afghanistan, is one the remaining two polio-endemic countries. The numbers of cases reported in Pakistan in 2014 were far in excess of Afghanistan (28) and Nigeria (6). This paper focuses on the endemic militancy plaguing the country that has recently created grave obstacles for countrywide polio eradication. We argue that the relationship between polio and militancy in Pakistan has had two facets. First, polio vaccination efforts have become a casualty of militancy: over the last decade, polio vaccination was periodically banned in militant strongholds, large cohorts of children remained unvaccinated in remote frontier regions as vaccinators were unable to reach them, and anti-vaccination discourses in many parts of the country deterred others from vaccinating their children. The second relationship between the presence of polio in Pakistan and militancy is one where state-led polio vaccination efforts became a target of militancy. This was through the deliberate killing of polio workers; since July 2012, 71 contractual government employees tasked with administering polio vaccines have been killed, posing impediments to vaccine coverage. This paper concludes that in addition to implementing policies to improve vaccination coverage, endemic militancy must be addressed before polio can be eradicated.

The “Color” of Money: The Ruble, Competing Currencies, and Conceptions of Citizenship in Manchuria and the Russian Far East, 1890s–1920s

Transformed by Russian colonial expansion in the late 1890s, the Chinese territory of Manchuria turned from a remote frontier into a locus of global metropolises in the making, where a complex money economy comprising of multiple currencies took root. Mirroring localized contestations and global rivalries, Russian proposals first advocated supporting a Chinese currency to “squeeze out” Mexican and “English” dollars, but settled on creating a ruble for Manchuria, to inscribe Manchuria as Russian. As depicted by Georg Simmel contemplating the European metropolis in the 1900s, money was “colorless,” an instrument of equivalence without intrinsic quality, or “color,” that homogenized qualitative differences. In the colonial and multiethnic setting of Manchuria, however, money took the form of competing currencies that by the 1920s included various Russian rubles, the Soviet chervonets, a Japanese yen, and a variety of Chinese dollars. In this form, money in Manchuria was “colored”–by the qualitative differences associated with supposed national character and perceptions of strengths and weaknesses that found expression in the way currency exchange rate became an everyday concern for the local urban population. This paper traces Russian and Chinese efforts to render their currencies “colorless” in the sense understood by Simmel, with colorlessness meaning uniformity and absence of qualities that would hinder the currencies' ideal function. The paper explores how these efforts–such as Soviet currency “unification” policies in the Russian Far East after 1922–worked to erase the diversity of the region with respect to monetary practices. Reading these efforts at achieving uniformity and eliminating “color” in another light, my paper suggests that the experience of living with competing currencies in the Manchurian urban environment also had a socializing effect that worked toward acceptance of difference and diversity, reflected in the emphasis on a currency's convertibility to another, rather than on any one currency's unique presence. This paper thus also investigates the ways competing currencies in Manchuria might have shaped Russian and Chinese conceptions of citizenship in the direction of disregarding the “color”–the supposed intrinsic qualities marking their differences–of the diverse ethnicities of the region's population, in favor of a vision of functional equivalence, equality, and equal participation indicated by the principle of currency circulation.

A PSO-Inspired Multi-Robot Map Exploration Algorithm Using Frontier-Based Strategy

Map exploration is a fundamental problem in mobile robots. This paper presents a distributed algorithm that coordinates a team of autonomous mobile robots to explore an unknown environment. The proposed strategy is based on frontiers which are the regions on the boundary between open and unexplored space. With this strategy, robots are guided to move constantly to the nearest frontier to reduce the size of unknown region. Based on the Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) model incorporated in the algorithm, robots are navigated towards remote frontier after exploring the local area. The exploration completes when there is no frontier cell in the environment. The experiments implemented on both simulated and real robot scenarios show that the proposed algorithm is capable of completing the exploration task. Compared to the conventional method of randomly selecting frontier, the proposed algorithm proves its efficiency by the decreased 60% exploration time at least. Additional experimental results show the decreased coverage time when the number of robots increases, which further suggests the validity, efficiency and scalability.

Characteristics of the Frontier Extended Stay Clinic: a new facility model

PurposeIn 2004, 5 remote clinics – 4 in rural frontier communities in Alaska and 1 in Washington – were funded to pilot and examine the effectiveness and appropriateness of a new facility model. Transporting patients from these locations to higher levels of care is not always possible requiring these facilities to expand their scope of services and provide care for extended periods. The Frontier Extended Stay Clinic (FESC) model is staffed and equipped to provide the combined services usually found in the separate settings of an outpatient primary-care clinic, inpatient acute care hospital and emergency room. This is a descriptive study of the characteristics of these pilot facilities and an analysis of patient utilization and outcomes.MethodsThe 5 clinics collected outcome data for 2,226 extended-stay encounters of 4 hours or longer from 15 September 2005 to 14 September 2010. Data from these extended-stay encounters were summarized, and descriptive statistics were used to describe: number and duration of encounters, when the encounters started, chief compliant, discharge diagnoses, transfer destination, Medicare and Medicaid eligibility, and type of encounter.FindingsFrom 2005 to 2010, the mean duration of an extended-stay encounter was 9.1 hours. All of the clinics experienced many extended-stay encounters that were initiated or continued after normal business hours. The 5 most frequent diagnoses at discharge for extended encounters were cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, injury, substance abuse and pneumonia/bronchitis. Almost half, 47.6%, of extended-stay encounters resulted in discharge of the patient without a need for either non-urgent follow-up referral or transport. Extended-stay encounters that ended in a patient being transported to another medical facility were 43.7% of the total. More than a quarter (26.9%) of extended-stay encounters were eligible for Medicare payment.ConclusionWhile many of communities can support a facility for primary care, there is an on-going need for facilities in remote frontier areas to also provide emergent and extended-stay care. The FESC can provide access to primary, emergent and extended-stay services in these locations.

Adapted Diabetes Prevention Program Lifestyle Intervention Can Be Effectively Delivered Through Telehealth

The purpose of this study was to assess the feasibility of delivering an adapted group-based version of the Diabetes Prevention Program's (DPP) lifestyle intervention through telehealth video conferencing. In 2009, the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services in collaboration with Holy Rosary Heathcare implemented the DPP lifestyle intervention, which was provided to an on-site group in 1 community and simultaneously through telehealth to a second group in a remote frontier community. Participants obtained medical clearance from their primary care physician and were eligible if they were overweight and had 1 or more of the following risk factors: prediabetes, impaired glucose tolerance/impaired fasting glucose (IGT/IFG), a history of gestational diabetes (GDM) or the delivery of an infant >9 pounds, hypertension, or dyslipidemia. A total of 13 and 16 eligible adults enrolled in the on-site and the telehealth program, and 13 (100%) and 14 (88%) participants completed the 16-week program, respectively. Both the on-site and telehealth groups achieved high levels of weekly physical activity and there were no significant differences between groups. Over 45% of on-site and telehealth participants achieved the 7% weight loss goal with the average weight loss per participant greater than 6.4 kg in both groups. Our findings suggest that it is feasible to deliver an adapted group-based DPP lifestyle intervention through telehealth resulting in weight loss outcomes similar to the original DPP.