bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Understanding the Snowshoe Hare Cycle through Large-scale Field Experiments
Authors: Boutin Stan , Krebs Charles J.
Published: November 2020

The 10-year cycles of the snowshoe hare and lynx seen in Hudson’s Bay fur returns represent a classic example of cyclic population dynamics. Hare cycles have been the subject of time series analysis (Stenseth et al. 1998), population modeling (Royama 1992), and field experimentation (Keith and Windberg 1978, Krebs et al. 1986, Murray et al. 1997). However, only two studies have monitored hare populations in detail over at least one full cycle. The first of these was conducted in central Alberta, Canada, by Lloyd Keith and coworkers, and provided a detailed description of the demographic machinery driving changes in hare numbers (Keith et al. 1977, Gary and Keith 1979, Keith et al. 1984). From this came the “Keith hypothesis” that hare cycles are driven by a sequential two-stage trophic interaction with hare declines initiated by winter food shortages and exacerbated by predator numerical responses that lag hare numbers by 1-2 years (Keith 1983, 1990). Predators force hares to low numbers and recovery does not occur until predator densities reach their lowest levels. The second long-term study of hare dynamics took place at Kluane Lake in the southwestern Yukon, Canada. The Kluane project began as an attempt to test the Keith hypothesis through single-factor manipulations of food supply and predation (Krebs et al. 1986, Sinclair et al. 1988, Smith et al. 1988). The first attempt failed to manipulate predators effectively, and plots containing food supplements were quickly overwhelmed by predators moving into the area. Consequently, the experiments failed to alter hare dynamics. Building on this experience, the second phase expanded the scale of experimental manipulations and developed an effective means of excluding predators from selected areas. The study also added an interaction treatment in which predators were excluded and food supplemented. These experiments were designed to test the roles of food supply, predation, and their potential interaction in the dynamics of snowshoe hares (Krebs et al. 1995). In this chapter we provide a synopsis of the key results obtained from these experiments and discuss how the results alter the current understanding of snowshoe hare dynamics.
Site Selection and Soil Preparation
Authors: White Robert E.
Published: November 2020

At the Pine Ridge winery in Napa Valley, California, a sign lists six essential steps in wine production. The first step reads . . . Determine the site—prepare the land, terrace the slopes for erosion control, provide drainage and manage soil biodiversity. . . . Determining the site means gathering comprehensive data on the local cli­mate, topography, and geology, as well as the main soil types and their distribu­tion. Traditionally, site determination was done using the knowledge and experi­ence of individuals. Now it is possible to combine an expert’s knowledge with digital data on climate, parent material, topography, and soils in a GIS format to assess the biophysical suitability of land for wine grapes. Viticultural and soil ex­perts together identify the key properties and assign weightings to these proper­ties. An example of an Analytical Hierarchy Process is shown in figure 8.1. In this approach, both objective and subjective data were pooled and evaluated to decide the suitability of land for viticulture in West Gippsland, Victoria. In this region with a relatively uniform, mild climate, soil was given a 70% weighting, and the important soil properties were identified as depth, drainage, sodicity, texture, and pH. But in other areas, with another group of experts, a different set of key prop­erties and weightings may well be identified. For example, a similar approach used in Virginia, in the United States, gave only a 25% weighting to soil and 30% to elevation (which affected temperature, a critical factor governing growth rate and ripening) (Boyer and Wolf 2000). This kind of approach can be refined to indicate site suitability for a partic­ular variety within a region of given macroclimate. For example, Barbeau et al. (1998) assessed the suitability of sites in the Loire Valley, France, for the cultivar Cabernet Franc, using an index of “precocity.” Such an index is related to the ability of the fruit to accumulate sugar and anthocyanins and to attain a favorable acidity.
Soil and Wine
Authors: White Robert E.
Published: November 2020

The concept of terroir as a complex interaction among soil, climate, biology, and human intervention is introduced in section 1.1. The belief that the soil in a par­ticular vineyard imparts a distinctive character to the resulting wine is strong in Europe, but less so in the New World. The special character or personality of a wine may be confined to just one small block, less than 0.5 ha, for example, the “core block” within L’Enclos of Château Latour in the Bordeaux region (Borde­lais) of France. Alternatively, a special character may be attributed more widely to wines from an appellation (the commune Pauillac) or to a subregion such as the Haut-Médoc. But soil is very variable in the landscape (chapter 1), so that as the vineyard area increases, the character of a wine is less and less likely to show a dis­tinctive and defining influence of the soil. Soil variation, in combination with a variation in the mesoclimate (section 1.3.2), will mask a clear, intense expression of the underlying terroir. The grape variety, cultural practices, and the wine maker will then dominate the wine character. Thus, the true influence of terroir can only be satisfactorily studied for small areas. As pointed out in section 8.2.1, soil information is typically collected at a low sampling density over large areas to produce general-purpose soil classifica­tions. The resulting soil maps are necessarily of a small scale (e.g., 1:1,000,000), which means the information about small areas (1–10 ha) is unlikely to be very accurate (see box 8.1). Hence, intensive soil surveys, with at least 6 soil pits per ha, are necessary to study the soil factor in terroir when soil variation can be mapped at a large scale (1:5,000). Further, with more widespread use of precision viticulture technology, as discussed in section 5.3.5, the variation in specific soil properties (e.g., depth to an impeding B horizon and soil strength) can be mea­sured at intervals of about 2 m and mapped at a very large scale (>1:1,000). At a small scale (representing a large area), we can make generalizations, such as that soils on limestone or chalk in Burgundy, Champagne, and the Loire Val­ley in France are highly regarded for producing distinctive wines.
Cell Interactions With Polymers
Authors: Saltzman W. Mark
Published: November 2020

