Van Sickle Research Articles

Could routine race-adjustment of spirometers exacerbate racial disparities in COVID-19 recovery?

Could routine race-adjustment of spirometers exacerbate racial disparities in COVID-19 recovery?

Changes in medication adherence among patients with asthma and COPD during the COVID-19 pandemic

Changes in medication adherence among patients with asthma and COPD during the COVID-19 pandemic

Sites of Protest: Rethinking Everyday Spaces as Sites for Protesting the Marginalisation of Difference

Sites of Protest: Rethinking Everyday Spaces as Sites for Protesting the Marginalisation of Difference

Rhetorical Technique in the Young Adult Verse Novel

Rhetorical Technique in the Young Adult Verse Novel Mike Cadden (bio) The verse novel for young adult readers is the most striking development in literature for young people in the young twenty-first century. Hundreds of titles have been published since the late 1990s. What makes it important is that it is a form which has found a niche in the Young Adult (YA) market, and so while the YA novel has understandably become set in its own conventions over the last few decades, the verse novel is, in contrast, still an experiment. The form makes visible the process of rhetorical balance between estrangement and invitation, which is an important consideration in literature for the young. Rather than judging a verse novel on individual poems or even as a collection of poems, we should judge the volume's success in its balance in providing aesthetic challenge and communicating story.1 Is it Poetry? Patty Campbell asks this question of the verse novel: "But is it poetry?" (61). Answering her own question, she alludes to a "Dictionary definition of 'poetry'" which includes "condensed language, natural cadences, and metaphors" (613)—qualities any good prose writer hopes to achieve as well, surely. Campbell compliments Karen Hesse's Out of the Dust as "vivid," which is an aspiration of all good novelists regardless of whether we consider the diary entries to be poems. Some verse novels are more poetic than others, as some novels in general are. But I think for us to concentrate only on individual entries and their poetic qualities may mean missing the forest for the trees. I'd like to suggest that while we can appreciate verse novels that are comprised all or in part of some fine poems, we can also acknowledge the poetic quality of others ("condensed language, natural cadences, and metaphors"), and then also concede that [End Page 129] other verse novels are simply less poetry than they are good novels that guide the reader by manipulating language into rhetorically effective forms. Poets may be attracted to the form for different reasons than fiction and nonfiction writers, but regardless of from which direction the writer comes, she sees in the form opportunities to combine poetic convention with story, and the form rewards the writer who wants to create a distinctive voice above all things (Alexander 282). Karen Coats argues that children's poetry criticism generally has suffered from its being read with the same critical lenses used to read poetry for adults, and so we have the compounded problem of judging verse novels on the quality of individual poems using standards possibly ill-fitted to judge poetry for young people at all. Children's poetry criticism creates "camps that operate out of implicit theoretical positions culled from approaches to adult poetry," and as a result, "children's poetry has no coherent theory of its own" (129). We also don't usually judge the verse novel for failing to be enough like novels or like drama, two other genres clearly at work in the verse novel, though it has as much in common with those genres as it does poetry. The graphic novel presents us with a similar circumstance: it might be accused of not being novel enough, or comic enough—too much of either or not enough of both. I would rather not go down the rabbit hole that critics often do regarding whether something is or isn't children's or YA literature. The binaries of poetry-or-not as well as for-children-or-not are typically more useful for fireworks than shedding actual light. Rather than answering the question, "is it poetry?" I'd like to consider how the verse novel strikes a balance between techniques that provide access and techniques that encourage alienation, and certainly poetic form is part of this balance. Although the contemporary verse novel has its roots in the epic and the verse novels of earlier centuries, as Donelle Ruwe explains in her work, the twenty-first century version of the verse novel has been embraced enthusiastically by writers of young adult literature. Vikki Van Sickle observes that "familiar methods of categorization and analysis are failing the verse novel." We...

American Support for German Economists after 1933: The Kiel Institute and the Kiel School in Exile

