Snow Flurries Research Articles

A report from the 72nd annual meeting of the American Academy of Dermatology (March 21-25 - Denver, Colorado, USA).

March, at 5,000 feet above sea level, is not the best season for having much skin exposed, particularly when snow flurries are coming down on one's face. However, that was the time and place for sharing or getting new knowledge of skin science during this year's annual meeting of the American Academy of Dermatology. At high altitude, a high level of science was constant throughout the meeting sessions, including, notably, the Latest in Dermatology Research symposium held on Saturday March 22, and the electronic poster presentations available to attendees throughout the conference. This report summarizes the most significant new scientific findings reported during the meeting, which have a direct impact on how diseases of the skin are or will possibly be treated in the foreseen future.

Thinking out of the box

![Figure][1] Dear Uncle Mole, I'm sitting here writing to you on my beloved MoleBook Pro, listening to my iPaw, and idly monitoring my eye-phone on the chair next to me so I don't miss any text messages. It's that time of year when snow flurries (and more) make their appearance, so even

Tales From Timberline: The 2011 Acquisitions Institute at Timberline Lodge

The 2011 Acquisitions Institute at Timberline Lodge delivered a packed schedule of timely and interesting presentations on compelling topics for acquisitions and collection development librarians, publishers, and library vendors. The cozy lodge provided a perfect environment for relaxed conversation on topics such as patron-driven acquisitions, e-books, and library collaborations, while late snow flurries and a cloud cap hid Mount Hood from attendees’ eyes.

A potpourri of pediatric urology

With the enforced absence of your usual editor with a minor and somewhat embarrassing ailment this month's potpourri is assembled by a returning guest author, Mr Chris Driver, currently dodging snow flurries in Aberdeen in the North of Scotland. We wish Mr O'Toole a rapid recovery and hope he can sit down in comfort soon.

Das maligne Mesotheliom des Hodens

Malignant mesothelioma of the tunica vaginalis is a very rare malignant tumour. The prevalence of mesothelioma is about 1 : 1 000 000: Only 1 % have their origin in the tunica vaginalis testis with a 5-year survival of less than 5 %. About 80 cases have been reported in the literature. In 41 % of these cases exposure to asbestos for many years was determines. We report on a 76-year-old patient who presented with an atypical hydrocele testis. Intraoperatively, thickened testicular walls and an crystalline lawn adjacent to the tunica vaginalis testis were found. Ultrasonography showing snow flurries together with cloudy hydrocele fluid and visible crystal particles and thickened testicular walls may help to identify a mesothelioma of the testicular walls. Intraoperative frozen section and a high inguinal orchiectomy is the operative method of choice.

Propositional Attitudes

AbstractThe propositional attitudes are attitudes such as believing and desiring, taken toward propositions such as the proposition that snow flurries are expected, or that the Prime Minister likes poutine. Collectively, our views about the propositional attitudes make up much of folk psychology, our everyday theory of how the mind works.

