Search

Emerald ash borer (EAB) (Agrilus planipennis), an invasive nonnative beetle, is responsible for the mortality of ash trees in the eastern and midwestern United States. Despite efforts to contain this beetle through various control options, human-induced spread of EAB has caused damage to ash forests in many states. Because most ash trees are under private ownership, it is important to understand how landowners evaluate the risk of EAB and perceive the effectiveness of various control options. A mail survey of private forest landowners was conducted in Kentucky in 2020 to assess their awareness and perception of various control options of EAB infestation. Results from this survey suggest that landowners are concerned about EAB and the associated increased risks, reduced quality of scenic views, and increased cleanup costs. Landowners experiencing EAB infestation believed that EAB management needs collective actions and that current efforts by government agencies are not sufficient. However, few landowners are taking actions themselves to manage EAB on their property. These findings shed light on the extent to which landowners are concerned about EAB impact and emphasize the need for development of effective control options and outreach programs to increase landowner engagement and actions in EAB control and management.

Native ash species in the central hardwood region of the United States have been threatened by infestations of emerald ash borers (EAB), which have caused significant damage to the forests’ ecological and economic value. Because private landowners own most of these forestlands, their knowledge, attitudes, and behavior are important in managing EAB effectively across the landscape. We conducted a mail survey of landowners in Kentucky, where EAB are spreading across the state and causing variable levels of damage depending upon how long they have been established, and assessed whether and how psychosocial and demographic factors help explain the landowner’s behavioral intention to manage EAB on their property. The results of an ordinal logistic regression model, grounded in a modified theory of planned behavior framework, suggested that severity of risk perception, knowledge about management options, importance of economic objectives, and perceived group efficacy were related positively to landowners’ intention to manage EAB. These findings shed light on landowners’ perspective of EAB’s effects and the role of psychosocial factors in their motivation to adopt EAB control options.Study Implications: Landowners’ active participation can be critical in managing EAB effectively in privately owned forests. This study found that landowners’ management intentions depended on their perception of EAB risks, knowledge of EAB prevention, and perceived cooperation among landowners. Raising awareness of EAB threats, educating landowners on the control options available, and promoting collaborative approaches to combat EAB at the regional scale can help increase landowners’ participation in EAB management. Taking a collaborative approach is important to address such transboundary problems as EAB infestations because such an approach ensures that relevant agencies will provide landowners with continuous legal, technical, and financial support.

Click here for the corresponding questions to this CME article.

Maps are a crucial item of evidence in international law, yet their limitations in terms of constructing reality are not usually considered in depth. Maps are not objective, but rather subjective, and hence political, documents. International courts and tribunals, and international negotiations, often apply maps as if they were unimpeachable. After all, they do appear on their face to be scientific instruments, depicting a photographic and naturalistic representation of reality. However, they are not naturally occurring themselves; they are constructions that function as imperfect models, representing reality for certain purposes. For whatever purposes the map is used, the map must be evaluated, and perhaps deconstructed. This article will examine the various ways in which maps are products of choices, errors and assumptions, and the implications those limitations have for maps when they serve as evidence in international relations.

Clearly a state has a right to expel aliens generally, and a state has a right to grant asylum to aliens, but the question is whether an individual has a right to asylum opposable to the state’s right to expel. In the literature, it is commonly understood that no such right exists. Treaty obligations discussing a “right to asylum” are understood in various ways, generally not to provide for a right to receive asylum but apply for it. However, the past few decades have shown a growth in conventions addressing asylum, especially, but not limited to, the European context. With refugee flows being an inherently international concern with a need for durable solutions, increasingly refugees are being assimilated to refugee-seekers. States are reacting or anticipating these issues by adopting domestic rights to asylum, at least for individuals qualifying as refugees. These trends suggest an evolving international consensus on opinio juris and state practice that refugees must receive asylum. Thus, it appears that the right to asylum for refugees exists under customary international law.The paper will proceed broadly in two sections viewing the issue from different perspectives. In the first section, the paper will begin by examining the “right to asylum” from the perspective of the states, the authors of the Refugee Convention and similar agreements. The paper will conclude that the “right to asylum” in those agreements is directed at states, not individuals. In essence, states have a right vis-a-vis other states to grant asylum to aliens and not have that act be viewed as hostile. However, this right of the state does not necessarily exclude a right of individuals to receive asylum if convention or customary international law also demand it. Accordingly, the second section examines the right of the individual to receive asylum. In the first sub-section, the author looks at conventional law and in the following sub-sections he looks at customary international law, specifically state practice and opinio juris. In the conclusion, the author argues that, although there is a state right to grant asylum, there is also an individual right to receive it in certain circumstances. This conclusion is based on widespread and consistent practice granting asylum as an obligatory consequence of refuge.

Purpose: We present the concept of the Green House, articulated by William Thomas as a radically changed, ‘‘deinstitutionalized’’ nursing home well before its first implementation, and we describe and discuss implications from the first Green Houses in Tupelo, Mississippi. Design and Methods: Green Houses are small, selfcontained houses for 10 or fewer elders, each with private rooms and full bathrooms and sharing family-style communal space, including hearth, dining area, and full kitchen. Line staff at the level of certified nursing assistants, called Shahbazim, are ‘‘universal workers,’’ who cook meals, do laundry, provide personal care, assist with habilitation, and promote the elders’ quality of life. Nurses, doctors, and other professionals comprise a visiting clinical support team for the residents and Shahbazim. Multiple Green Houses comprise a nursing home, meeting all nursing facility regulations and working within state-reimbursement levels. In 2003, four Green Houses were built on the campus of a retirement community; in June of that year, 40 residents relocated from the 140-bed nursing home to the Green Houses, including 20 residents previously living in the locked dementia unit. Results: Experiences to date are positive for residents, family, and staff. The sponsor is converting the entire facility to Green Houses, and other providers around the country plan to implement Green House variants. Implications: Because nursing home stock is aging, many physical plants are or soon will be slated for major rebuilding, thereby providing sponsors with an opportunity to consider Green Houses. Early experience suggests that Green Houses are feasible and that outcomes are likely to be positive, and it also suggests that there are some potential issues to overcome in such a dramatic reengineering of nursing homes.