American Support for German Economists after 1933:The Kiel Institute and the Kiel School in Exile Gunnar Take (bio) the widespread racially and politically motivated attacks on German scientists in the spring of 1933 came as a surprise to many, not only in the local academic community but also in America and elsewhere. Some institutions, among them the Rockefeller Foundation (the Foundation hereinafter), were forced to make rapid decisions about whether to adapt or to cease entirely their support for those organizations affected by "the full force of the German blast of intolerance" (Van Sickle 1933a). In many cases, it was the academic excellence of the expelled scholars themselves that had been the reason for the Foundation's engagement since the 1920s. Now, after the Machtergreifung—the Nazis' seizure of power—the questions were whether and how to support the refugees in exile and how to deal with their former employers. Other kinds of institutions, such as American universities, were faced with the choice of whether to react at all to the events on the other side of the ocean. Many chose not to, whereas some, most notably the New School for Social Research in New York, decided to employ huge numbers of German emigrants. One case in which the different attitudes and strategies can be analyzed and assessed is the Institute for the World Economy at the [End Page 809] University of Kiel (the Kiel Institute), which became one of the main "centers of expulsion" from Germany in 1933, when eight members of the Kiel School were forced into exile. In the two decades leading up to 1933, the Kiel Institute had profited from the already widespread antisemitism and political intolerance in the German academic community. Its director, Bernhard Harms, pursued a liberal policy and was therefore able to attract large numbers of highly talented scholars who did not see adequate career opportunities for themselves at more distinguished universities. From 1926 onwards, most of these scholars were employed in a new department for business cycle research, and thus engaged in one of the most promising fields of economics in the interwar period. During the following "seven years of world class" economics (Hagemann 2008), they made significant contributions, especially with regard to the empirical observation and theorization of business cycles, global structural change, and the problem of technological unemployment. It has been convincingly argued that the heads of the department, Adolph Lowe1 and Gerhard Colm, founded a "Kiel School" (Hagemann 1997, 298), which asserted itself against the traditional German Historical School as well as against the Austrian liberals. Among its most striking characteristics were the attempts to create a synthesis between a socialist form of economic organization and planning on the one hand and an open society with a liberal market on the other. As one of many national and foreign observers, the Foundation followed its scientific progress closely and made highly positive evaluations: The Kiel Institute constitutes one of the bright spots in German economics. … Much of the work of German university professors is philosophical speculation or minute historical investigation. The work of a more scientific character is carried on in relatively few places. Kiel is one of these and may perhaps be regarded as the most important. [End Page 810] (Van Sickle 1932) During the 1920s, the Foundation supported the Kiel Institute in its endeavor to enlarge its research capacity, to establish contacts with international scholars, and to develop the biggest social science library in Europe. When the budget of the Institute had to be cut by about 50 percent during the Great Depression, the Foundation stepped in and secured the continued existence of the department for business cycle research—and hence the Kiel School—through a large grant. In reaction to the Preußenschlag (Prussian Coup) in the summer of 1932, the Foundation concentrated its funding of German economics even more on larger institutes such as the one in Kiel, which it deemed "to offer reasonable guarantees of permanence" (Kittredge 1932). Hence, the Foundation was heavily invested financially in the Kiel Institute by the time the Nazi regime took power in early 1933. In the case of John Van Sickle and Tracy Kittredge, the heads of...

Effect of shoes cleat position on physiological and biomechanical variables of cycling performance

Introduction: The cleat under the cycling shoe is generally positioned below the first metatarsal head, directly over the pedal axis (Silberman et al., 2005, Clinical Journal of Sport Medicine, 15, 271-276). Previous studies did not found significant change of oxygen consumption (VO2) with moving forward or backward the cleat position (Van Sickle & Hull, 2007, Journal of Biomechanics, 40, 1262-1267; Paton, 2009, International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance, 4, 517-523) although small changes in electromyography (EMG) activity in leg and thigh muscles have been observed (Ericson et al., 1985, Scandinavian Journal of Rehabilitation Medicine, 17, 53-61; Litzenberger et al., 2008, The Engineering of Sport 7, 1, 215-222). However, these changes have been observed with non cyclist subjects for larger shoe cleat displacements (+ 50 mm).  Purpose: The aim of this study was to investigate the acute effects of small variation of cleat position on the energy cost and pedalling technique (kinetics, kinematics and electromyography) during submaximal cycling. The second purpose was to analyze their effects on supramaximal cycling performance.  Methods: Twelve cyclists participated (25 ± 6 years; 69 ± 7 kg; 1.78 ± 0.05 m; Maximal Aerobic Power: 406 ± 40 W), being amateur and elite cyclists, according to previous conventions (Ansley and Cangley, 2009, European Journal of Sport Science, 9(2), 61-85). They performed three 5-min submaximal pedalling exercises (35, 50 and 65% MAP) and one 10-s supramaximal test (sprint) on Lode Excalibur electromagnetically braked cycle ergometer (Lode B. V., Groningen, The Netherlands). Three different cleat positions were studied in a randomized order: under the first metatarsal head, 15 mm forward and 15 mm backward. Power output, oxygen consumption, kinematics of lower limb joints and surface EMG activity (EMG) of six lower limb muscles (rectus femoris: RF, vastus lateralis: VL, biceps femoris: BF, tibialis anterior: TA, gastrocnemius lateralis: GL, soleus: SOL) were recorded during all the pedalling exercises, at 1, breath-by-breath, 200 and 1000 Hz, respectively. The kinematics and RMS over whole crank cycle of EMG activity were computed during 30 consecutives pedalling cycles. One-way ANOVA for repeated measures was performed to analyse the effect of cleat position on biomechanical and physiological variables.   Results and Discussion: Hip ROM was lower in forward position and ankle ROM was lower in backward position compared to the metatarsal position (Figure 1). None significant differences between the three cleat positions were found for knee ROM and RMS despite trends can be observed in backward position for SOL and GL activity to decrease and for RF and TA activity to increase. These tendencies are consistent with previous studies (Ericson et al., 1985; Litzenberger et al., 2008). Like in previous studies (Van Sickle & Hull, 2007; Paton, 2009), small changes of cleat position had no significant effects on VO2, nor on gross efficiency (19.9 ± 1.9 % ; 19.5 ± 2.1 % ;19.4 ± 2.0 % respectively for forward, metatarsal and backward cleat positions). No significant differences in peak power output were found during the supramaximal test between forward (18.9 ± 3.2 W.kg-1), metatarsal (19.0 ± 3.4 W.kg-1) and backward (19.0 ± 2.9 W.kg-1) cleat positions.  To conclude, the main finding of this study is that small changes of cleat position (± 15 mm) involve slight changes of kinematic of the hip and ankle joints without altering cycling efficiency and maximal power output during supramaximal sprints. Although muscular activity level remains unchanged by variation ± 15 mm of cleat position, these results should be completed by the analysis of the muscle timing activation.