Against a Sea of Troubles

FICTION Against a Sea of Troubles R.T. Smith THE FIRST THING ELON LEFT in the lumber stacker's seat was an old Bible open to a fierce passage in Revelations circled in red with a grease pencil. Since the evangelist types always came out in force this close to Easter, the operator, Garth Boone, and his cohorts didn't give it much thought, and he pitched the book into some trashwood before he cranked up the logger's cherry picker and started stacking the beamwood on a flatbed. Elon's second message was a Reebok box containing a long strip of bag paper bearing the words THIS IS NOT A RATTLESNAKE BUT IT WANTS TO BE. Garth showed it to Billy Priester, who phoned the boss on his cell. They'd been worried about tree hugger activists since the development was approved by the county, but this was not the form they had expected protest to take. Mr. Touissant advised Billy not to get his skivvies in a wad but to keep a weather eye out just the same. Touissant was a natural-born coonass, his men thought, no matter how shinyhis blue suit, so he still had the Gulfjargon and a fair amount of fight in him. He was already rich, as even his foreman said, and getting filthier by the hour with no reservations. Philippe Touissant, or Smiley, as the papers said he liked to call himself, had been in the Blue Ridge exactly six years and had made a killing buying up farms and lumbering before he slashed the land into acre lots and threw up summer home bungalows. His workers didn't much cotton to him, buthe had a way with the paper-pushers and votechokers . No complaint anybody could write to the local paper's letter column could so much as slow him down, as his crews cut roads and gouged out roughing stations for processing the towering hardwoods they dropped. The county commissioners couldn't stop him, and the board of supervisors wouldn't. Touissant's—Smiley's—trademark seemed to be the alarming, high-pitched crack of live trunks, followed by the thrash through understory trees not ripe for harvest. From Barn Mountain to Sweet Berry Valley, from Walker's Run to Timber Ridge longtime residents had wakened to the artillery volleys of falling trees and known whose wallet was filling, and the sight of his bright new Humvee cruising the back roads brought out curses all around. 42 When Garth couldn't turn the motor over on a Monday, he ran through his troubleshoot list, backtracking both the electricals and the fuel flow, until he noticed a foreign grit and thickness in the line, then checked the diesel tank, which he found clotted with honey, and that brought out Touissant in the silver Hummer and Sheriff Lowery in a chocolate-colored cruiser. Touissant emerged from his sparkling vehicle wearing a white cowboy Stetson, which made Garth and Billy have to hide their snickers, but they knew these weird raider visitations were turning into serious business. Just before dark, snow flurries scattered their flakes through the limbs of the Judas tree, where red buds looked like lipstick rubbed on, but badly, like a girl learning. Elon was reading a detective novel by the window and listening to the silence in the wake of the day's timbering noise. The sky was mostly cleared up by midnight, and Elon stood in the yard relieving himself, staring at the full moon. That bullet must have flown hot and fast, he thought, cause it cut through everything the sky could offer and scorched a silver hole. It was the pistol in his denim pocket that made his thoughts head down that particular path. "Alva," he had said over the chicken pie the daybefore, "it all hurts so bad. I know it's just self-pity, but it feels like great grief, and I don't see how much longer I can bear it. The noise, the evil of it all. No man has the right to do this." She looked down at the steaming food on her fork. "Yesterday they was shaking the ground so...

Moments in the Wilderness: Becoming a Filipino American Writer

I knew I was in trouble then. When I saw snow flurries streaming over the sand dune next to the highway. I was in the freaking Utah desert (well, more than freaking) in my little sky-blue Karmann Ghia. The sun had just about finished setting. Something like three hours to midnight. Probably 30 degrees outside. And surely wind chill too, with me in cut-off jeans and a T-shirt. I mean, really--the Utah desert in mid--May wouldn't you think 80 or 90 degrees? Earlier that morning, I had been tooling through Steamboat Springs, Colorado, on US 40, with Santana's Black Magic Woman rolling through the speakers. I was sure I had bypassed that late snowstorm that hit Denver last night, when I stayed over at my cousin's. The Weather Channel had shown the storm moving eastward. I was going westward, halfway from Indiana University to my father's house in San Francisco: summer break, summer job between school years doing my literature PhD in the early 80s. Steamboat Springs. Open road. Sunshine. Blue sky. A dab here, a daub there of cirrus streakiness. When the sun began to fall and fade some time after I went by Salt Lake City on I-80, I switched on the headlights. A short while later a little red light came on: alternator. I guessed I wasn't far from Wendover, on the border between Utah and Nevada. I thought I could make a run for it. But it was getting dark, in that swift way night falls in the desert. I was basically driving into deep red sun, and I needed the lights to see the road. But I also knew my lights were sapping the battery, now. So, there I was. The Ghia limping to the side of the road, headlights dimming, then off. Wendover's city glow peeking over the horizon. Car after car, semi after semi whooshed by, buffeting my car, awash in their wake, as they nosed toward the faraway lights of Wendover. Violet sheen smoothing out darkening sky. Snow flurries. Cold. Damn cold. When it got a little darker, I began to crack open the driver's side door every time a vehicle zoomed by to wave my two-D-cell flashlight. Maybe ten or twenty or a hundred cars and trucks passed, ignoring or not seeing my small beacon. Might as well have been a buoy lantern in the middle of San Francisco Bay. I could almost hear the two-tone foghorns knelling my demise. Another semi. Crack the door. Blink the flashlight. As the rig barrelled by and the car shook, I heard the unmistakeable whine of air brakes mixing with backwash. The semi started to buck, practically jackknifing as it wrestled itself onto the shoulder, coming to a stop maybe a hundred yards down. backup lights shone like two eyes as the semi backed up to within twenty yards. I jumped out of the car, overjoyed, a Crusoe finding his Friday. The driver got out of his truck: even in the dark I could see he was a barrel-chested man of medium height, jeans and cowboy boots, big-silver-buckle cowboy belt that glimmered like a sheriff's badge, what looked like a lumberjack shirt under a poplin down vest--nothing like Friday at all. Hey, name's Merlin. Almost didn't see your light. Merlin! By God, either he was a country-music god, a la Merle Haggard, or a medieval wizard incognito. Interesting how one's literary instincts refuse to knuckle under, even while freezing in the desert by an interstate. I told Merlin what the trouble was. Well, I bet we can bump-start that baby. Merlin mused. Then you keep your lights off, and I'll follow you with my high beams, light the road up in front of you, and we'll ride like that, all the way to Wendover. Okay? Merlin got behind the car and I poised myself behind the open driver's door. I reached in and released the emergency brake. We began to push and then I jumped in, crammed it into gear, and popped the clutch. The engine coughed and sputtered but caught. Merlin huffed up into his cab, fired up the tractor, then stuck his left arm out to wave me around. …

