bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Vine Root Habitat
Authors: White Robert E.
Published: November 2020

In the deep gravelly soils of the Bordeaux region, Seguin (1972) found vine roots at a depth of 6 m. Woody “framework roots” tend to be at least 30–35 cm be­low the surface and do not increase in number after the third year from planting (Richards 1983). Nevertheless, smaller diameter “extension roots” continue to grow horizontally and vertically from the main framework. They may extend lat­erally several meters from the trunk. These roots and finer lateral roots in the zone 10–60 cm deep provide the main absorbing surfaces for the vine. But in soils with a subsoil impediment to root growth, such as many of the duplex soils in south­east Australia (section 1.3.2.1), less than 5% of vine roots may penetrate below 60 cm (Pudney et al. 2001). Nor do vines root deeply in vineyards where irriga­tion supplies much of the vine’s water in summer. Plant roots and associated mycorrhizae (section 4.7.3.2) help to create soil structure. A desirable soil structure for vines provides optimal water and oxygen availability, which are fundamental for the growth of roots and soil organisms. The structure should be porous and not hard for roots to penetrate, allow ready exchange of gases and the flow of water, resist erosion, be workable over a range of soil water contents, allowing the seedlings of cover crops in vineyards to emerge, and be able to bear the weight of tractors and harvesting machinery with a min­imum of compaction. The quality of soil structure and its maintenance in vine­yards are discussed further in chapter 7. We might expect the soil particles described in chapter 2 simply to pack down, as happens in a heap of unconsolidated sand at a building site. However, if the sand is mixed with cement and water, and used with bricks, we can construct a building—a solid framework of floors, walls, and ceilings. This structure has in­ternal spaces of different sizes that permit all kinds of human activities. So it is with soil. Vital forces associated with the growth of plants, animals, and mi­croorganisms, and physical forces associated with the change in state of water and its movement act on loose soil particles.
How the Soil Supplies Nutrients
Authors: White Robert E.
Published: November 2020

Most plants need 16 elements to grow normally and reproduce. Some of these el­ements are required in relatively large concentrations, ideally >1,000 mg/kg (0.1%) in the dry matter (DM); these are called macronutrients. The others, called micronutrients, generally are required in concentrations <100 mg/kg DM (0.01%). Of the essential elements, C and O are supplied as CO2 from the atmosphere, whereas H and O are supplied in H2O from the atmosphere and water sources. Chlorine is also abundant in the air and oceans as the Cl_ ion. Winds whip sea spray containing Cl, Na, Mg, Ca, and S into aerosols to be deposited by rain on the land or as “dry deposition” on vegetation. Nitrogen as N2 gas in the atmo­sphere enters soil–plant systems primarily by “biological fixation” (section 4.2.2.1), although small amounts are also deposited as NH4+ and NO3­_ ions from the air. Cobalt (Co) is essential for biological N2 fixation in legumes and blue-green al­gae. For the remaining essential elements, the major source is minerals that weather in the soil and parent material. Another term frequently used is trace element, which can include both essen­tial and nonessential elements. A trace element normally occurs at a concentra­tion <1,000 mg/kg in the soil. There are three categories of trace elements: 1. The essential micronutrients Cu, Zn, Mn, B, and Mo, which are beneficial at normal concentrations in the plant (ranging from 0.1 mg/kg for Mo to 100 mg/kg for Mn) but which become toxic at higher concentrations. Iron is the only micronutrient that is not strictly a trace element. 2. Elements such as chromium (Cr), selenium (Se), iodine (I), and Co that are not essential for plants, but are essential for animals. 3. Elements such as arsenic (As), mercury (Hg), cadium (Cd), lead (Pb), and nickel (Ni), which are not required by plants or animals and are toxic to either group at concentrations in the organism greater than a few mg/kg. Trace elements in the soil are normally derived from the parent material. Ex­amples of concentrations of trace elements in soils derived from different parent materials are given in table 4.2.
Soil–Water–Vine Relationships and Water Management
Authors: White Robert E.
Published: November 2020

Water is a prerequisite for vine growth. It is essential for photosynthesis and to maintain the hydrated conditions and cell turgor necessary for a host of other bio­chemical processes in the plant. As we saw in chapter 4, diffusion of nutrient ions to the root, and their movement by mass flow into the vine’s “transpiration stream,” both depend on water. The volumetric water content θ, defined as the volume of water per unit vol­ume of soil (section 3.3.2), indicates how much water the soil can hold. How­ever, to understand what drives water movement in the soil, we must understand the forces acting on the water because they affect its potential energy. The energy status of soil water also influences its availability to plants. There is no absolute scale of potential energy. But we can measure changes in potential energy when useful work is done on a measured quantity of water or when the water itself does useful work. These changes are observed as changes in the free energy of water, which gives rise to the concept of soil water potential. The derivation of the soil water potential ψ (psi) is given in appendix 7. Historically, the energy status of soil water has been described by a number of terms related to soil water potential, such as pressure, suction, or hydraulic head. These terms ψ and their units are explained in box 6.1. The terms and head will be used in this book. Several forces act on soil water to decrease its free energy and give rise to compo­nent potentials. These are adsorption forces, capillary forces, osmotic forces, and gravity. Adsorption Forces. In very dry soils (relative humidity, RH, of the soil air <20%), water is adsorbed onto the clay and silt particles as a monolayer in which the molecules are hydrogen bonded to each other and the surface. With an in­crease in RH, more water molecules are adsorbed by hydrogen bonding to those on the surface. The charged surfaces of clay minerals also attract cations, and the electric field of the cation orients the polar water molecules around the ion to form a hydration shell, containing 6–12 water molecules.
Tissue Engineering
Authors: Saltzman W. Mark
Published: November 2020

