California's Safety Nets and the Need to Improve Local Collaboration in Care for the Uninsured: Counties, Clinics, Hospitals and Local Health Plans

Examines the state's safety net financing and infrastructure resources, with county and regional comparisons. Analyzes the care for the uninsured provided by county facilities, free and community clinics, hospitals, and Medi-Cal managed care programs

Constraining Prograde Metamorphic Paths in Archean High-grade Garnet-bearing Lithologies from the Eastern Beartooth Mountains, Montana, USA

Prograde metamorphic pressures and temperatures of Archean high-grade garnet-bearing lithologies from the eastern Beartooth Mountains of Montana provide an important constraint on the tectonometamorphic history of this terrane and the early Earth in general. A particularly useful means to approximate prograde metamorphic conditions is examining entrapment conditions of garnet mineral inclusions during garnet growth. Lithologies of the eastern Beartooth Mountains are well-suited to this approach because of the presence of abundant mineral inclusions within garnet porphyroblasts. Consequently, prograde metamorphic pressures and temperatures in the Beartooth Mountains, conditions that have only been broadly constrained previously, can be more accurately determined and used to constrain the tectonic environment responsible. Four high-grade garnet-bearing lithologies from the eastern Beartooth Mountains were examined to constrain prograde metamorphic paths: peraluminous migmatites, garnet-biotite gneisses, iron formations, and mafic granulites. Optical petrography and cathodoluminescence (CL) imagery were used to target areas for subsequent Raman and chemical analysis. Quartz inclusion entrapment pressures were calculated by measuring Raman spectroscopic peak position changes of quartz as a result of relative changes in strain. Mineral inclusions and matrix grains were chemically analyzed on an electron microprobe (EMP) and the data were used to calculate prograde entrapment temperatures and peak metamorphic conditions, respectively, using various geothermobarometers. Inclusion thermometry coupled with Raman barometry predicts prograde entrapment conditions of 675-775°C and 9-11 kbar. Predicted conditions of inclusion entrapment agree with the upper limits of calculated peak metamorphic pressures but are below calculated peak metamorphic temperatures. These data are interpreted to represent inclusion entrapment during isobaric growth of garnet hosts at peak metamorphic pressures as temperatures increased in a clockwise pressure-temperature path. Such prograde paths likely resulted from burial due to collisional tectonics followed by isobaric heating from emplacement of local plutonic bodies. These findings place new constraints on the tectonometamorphic evolution of Beartooth rocks. Additionally, these findings demonstrate that garnet mineral inclusion studies can be used to quantitatively constrain prograde conditions of Beartooth metamorphism

The hand of Homo naledi

A nearly complete right hand of an adult hominin was recovered from the Rising Star cave system, South Africa. Based on associated hominin material, the bones of this hand are attributed to Homo naledi. This hand reveals a long, robust thumb and derived wrist morphology that is shared with Neandertals and modern humans, and considered adaptive for intensified manual manipulation. However, the finger bones are longer and more curved than in most australopiths, indicating frequent use of the hand during life for strong grasping during locomotor climbing and suspension. These markedly curved digits in combination with an otherwise human-like wrist and palm indicate a significant degree of climbing, despite the derived nature of many aspects of the hand and other regions of the postcranial skeleton in H. naledi

Attention Factors Compared to Other Predictors of Simulated Driving Performance Across Age Groups

Groups of young, middle-aged, and older adults performed a battery of computer-based attention tasks, the UFOV® and neuropsychological tests, and simulated low-speed driving in a suburban scenario. Results from the attention tasks were submitted to Maximum Likelihood factor analysis and 6 factors were extracted that explained more than 57% of the task variance. The factors were labeled speed, switching, visual search, executive, sustained, and divided attention in descending order of amount of task variance explained. The factor scores were used to predict simulated driving performance. Step-wise regressions were computed with driving performance as the criterion, and age, sex and the factor scores, the UFOV® scores, or the neuropsychological test scores as predictors. Results showed that the perceptual-motor speed and divided attention measures from the UFOV® and attention battery were more likely to explain driving performance variance than the neuropsychological tests

Stability of the monoclinic phase in the ferroelectric perovskite PbZr(1-x)TixO3

Recent structural studies of ferroelectric PbZr(1-x)TixO3 (PZT) with x= 0.48, have revealed a new monoclinic phase in the vicinity of the morphotropic phase boundary (MPB), previously regarded as the the boundary separating the rhombohedral and tetragonal regions of the PZT phase diagram. In the present paper, the stability region of all three phases has been established from high resolution synchrotron x-ray powder diffraction measurements on a series of highly homogeneous samples with 0.42 <=x<= 0.52. At 20K the monoclinic phase is stable in the range 0.46 <=x<= 0.51, and this range narrows as the temperature is increased. A first-order phase transition from tetragonal to rhombohedral symmetry is observed only for x= 0.45. The MPB, therefore, corresponds not to the tetragonal-rhombohedral phase boundary, but instead to the boundary between the tetragonal and monoclinic phases for 0.46 <=x<= 0.51. This result provides important insight into the close relationship between the monoclinic phase and the striking piezoelectric properties of PZT; in particular, investigations of poled samples have shown that the monoclinic distortion is the origin of the unusually high piezoelectric response of PZT.Comment: REVTeX file, 7 figures embedde

Tribute to Donald A. Winslow

This article is comprised of a series of tributes to Donald A. Winslow, who was a law professor at the University of Kentucky College of Law

Geomorphology in Iowa 1943-1968: An Annotated Bibliography of the Literature

A study of what has been written about the geomorphology of Iowa since the publication of the Kay volume, The Pleistocene of Iowa, in 1943, resulted in the compilation of an annotated bibliography. An examination of the subject material and procedures described suggests: studies since 1943 are process oriented rather than time oriented; increased use of paleosols and buried erosion surfaces; introduction of radiocarbon dating; and a lack of discussion about a framework for geomorphology

Physiological Costs of Repetitive Courtship Displays in Cockroaches Handicap Locomotor Performance

Courtship displays are typically thought to have evolved via female choice, whereby females select mates based on the characteristics of a display that is expected to honestly reflect some aspect of the male’s quality. Honesty is typically enforced by mechanistic costs and constraints that limit the level at which a display can be performed. It is becoming increasingly apparent that these costs may be energetic costs involved in the production of dynamic, often repetitive displays. A female attending to such a display may thus be assessing the physical fitness of a male as an index of his quality. Such assessment would provide information on his current physical quality as well as his ability to carry out other demanding activities, qualities with which a choosy female should want to provision her offspring. In the current study we use courtship interactions in the Cuban burrowing cockroach, Byrsotria fumigata to directly test whether courtship is associated with a signaler’s performance capacity. Males that had produced courtship displays achieved significantly lower speeds and distances in locomotor trials than non-courting control males. We also found that females mated more readily with males that produced a more vigorous display. Thus, males of this species have developed a strategy where they produce a demanding courtship display, while females choose males based on their ability to produce this display. Courtship displays in many taxa often involve dynamic repetitive actions and as such, signals of stamina in courtship may be more widespread than previously thought