Depositional characteristics of 7Be and 210Pb in southeastern Michigan

The depositional fluxes in the bulk and dry fallout as well as the concentrations of 7Be and 210Pb in aerosols were measured for a period of 17 months at Detroit, Michigan. The bulk depositional fluxes of 7Be and 210Pb varied between 3.11 and 63.0 dpm cm−2 yr−1 (mean of 11.4 dpm cm−2 yr−1) and 0.35 and 10.3 dpm cm−2 yr−1 (mean of 1.41 dpm cm−2 yr−1), respectively, and this variability in the depositional fluxes is attributed to the frequency and amount of precipitation and seasonal variations in the depositional fluxes. The dry depositional fluxes of 7Be and 210Pb contributed 2.1–19.8% and 3.6–48.6% of the bulk depositional fluxes, respectively. The higher precipitation‐normalized enrichment factor for 7Be during spring is attributed to the stratosphere‐troposphere exchange of air masses during spring and large‐scale atmospheric mixing during summer. We report that snow is more efficient than rain in removing 210Pb from the atmosphere, and this is likely due to higher surface area of snow flurries compared to the rain droplets. The volume‐weighted concentrations of 7Be and 210Pb are the highest reported in literature so far. The concentration of 7Be in the air showed a seasonal increase during the spring and summer months, and no seasonal variation was observed for 210Pb. The mean deposition velocities of aerosols calculated using concentrations of 7Be and 210Pb in air and precipitation are 1.6 and 1.1 cm s−1, respectively, and the corresponding washout ratios are 948 and 637. There is no significant correlation between the aerosol mass and depositional velocities of 7Be and 210Pb in the air masses. We propose that a relatively minor portion of the aerosols actively participate in the removal of these nuclides from the air masses.

TES premapping data: Slab ice and snow flurries in the Martian north polar night

In the 1970s, Mariner and Viking spacecraft observations of the north polar region of Mars revealed polar brightness temperatures that were significantly below the expected kinetic temperatures for CO2 sublimation. For the past few decades, the scientific community has speculated as to the nature of these Martian polar cold spots. Thermal Emission Spectrometer (TES) thermal spectral data have shown these cold spots to result largely from fine‐grained CO2 and have constrained most of these cold spots to the surface (or near‐surface). Cold spot formation is strongly dependent on topography, forming preferentially near craters and on polar slopes. TES data, combined with Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA) cloud data, suggest atmospheric condensates form a small fraction of the observed cold spots. TES observations of spectra close to a blackbody indicate that another major component of the polar cap is slab CO2 ice; these spectrally bland regions commonly have a low albedo. The cause is uncertain but may result from most of the light being reflected toward the specular direction, from the slab ice being intrinsically dark, or from it being transparent. Regions of the cap where the difference between the brightness temperatures at 18 μm (T18) and 25 μm (T25) is less than 5° are taken to indicate deposits of slab ice. Slab ice is the dominant component of the polar cap at latitudes outside of the polar night.

