Residues of six plant species were incubated in the field and analyzed for decomposition rates, fungal, bacterial and total substrate-induced respiration (SIR), total fungal and bacterial biomass and ...changes in residue composition during 161 days. Plant residues included crimson clover (Trifolium incarnatum L.), hairy vetch (Vicia villosa Roth), crabgrass Digitaria sanguinalis, (L.) Scop., winter rye (Secale cereale L.), grain sorghum (Sorghum bicolor L. Moench) and chestnut oak (Quercus prinus L.) leaves. Plant residues were incubated in litterbags placed on the soil surface in no-tillage (T. incarnatum, V. villosa, S. bicolor, S. cereale), old-field (D. sanguinalis) or hardwood forest (Q. prinus) plots at the Horseshoe Bend Experimental Area in Athens, Ga and collected periodically for analyses. Decomposition rate constants (k) were greatest for V. villosa followed by T. incarnatum, D. sanguinalis, S. cereale, S. bicolor and Q. prinus. Net N loss generally followed the pattern of dry matter loss. Net N gain was observed after 100 days of decay for those residues with high initial C:N ratios. Initial N concentration was exponentially related with the annual decay rate constant (r2 = 0.93) for all species; however, on an individual species basis, lignin content was best correlated to dry matter weight loss. Total SIR was greatest on T. incarnatum and V. villosa followed by D. sanguinalis, S. bicolor, S. cereal and Q. prinus. Across all sample dates, residue carbon-to-nitrogen ratio was the best predictor of total SIR. Measurements of potential fungal and bacterial activity by SIR as well as biomass-C estimates by direct counts indicated that fungi were the dominant decomposers of these surface residues. For most residues, lignin content through time exerted the greatest influence on fungal SIR and fungal biomass-C (r = -0.56 to -0.93). Total SIR, fungal SIR and total fungal biomass tended to decrease through time as residues decomposed. Total SIR, on any given sample date, was significantly correlated with residue dry weight remaining and annual decay rate constants were exponentially related to overall mean values of total SIR for all residues excluding S. cereale (r2 = 0.99). Residue SIR rates as a measure of the potentially active microbial biomass reflected the resource qualities of the plant residues investigated here and were positively correlated to their decomposition rates.
Top linguists from diverse fields address language varieties in the South.   Language Variety in the South Revisited is a comprehensive collection of new research on southern United States ...English by foremost scholars of regional language variation. Like its predecessor, Language Variety in the South: Perspectives in Black and White (The University of Alabama Press, 1986), this book includes current research into African American vernacular English, but it greatly expands the scope of investigation and offers an extensive assessment of the field. The volume encompasses studies of contact involving African and European languages; analysis of discourse, pragmatic, lexical, phonological, and syntactic features; and evaluations of methods of collecting and examining data. The 38 essays not only offer a wealth of information about southern language varieties but also serve as models for regional linguistic investigation.
To determine links between human rhinoviruses (HRV) and asthma, we used data from a case–control study, March 2003–February 2004, among children with asthma. Molecular characterization identified ...several likely new HRVs and showed that association with asthma exacerbations was largely driven by HRV-A and a phylogenetically distinct clade of 8 strains, genogroup C.
. Emergency medical services (EMS) systems increasingly seek to triage patients to alternative EMS resources. Emergency medical services dispatchers may be asked to perform this triage. New protocols ...may be necessary. Alternatively, existing protocols may be sufficient for this task. For an existing dispatch protocol to be sufficient, it at least must accurately categorize patient condition and severity based on an external standard. Objective: To examine the extent to which nature codes (NCs), or patient condition codes, and severity codes (SCs) currently assigned in one urban 911 center agree with paramedic field findings. The null hypothesis was that there is no routine agreement (75%) between dispatcher‐assigned NC or SC and paramedic‐assigned NC or SC for the same patient using the same protocol. Methods: Emergency medical services dispatch nature and severity code data and matching out‐of‐hospital data were prospectively gathered over six months. Dispatch data included the NC: caller‐identified problem, and the SC: dispatcher‐assessed severity. Each NC is modified by one of three SCs (1, 3, or 9): 1 is emergent, 3 is urgent, and 9 is neither. Paramedics verified and/or corrected dispatcher‐assigned NCs and SCs using the same dispatch protocol. Results: One thousand forty usable cases fell into 33 unique NC/SC combinations. The designation of SC 1 was assigned 275 times, SC 3 was assigned 736 times, and SC 9 was assigned 24 times. The SC was missing five times. The overall NC agreement was 0.70 (95% CI = 0.697 to 0.703). The overall SC agreement was 0.65 (95% CI = 0.645 to 0.655). The NC agreement exceeded 75% for ten (59%) NC/SC combinations. The SC agreement exceeded 75% for five (29%) NC/SC combinations. There was both NC and SC agreement for four (24%) combinations: urgent breathing problems, urgent diabetic problems, urgent falls, and urgent overdoses. The greatest NC/SC disagreement occurred within emergent and urgent traffic crashes. Paramedics adjusted SC toward lower severity 29% of the time and toward higher severity 5.4% of the time. There was no upward SC adjustment for eight (47%) combinations. Conclusions: Certain dispatcher‐assigned NC and SC codes and NC/SC combinations achieved the study threshold. Overall agreement failed to achieve the threshold. The lowest SC level was rarely assigned, preventing a meaningful analysis of all severity levels.