Synthetic and natural polymers are an important element in new strategies for producing engineered tissue. Polymers are currently used in a wide range of biomedical applications, including applications in which the polymer remains in intimate contact with cells and tissues for prolonged periods. As discussed in Chapter 1, several classes of polymers have proven to be most useful in biomedical applications and, therefore, might be appropriate for tissue engineering applications. To produce tissue-engineered materials composed of polymers and cells, however, it is first necessary to understand the influence of these polymeric materials on cell viability, growth, and function. Cell interactions with polymers are usually studied using cell culture techniques. While in vitro studies do not reproduce the wide range of cellular responses observed following implantation of materials, the culture environment provides a level of control and quantification that cannot usually be obtained in vivo. Cells in culture are generally plated over a polymer surface and the extent of cell adhesion and spreading on the surface can be measured. By maintaining the culture for longer periods the influence of the substrate on cell viability, function, and motility can also be determined. Since investigators use different techniques to assess cell interactions with polymers, and because the differences between techniques are critically important for interpretation of interactions, some of the most frequently used in vitro methods are reviewed in this section. Before any measurement of cell interaction with a polymer substrate can be attempted, the polymeric material and the cells must come into contact. Preferably, this contact should be controlled (or at least understood) by the experimentalist. This is a critical, and often overlooked, aspect of all of these measurements. Some materials are easily fabricated in a format suitable for study; polystyrene films, for example, are transparent, durable, and strong. Other materials must be coated onto a rigid substrate (such as a glass coverslip) prior to study. Cell function is sensitive to chemical, morphological, and mechanical properties of the surface; therefore, almost every aspect of material preparation can introduce variables that are known to influence cell interactions.
Harvesting the Future
Authors: Wilshire Howard G. , Hazlett Richard W. , Nielson Jane E.
Published: November 2020

For most of two centuries, the United States was a nation of small farms and many farmers, raising much of their own food along with one or more cash crops and livestock for local markets. Today, farms run by families of weatherbeaten farmers, pie-baking farm wives, and earnest 4-H offspring are disappearing. Americans live on supermarket or take-out food, mostly produced on extensive, highly mechanized and chemical-dependent industrial-scale “conventional” farms, raising single-crop monocultures or single-breed livestock. The larger farms cover tens of thousands of acres, too much for single families to manage. It is not agriculture, but agribusiness— an industry run by corporations. Conventional industrial agriculture is highly productive, and supermarket food is cheap. So why should anyone worry about growing food with chemical fertilizers, expensive equipment, pesticides, and pharmaceuticals? The reasons, acknowledged even by the industry, are that agribusiness “saddles the farmer with debt, threatens his health, erodes his soil and destroys its fertility, pollutes the ground water and compromises the safety of the food we eat.” Croplands presently encompass some 57 million acres in the 11 western states (table 2.1). Giant plantations consume huge amounts of natural resources—soil, fertilizers, fuels, and water. Synthetic fertilizers keep overused soils in production, until they become too salty (salinated) and must be abandoned. Industrial farming has taken over large areas of wildlife habitat, including forest, scrub, desert, or prairie, to replace degraded croplands. The clearings and massive pesticide applications threaten or endanger large and increasing numbers of plant and animal species in the western United States. Pesticide exposures sicken family farmers and agribusiness workers in the fields, and add environmental poisons to our diet. Pesticides and other problematic agricultural chemicals accumulate in our bodies. Agribusiness consumes especially huge amounts of increasingly costly, nonrenewable petroleum. “Every single calorie we eat is backed by at least a calorie of oil, more like ten” to run fleets of immense plowing, planting, cultivating, harvesting, and processing machines, plus countless irrigation pumps. Growing a pound of American beef consumes half a gallon of petroleum. A top executive of the giant agriculture-chemical corporation Monsanto has admitted that “current agricultural technology is not sustainable.” High-tech agriculture, such as cloning and genetically modifying crops, does not help conventional agriculture become more sustainable.
Tragedy of the Playground
Authors: Wilshire Howard G. , Hazlett Richard W. , Nielson Jane E.
Published: November 2020