Feasibility of Deploying Inhaler Sensors to Identify the Impacts of Environmental Triggers and Built Environment Factors on Asthma Short-Acting Bronchodilator Use.

Background:Epidemiological asthma research has relied upon self-reported symptoms or healthcare utilization data, and used the residential address as the primary location for exposure. These data sources can be temporally limited, spatially aggregated, subjective, and burdensome for the patient to collect.Objectives:First, we aimed to test the feasibility of collecting rescue inhaler use data in space–time using electronic sensors. Second, we aimed to evaluate whether these data have the potential to identify environmental triggers and built environment factors associated with rescue inhaler use and to determine whether these findings would be consistent with the existing literature.Methods:We utilized zero-truncated negative binomial models to identify triggers associated with inhaler use, and implemented three sensitivity analyses to validate our findings.Results:Electronic sensors fitted on metered dose inhalers tracked 5,660 rescue inhaler use events in space and time for 140 participants from 13 June 2012 to 28 February 2014. We found that the inhaler sensors were feasible in passively collecting objective rescue inhaler use data. We identified several environmental triggers with a positive and significant association with inhaler use, including: AQI, PM10, weed pollen, and mold. Conversely, the spatial distribution of tree cover demonstrated a negative and significant association with inhaler use.Conclusions:Utilizing a sensor to capture the signal of rescue inhaler use in space–time offered a passive and objective signal of asthma activity. This approach enabled detailed analyses to identify environmental triggers and built environment factors that are associated with asthma symptoms beyond the residential address. The application of these new technologies has the potential to improve our surveillance and understanding of asthma.Citation:Su JG, Barrett MA, Henderson K, Humblet O, Smith T, Sublett JW, Nesbitt L, Hogg C, Van Sickle D, Sublett JL. 2017. Feasibility of deploying inhaler sensors to identify the impacts of environmental triggers and built environment factors on asthma short-acting bronchodilator use. Environ Health Perspect 125:254–261; http://dx.doi.org/10.1289/EHP266

High on 'chronic': an unexpected route to cannabinoid-induced synaptic plasticity.

High on 'chronic': an unexpected route to cannabinoid-induced synaptic plasticity.

“Blest pair of Sirens … Voice and Verse”: Milton’s Rhetoric of Song

“Blest pair of Sirens … Voice and Verse”:Milton’s Rhetoric of Song Katherine R. Larson In his three Latin epigrams penned in commendation of the singer Leonora Baroni, Milton marvels at the power and beauty of the soprano voice. Leonora is, he writes, a “liquid-voiced Siren” (liquidam Sirena) who “lays the spell of her song upon both men and gods” (Atque homines cantu detinet atque Deos).1 The sound of her voice is such that Milton can only conclude that God must be present within it or, if not God, an angelic spirit who “is moving mysteriously in [her] throat” (Per tua secreto guttura serpit agens) as Leonora ravishes her hearers (“Ad Leonoram,” 6). These poems constitute only one moment among many in Milton’s writings that attest to the affective potency of song. In Il Penseroso, Milton’s speaker imagines himself “Dissolve[d] … into ecstasies” (164) by “full voic’d” (162) anthems. In Of Education, he commends song for its ability “to smooth [dispositions and manners] and make them gentle from rustic harshness and distempered passions” (638). And in Ad Patrem, Milton credits Orpheus’s song, not the music of his lute, for his ability to captivate the natural world (84). However, while Milton’s epigrams to Leonora likewise tap into popular early modern discourses linking song and rhetoric, these [End Page 81] poems also stand out for their attention to Leonora’s performance and the physiology of her singing body, as she “breath[es] peace into [the] diseased breast[s]” (aegro spirans sub corde quietem) of her hearers with her “heart-stirring song” (Flexanimo cantu) (“Ad eandem [1],” 11–12). In so doing, they invite us to attend to song as an acoustic, embodied, and gendered rhetorical practice in Milton’s writings. Although scholars have long been attuned to the centrality of music and song in Milton’s texts, most work in the area has concentrated on the sonority of Milton’s prosody—the “musical delight” of his “apt Numbers” and “fit quantity of Syllables” (PL, “The Verse,” p. 210)—rather than treating song as an embodied affective musical phenomenon. Even the most musically focused studies, notably by Diane McColley, Louise Schleiner, and Judy van Sickle, dwell primarily on the musical influences that shaped Milton’s treatment of song, probing, in van Sickle’s words, “how songs become embedded in the rich texture of Milton’s language.”2 Such interventions have greatly enriched our understanding of musical-textual relations in Milton’s writings and have helped to elucidate his close engagement with early modern musical discourses and his dexterous appropriation of vocal genres and musical modes. Joseph Ortiz and Erin Minear have helped to shift these debates in a new direction by highlighting the implications of reading Miltonic music as sensuous, reverberating sound.3 More work needs to be done, however, in order fully to appreciate the significance of the materiality and acoustic impact of song as performance in Milton’s writings. This critical imbalance is reflective of broader patterns within early modern studies. We experience songs from the period not only as readers, but also as audience members and, in some cases, as singers. Yet literary scholarship on song is weighted toward what Leslie Dunn and Nancy A. Jones call its “verbal and textual dimensions.”4 When a critic encounters a song in a sonnet sequence, romance, and even a masque or play, the tendency is to engage with it as poem rather than as musical performance. Musicologists likewise too often overlook the sonic and visual facets of early [End Page 82] modern vocal repertoire in favor of the abstract musical work and the notational framework of its score. Such patterns can in part be attributed to disciplinary trends and modes of training that can hinder a full integration of historically situated textual, musical, and performance analysis. Less tangible, but no less significant, methodological challenges arise from the transience of live performance (accentuated further in the case of early modern songs by a temporal distancing of nearly four centuries), as well as from the emotional transcendence prompted by the experience of a musical event. In an influential essay, musicologist Carolyn Abbate confronts this issue by elucidating...