Pathological evaluation of venous emboli during total hip arthroplasty

One of the possible causes of bone cement implantation syndrome during total hip arthroplasty is pulmonary embolism, as has been suggested by a characteristic image seen during transoesophageal echocardiography, the so-called 'Snow Flurry'. However, the nature of the embolic material has not been definitively determined. We studied seven patients undergoing cemented or uncemented total hip arthroplasty. 'Snow Flurry' images were detected in all patients. Blood was aspirated from the right atrium during 'Snow Flurries' and was subjected to pathological examination. Amorphous, eosinophilic, fine granular material was seen in all specimens. The material did not originate from cement. Fat and bone marrow were not detected. The material seen may consist of fine particles of bone ('bone dust') originating from reamed bone.

Delivering Road Weather Information to the Traveling Public

Data obtained from road weather information system (RWIS) technology have been successfully applied to road maintenance and to a lesser extent traveler information. Before the information is disseminated publicly, several questions must be asked. For instance, what RWIS information does the public want and how do they want to receive it? Insight into the answers to such questions was provided by a study that involved a series of questionnaires provided to four potential user groups of RWIS information: commuters, recreational travelers, long-distance travelers, and truckers (including dispatchers). The results show that variable message signs, commercial radio, and highway advisory radio are the most popular forms of delivery methods. No strong preference was identified for telephone services, paging services, or in-car navigation systems. Road condition information is preferred by all groups over information on alternate routes, travel times, or travel speeds. The surveys indicate that road conditions that inhibit vehicle performance, such as accumulating snow, fog, ice, wind, and road closures, are most important to users. Information about rain, nonsticking snow, thunderstorms, and snow flurries is less important to users. Users prefer delivery time from 1 h before departure and while en route.

Environmental Effects on Radiation Fluxes during the Pre-Monsoon, 4,170-5,525 m, Annapurna Region, Nepal

This paper addresses the net radiation balance as it is affected by high elevation, topography, and variable surface materials and surface conditions in the Annapurna region of central Nepal. Emphasis is given to shortwave radiation components. Heat flux data were collected during the pre-monsoon period at four sites north of Annapurna Himal at elevations of 4,170; 5,019; 5,200; and 5,526 m. Results from this and other investigations of radiation in the Himalaya confirm remarkably consistent high transmissiv- ities with low atmospheric turbidities. Seasonal cloudiness, elevation, and solar position appear to be the primary cause of changing global radiation in the region. Beam/diffuse ratios, in addition to expected cloud effects, are strongly influenced by slope, aspect, and surface material. For example, wall-originated diffuse radiation represented 15% of total global radiation at the 5,019 m Tilicho Lake site. Changes of local weather at Tilicho Lake, accompanied by snow flurries and subsequent snow melts, resulted in constantly changing albedos and highly variable longwave and net radiation values throughout most days.

Frost Heave and Creep in the Sor Rondane Mountains, Antarctica

Frost heave, slope deformation, and ground temperature have been monitored for 5 yr on ice-free mountains in Antarctica, where only diurnal frost action operates during the midsummer. The monitoring was done at three sites with similar soils but different local climates. Diurnal freeze-thaw cycles result in significant heave (max. 3.4 mm) and downslope movements (max. 1.5 cm yr-' at the surface) on some wet slopes subject to both snow flurries and strong insolation. The estimation from the cumulative frost heave measurements indicates that frost creep is most responsible for the movements. The velocity profile, calculated using the values of thaw depth and frost heave, agreed fairly well with the actual profile, demonstrating that subsurface freeze-thaw frequency is the primary control of the profile. However, such activities are insignificant on the most of the mountain slopes owing to little thawing and/or a moisture shortage. Significant frost heave and creep usually take place after the ground achieves water content of > 5% and has thawed deeper than 7 cm.