“Recreation” connotes revitalization, the re-creation of spirit. In an increasingly urbanized culture, people recreate in natural settings to lift their spirits and revitalize their outlook and motivation. Public lands in the western United States, which embrace much of the nation’s remaining natural and wild areas, are especially attractive—and most are open for recreation. We authors certainly have found solace from camping, hiking, climbing, and skiing in backcountry areas. But latetwentieth- century American affluence has created a massive and unprecedented invasion of these lands, and particularly an invasion of motorized recreation. All human uses of natural areas can, and generally do, degrade soils, kill plants, and increase erosion rates, with resultant water pollution and ecosystem damage. In small numbers, and spread out widely, recreational disturbances can be minor, but millions of people regularly play on western public lands in mass gatherings that have large cumulative impacts. More now drive vehicles across forested or desert areas than pursue the less-damaging activities of hiking and small-group camping. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service (USFS) oversee the largest amount of western land available for recreation. By law, the agencies must manage public lands for multiple uses and “sustained yield.” Instead, federal land-management agencies are partitioning them to separate incompatible pursuits, including many that consume land. For example, as logging, mining, and grazing pressures ease, recreational pressures are exploding in Colorado’s White River National Forest, a short 50 miles west of Denver on Interstate Highway 70. Along with Denver’s increasing population, snowmobile registrations jumped 70% in Colorado since 1985. Off-road vehicles (ORVs) are everywhere, and mountain bike use has jumped more than 200%. Between 1990 and 2004, all ORV registrations in Colorado increased more than 650%. Ski facilities also burgeoned, along with hiker and equestrian demands for greater backcountry access. The USFS’s efforts to bring the conflicting uses under control is losing ground rapidly.
Nature’s Way
Authors: Wilshire Howard G. , Hazlett Richard W. , Nielson Jane E.
Published: November 2020

Humans have demonstrated the capacity to damage land and extinguish species from very early times (figure 13.1). Our impacts have grown immensely as populations and technological prowess increased (figure 13.2), and by the twentieth century, they had begun changing the landscape in major ways. To generations born since 1945, the pervasive human sculpting of natural landforms may even seem part of the natural scene. The effects certainly have reached a scale comparable to natural geological forces. Humans directly displace approximately 35 billion tons of soil and rock per year worldwide, exceeding the work of rivers and streams and greatly surpassing natural erosion from glaciers or wind. In the United States, road building, mining, construction, urban expansion, recreation, and military training and bomb testing move approximately 28 tons of earth per person each year—far outranking the world average of about six tons per person per year. Unintentional agricultural displacements are even greater—about 1,500 billion tons per year. Natural processes obey the physical laws of motion and energy, which never take a break. In this book, we have tried to explain how human changes add to nature’s effects (figure 13.3), in many cases multiplying the impacts of natural processes and causing severe environmental damage. Most people simply do not understand how the Earth works—but if nothing else, Hurricane Katrina’s 2005 devastation of New Orleans made it clear that ignoring or underestimating the power of natural forces can severely imperil our present and future well-being. Natural forces constantly are acting on and inside the Earth, building up land and tearing it down at the same time. Humans experience the Earth’s internal heat engine through tectonic effects, which have segmented the surface along boundaries that define mobile tectonic plates. Plate interactions at the boundaries generate faults and earthquakes, raising hills and mountains or depressing basins and troughs. Plate boundaries also contain most of the world’s volcanoes, generated by the internal melting that creates igneous rocks.
The State and the Ongoing Struggle Over Coca in Bolivia: Legitimacy, Hegemony, and the Exercise of Power
Authors: Sanabria Harry
Published: November 2020

Dangerous Harvest, the title of this volume, is an especially appropriate metaphor with which to begin to discuss and understand the ongoing, protracted, and increasingly violent struggle over coca in Bolivia—the third most-important coca leaf–producing country in the world (BINM 1998: 65). Such a metaphor—which suggests the reaping of a product that is potentially precarious, menacing, ominous, and even deadly—points to the fact not only that coca is an inherently conflict-ridden arena or social space but also that the most enduring and significant upshot of the current drive against coca, what is being “harvested” by recent counternarcotics efforts, is the potential for long-term structural instability and conflict in Bolivian society. In this chapter I pay special attention to this struggle over coca in Bolivia, particularly from the late 1980s to the early part of 2000. I will argue that the contest over coca in Bolivia reflects and embodies numerous and inherently conflictive claims and counterclaims (social, political, economic, and ideological) by different segments of Bolivian society, many of which entail fundamental questions about legitimacy, hegemony, and challenges to the exercise of power by elites and state elites. That is, to view the coca conflict as essentially one between “evil” or “criminal” coca growers and traffickers, on the one hand, and enlightened, law-abiding authorities and citizens, on the other—precisely the criminal justice perspective that ideologically informs, guides, and justifies current anticoca policy by U.S. and U.S.-funded counternarcotics agencies and programs—is not only not enlightening but also fundamentally counterproductive in that it fails to provide the necessary insights with which to grapple with and arrive at a just solution to some of the most important roots of the current coca strife in Bolivia. I will also try to understand and explain the seemingly successful coca eradication efforts in the late 1990s and first half of the year 2000, as well as how and why resistance to these efforts by coca cultivators in the Chapare appear to have been particularly ineffective in recent years.
An Intelligent Agent-Based Model for Simulating and Evaluating River Trip Scenarios along the Colorado River in Grand Canyon National Park
Authors: Randy Gimblett H. , Roberts Catherine A.
Published: November 2020