Ripe for Emancipation: Rockbridge and Southern Antislavery from Revolution to Civil War (review)

Reviewed by: Ripe for Emancipation: Rockbridge and Southern Antislavery from Revolution to Civil War Eugene Van Sickle Ripe for Emancipation: Rockbridge and Southern Antislavery from Revolution to Civil War. By Neely Young. (Buena Vista, VA: Mariner Publishing, 2011. Pp. xi, 221.) Historians often disagree on the means Americans employed to end slavery during the antebellum period, especially when tied to the colonization movement. Neely Young’s Ripe for Emancipation adds to the historiography on the antislavery and colonization movements as well as West Virginia history in an accessible way for the general reader, while contributing something for the specialist. The author connects southern antislavery efforts and African colonization in Rockbridge County to place Virginia at “the center of the Upper South emancipation movement” (4). He argues that leaders of Rockbridge County’s antislavery forces were in fact moderate ‘racialists’—rather than racists—who supported colonization as a reasonable solution to end slavery in the United States (198–200). Young’s focus on Rockbridge County demonstrates that antislavery supporters such as Henry and William Henry Ruffner differed from supporters of the broader antislavery movement. They were more moderate, demonstrating the transition from morally opposing slavery after the American Revolution to a pragmatic opposition grounded in economics—slavery was less productive than free labor. In short, slavery hurt both whites and blacks (97–98, 198). Furthermore, the approach Young uses, which some may argue is only local history, is of value for those interested in West Virginia history because it adds to the historiography by explaining the divisions within Virginia that ultimately led to the 1863 split that created the state. Finally, Ripe for Emancipation adds to the growing body of work [End Page 134] on the colonization movement. The movement generally sought to solve America’s race problems and Young’s interpretation supports that offered by Eric Burin in Slavery and the Peculiar Solution (2005). The author provides a compelling argument that antislavery was not just a northern phenomenon. He achieves this outcome by tracing the origins and growth of Rockbridge antislavery after the revolution to its peak in the 1840s; the movement declined quickly after 1850. Young also details the connections that leaders in Rockbridge shared with antislavery supporters in other parts of the country, and concludes with a discussion of the demise of antislavery in the 1850s. In short, the study enriches our knowledge of the national antislavery movement by looking at it in an Upper South community. In doing so, the complexity of American society is further revealed to the reader. Young also ties African colonization, a popular national movement that began formally under the guidance of the American Colonization Society (ACS) in 1816, to his antislavery theme. Young consistently connects Rockbridge antislavery and colonization throughout the book; consistency matters because he clearly illustrates what colonization meant for supporters in Rockbridge County, Virginia. Their reasons for backing colonization could be and often were quite different from those of supporters elsewhere. It would be easy to conclude that colonization sought to end slavery; such a view is as simplistic as thinking that antislavery advocates opposed slavery only for moral reasons. Young does fall short by not exploring more of the nuances of the colonization movement. Many colonizationists avoided the topics of emancipation or even the appearance of being antislavery because the leadership of the movement wanted to appeal to the broadest section of the American population. This has led to numerous interpretations of the ACS and its real purpose, beginning with Philip Staudenraus, who suggested in his 1961 work, The African Colonization Movement, that colonization was mainly a humanitarian effort. Certainly specialists will find issues about which to argue in this book. Young has, however, produced an accessible study and given historians further incentive to examine this period as they continue to fill in the gaps of American history. [End Page 135] Eugene Van Sickle North Georgia College and State University Copyright © 2011 West Virginia University Press

NewsCAP

An asthma inhaler equipped with Global Positioning System (GPS) capability could allow researchers to track when and where asthma attacks occur—and reveal previously unknown environmental triggers and "hot spots." David Van Sickle, a medical anthropologist and epidemiologist who's currently a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health and Society Scholar at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, worked with the university's biomedical engineering department to develop a prototype that receives and transmits GPS signals even as it delivers medication. A pilot study, designed to evaluate the device's accuracy and reliability and funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is ongoing.