The Blizzard Voices by Ted Kooser

370 Western American Literature The last section of the book—“the magnetic, mystical West”—is the most interesting and suggests an area that the reader wishes were investigated more thoroughly. Many of the travelers found only what they expected because of the preconceived notions and images they brought with them. But others were profoundly changed by what they saw and experienced. Unfortunately, the real impact of the West upon the minds and imagination of the women who traveled in it in the nineteenth century is only superficially examined in this slight work. RUTH ALEXANDER South Dakota State University The Blizzard Voices. By Ted Kooser. (Studio One, Fourth Floor / 212 Second Street / 55401 Minneapolis: The Bieler Press, 1986. 55 pages, $125. Limited edition hardcover, $8.95 paper.) At the end of March, I drove with my daughter from northern Utah to the Puget Sound. Spring settled uneasily over the Great Basin, but the weather was good until we reached the Blue Mountains of Oregon, where we ran into snow flurries as we made the circuitous descent into Pendleton. A thirty-knot wind was blowing in the Columbia River Valley, a strong head wind that embedded a three foot tumbleweed in the Plymouth’sgrille. Climbing into the mountains out of Yakima, we lost it, but as we descended into Ellensburg, the wind redoubled, blowing cold and wet out of the southwest. We stopped to top up the gas tank; the night attendant told us that cars were turning back at Snoqualmie Pass, that the road would soon be closed. We went on. The blizzard hit us in the foothills of the Cascades, twenty-five miles from the pass. Immediately, there were inches of accumulated snow on the road; from the windshield, white opacity. Home on my desk lay a copy of Ted Kooser’s The Blizzard Voices, a nar­ rative based on memories of a great blizzard in the Midwest in 1888. For me, the terror of the blizzard was now clear; it remained for Kooser to name and describe it with the voices from the blizzard, yet the voices are strangely mono­ tone—one voice, not many. They are subdued, not the scream of those caught in the cold grip of the white-out. In this sense the title is misleading. The voices are not the blizzard’s, or the victims of the blizzard, but the survivors’. Resignation is their striking quality. This may be appropriate for those farmers of the bare plains whose lives were on the knife’s edge of nature’s balance. The great blizzard was only a more extreme manifestation of the forces that decided survival. There is no anger, only calm acceptance. Missing is the terror, beauty, and majesty of the storm. As a monument to the survivors, The Blizzard Voices is a handsomely crafted success, but the memorial to the blizzard itself is yet to be composed. STEVEN PUGMIRE Seattle, Washington ...

The origin of horizontal alternating bedding in weichselian aeolian sands in Northwestern Europe

Periglacial acolian sands of Weichselian age are widespread in the lowlands of western and central Europe. One facies of this sediment type, corresponding to the coversand sensu stricto, is characterised by a wavy parallel bedding and a generally horizontal position of the strata. Since this layering results from an alternation of finer- and coarser-grained beds, “horizontal alternating bedding” is the appropriate designation for it. By a detailed analysis of representative lacquer peels eight characteristic stratification types could be distinguished. These units are the smallest fundamental building blocks constituting the sediment under consideration. An idealised annual cycle of sedimentation is proposed. In summer, light and variable winds carry silt in suspension to the site of deposition whilst the sandy saltation load is left behind in a throughput zone farther upwind. Upon settling, the fines adhere to the surface which is wet or damp due to the thawing of the seasonally frozen ground. In winter, wind strength is generally greater so that deposition of sand prevails in the area whereas the fine-grained suspension load settles downwind. Deposition by snow-free winds results in the accretion of patches of well-sorted sand. Snow flurries, on the other hand, produce niveo-aeolian strata of generally more poorly sorted sand. In the cycle it is implied that: (1) The aeolian sedimentation basin must have been large and uniform enough to permit areal separation of sand and loess-like material; and (2) a seasonal shift in the centres of sand and silt deposition was inherent to the atmospheric pressure system of the formative period. The exposed part of the northern and eastern North Sea floor as it existed around the Middle Weichselian glacial climax assumedly was the principal source area for the deposits. The relationships between the periglacial aeolian sands with horizontal alternating bedding, loess and their integrades as described from the Belgian lowlands and Niedersachsen can be interpreted in the context of the proposed depositional cycle.

ON SOME WEATHER INFLUENCES DUE TO WARMING OF THE AIR BY THE GREAT LAKES IN WINTER

Abstract The effect of the Great Lakes on the motion and precipitation patterns during a cold spell (8 to 14 February 1958) is investigated. By calculating the rotational part of the motion and, also, by resolving the pressure field into orthogonal polynomials, measures of the intensity of the circulation systems associated with the Lakes were obtained. On occasions, separate effects of Lake Huron and Lake Superior could be identified. In general, the precipitation patterns caused by snow flurries from the Lakes revealed marked orographic influences. Well defined patterns, with a band of maximum precipitation about 15 to 25 mi from the shore, were found to occur persistently over the flat plains of northern Indiana and southwestern Michigan. Evidence is produced to show that these patterns are related to the nonadiabatic cooling and decrease in lapse rate of the air that moves from the open waters of Lake Michigan over the colder land.