Tissue or organ transplantation are among the few options available for patients with excessive skin loss, heart or liver failure, and many common ailments, and the demand for replacement tissue greatly exceeds the supply, even before one considers the serious constraints of immunological tissue type matching to avoid immune rejection. Tissue engineering promises to help sidestep constraints on availability and overcome the scientific challenges, with huge medical benefits. This book lays out the principles of tissue engineering. It will be a useful reference work for those associated with this field and as a textbook for specialized courses in the subject. It is a companion volume to Saltzman's OUP book on drug delivery.
Introduction: Obeying Nature
Authors: Wilshire Howard G. , Hazlett Richard W. , Nielson Jane E.
Published: November 2020

This book focuses on the human-caused environmental woes of America’s 11 contiguous western states, its mostly arid western continental frontier. In the nineteenth century, penny pamphlets and dime novels mythologized the American west, making icons of its prospectors, “cowboys,” northwestern loggers, and wide open spaces. The west was free of encroaching neighbors and government controls, open to fresh starts. As Robert Penn Warren wrote, in All the King’s Men, “West . . . is where you go when the land gives out and the old-field pines encroach . . . when you are told that you are a bubble on the tide of empire . . . when you hear that thar’s gold in them-thar hills. . . . ” But the “West” was more than gold and oil bonanzas—it was also a land of rich soils, bountiful - sheries, immense, dense forests, desert wonders, and sparkling streams. It is no myth that the western states were America’s treasure house. The romantic myths related to “winning” the west tend to obscure both its basic objective of resource exploitation and the huge public expenditures that supported every aspect, bestowing fortunes on a few. Western resources supported U.S. industrial growth and affluent lifestyle, but now they are highly depleted or largely gone, and the region is in danger of losing the ability to sustain an even moderately comfortable future. Much of what we have done to these magni- cent lands opened them to devastating erosion and pollution. Today, whole mountains are being dismantled to produce metals from barely mineralized zones. Entire regions may be devastated in the attempt to extract the last possible drops of petroleum. We soon could cut down the last remnants of ancient western forests, along with the possibility of ever again seeing their like. Large-scale farming has opened vulnerable western soils to erosion by water and wind, perhaps inviting another dust bowl era. Irrigating vast crop acreages has converted many of them to salt farms, perhaps resembling the conditions that spelled doom for the ancient Babylonian Empire.
Creating the Nuclear Wasteland
Authors: Wilshire Howard G. , Hazlett Richard W. , Nielson Jane E.
Published: November 2020

“At the heart of the matter nuclear weapons are simply the enemy of humanity”— retired U.S. Air Force General Lee Butler, former Commander of Strategic Nuclear Forces, spoke these words in his testimony to a 1999 Joint Senate–House Committee on Foreign Affairs. They probably express the deep feelings of most of the world’s people, including most Americans. Towering mushroom blast clouds and the shapes of atomic weapons are common symbols of doom. The specter of nuclear weapons in the hands of terrorists haunts us, and the possibility of attacks on U.S. citizens with “dirty bombs”—a bomb made of conventional explosives that scatters radioactive materials—raises major concerns. As it should. Nuclear weapons and the nuclear waste that they generate truly are destructive to all life and must be controlled. If we fail to prevent their proliferation in the world and stop generating them ourselves, they could destroy us without respect for national boundaries—even without a real nuclear war or dirty bomb terrorist attacks. They already have poisoned great expanses of American lands from coast to coast. American soil, water, and air started accumulating radioactive pollution during the World War II race to build an atom bomb. Radioactive contaminants spread into the environment at every step in the process, from mining the uranium for bomb fuel and purifying and enriching the uranium to make plutonium, to detonating bombs to test them and disposing of the wastes. Radioactive materials currently contaminate buildings, soil, sediment, rock, and underground or surface water within more than two million acres administered by the U.S. Department of Energy in the 11 western states. All sorts of Americans were carelessly exposed to radioactive bomb fuels during WWII and the Cold War, but especially the atomic scientists, uranium miners, and bomb plant workers who were exposed to them every day. For nearly two decades, U.S. atomic bombs blew up and contaminated American lands. Both American soldiers at the test grounds and civilians on ranches or farms and in homes were exposed to the dangerous radioactive fallout (see appendix 5). Perhaps unknown to most Americans is the fact that radioactive contamination from U.S. atomic weapons tests also spread across the whole country and far beyond U.S. borders.
Driving to the End of America’s Birthright
Authors: Wilshire Howard G. , Hazlett Richard W. , Nielson Jane E.
Published: November 2020