In 1979 the National Park Service (NPS) approved a Colorado River Management Plan (CRMP) based on the Grand Canyon Wilderness Recommendation and findings from a comprehensive research program. An amendment to an Interior Appropriations Bill in 1981 prohibited the implementation of this plan and resulted in increased public use levels and continued motorized use in proposed wilderness. In the last 20 years, the demand for Whitewater experiences has increased, especially for the self-outfitted public. Today, the NPS is challenged by users and preservationists to provide accessibility while maintaining wilderness integrity. Whitewater trips along the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon National Park are an excellent example of how increasing human use is impacting a sensitive, dynamic ecosystem and threatening to degrade the quality of experience for human visitors. Although visitation of the Colorado River has remained relatively constant since the 1989 CRMP—at 20,000 to 22,000 visitors and another 3,700 guides, researchers, and park staff traveling through the Grand Canyon each year—figure 1 shows the rapid rise in visitation since 1955. Visitors travel on over 600 commercial or privately organized river trips on a variety of watercraft powered by oars, paddles, or motors for varying duration. Most of the recreational use is concentrated in the summer months, resulting in high encounter rates and congestion at riverside attraction sites. Commercially guided operations account for over 80% of the total recreational use, of which 85% is on motorized rafts. The remaining proportion of recreational river trips are undertaken by noncommercial, self-outfitted public. Nearly 60% of the self-outfitted trips occur in the summer months, with an even proportion on use in the spring and fall. Less than 1% of these trips are motorized. Major drainages and side canyons along the 277-mile river corridor in Grand Canyon National Park provide recreational activities including white water rapids, sightseeing, hiking, and swimming. Well-known attractions and destinations are regular stops for nearly every river trip that passes through the canyon. Crowding and congestion along the river at attraction sites is often extreme and has been shown to affect the character and quality of visitor experience (e.g., Shelby et a]. ).
What is the Autonomic Nervous System?
Authors: Wallace Daniel J. , Brock Wallace Janice
Published: November 2020

The autonomic nervous system (ANS) has already been introduced; let’s summarize what we know about it so far. Part of the peripheral nervous system, the ANS consists of the sympathetic nervous system (SNS), which consists of outflow from the thoracic and upper lumbar spine, and the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS), including outflow from the cranial nerves emanating from the upper spine and also from the mid-lumbar to the sacral areas at the buttock region. Several neurochemicals help transmit autonomic instructions. These include epinephrine (adrenaline), norepinephrine (noradrenalin), dopamine, and acetylcholine. This chapter will focus on how abnormalities in the regulation of the ANS cause many of the symptoms and signs observed in fibromyalgia. Our body has numerous receptors or surveillance sensors that detect heat, cold, and inflammation. These ANS sensors perform a function known as autoregulation. As an example of how the ANS normally works, why don’t we pass out when we suddenly jump out of bed? Because the ANS instantly constricts our blood vessels peripherally and dilates them centrally. In other words, as blood is pooled to the heart and the brain, the ANS adjusts our blood pressure and regulates our pulse, or heart rate, so that we don’t collapse. On the local level, these sensors dilate or constrict flow from blood vessels. They can secondarily contract and relax muscles, open and close lung airways, or cause us to sweat. For instance, ANS sensors can tone muscles, regulate urine, and regulate bowel movements, as well as dilate or constrict our pupils. The SNS arm of the ANS is our “fight or flight” system, releasing epinephrine and norepinephrine as well as a neurochemical called dopamine. Whereas the SNS often acts as an acute stress response, the PNS arm tends to protect and conserve body processes and resources. The SNS and PNS sometimes work at cross purposes, but frequently they work together to permit actions such as normal sexual functioning and urination. How do the workings of the ANS relate to fibromyalgia? The SNS is underactive in fibromyalgia in the sense that an increased ratio of excitatory to inhibitory responses from central sensitization results in lower blood flow rates, leaky capillaries, at relatively low baseline blood pressure.
What are the Regional and Localized Forms of Fibromyalgia?
Authors: Wallace Daniel J. , Brock Wallace Janice
Published: November 2020