A Companion to Catullus (review)

Reviewed by: A Companion to Catullus John B. Van Sickle Marilyn B. Skinner (ed.). A Companion to Catullus. Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2007. Pp. xxvi, 590. $149.95. ISBN 978-1-4051-3533-7. Topics and authors attract, promising expert and timely ways to approach or reconnect with the poet and trace readers' shifting fashions. Good reading starts with the editor—judicious, attentive to scholarly history's turns and to advances by her notable crew. Given the editorial constraints customary here, however, my remarks will focus on a few of the many intersections with scholarly concerns of mine. Text history fascinates in the hands of the late James Butrica—redeeming Pontano, prizing Billanovich (praised now too by a Latin inscription at his Milanese university). Competing perceptions of a Catullan book get historicized by the editor as conditioned by evolving preconceptions about structure: other poetic books could use such reckoning. Already central to the editor's account of order, Peter Wiseman vindicates his standing (with her) as a dean of Catullan studies, bringing again to life hints of "Transpadane upbringing" and providing an exemplary reconstruction of social history for the Valerii Catulli and their Sirmionian villa through lapidary hints from ruins, inscriptions, satire, and epigram. Also reconstructing socio-political circles, Konstan revives and amplifies possible allegory encoded in the manneristic rendering of marriage between Peleus and Thetis, e.g., indicat not merely colorless "reveal" (Guy Lee) but "expose" (cf. "indict"). Despite a textual lapse (legitur, an unmetrical gloss displacing fertur, c. 114.2), Konstan recalls that Callimachus' Lock of Berenice was court poetry and he intuits that the metonym and slight catachresis of caesaries ("head of hair") to translate "lock" might flatter Julia, daughter of Julius Caesar. Catullus' use of Hellenistic learning to negotiate social status, closely argued by Andrew Feldherr, may even prompt rueful reflection about the relative status of learning in our times. The "court poetry" of Catullus' forebears at Alexandria has morphed in recent scholarship into ideological engagement: e.g., Fantuzzi and Hunter (Tradition and Innovation, 2005) decrying notions of "art for art's sake" to restore Hellenistic poetry to "its own intellectual and cultural context" (cf. more emphatically Stephens, Seeing Double. Intercultural Poetics, Berkeley 2003). But if Alexandrian poets looked beyond the library, to honor the hand that fed and to collaborate on ideological instruments for Ptolemaic rule, their role anticipates that of the poets (Livius, Naevius, Ennius) engaged by Rome's elite to corroborate imperial expansion (cf. Habinek, The Politics of Latin Literature, 1998). They codified the mythic frame and epic style for the confident republican order. That order's last master was Cicero, portrayed with empathy and wit by W. R. Johnson as an old school poet, dutifully Roman, perplexed by the rather fresh (neoteroi) "Euphorionic troupe" (cantores) with their "poetics of style for style's sake"—the "peeled" ("slight," lepton)—to which Catullus and his ilk turned, Johnson writes, "away from civic failure and public catastrophe—inward to a private world of immense, exciting emotions and of extraordinary pleasures (and pains)." Rome's political chaos allowed them not a neo-Alexandrian ideology but a mirror of broken ties: fragments of the shattered frame for Catullus' private construct, cobbled together from amicitia, amor, Troy as manifold sign of tragic loss, even one bit of the old foundational mythology reduced to a satiric barb—glubit magnanimi Remi nepotes ("she peels back the descendants of heroic Remus")—ultimate variant of lepton. Construing the "neoteric" emphasis on private amor as retreat from the public engagement of Alexandrian and republican Roman poetics, suggests review of takes on [End Page 516] Virgil and Catullus by both W. R. Johnson and Christopher Nappa. Virgil, perhaps little more than a decade on into the agony of the republic, begins to move beyond neoteric retreat to reclaim an Alexandrian role for his poetics, envisioning public order beyond chaos. In the first half of the Bucolics, Virgil makes ROMA the causative power for new order and new epos, starting to restore but stretch the republican mythic frame—ille mihi semper deus (ecl. 1), nova progenies, Iovis incrementum (Ecl. 4), deus, deus ille (Ecl. 5); cf. Dionaei Caesaris astrum (ecl...