In a 1957 speech, the legendary and controversial scientist and submariner Admiral Hyman G. Rickover noted, “Our civilization rests upon a technological base which requires enormous quantities of fossil fuels.” Rickover understood that the United States was producing and using as much oil in the 1950s as we had in all our previous history and worried, “What assurance do we . . . have that our energy needs will continue to be supplied by fossil fuels: The answer is—in the long run—none.” Rickover also warned that failing to conserve our oil wealth could leave us destitute. The United States doubled oil production and consumption again in the 1960s, and again in the 1970s—ignoring Rickover’s appeal “to think soberly about our responsibilities to our descendents—those who will ring out the Fossil Fuel Age.” Unrestrained fossil fuel consumption has propelled the United States to a level of affluence previously unknown in human history. Fossil fuels, petroleum (oil and natural gas), and coal, represent the “stored sunlight of millions and millions of years deposited in an energy bank account in the Earth by geological processes.” Since the early twentieth century, the whole world has been using up this inheritance “in a geological instant.” Cars and other transportation consume the major proportion of the world’s oil, but petroleum also is the raw material for a wide variety of industrial products, fabrics, and medicines (see appendix 3). Without it, every facet of modern life would be less convenient, less comfortable, and far less mobile. Massive energy consumption has addicted Americans to cheap fossil fuels. Energy addicts overheat the house and wear T-shirts all winter, tend to own two or more refrigerators, and maintain a vehicular fleet. Many believe that having and driving cars is a more important American liberty than voting (see chapter 5). Along with U.S. Senator Trent Lott, they feel that “the American people have a right to drive a great big road-hog SUV if they want to.”
Drugs, Moral Geographies, and Indigenous Peoples: Some Initial Mappings and Central Issues
Authors: Kent Mathewson
Published: November 2020

There are about 2,000 entities in the world today that ethnologists call societies, each with distinct cultures. Perhaps the most obvious marker, and many argue the most important, is that each of these entities has its own language. Among the other societal attributes, besides language, that can make claims to human universality, or nearly so, is the cultural use of psychoactive substances— or what commonly are referred to as simply “drugs.” These range from mild stimulants such as coffee, tea, cacao, coca, and kola to stupeficients such as opium and alcohol, to hallucinogens found in mushrooms, cacti, and a number of flowering plants. Since the Mesolithic and perhaps before, the vast majority of the world’s peoples have used one or more such substances for religious and related purposes. Even in their most seemingly secular contexts, drugs are often used in ritual and habitual ways that exhibit their cultural embeddedness. Increasingly the world’s remaining indigenous peoples and many local folk are confronting questions and the consequences of the production, processing, trade, trafficking, and consumption of drugs deemed illegal and illicit by global agencies and national polities. Some of these substances, usually in their unrefined forms, have deep roots in local and indigenous cultures and economies. Often they serve important roles in constituting and maintaining cultural identity. With ever-increasing modernization and globalization, the circumstances and conditions under which indigenous and local peoples produce, trade, and use these substances continues to change. In turn, psychoactive substances—whether sanctioned, proscribed, or both—often serve as agents in the creation and defense of local and indigenous “moral” geographies. The concept of moral geography (as used here) refers to both the actual and symbolic terrain upon which traditional societies elaborate their customary livelihood and belief systems, and the cognate spaces in which they defend these practices and perceptions. For most indigenous peoples, the drugs in their culture, whether sacred or profane, are manifest in both their moral economies and geographies. For some groups, drugs become defining elements in their relations with dominant cultures and polities. For others, they are less than determinate, but still play significant roles in mediating exchanges—both symbolic and material. In either case, they can serve as mechanisms of subordination, or modes of resistance, or sometimes both.
Opium Production in Afghanistan and Pakistan
Authors: Allan Nigel J. R.
Published: November 2020