The definition of fibromyalgia includes widespread pain in all four quadrants (areas) of the body. What happens when you have fibromyalgia-like pain located in only one or two quadrants of the body? Limited forms of the syndrome have distinct features and terms used to describe them. Myofascial pain syndrome encompasses many regional pain conditions ranging from temporomandibular joint dysfunction in the jaw to a low back pain syndrome. The diagnosis of myofascial pain syndrome requires that at least one trigger point be present and that, when it is pressed, pain is referred to another site. This chapter will review regional myofascial pain, relate it to fibromyalgia pain pathways, and discuss its management and prognosis. Our current concepts of tender points, trigger points, and regional pain amplification were developed by two of the best-known physical medicine thinkers, Janet Travell and David Simons. Beginning in the early 1940s, Dr. Travell became well known as John F. Kennedy’s physician, who nursed him back to health in the 1950s when back pain restricted his ability to walk. Later, she became Lyndon Johnson’s White House physician. Travell and Simon’s textbook on myofascial pain remains a classic and was updated by them as recently as 1992. Dr. Travell (who died in 1997 at the age of 95) and Dr. Simons formed close working relationships with rheumatologists, and their influence permeates every fibromyalgia study relating to tender points and regional pain. Neurologists, neurosurgeons, and orthopedists diagnosed and treated localized muscle and nerve pain long before there were rheumatologists. At about the same time that rheumatologists were becoming recognized and organized into a certifiable subspecialty, an equally small group of doctors were organizing themselves into a specialty known as physical medicine and rehabilitation. These doctors (who call themselves physiatrists) do not perform surgery, are not internists or family physicians, and do not manage autoimmune diseases. They concern themselves with areas not addressed by rheumatologists such as stroke, cardiac, and spinal cord injury rehabilitation. Physical medicine doctors usually practice in a hospital or hospital-like environment and work closely on a daily basis with physical therapists, occupational therapists, speech therapists, social workers, psychologists, and other allied health professionals.
Controversial Syndromes and Their Relationship to Fibromyalgia
Authors: Wallace Daniel J. , Brock Wallace Janice
Published: November 2020

Over the years, a variety of health professionals have developed terms or phrases to denote seemingly unique clinical combinations of symptoms and signs. A disorder or syndrome does not necessarily exist simply because it has been described in the medical literature. Some have stood the test of time, others overlap with syndromes described by different specialists, and additional terms may be favored by a single practitioner advocating a “cause.” This chapter reviews conditions that have overlapping features with fibromyalgia but are not yet regarded as full-blown, legitimate disorders by organized medicine. When Dr. Fine first met Wanda, she was a basket case. Wanda had canceled three prior appointments because smells from a new carpet had made her sick, Med fly agricultural spraying 30 miles away prevented her from getting out of bed, and she developed a severe headache when her neighbors’ house was being painted. She almost passed out in the elevator going to Dr. Fine’s office because somebody was smoking. Wanda had been to three allergists, who obtained normal skin tests and blood tests. Desperate, she traveled to Mexico, where “immune rejuvenating” injections were administered, and to Texas, where a clinical ecologist sequestered her in a pollution-free, environmentally safe quonset hut for a month. There she received daily colonies, antiyeast medication, and vitamin shots, to no avail. Dr. Fine elicited a history of aching, sleep disorder, a “leaky gut,” muscle pains, fatigue, and a spastic colon. His physical examination and mental status examination revealed evidence of anxiety, obsessive-compulsive tendencies, and fibromyalgia tender points. Wanda was treated with fluoxetine (Prozac) for pain and obsessive behavior, buspirone (Buspar), for anxiety during the day, and trazodone (Desyrel), a tricyclic, to help her sleep at night. She was referred to a psychologist who worked to improve Wanda’s socialization skills and encouraged her to go out rather than be a prisoner in her own home. Wanda is slowly improving but will need many months of therapy. Self-reported environmental sensitivities are observed in 15 percent of Americans.
Influences of Lifestyle and Environment on Fibromyalgia
Authors: Wallace Daniel J. , Brock Wallace Janice
Published: November 2020