An invitation to apply national survey data to ecological research

Previous article No AccessArticlesAn invitation to apply national survey data to ecological researchSteven G. Paulsen, Charles P. Hawkins, John Van Sickle, Lester L. Yuan, and Susan M. HoldsworthSteven G. Paulsen1 Office of Research and Development, US Environmental Protection Agency, 200 SW 35th St., Corvallis, Oregon 97330 USA5E-mail addresses: [email protected] Search for more articles by this author , Charles P. Hawkins2 Western Center for Monitoring and Assessment of Freshwater Ecosystems, Department of Watershed Sciences and the Ecology Center, Utah State University, Logan, Utah 84322-5210 USA6 [email protected] Search for more articles by this author , John Van Sickle1 Office of Research and Development, US Environmental Protection Agency, 200 SW 35th St., Corvallis, Oregon 97330 USA7 [email protected] Search for more articles by this author , Lester L. Yuan3 Office of Research and Development, US Environmental Protection Agency, 1200 Pennsylvania Ave, NW, 8623P, Washington, DC 20460 USA8 [email protected] Search for more articles by this author , and Susan M. Holdsworth4 Office of Water, US Environmental Protection Agency, Ariel Rios Building, 1200 Pennsylvania Ave., NW, 4503T, Washington, DC 20460 USA9 [email protected] Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Volume 27, Number 4December 2008 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1899/08-123.1 Views: 20Total views on this site Citations: 4Citations are reported from Crossref HistoryReceived September 3, 2008Accepted September 3, 2008 Journal History This article was published in the Journal of the North American Benthological Society (1986-2011), which is continued by Freshwater Science (2012-present). © 2008 by The North American Benthological SocietyPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Luis Mauricio Bini, Victor Lemes Landeiro, André Andrian Padial, Tadeu Siqueira, Jani Heino Nutrient enrichment is related to two facets of beta diversity for stream invertebrates across the United States, Ecology 95, no.66 (Jun 2014): 1569–1578.https://doi.org/10.1890/13-0656.1W. G. McDowell, A. J. Benson, J. E. Byers Climate controls the distribution of a widespread invasive species: implications for future range expansion, Freshwater Biology 59, no.44 (Feb 2014): 847–857.https://doi.org/10.1111/fwb.12308John M. Faustini, Philip R. Kaufmann, Alan T. Herlihy Downstream variation in bankfull width of wadeable streams across the conterminous United States, Geomorphology 108, no.3-43-4 (Jul 2009): 292–311.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geomorph.2009.02.005Charles P. Hawkins,* Steven G. Paulsen,† John Van Sickle,‡ and Lester L. Yuan§ Regional assessments of stream ecological condition: scientific challenges associated with the USA’s national Wadeable Stream Assessment, Journal of the North American Benthological Society 27, no.44 (Jul 2015): 805–807.https://doi.org/10.1899/08-122.1

An African Republic: Black and White Virginians in the Making of Liberia (review)

Reviewed by: An African Republic: Black and White Virginians in the Making of Liberia Eugene Van Sickle An African Republic: Black and White Virginians in the Making of Liberia. By Marie Tyler-McGraw. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007. Pp. 264.) An African Republic is one of several recent works examining American efforts to colonize Africa in the nineteenth century. Tyler-McGraw contends that the study of the colonization movement provides insight into the meaning of "citizenship in a republic and race as a category" in nineteenth-century America (1). Tyler-McGraw's study adds to the literature by examining Virginia's role in the movement. In her analysis, the state of Virginia played a central part in the colonization movement as well as in the national discourse over the future of bonded labor in the United States. Virginia was central to the movement, Tyler-McGraw claims, because of its location between the North and South (3-4). As an Upper South state, Virginians understood the "interests of both sections" of the country (4); thus, Virginia offered the best hope in resolving questions about the status and future of African descendants in the United States (24-27). The methodology and interpretation of the African colonization movement and the American Colonization Society (ACS) in this work reflects current trends in the scholarship. Relying on vast collections of ACS and [End Page 112] state colonization societies as well as personal correspondence, An African Republic traces the movement's origins in Virginia as it gained momentum to become a national effort. Central to the formation of the ACS were events in Virginia such as Gabriel Prosser's Rebellion and the influence of revolutionary ideals. Slave rebellions combined with revolutionary era notions of citizenship provided the impetus for colonization as a solution to the contradictions exposed by the presence of free and enslaved African Americans. The interpretation places the movement in an antislavery context, suggesting colonization advanced emancipation towards the peaceful extinction of slavery (43). In the following chapters, Tyler-McGraw details the colonization program in Virginia, the reasons both black and white Virginians supported or opposed the movement, and the experience of American settlers who went to Liberia. The focus on Virginia adds to the scholarly discourse, though those specifically interested in West Virginia history may find little to interest them. What distinguishes this work from other studies of colonization in the nineteenth century is the section on women as colonizationists. The majority of studies merely mention women in colonization; Tyler-McGraw dedicates an entire section to their role in the movement. Broadly speaking, women participated in colonization for the same reasons they were prominent in social reform efforts such as temperance and antislavery. Activism in colonization gave women a chance to "engage the world of ideas and actions and to demonstrate their abilities" (86). Most contend that women's participation in reform movements was the only accepted means for them to influence the budding American republic. Tyler-McGraw contends, however, that women involved in African colonization sought to remake their society on a more personal and local level. Female supporters believed that "encouraging respectability, piety, and education in black families would enhance those qualities in their own white families" (84). The text concludes with a discourse on Liberians in Africa and America and how the colonization movement became a footnote to history after the Civil War. American social, political, and cultural influences on Liberia are well documented. Consistent with her goal of demonstrating Virginia's centrality to colonization, Tyler-McGraw focuses on the influence Virginia emigrants had on the development of Liberia, particularly because so many of them became leaders in the African republic. Their presence shaped the Liberian historical narrative in a way similar to that in which Virginians contributed to the American narrative. Despite the obvious connections between Liberia and the United States, the colonization movement has, as [End Page 113] the author points out in the last chapter, become a novelty in American history. Colonization was made moot by the American Civil War and became an afterthought by the end of the nineteenth century. This was due as much to American events as it was to the...