Opium cultivation in Afghanistan and Pakistan is long-standing, probably covering thousands of years. Only in the decades since the 1960s, however, has opium been cultivated and transformed into rough morphine and heroin for export to the world market. Local men have traditionally smoked opium, whereas women eat it. To understand who cultivates opium in Afghanistan and Pakistan and why they cultivate it is the objective of this chapter. The volume of production and spatial distribution of opium cultivation is also discussed. Both Afghanistan and Pakistan have a long tradition of ingesting stimulants, intoxicants, and depressants. These ingestibles are discussed in the context of common consumption and their great cultural, spatial distribution. A brief synopsis of the current scale of opium production in Afghanistan is given. With the destruction of irrigation facilities since October 8, 2001, in the major opium-growing regions of southern Afghanistan where the Taliban Pashtuns reside, it is unlikely that cultivators will stop growing opium, the most highly valued crop. On the contrary, 2002 levels have soared to 1990s levels. In 2000, unpublished reports recorded that two Afghan provinces alone, Helmand and Nangarhar— home to the hard-core Pashtun Taliban and former anti-Soviet, U.S.-backed mujaheddin—produced 79 percent of Afghanistan’s production, which is 72 percent of the world’s opium supply. By 2001, the United Nations Drug Control Programme said that the 1999 production total of 4,581 tons had diminished to a 2002 total of 3,276 tons, and as a consequence of a Taliban enforcement program due to overproduction the amount had dwindled to 185 tons in 2001. These late estimates are not definitive because of the wholesale civic disruption in the poppy-growing regions. International heroin prices have not reflected the dramatic alleged reduction of opium production, with a gram of heroin in London holding steady at around $100. Interdiction programs in Central Asia have confiscated substantial amounts of heroin (Lubin, Klaits, and Barsegian 2002), but the supply continues, leading one to conclude that much of the bumper crop of opium in 1999 and in previous years was held in storage. The Taliban could claim that their eradication program diminished production, but in actual fact there was a glut of opium on the market and the Taliban’s program was a smokescreen in an effort to raise the market price. The 2002 harvest indicates that vast areas of southern Afghanistan were already planted to the levels of the 1990s.
Geographic Information Systems and Agent-Based Modeling
Authors: Westervelt James D.
Published: November 2020

As we enter the twenty-first century, decreasing computer costs continue to result in the development of new generations of computation-based land management tools. Geographical information systems (GIS) emerged from laboratories in the mid-1970s and became, by the mid-1990s, a mainstay of the land manager’s toolbox. During this time, GIS technicians moved from a role as the sole GIS operator to one that includes the design and development of decision support systems (DSS) developed on a foundation of GIS technologies. The land manager is now provided with interactive environments that provide limited, but directed, manipulation and querying of GIS data files. GIS, now a mature technology, is an incomplete tool. It allows for the capture and analysis of landscape system state information. Historic maps, satellite and high-altitude photography, survey data, communication networks, and other sources now provide a rich record of historic and present conditions. Our culture has now embraced the idea that ideas about the state of our landscapes should be formally captured. Ideas about how landscape works, however, remain concepts in the minds of land managers. These ideas develop through formal education, continual review of the literature, and perhaps most importantly, personal experiences during one’s career. While applications of GIS technologies reflect land manager knowledge about the land processes, the GIS does not easily allow that knowledge to be formally captured. The scientific community has now developed a rich array of formalized landscape processes in the form of computer simulations. Hydrologic engineers have a wealth of groundwater, surface water, and overland water flow simulation models. Regional planners offer simulations of urban growth and traffic flow. Ecologists are developing plant and community succession models , and models of habitat responses to land use patterns. Working with scientists, land managers can apply such models to their land management decision processes. However, each model focuses on only part of the landscape system. Full use of the scientific models to affect land management decisions will not occur until the models are integrated as components of a simulation-based geographic modeling system (GMS). Over the next decade experimental systems are expected to result in the release of commercially viable land simulation modeling environments. As we currently capture our understandings of state information in GISs, we will formalize our understandings regarding the dynamics of the landscape in GMSs.
Nathan Marsh Pusey and the Affluent University
Authors: Keller Morton , Keller Phyllis
Published: November 2020

on New Year’s Day 1953, James Bryant Conant made known his intention to resign, effective January 23—all of three weeks later. In June the Corporation announced his successor: forty-six-year-old Nathan Marsh Pusey, the president of Lawrence College in Appleton, Wisconsin. Why this wholly unexpected choice? Who was Pusey, and what did he offer Harvard? He came from an old New England family transplanted to Iowa, graduated from Harvard College in the class of 1928, earned a Harvard Ph.D. in Classics in 1935, went off to stints of college teaching at Lawrence, Scripps, and Wesleyan, and in 1944 returned to Lawrence to become its president. This was a small, highly regarded college in Wisconsin, founded in 1847, with strong New England roots. Pusey did well there, recruiting able faculty and taking a public stand against Appleton native Joseph McCarthy when that sinister figure began to hack his way through American politics. All respectable enough; and, it appears, sufficient to secure Pusey a place on the short list of candidates. But enough to make him Harvard’s twenty-fourth president? Lawrence board chairman William Buchanan reported that Pusey had done little fund-raising for the college, and noted his cool personality and lack of popularity with students despite his manifest skill as a teacher. Another member of the Lawrence board doubted that Pusey had the administrative ability required by the Harvard presidency: “He is stubborn and uncompromising.” More weighty was Carnegie Corporation vice president (and Harvard president wannabe) John Gardner’s “serious doubts that he would have the particular leathery quality required to take on the great administrative job which Harvard is.” But positive views substantially outweighed these reservations. An Episcopal church source reported: “Pusey is stubborn at times but it is always a stubbornness on matters of principle and not with respect to his biases.” Another who knew him well said: “He is all mind, character, and perception. He is no promoter. . . . He is as firm as iron. He always succeeds in getting what he wants done. . . . His religion is top flight 100 percent all wool and a yard wide Episcopalian.”
How Our Understanding of Fibromyalgia Evolved
Authors: Wallace Daniel J. , Brock Wallace Janice
Published: November 2020