Although there is no cure for fibromyalgia, patients can initiate numerous changes and make adjustments that improve their sense of well being. Simply stated, there are things patients can do without spending money or seeing a health care provider. Demonstrating a certain amount of control over the syndrome also improves self-esteem and instills a sense of self-worth. This chapter describes how modifications in diet, sleep habits, and lifestyle can ameliorate fibromyalgia. It also advises patients how best to deal with the weather, fatigue, pain, and their home environment so that they will hurt less and become more productive. Even though certain general dietary principles allow fibromyalgia patients to feel better, there is no “fibromyalgia diet.” No specific food regimens or supplements have ever been shown in any published, controlled study to be helpful for fibromyalgia despite the observation that “arthritis diet” books are a multi-million-dollar-a-year industry. How can we explain this discrepancy? First, people feel better when they eat healthy foods. Most “arthritis diet” books urge patients to eat three well-balanced meals a day and caution against overeating. Many recommend having the main meal at midday; heavy, late-evening dinners don’t give the body enough time to burn off calories and are associated with bedtime esophageal spasm or heartburn. Similarly, consuming alcohol, nicotine, or caffeine (in the form of coffee, tea, or even chocolate) at a late dinner can make it harder to get a good night’s sleep. Alcohol, in particular, should not be used as a painkiller. In turn, poor sleep can increase musculoskeletal pain. An acceptable healthy balance of proteins, carbohydrates, and fats can also increase energy and fight fatigue. What about vitamins? As people always on the go, Americans tend to settle for the convenience of quick-to-prepare, easy-to-consume refined, processed foods that are relatively deficient in vitamins and minerals. Multivitamin and mineral supplements can be useful additions for those who don’t have time or are unable to prepare well-balanced meals. Many specialized formulas with heavily promoted “herbs and spices” are available from acquaintances, distributors, and health food stores; none of these have been shown to be superior to Wal-Mart, Rite-Aid, or Osco preparations available at a fraction of the cost.
The Influence of Exercise and Rehabilitation on the Mind and Body
Authors: Wallace Daniel J. , Brock Wallace Janice
Published: November 2020

Let’s continue on the self-help road to improving fibromyalgia symptoms. Suppose we are eating healthy, well-balanced meals, are no longer smoking, have learned to pace ourselves, cope with changes in the weather, are sleeping well, and have reconfigured the house. At this point, how can the body be trained to reduce pain, stiffness, and fatigue? This chapter will explore how physical, mental, and complementary modalities allow fibromyalgia patients to feel better about their bodies and minds. Therapeutic regimens that help the body and mind, whether physical therapy, yoga, acupuncture, or chiropractic methods, are all based on similar tenets of body mechanics: 1. Fibromyalgia patients will never improve unless they have good posture. Bad posture aggravates musculoskeletal pain and creates tight, stiff, sore muscles. Therefore, stretch, change positions, and have a good workstation that does not require too much leaning or reaching. 2. The way we get around is a demonstration of body mechanics. The fundamental principles of good body mechanics in fibromyalgia include using a broad base of support by distributing loads to stronger joints with a greater surface area, keeping things close to the body to provide leverage, minimizing reaching, and not putting too much pressure on the lower back. Also, don’t stay in the same position for a prolonged period of time. 3. Exercise is necessary. It improves our sense of well-being, strengthens muscles and bones, allows restful sleep, relieves stress, releases serotonin and endorphins, which decreases pain, and burns calories. 4. Don’t be shy about using supports. Whether it be an armrest, special chair, brace, wall, railing, pillow, furniture, slings, pockets, or even another person’s body, supports allow fibromyalgia patients to decrease the amount of weight or stress that would otherwise be applied to the body, producing discomfort or pain. 5. All activities should be conducive to relaxation and stress reduction, whether they be deep breathing, meditation, biofeedback, or guided imagery. There are a surprisingly large number of ways these activities can be carried out. They are discussed in the next few sections.
What’s the Prognosis?
Authors: Wallace Daniel J. , Brock Wallace Janice
Published: November 2020

When patients are diagnosed with fibromyalgia, one of their first questions to us relates to its outcome. “Is there hope, doc?” and “Will the pain ever go away?” are two of the more common queries we hear. Unfortunately, few surveys have addressed this issue, and some have arrived at contradictory conclusions. This chapter will try to put these studies in their proper perspective. Yes, there is hope! When discomfort is limited to a specific region of the body and is not widespread, the outlook for long-term relief of pain is usually quite good. With local physical measures, injections, emotional support, and anti-inflammatory and analgesic medication, as well as instruction in proper body mechanics, over 75 percent of regional myofascial pain syndrome patients have substantial pain relief within two–three years. Unfortunately, there is little middle ground. For example, in an 18-year analysis of 53 patients with low back pain followed by musculoskeletal specialists, 25 percent ultimately developed fibromyalgia. Therefore, we believe that myofascial pain should not be shrugged off or given short shrift. A problem that is addressed early and effectively saves patients, health plans, and society money. Also ameliorated are the heartaches of patients and those close to them. Improved productivity promotes a feeling of relief, as well as a better quality of life. When a practitioner prescribes Advil and says that this is all that can be done for TMJ dysfunction syndrome, it is penny wise but pound foolish. The outcome of fibromyalgia depends on who sees the patient and calls the shots. For example, in one report that tracked family practitioners, internists, or other primary care physicians familiar with fibromyalgia’s diagnosis and management, 24 percent of patients were in remission at two years and 47 percent no longer met the ACR criteria for the syndrome. This implies that early intervention by a knowledgeable community physician is the first line of therapy. Children with fibromyalgia also have a favorable outcome. In the largest study to date, symptoms resolved in 73 percent within two years of diagnosis. The outlook in tertiary care settings is not as rosy. Once the symptoms and signs of the syndrome are serious enough to warrant referral to an academically oriented rheumatologist who is involved in fibromyalgia research, improvement is common but recovery rare.
Social Evolution versus Sudden Change
Authors: Ehrenfeld David
Published: November 2020