In a randomized, controlled trial of fecal occult blood screening for colorectal cancer, the Minnesota Colon Cancer Control Study carried out 11 annual mail screens in two phases between 1976 and 1992. This long-term compliance record of 15,476 individuals is summarized and related to demographic characteristics as well as to the screening experience of the participants. There was a strong and consistent effect of age, with peak compliance among participants about 70 years old, and lower compliance among the youngest ( or = 80 years) participants. There was a significantly higher rate of screen compliance among participants who lived with other participants, compared with households where only one individual participated in the study. Finally, participants who underwent a diagnostic colorectal examination with negative results had significantly lower odds of compliance.

The authors report a patient with coexistent double gammopathy, a Philadelphia chromosome-negative, bcr rearrangement-negative myeloproliferative disease resembling chronic myelocytic leukemia and a malignant lymphoma of B-cell origin. The double gammopathy consisted of IgM (kappa) and IgG (kappa). Peripheral blood, spleen, and marrow lymphocytes had primarily an IgG (kappa) isotype, whereas lymph node lymphocytes had predominantly an IgM (kappa) surface isotype. Increased numbers of marrow lymphocytes stained doubly for both IgM (kappa) and IgG (kappa). The results suggest that doubly isotypic as well as single isotypic lymphocytes contributed to the double gammopathy. Organ localization differed for lymphocytes with different antibody isotypes. This cluster of findings has not been described previously.

We describe a case of burns purposefully sustained in a patient performing a bizarre pub game while under the influence of alcohol. Full-thickness burns were sustained through contact with a 50-p UK currency coin essentially heated with burning paper. We discuss the nature and ease by which such burns can be sustained in the community and the increasing awareness of alcohol abuse as a factor in a significant proportion of such self-inflicted burns.

Lisa I. Iezzoni (editor) Hardback, 508 pp, August 2003, ISBN 1-56793-207-X, $76.50, AcademyHealth/HAP (http://www.ache.org/hap.cfm) Lisa Iezzoni and colleagues produced the first edition of Risk Adjustment for Measuring Health Care Outcomes nearly 10 years ago. At that time, payers and researchers were concerned with risk adjustment primarily as a tool for hospital payment and for assessing hospital performance. Although the Health Care Financing Administration had ceased issuing Medicare risk-adjusted mortality rate reports, several other hospital performance reporting projects were then underway, such as New York State’s coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) surgery mortality project, Pennsylvania’s hospital outcomes reporting project, and the Cleveland Health Quality Choice program. In the years since the publication of the first edition, interest in risk adjustment in health care has expanded greatly. Risk adjustment continues to be used in hospital quality and efficiency reports, but now it is also a frequent input to health plan capitation calculations, and it is used with increasing frequency for measuring and reporting the performance of physicians, networks, groups, and even individuals. In addition to state agencies, researchers, and health plans, now purchasers—primarily large employers and business coalitions—have entered the field as major consumers of health provider performance information. Additional types of outcomes and new data sources and statistical methodologies have emerged, …

SUMMARY Suggested diagnostics for influence on the estimated regression coefficients in a generalized linear model have generally approximated the effect of deleting a single case. We apply the local influence method of Cook (1986) to assess the effect of small perturbations of the data, including the vector of responses, case weights, explanatory variables, and the components of one case. The resulting diagnostics allow one to check for different kinds of influence, and may give insight into its workings. Two examples illustrate some of the diagnostics.

The intravenous infusion of methylene blue was investigated as a procedure that would identify parathyroid glands during operation in 17 patients with primary hyperparathyroidism. The dye was found to stain all adenomas, most hyperplastic glands and occasionally normal parathyroid glands. In addition, the frequency of glandular staining was directly related to the size of the gland, although size and histology may have been independent variables. Methylene blue infusion is a safe effective method of localizing abnormal parathyroid glands.

Larvae of the alfalfa weevil, Hypera Postica (Gyllenhal), were reared at 25.6°C and with a 15-hour photoperiod. Following emergence, adults were active for 2-3 weeks before entering diapause. During this period, weevils were exposed to parasites, and at a parasite-host ratio of ca. 1:50 survival of weevils averaged 93%. Diapausing pausing parasitized weevils were stored successfully at 10°C. Topical applications of a synthetic juvenile hormone, a mixture of cis,trans and trans,trans -10,11-epoxyfarnesenic acid methyl ester, were used to break diapause in hosts and coordinate emergence of parasites so that a large number of Microclonus aethiops (Nees) would be available for release within a short time interval. Parasites were released either as adults (ca. 100 mated females/field) or as larvae within hormone-treated hosts. The adult-release method was superior. M. aethiops was released at 5 sites in Maryland where it was determined previously to be absent. It was recovered at Germantown, Montgomery County; Boonsboro, Washington County; and Butler, Baltimore County. The parasite was reported previously to have established itself in 6 additional eastern and northern counties of Maryland, apparently as a result of dispersion from Delaware and Pennsylvania.