There are times when rheumatologists have been accused of making up new syndromes. For example, in the last 20 years, our specialty has described new rheumatic entities including Lyme disease, the musculoskeletal manifestations of acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS), eosinophilic myalgia syndrome (from L-tryptophan contamination), and siliconosis (which, if it exists, results from silicone breast implants). Fibromyalgia is not in this group. Evidence for the syndrome can be found as far back in history as the book of Job, where he complained of “sinews (that) take no rest.” Seemingly exaggerated tenderness of the muscles and soft tissues to touch was documented in the nineteenth-century medical literature by French, German, and British scientists, who called it spinal irritation, Charcot’s hysteria, or a morbid affection. Tender points were first described by Balfour in 1824 and Villieux in 1841. The English physician Sir William R. Gowers (1845-1915) coined the term fibrositis in 1904 in a paper on lumbago (low back pain) when he tried to describe inflammatory changes in the fibrous tissues of the muscles of the low back. Gowers was wrong. There is no such thing as inflammation of the fibrous tissues, but the term lived on because British physicians used fibrositis to denote pain in the upper back and neck areas among Welsh coal miners in the 1920s and 1930s. The definition of fibrositis cross-pollinated during the Second World War when United States, Canadian, Australian, and New Zealand physicians served with their British counterparts. Soldiers who were unwilling to fight or who experienced shell shock, or complained of aches and pains due to carrying heavy gear without any obvious disease, were diagnosed as having fibrositis. A symptom complex of fatigue, palpitations, dizziness, gastrointestinal symptoms, headache, sleep disturbance, and aching was first noted by the Union physician J. M. da Costa among 300 soldiers during the Civil War who had what he termed an “irritable heart.” The first mention of fibrositis in the North American medical literature appeared in a rheumatology textbook chapter written by Wallace Graham in 1940.
Who Gets Fibromyalgia and Why?
Authors: Wallace Daniel J. , Brock Wallace Janice
Published: November 2020

When fibromyalgia is first diagnosed, patients often have two reactions. The first reaction is relief. They have a legitimate diagnosis and are not crazy. Then a feeling of loneliness and a hint of fear can be detected, since many patients have never heard of the fibromyalgia syndrome and do not know what to do. It is worth repeating that the intent of this book is to promote a better understanding of fibromyalgia, as well as to provide patients, allied health professionals, and physicians with ways to work together. But first, this chapter will discuss how many people have fibromyalgia and how it might have been acquired. Until recently, nobody knew how many people had fibromyalgia. Dr. Frederick Wolfe, the same physician who chaired the ACR Criteria Committee, received funding to undertake an epidemiologic survey of the syndrome. Using computerized applications of field methodologies to estimate the prevalence of fibromyalgia (the number of cases per 100,000 individuals), his team estimated that 6 million people in the United States fulfill the ACR criteria for fibromyalgia. This and other surveys suggest that while 2 percent of the adult U.S. population have full-blown fibromyalgia (3.5 percent of adult women and 0.5 percent of adult men), 11 percent have chronic widespread pain and 20 percent have chronic regional pain. Recently, Dr. Larry Bradley at the University of Alabama has found that for every diagnosed fibromyalgia patient in the United States, there is an undiagnosed individual who has the requisite tender points, but never seeks medical attention for this. This has been termed community fibromyalgia. A survey in Great Britain found that 13 percent of the population had chronic widespread pain, 72 percent of whom sought medical attention for it. Of those, 21 percent fulfilled the ACR criteria for fibromyalgia. In other words, of individuals with chronic neuromuscular pain, less than half have diagnosed fibromyalgia or community fibromyalgia. Fibromyalgia is the third or fourth most common reason for consulting a rheumatologist. Approximately 15 to 20 percent of all patients seeking rheumatology referrals have fibromyalgia.
Why and How Do We Hurt?
Authors: Wallace Daniel J. , Brock Wallace Janice
Published: November 2020