Patients with resectable stage IIIA non-small-cell lung cancer have a low survival rate following standard surgical treatment. Nonrandomized trials in which induction chemotherapy or a combination of ...chemotherapy and radiation prior to surgery were used to treat patients with regionally advanced primary cancers have suggested that survival is improved when compared with treatment by surgery alone.
We performed a prospective, randomized study of patients with previously untreated, potentially resectable clinical stage IIIA non-small-cell lung cancer to compare the results of perioperative chemotherapy and surgery with those of surgery alone.
This trial was designed to test the null hypothesis that the proportion of patients surviving 3 years is 12% for either treatment group against the alternate hypothesis that the 3-year survival rate would be 12% in the surgery alone group and 32% in the perioperative chemotherapy group. The estimated required sample size was 65 patients in each group. The trial was terminated at an early time according to the method of O'Brien and Fleming following a single unplanned interim analysis. The decision to terminate the trial was based on ethical considerations, the magnitude of the treatment effect, and the high degree of statistical significance attained. In total, 60 patients were randomly assigned between 1987 and 1993 to receive either six cycles of perioperative chemotherapy (cyclophosphamide, etoposide, and cisplatin) and surgery (28 patients) or surgery alone (32 patients). For patients in the former group, tumor measurements were made before each course of chemotherapy and the clinical tumor response was evaluated after three cycles of chemotherapy; they then underwent surgical resection. Patients who had documented tumor regression after preoperative chemotherapy received three additional cycles of chemotherapy after surgery.
After three cycles of preoperative chemotherapy, the rate of clinical major response was 35%. Patients treated with perioperative chemotherapy and surgery had an estimated median survival of 64 months compared with 11 months for patients who had surgery alone (P < .008 by log-rank test; P < .018 by Wilcoxon test). The estimated 2- and 3-year survival rates were 60% and 56% for the perioperative chemotherapy patients and 25% and 15% for those who had surgery alone, respectively.
In this trial, the treatment strategy using perioperative chemotherapy and surgery was more effective than surgery alone.
This clinical trial strengthens the validity of using perioperative chemotherapy in the management of patients with resectable stage IIIA non-small-cell lung cancer. Further investigation of the perioperative chemotherapy strategy in earlier stage lung cancer is warranted.
Information developed during recently completed evaluations of the status of seven species of anadromous Pacific salmonids (Oncorhynchus spp.) in the Pacific Northwest was used to characterize ...patterns of intraspecific diversity along three major axes: ecology, life history and biochemical genetics. Within the study area, the species’ ranges, and therefore the number of distinct ecological regions inhabited differ considerably, with pink and chum salmon limited to the northern areas and chinook salmon and steelhead distributed over the widest geographic range. The species showed comparable differences in the patterns of life history and genetic diversity, with chinook and sockeye salmon and steelhead having the most major diversity groups and pink, chum and coho salmon having the least. Both life history and genetic diversity showed a strong, positive correlation with the extent of ecological diversity experienced by a species, and the correlation between the number of major genetic and life history groups within a species was even stronger (r=0.96; P<0.05). Departures from these general diversity relationships found in some species (especially sockeye and coho salmon and cutthroat trout) can be explained by different interactions with the freshwater environment and, for cutthroat trout, by the occurrence of substantial intrapopulational diversity in life history traits, a hierarchical level not considered in this study.
We examined unconscious priming in a stem-completion task with both identity and form-related primes. Participants were given exclusion instructions to avoid completing a stem (e.g., ca-
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-) with a ...briefly flashed masked word (e.g., candy). In Experiment 1, priming of around 7% occurred for both identity (e.g., candy) and form-based (e.g., windy) primes at a 33
ms exposure duration. When examining only trials in which the participants failed to identify the prime, this effect increased to 12% for identity primes, but remained the same for form-based primes. In Experiment 2, priming without prime identification was 9% for identity primes, 4% for homophone primes, and 3% for orthographic control primes. Although identity priming was greater than form priming in both experiments, regression analyses revealed that orthographic and phonological overlap alone between the flashed primes and targets could completely account for unconscious identity priming. Hence, we conclude that masked words may only activate their sublexical orthographic and phonological representations and not their lexical representations.
Low shaft rotational speeds and high load cell readings occurred soon after start-up as load cell readings increase, the shafts rotate unevenly, and may eventually stop if the condition is not ...corrected. Different variables were examined to determine the source of the problems including organic and hydraulic loading, temperature, air cup size, soluble BOD removal through the stages, air rate, and influence of water plant alum sludge received at the plant. The root causes are low wastewater temperatures and inadequate air rates. A variety of approaches used to strip biomass from the overloaded shafts are discussed.
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