New Opportunities for Time-Sensitive Gulf of Mexico Completions

This article, written by Assistant Technology Editor Karen Bybee, contains highlights of paper OTC 18857, "New Opportunities for Time-Sensitive Gulf of Mexico Completions," by Allen W. Womble, SPE, Ed Van Sickle, SPE, and Mike Mckown, SPE, Baker Oil Tools, prepared for the 2007 Offshore Technology Conference, Houston, 30 April-3 May. Adaptation of single-trip multizone sand-control completion systems in the Gulf of Mexico (GOM) for frac packing has created new opportunities for time-sensitive completions. Frac packing involves relatively large amounts of complex fluids and deployment of capital-intensive equipment. Time becomes a significant variable in project economics. In 1990, after completing several hundred wells successfully in California, single-trip multi-zone technology was introduced to the GOM. Two key drivers provided the initial opportunity for GOM applications: minimizing rig time and reducing formation damage by reducing formation exposure time to completion fluids. Introduction Single-trip multizone gravel-pack systems are not new to the GOM, but the adaptation to frac packing has created new opportunities for this technology. Single-trip multizone gravel-pack completions were proved first in the early 1980s in the Beta field offshore California. The productive interval there was composed of as many as nine separate zones with a gross interval thickness of 1,200 ft. The system provided zone isolation in the form of packers without the normal packer slips; hence, the first zone-isolation packers were created. The gravel-pack-liner assembly consisted of a series of screen/isolation-packer/gravel-pack port combinations, one combination per zone. Sealbores were positioned above each isolation packer and below the gravel-pack port, to be used for positioning of a gravel-pack-seal assembly during gravel packing. All producing zones were first perforated simultaneously by use of tubing-conveyed-perforating guns. The appropriate number of gravel-pack assemblies was assembled as a single unit, and a conventional gravel-pack packer, with slips, was positioned at the top gravel-pack assembly. The entire single-trip multizone system then was run to bottom on drillpipe. Once the system is positioned across the producing interval, the upper gravel-pack packer is set, the setting is released, and the gravel-pack-seal assembly is used to set all zone-isolation packers hydraulically. A smaller pipe string was run concentrically through the drillpipe to bottom and stung into the gravel-pack-seal assembly. The lowermost zone then was gravel packed, with slurry transported down the inner work string and clean return flow moving up the miniannulus between the two strings. Repositioning the tool to pack all upper zones required pulling both the drillpipe and concentric pipe up the incremental distance between zones. This original system, given the name "Beta" system in reference to the field where the system was used, was used successfully in more than 250 wells involving more than 2,000 zones from 1981 to 1991, resulting in significant completion time savings.

56. Proficiency at the end of practice predicts retention of a technical clinical skills

A debate is emerging regarding the efficacy of proficiency based versus duration based training of technical skills. It is not clear whether the performance level attained at the end of practice (i.e., proficiency criteria), or the overall amount of practice performed during learning will best predict the retention of a technical clinical skill. 
 The skill learned was the single-handed double square-knot. Forty two trainees learned the skill through video-based instruction and were divided into three groups (14 participants per group) each with a specific criterion time to tie the knot (10, 15, and 20 seconds). Practice continued until participants completed the knot within their criterion time. The total number of trials, and the overall practice time required to obtain each respective criterion were recorded during practice. Participants returned one-week later for a timed retention test consisting of one trial of the knot tying skill with no video instruction.
 A multiple regression analysis tested whether the amount of practice, the total practice time, or the criterion reached at the end of practice was the best predictor of the time taken to perform the skill during retention. This analysis showed that the number of practice trials was highly correlated with total practice time (r = .82, p = .01), therefore total practice time was withdrawn as a predictor variable from the subsequent analysis. The regression showed that the only significant predictor of retention performance was the criterion reached at the end of practice (p = .03). The number of practice trials was not found to significantly predict the retention performance (p = .87).
 The results support the notion that proficiency based training results in better retention of a technical clinical skill in comparison to duration based approaches. This provides evidence for the introduction of proficiency based educational approaches in technical skills curricula.
 Jowett N, LeBlanc V, Xeroulis G, MacRae H, Dubrowski A. Surgical skill acquisition with self-directed practice using computer-based video training. Am J Surg. 2007; 193(2):237-42. 
 Gallagher AG, Ritter EM, Champion H, Higgins G, Fried MP, Moses G, Smith CD, Satava RM. Virtual reality simulation for the operating room: proficiency-based training as a paradigm shift in surgical skills training. Ann Surg. 2005; 241(2):364-72. 
 Van Sickle KR, Ritter EM, McClusky DA, Lederman A, Baghai M, Gallagher AG, Smith CD. Attempted establishment of proficiency levels for laparoscopic performance on a national scale using simulation: the results from the 2004 SAGES Minimally Invasive Surgical Trainer-Virtual Reality (MIST-VR) learning center study. Surg Endosc. 2007; 21(1):5-10.