A fibromyalgia patient frequently complains of pain. The pain of fibromyalgia is different from that of a headache, stomach cramp, toothache, or swollen joint. It has been described as a type of stiffness or aching, often associated with spasm. Unlike the other pains mentioned above, fibromyalgia pain responds poorly to aspirin, acetaminophen (Tylenol), or ibuprofen (Advil, Motrin). In fact, studies have suggested that even narcotics such as morphine are minimally beneficial in ameliorating fibromyalgia pain. Why is it that fibromyalgia patients can take codeine, Darvon, Vicodin, or even Demerol for musculoskeletal aches and have only a slight response? What produces “pain without purpose”? In this chapter, we’ll explore what makes fibromyalgia a pain amplification syndrome. Why does the patient hurt in places where there was often no injury and all laboratory tests are normal? What creates what doctors call allodynia, or a clinical situation that results in pain from a stimulus (such as light touch) that normally should not be painful? Fibromyalgia is a form of chronic, widespread allodynia, as well as sustained hyperalgesia, or greater sensitivity than would be expected to an adverse stimulus. The nervous system consists of several components. The brain and spinal cord comprise the central nervous system. Nerves leaving the spinal cord that tell us to move our arms or legs are part of the “motor” aspects of the peripheral nervous system. Additionally, all sorts of information about touch, taste, chemicals, and pressure are relayed through “sensory” pathways back to the spinal cord, where they are processed and sent up to the brain for a response. The autonomic nervous system consists of specialized peripheral nerves. Fibromyalgia is a disorder characterized by an inappropriate neuromuscular reaction that leads to chronic pain. Patients with fibromyalgia usually react normally to acute pain. Our current concepts of the way the body responds to chronic painful stimuli stem from the gate theory, first proposed by Ronald Melzack and Patrick Wall in 1965. Nerve “wires” go from the periphery to the dorsal horn of the spinal cord. These wires are modulated by feedback loops within the nervous system.
Insights into Insides: Chest, Cardiovascular, and Other Concerns
Authors: Wallace Daniel J. , Brock Wallace Janice
Published: November 2020

Although some patients are concerned that their critical organs are involved in fibromyalgia, chest area symptoms infrequently are related to heart or lung disease. Palpitations, noncardiac chest pain, and subjective swelling or edema are important symptoms and signs of fibromyalgia. Reflux from the esophagus, gastrointestinal complaints, and female organ-related problems are also reviewed in this chapter in the context of fibromyalgia-associated concerns. The pounding in her chest was becoming unbearable, and Georgia was sure she would pass out. The sensation had been noticed before, but it usually stopped after several seconds. After several minutes, Georgia no longer felt lightheaded or dizzy. She broke into a cold sweat and heaved a sigh of relief. Her internist was aware of Georgia’s intermittent musculoskeletal aches and spasms and fatigue, which were managed with ibuprofen and occasional cyclobenzaprine (Flexeril) at night. When Georgia mentioned her fatigue to Dr. Baker, her comments were greeted with silence and not immediately pursued. Consequently, she drank four Diet Cokes to make it through the workday in addition to her morning coffee. Dr. Baker ordered a two-dimensional echocardiogram (a heart image in ultrasound) that demonstrated evidence of mitral valve prolapse. He told Georgia that the palpitations were brought on by drinking too much caffeine, and said that if she could not reduce her caffeine intake substantially, he would have to prescribe a beta-blocker to control her heart rate. The sense of having extra heartbeats, or palpitations, is reported in l0–20 percent of patients with fibromyalgia. Although heart disease, caffeine intake, anxiety, and other factors are associated with palpitations, many otherwise healthy young women have mitral valve prolapse. The prevalence of mitral valve prolapse is clearly increased in fibromyalgia. The mitral valve, one of the four valves of the heart that lies between its right-sided chambers, can become more floppy under ANS influence and produce palpitations. Patients feel as though they will pass out but rarely do. Mitral valve prolapse is also associated with chest pains and shortness of breath and can be easily diagnosed by a heart ultrasound known as a two-dimensional echocardiogram.
What Conditions are Associated with Fibromyalgia?
Authors: Wallace Daniel J. , Brock Wallace Janice
Published: November 2020

The perception of fibromyalgia as a distinct syndrome is relatively new. As recounted in chapter 1, healers and sufferers have struggled to define what people have and how they feel with regard to widespread pain and fatigue complaints since the time of Job. Throughout this century, patients with fibromyalgia-like complaints have been diagnosed by physicians as having all types of conditions, syndromes, and diseases. Many of these overlap with fibromyalgia and this chapter focuses on the most important ones. Friends always thought Kathy was an overachiever. They marveled that she could be an exemplary mother devoted to her two children and hold down a high-powered executive position while still finding time to run the church auxiliary and play tennis six hours a week. When she missed work for three days with a temperature of 102°F, a sore throat, cough, and swollen neck glands, nobody anticipated what followed. Although she returned to work the next week, it was clear that something had changed. Kathy was too tired to play tennis and started going to bed early. She began having difficulty thinking clearly and complained to her doctor about a “fog” in her brain. When the weather changed, Kathy reported being more stiff and achy. Ultimately, Kathy was diagnosed as having a postinfectious fatigue syndrome. She took a leave of absence from her job, but the company hired her as a consultant to help out with specific projects, which allowed her to work at a more leisurely pace. After 18 months, she returned to her job. Kathy seemed to be herself but was working at about 80 percent of her previous level. The codification and “legitimization” of fibromyalgia with statistically validated criteria has paralleled similar initiatives concerning chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS). Chapter 1 recounted some of the earlier insights and efforts. An acute infection is often characterized by fever, swollen glands, and either a cold/bronchitis, a stomach/intestinal condition, or an aching/debilitating presentation. As the body fights infection and makes antibodies against microbes, acute symptoms and signs start to disappear and most of the time patients feel much better.
The Future Holds a Lot of Hope
Authors: Wallace Daniel J. , Brock Wallace Janice
Published: November 2020