In an address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, meeting at the Vatican on October 22, 1996, Pope John Paul II accepted the theory of evolution, thus bringing to an official end, for the Catholic Church, the most bitter and most persistent of all debates between science and religion. “New knowledge,” John Paul said, “has lead to the recognition of the theory of evolution as more than a hypothesis.” He qualified his statement somewhat by pointing out that there are many readings of evolution, “materialist, reductionist, and [his preference] spiritualist interpretations.” Still, we must not quibble; the Pope has endorsed slow evolutionary change, Darwinian evolution, as the likely way that nature modifies all living creatures, including all human beings. Fashioning us in the image of God, the Pope appears to believe, took a very, very long time. The dust has not yet settled on the great evolution war, nor will it settle soon. A few intelligent scientists are still not convinced that evolutionary theory explains the species richness of our planet and the amazing adaptations, such as eyes, wings, and social behavior, of its in-habitants. There also remain powerful religious orthodoxies that show no sign of giving up the fight for creationist theology. A second war about evolution is now being waged, an invisible, un-publicized struggle between a different set of protagonists; it is a war whose outcome will affect our lives and civilization more directly than the original controversy ever did. The new protagonists are not science and traditional religion; instead, they are the corporate apostles of the religion of progress versus those surviving groups and individuals committed to slow social evolution as a way of life. To understand this other struggle, it is necessary to look at evolution in a broad context that transcends biology. Not just a way of explaining how the camel got her hump or how the elephant got his trunk, the idea of evolution can also be applied to the writing of a play that “evolves” in the mind of the playwright or the “evolution” of treaties, banking systems, and anything else that changes over time in a non random direction.
Saving by Selling
Authors: Ehrenfeld David
Published: November 2020

Since the fall of Soviet communism, capitalism—perhaps we should say big business—has been prescribed more than ever as the cure for any ill, including the decline of nature. A large part of the natural world has been damaged or destroyed by unregulated commerce. Now, various groups of conservationists are trying to save some of the most spectacular remnants of nature, both species and ecosystems—with more commerce. The idea of turning the tables and using the methods of exploiters to prevent more serious exploitation is an interesting one, but the risks are high and not everyone in the business of saving by selling seems to have given much thought to them. I first came across commercial conservation in one of its earliest and most dubious forms, the farming of sea turtles, a phoenix like enterprise that, despite its chronic inability to turn a profit, always springs up renewed from the ashes of its last bankruptcy. Because of its biological and economic complexity, the farming of sea turtles nicely illustrates many of the problems inherent in the commercialization of consevation and is worth examining in some detail. There are seven species of sea turtles in the world’s oceans, ranging in size from the approximately 100-pound Atlantic and Pacific ridleys and the hawksbills, to the huge leatherbacks, which can weigh as much as1200 pounds and possibly more. All except the loggerhead nest primarily on tropical or subtropical beaches, although some venture far into cold waters in between nestings. The eggs of every species are prized as food and in Latin America are considered an aphrodisiac. The leather is used for expensive shoes; the hawksbill provides shell for jewelry; and the hawksbill, loggerhead, and especially the green are taken for their meat, cartilage (for soup) and oil (for cosmetics). Indeed, the green turtle has been described as the world’s most valuable reptile. Not surprisingly, nearly all sea turtle populations have been seriously depleted, and the great majority of the nesting populations that existed 150 years ago are now extinct.
A Connoisseur of Nature
Authors: Ehrenfeld David
Published: November 2020