Central Expression of Peripheral Cannabinoid Receptors

The discovery of endocannabinoids, which act as retrograde messengers in the brain, changed the way we think about the flow of information across the synapse. Are the endogenous actions of endocannabinoids in the brain solely accounted for by activation of CB 1 receptors? Although there are hints for the presence of another receptor type, there have been no reports of an alternative CB receptor in the brain. Using reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR), pharmacological, and behavioral evidence, Van Sickle et al . show that functional cannabinoid CB 2 receptors, a receptor subtype traditionally considered to be expressed in immune tissues and circulating immune cells, are also present in brainstem neurons. This finding could lead to new therapies without the usual drawbacks of addiction and mind alteration traditionally associated with the consumption of cannabis derivatives. M. D. Van Sickle, M. Duncan, P. J. Kingsley, A. Mouihate, P. Urbani, K. Mackie, N. Stella, A. Makriyannis, D. Piomelli, J. S. Davison, L. J. Marnett, V. D. Marzo, Q. J. Pittman, K. D. Patel, K. A. Sharkey, Identification and functional characterization of brainstem cannabinoid CB 2 receptors. Science 310 , 329-332 (2005). [Abstract] [Full Text]

Differential Expression of Cannabinoid Receptors in the Human Colon: Cannabinoids Promote Epithelial Wound Healing

Differential Expression of Cannabinoid Receptors in the Human Colon: Cannabinoids Promote Epithelial Wound Healing

A method for measuring the comparability of different sampling methods used in biological surveys: implications for data integration and synthesis

Summary1. Numerous methods have been developed to sample the biota occurring in different ecosystems. However, the comparability of data derived from different sampling methods is generally unknown and is a major concern when integrating data from different studies.2. Examination of assemblage‐level attributes such as taxa richness and biotic index scores is generally inappropriate for evaluating the degree to which different sampling methods produce comparable descriptions of entire assemblages, because these measures provide no information regarding taxonomic composition. Multivariate methods are generally more appropriate for this purpose, but some of the methods previously used are not satisfactory and others have not been tested. A useful measure of sampling‐method comparability (SMC) should be independent of sampling effort, independent of the sites sampled and have an explicit biological interpretation.3. We used simulated data to compare two potential methods of assessing SMC, the R‐value produced by anosim and a modified version of classification strength (CS‐SMC) derived from Van Sickle's Mean Similarity Analysis. Analyses were based on similarities between the assemblages captured by two different sampling methods (electrofishing and seining) employed at the same sites. Similarities were calculated two different ways: the Bray–Curtis index and the Jaccard coefficient.4. Based on simulated data, anosimR‐values were strongly affected by sampling effort, highly variable across sites and difficult to interpret biologically. In contrast, CS‐SMC values were highly stable over a range of sampling effort, across sites and easy to interpret biologically.5. Application of CS‐SMC to field data showed that seining and electrofishing produced highly comparable samples of fish in small streams: 97% comparable on average for species lists and 94% comparable for relative abundances. Kicknet and Surber samples of benthic invertebrates were also comparable after being standardised to a fixed count, but to a lesser extent than fish samples: 77% comparable on average for the taxa lists and 93% comparable for relative abundances. CS‐SMC should be of general use when integrating and synthesising assemblage data from a variety of assemblages.

Do rare species have any place in multivariate analysis for bioassessment?

Cao et al. (2001) have recently published an assessment of the place of rare species in multivariate analyses associated with bioassessment. This assessment follows their earlier comments on this subject (Cao et al. 1998, Cao and Williams 1999) and criticism of their viewpoint (Marchant 1999). In their earlier comments Cao et al. (1998) claimed that elimination of rare species from data sets unduly biases the similarity measures used in multivariate analyses of community composition and results in an ‘‘unacceptable loss of ecological information’’. Marchant (1999) refuted this claim by noting that when rare taxa are eliminated from data sets the trends displayed by multivariate analyses are unaltered and that benthic data sets, both from freshwater and marine habitats, commonly contain much redundant information. If, as Cao et al. (1998) claimed, rare species are vital for multivariate analysis, then logically the less rare species and the common species must also be vital. In other words, all species are vital and, as Marchant (1999) noted, this amounts to saying that no redundancy exists. Such a claim is contrary to common experience. Cao et al. (2001) admitted that rare species may not be important when environmental gradients are strong. However, they suggested that rare species respond to different gradients, perhaps less important and subtle ones or those related to human impacts. They provided little evidence from the literature that such situations exist but they quoted a paper by Faith and Norris (1989) as supporting this view. Faith and Norris (1989) reanalyzed a study conducted in the La Trobe catchment of eastern Victoria, Australia (Metzeling et al. 1984, Marchant et al. 1985). Using all 269 taxa (mostly at genus or species level) Faith and Norris (1989) compared ordinations with and without rare taxa, as well as ordinations based solely on rare taxa (those with total abundances ,0.5% of the total abundance of all taxa). They showed that inclusion of rare taxa resulted in a greater number of sig-