When we became interested in fibromyalgia over 20 years ago, we quickly learned how it felt to be lonely. The Fibrositis Study Club (now the Fibromyalgia Study Club) of the American Rheumatism Association (now the American College of Rheumatology) had an average attendance of ten at its annual meetings. In 2001, more than 500 rheumatologists attended the same meeting. During the early 1980s, an average of 14 articles a year appeared in the fibromyalgia medical literature, and less than $100,000 was being spent annually on fibromyalgia research. The recognition of fibromyalgia by organized medicine as a distinct syndrome has had a salutary effect on research. As of this writing, 500 articles are now published yearly and $2 million is spent annually on research. All this attention and interest bodes well for more scientific breakthroughs in the field. What can fibromyalgia patients hope for over the next 20 years? In all probability, the name fibromyalgia will be replaced by a more all-encompassing term, one that includes related syndromes that have similar causes and physiologic processes. A better (and catchier) term that combines symptoms and signs reported in tension headache, pain amplification, irritable bowel syndrome, irritable bladder, and chronic fatigue syndrome, among others, will be devised and agreed on. When organized medicine marshals the resources of experts in gastroenterology, infectious disease, rheumatology, and other subspecialties to work together, our knowledge of pain amplification, neurotransmitter-mediated, behaviorally influenced fatigue syndromes will be increased, and research strategies will be better coordinated and focused. Fibromyalgia advocacy groups will unite to increase funding for research and education that will make a difference. We predict that 2–5 percent of the U.S. population has chronic neuromuscular pain with the systemic overlay mentioned above. Over the next 20 years, the precise racial and ethnic backgrounds of these individuals will be identified, as well as the genes that influence the process. Additionally, environmental and occupational factors that cause or aggravate chronic neuromuscular pain will be clarified. Through coordinated strategies involving all forms of media, the public will become aware of what fibromyalgia is and what factors are associated with it.
Rejecting Gifts
Authors: Ehrenfeld David
Published: November 2020

A long-remembered scene repeated many times: I am about sixteen; it is 5:45 P.M. and we are at the dinner table, with my mother at one end, my father at the other, and my twelve-year-old sister, Judy, sitting across from me. As always, the meal is formal—the oval mahogany table is covered with a clean tablecloth and there are three courses: appetizer, main course, dessert. And as always we are eating very quickly to keep up with my father, who must be back at the office at six to see more patients. The phone rings; I can hear our maid, Josephine, going to answer it. A pause. Then Josephine comes into the dining room. “It’s Dr. Williams,” she tells my father. My mother is annoyed. “Why does he always call at dinnertime?” she asks, but my father is already on the way to the phone. Dr. Williams and my father, both practicing physicians, occasionally meet at Passaic General Hospital, but Dr. Williams, who has heart problems, is also my father’s patient, and that is why he is calling. He knows that my father puts his patients ahead of his dinner. Soon, my father returns to snatch a hasty bite of dessert and tells my mother, “I’ll be going to Rutherford after office hours tonight. I should be back around ten.” My mother says nothing. Another scene, equally well remembered: My father and I are in a car, and he is driving; I am not yet old enough for a license. He speaks tome in that tentative, half-apprehensive tone of voice that fathers use to-ward adolescent sons when they are about to propose something new.“You know that I have a patient, Dr. Williams, over in Rutherford? Well he’s beginning to go blind and needs somebody to read to him once a week for an hour or two. I told him I would ask you—he would pay you for your time.”From my hesitation, my father knows that I am not liking the idea.“You would enjoy reading to Dr. Williams,” he continues. “He’s a very interesting man. He writes poetry.”
The Architecture of Science
Authors: Orr David W.
Published: November 2020