My old college housemate Claude had dropped by for one of his stimulating visits, an infrequent happening even though his apartment on Manhattan’s Upper West Side was only an hour away by car. In college, we had been utter opposites in interests and temperaments—Claude’s direction was art criticism, which he celebrated with an élan that gained him a wide circle of friends. Mine was biology, and shyness was my distinguishing social feature. A shared liking for history and the attraction of very different personalities formed a narrow bridge between us, enough to have kept us in occasional contact over the years. We had been discussing European politics and the question of de-centralism over a light lunch on the patio, and then, in one of those curious shifts that conversations take, we had abruptly changed the subject. He was holding forth in his usual compelling fashion. “The trouble with nature writing,” Claude said, “is that it’s so artistically accepting, so uncritical. Lopez, Abbey, and their ilk—why civilization seems to have passed them by without leaving a mark. Culture implies the ability to discriminate, to judge—not sometimes, all of the time. Why should nature be exempt from criticism?” He readjusted his long, elegantly trousered legs carefully on the lounge chair, glared briefly across the patio at a song sparrow sitting on a dead branch of my Cortland apple tree, and continued. “I fail to comprehend why you nature-lovers don’t hold nature to the same kind of ex-acting standard that a cultured person applies to a bottle of Margaux or a performance of Rosenkavalier. Undiscriminating adulation is barbaric.”Just then a starling arrived at the bird feeder, displacing a blue jay. “Do you see that?” cried Claude. “That is exactly what I mean.” “Too aggressive?” “No, no, that’s not it at all. Look at the preposterous thing. Surely you can see what I’m referring to?” “All I see is a starling. It seems healthy.” “It seems healthy!” Claude stared at me in disbelief. “You’re not understanding me. Try to look at it as if it were a painting, a painting you did in beginner’s art class.
Jane Austen and the World of the Community
Authors: Ehrenfeld David
Published: November 2020

For two weeks now, I have wallowed in sinful luxury, rereading the six completed Jane Austen novels (especially my favorite parts), basking in the warmth and wit of her collected letters, eagerly absorbing the details of her life from her best biographies, and attentively following the arguments of her leading literary critics. I also saw the recent movie versions of Sense and Sensibility and Persuasion, falling in love with Emma Thompson and Amanda Root in quick succession, and finished off my orgy with viewings of the BBC videos of Sense and Sensibility, Emma, Mansfield Park, Northanger Abbey, and Pride and Prejudice. Throughout—at least when I could remember to pay attention—I had two questions in mind. What does Jane Austen have to say about people, communities, and nature? And what is the cause of her resurgent popularity? Perhaps, I allowed myself to think, the questions are related. Answering the questions proved not so simple, but I did have fun trying. Sam and I read Aunt Jane’s letter, dated 8 Jan. 1817, to her nine-year-old niece Cassy, beginning: . . . Ym raed Yssac I hsiw uoy a yppah wen raey. Ruoy xis snisuoc emac ereh yadretsey, dna dah hcae a eceip fo ekac . . . . . . I read the amusingly mordant comments she could write about her neighbors, such as the one in her letter of 3July 1813 to her brother Francis, mentioning the “respectable, worthy, clever, agreable Mr Tho. Leigh, who has just closed a good life at the age of 79, & must have died the possesser of one of the finest Estates in England & of more worthless Nephews and Neices [sic] than any other private Man in the United Kingdoms.” I read the last chapters of Pride and Prejudice, Emma, and Persuasion each three times. I read once again about Catherine Morland’s cruel expulsion from Northanger Abbey, and about the ill-omened trip of Fanny Price, the Bertram sisters, and the Crawfords to the Rushworth estate, Sotherton, with its seductive, if too regularly planted, wilderness. And again I was privileged to accompany Emma Woodhouse, Miss Bates, Frank Churchill, and Mr. Knightly on the tension-charged picnic to Box Hill, surely one of the highest peaks in English literature.
An Invalid’s Guide
Authors: Ehrenfeld David
Published: November 2020

I have had some more strange dreams—two of them, a day apart—but not so somber as the one about the vine cleaners. They occurred in the early morning just before I awakened, which is why I remember them so vividly. In the first dream, on a Wednesday, an insurance salesman is trying to sell me life insurance.“You need it, Marvin,” he argues, “to protect your wife and children in case, God forbid, something happens to you.” I am not convinced. I have plenty of insurance, I think to myself. And the salesman’s manner irritates me—I dislike it when people I don’t know call me by my first name. Besides, my name isn’t Marvin; it never has been. Is it more polite for him to call me Marvin rather than David, I wonder? Before I can respond to the salesman, I wake up and the dream ends. What does it mean, I ask myself? Certainly there is no ominous feeling about the dream—in fact it leaves me laughing. And why Marvin? A pretty pass things have come to, when a person’s subconscious forgets his first name. Could I have gotten into someone else’s dream? Hardly likely, I reason. For a little while I puzzle over the dream’s significance with no results; by the time I am finished shaving, I have put it out of mind. Thursday’s dream brought more light. In this one, I have just written a book—or maybe it’s a pamphlet. Now comes the hard part; I have to find a title for my work. I am particularly bad at coming up with titles, a fact that I am well aware of even when I am not sleeping. (My best title, The Arrogance of Humanism, was actually the brainchild of my former editor at Oxford University Press, James Raimes.) But in the dream I am inspired; a brilliant title flashes into my mind like a comet. I will call my book (or pamphlet) “An Invalid’s Guide to Putting Out Mine Fires.” No matter whether it is directly relevant to what I have written—the end of the dream is fast approaching and I am no longer sure—who cares? The title is enormously pleasing: witty, catchy rhythm, full of some sort of meaning.