Back to the future. Suppose for a moment that you are the chair of a faculty team at Cornell University in the year 1905 and are charged with the responsibility for developing plans for a new science building. You, however, have the foreknowledge that this building is the one in which a young man from Columbus, Ohio, Thomas Midgley Jr., will one day learn his basic science. Further, you know what he will do over the course of his career. You have only this one chance to affect the mind of the man who will otherwise someday hold the world’s record for banned toxic substances by formulating leaded gasoline and chlorofluorocarbons. What would you do? Before developing the building program, could you engage your faculty colleagues in a conversation about the kind of science to be taught in the building? Would it be possible, in other words, to make architecture a derivative of curriculum? Would it be possible to signal to all entering the building that knowledge is always incomplete and that, at some scale and under some conditions, it can be dangerous? Is it possible to make this warning similar to but more effective than the Surgeon General’s warning on a pack of cigarettes? If you succeed, the catastrophes of lead dispersal from automobile exhaust and the thinning of stratospheric ozone from chlorofluorocarbons will not occur. Of course, the design of science buildings alone is not likely to influence young minds as much as teachers, peers, and classes do, but it is far from inconsequential. Frank Lloyd Wright once said that he could design a house for a newly married couple that would cause them to divorce within a matter of weeks. By the same logic, it is possible to design science buildings in such a way that they contribute to the estrangement of mind and nature, deadening senses and sensibilities. Indeed, this is the way we typically construct buildings. Typically, science buildings are massive and fortresslike and give no hint of intimacy with nature. Their design is utilitarian, with long, straight corridors and graceless, square rooms. Neither daylight nor natural sounds are permitted. Windows do not open.
A Higher Order of Heroism
Authors: Orr David W.
Published: November 2020

In the towns and cities across America, it is common to find a town square with a large monument to one military hero or another. Seldom, however, does one find the designers of those towns or town squares similarly memorialized. A smarter and more durable society would first acknowledge those with the foresight and dedication to design our places well, not just those who defended them in times of trouble.We need to recognize a higher order of heroism—those who helped avoid conflict, harmonized human communities with their surroundings, preserved soil and biological diversity, and created the basis for a more permanent peace than that possible to forge by violence. These are quiet heroes and heroines who work mostly out of the light of publicity. The few who do receive public acclaim are mostly reticent about the attention they get. Some like Frederick Law Olmsted, Aldo Leopold, and Rachel Carson develop a wide international following. Most, however, labor in obscurity, content to do their work for the satisfaction of doing things well. John Lyle, professor of landscape architecture at California Polytechnic Institute, was such a man. I met John in the mid-1980s during a visit to Cal Poly. During the two days we spent together, we talked about his concept of regenerative design and his plans for the Center for Regenerative Studies, now named the Lyle Center, and walked over the site—located between a large landfill and the university. In subsequent years, John and I met at conferences and sometimes collaborated on design projects, including one located in a remote, hilly, southern rural community. Our first site visit coincided with an ice storm the previous day that had covered the region with an inch of ice. We got within a mile of the site in a rental car, but had to make our way down a long, steep hill with a sheer drop of several hundred feet on one side. For the final mile on what passed for a dirt road in that part of the country, the rental car was useless, so we began to slip, slide, and tumble our way down the hill. Near the bottom, the road banked steeply to the right, but we had to reach a trail on the left side.
The Climate of the Central Arizona and Phoenix Long-Term Ecological Research Site (CAP LTER) and Links to ENSO
Authors: Brazel Anthony J. , Ellis Andrew W.
Published: November 2020

The Central Arizona and Phoenix LTER (CAP LTER) is one of two urban LTERs in the world network (Grimm et al. 2000; see http://caplter.asu.edu). Many LTER sites display a detectable climatic signal related to the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) phenomenon (Greenland 1999). The purpose of this chapter is twofold: (1) to provide some insight into the role of the tropical Pacific Ocean as a driver of several climatic (and thus, ecologically related) variables in the CAP LTER location of central Arizona, and (2) to suggest the linkages of ENSO events to selected ecosystem processes near and within the geographical region of CAP LTER (figure 7.1a). From past studies, it is clear that the seasonal and annual climate regimes of the southwestern United States, particularly water-related parameters, are linked to the periodicities and anomalies of what is known as the Multivariate ENSO Index (MEI) and Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) (e.g., Wolter 1987; Molles and Dahm 1990; Redmond and Koch 1991; Woolhiser and Keefer 1993; Wolter and Timlin 1993; Cayan and Redmond 1994; Redmond and Cayan 1994; Cayan et al. 1999; Redmond and Cayan 1999; Simpson and Colodner 1999; Redmond 2000; and Mason and Goddard 2001). In Arizona, and especially in the CAP LTER region, precipitation is bimodal during the year with peaks in winter (mostly midlatitudederived frontal storms) and in mid-to-late summer, mostly in the form of convective thunderstorms during the North American monsoon season. Recent studies show a strong connection between ENSO and winter moisture in Arizona, such that it is even possible to forecast impending conditions in advance (Pagano et al. 1999). These studies have established relationships between the climate of the southwest ern United States and ENSO by demonstrating monthly and daily timescale effects on inputs of moisture and resultant streamflow in Arizona (e.g., Molles and Dahm 1990; Cayan et al. 1999; and Simpson and Colodner 1999). The synoptic- and largescale circulation patterns associated with anomalies of MEI/SOI in the southwestern United States provide additional insight into regional forces that drive the CAPLTER climate (e.g., Redmond and Koch 1991). Generally, when the warm phase of the tropical Pacific Ocean occurs (El Niño, thus negative SOI, positive MEI), across the Southwest precipitation is generally anomalously high.