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A previously healthy toddler with bilious vomiting and erythematous gluteal rash over 2 weeks had intermittent pain, constipation and decreased appetite. All labs were negative with the exception of fecal occult blood. Abdominal x-ray and ultrasound revealed dilated air-filled loops of bowel and partial small bowel obstruction. After persistent worsening abdominal pain and vomiting a CT scan with IV contrast (Fig. 1) suggested small bowel obstruction. Emergent surgery was performed and diagnostic laparoscopy revealed about 61 cm of necrotic bowel causing stricture formation and mesenteric shortening in the distal small bowel. 56 cm of inflamed bowel was resected with end-to-end anastomosis. Final pathology report indicated diffuse intestinal angiomatosis with transmural involvement and focal erosion consistent with KHE (Fig. 2). Presentation is varied, consists of cutaneous lesion, retroperitoneal mass, intestinal obstruction, jaundice, intussusception, or multifocal neoplasms. Complete surgical resection with wide margins is the best therapeutic option and has achieved the best outcomes. If not treated in sufficient time, KHE has a relatively high mortality rate of 30%, with most deaths occurring due to its locally invasive effects [5]. There are limited reports of identifying features of KHE on imaging. Of 165 cases of KHE none were presented in the small bowel [5]. We report the unique case of KHE presenting as a hypervascular mass causing obstruction in the distal small bowel. Although extremely rare, KHE should be considered as a reason for severe GI stricture or obstruction in infants and children in obscure cases and included in the differential.

Regulation of plant root angle is critical for obtaining nutrients and water and is an important trait for plant breeding. A plant’s final, long-term root angle is the net result of a complex series of decisions made by a root tip in response to changes in nutrient availability, impediments, the gravity vector and other stimuli. When a root tip is displaced from the gravity vector, the short-term process of gravitropism results in rapid reorientation of the root toward the vertical. Here, we explore both short- and long-term regulation of root growth angle, using natural variation in tomato to identify shared and separate genetic features of the two responses. Mapping of expression quantitative trait loci mapping and leveraging natural variation between and within species including Arabidopsis suggest a role for PURPLE ACID PHOSPHATASE 27 and CELL DIVISION CYCLE 73 in determining root angle.

Paratesticular rhabdomyosarcoma is a rare but aggressive malignancy in children and adolescents. Prognosis is related to initial tumor resectability as well as staging of the disease based on tumor invasiveness, tumor bulk, nodal disease and metastases. We report the unusual presentation of paratesticular rhabdomyosarcoma with metastatic extension through the inguinal canal and encasement of the abdominal aorta. These features portend a poor prognosis given their association with a greater stage of disease and unresectable nature at presentation. Delayed surgical resection follows a regimen of chemotherapy and radiation therapy in such cases of extensive disease. Encasement of the abdominal aorta has been shown to increase presurgical risk for intraoperative vascular injury when related to other malignancies, but its role in relation to metastatic paratesticular rhabdomyosarcoma has not been investigated. Also, rhabdomyosarcoma should be considered in the differential diagnoses of tumors that demonstrate encasement of the abdominal aorta.

Plants are associated with a complex microbiota that contributes to nutrient acquisition, plant growth, and plant defense. Nitrogen-fixing microbial associations are efficient and well characterized in legumes but are limited in cereals, including maize. We studied an indigenous landrace of maize grown in nitrogen-depleted soils in the Sierra Mixe region of Oaxaca, Mexico. This landrace is characterized by the extensive development of aerial roots that secrete a carbohydrate-rich mucilage. Analysis of the mucilage microbiota indicated that it was enriched in taxa for which many known species are diazotrophic, was enriched for homologs of genes encoding nitrogenase subunits, and harbored active nitrogenase activity as assessed by acetylene reduction and 15N2 incorporation assays. Field experiments in Sierra Mixe using 15N natural abundance or 15N-enrichment assessments over 5 years indicated that atmospheric nitrogen fixation contributed 29%–82% of the nitrogen nutrition of Sierra Mixe maize., Author summary Nitrogen is an essential nutrient for plants, and for many nonlegume crops, the requirement for nitrogen is primarily met by the use of inorganic fertilizers. These fertilizers are produced from fossil fuel by energy-intensive processes that are estimated to use 1% to 2% of the total global energy supply and produce an equivalent share of greenhouse gases. Because maize (Zea mays L.) is a significant recipient of nitrogen fertilization, a research goal for decades has been to identify or engineer mechanisms for biological fixation of atmospheric nitrogen in association with this crop. We hypothesized that isolated indigenous landraces of maize grown using traditional practices with little or no fertilizer might have evolved strategies to improve plant performance under low-nitrogen nutrient conditions. Here, we show that for one such maize landrace grown in nitrogen-depleted fields near Oaxaca, Mexico, 29%–82% of the plant nitrogen is derived from atmospheric nitrogen. High levels of nitrogen fixation are supported, at least in part, by the abundant production of a sugar-rich mucilage associated with aerial roots that provides a home to a complex nitrogen-fixing microbiome.

A 7-cm anterior mediastinal tumor in an 80-year-old woman was found by light and electron microscopy to be a neuroblastoma. Immunoreactivity for neuron-specific enolase, synaptophysin, and chromogranin supported the diagnosis. Neuroblastoma is an uncommon tumor in adults and we are not aware of a previous report of such a tumor in a patient of this age.

As we have seen, the international “free trade” offensive emerged in the 1950s and got rolling between the early 1970s and early 1980s, with the oil crisis of the 1979–80 period helping to bring dozens of countries under International Monetary Fund (IMF) supervision in just a couple of years. This was also the time period in which a major shift began in the direction of American politics. The Ford and Carter presidencies marked a significant departure from the tone and tenor of American politics in the middle of the twentieth century. The idea of an active government held responsible for the general direction of the U.S. economy, a part of America’s political history, became widely accepted under FDR. Kennedy gave it new dimensions and new momentum. No president from FDR to Nixon made government the target of a general attack. For forty-one years, from 1933 to 1974, the federal government was widely viewed as an instrument of progress. That began to change in a clear way in the period between 1974 and the early 1980s.

The New Deal broke the trend and pattern of the period of roughly the 1870s to the 1920s. The trend was the growing dominance of Wall Street and of the social and political organization that had developed from what Veblen called the investor class. We have referred to the sociopolitical organization as the Establishment, the aristo-finance elite, or the Higher Circles. By the end of the 1920s, private forces, with greater wealth, organization, and unity than ever before, were shaping the government to serve their purposes. This is certainly not the outcome that Hamilton or Lincoln desired. It is not the outcome favored by such American System writers as Rae and Veblen. Government still played an important role in the regulation of trade, and it played an important role at various levels (federal, state, local) in a variety of areas, from infrastructure to basic education to agricultural research. But the trend of the late 1800s to 1920s period was clear. Government was increasingly handmaiden to private wealth, not the force shaping the country’s future, as it often was under the influence of American System ideas. The role of the American System ideas has been and is routinely ignored by most historians, contemporary commentators, and economists. It may well be the case that no students in the country’s graduate schools are trained today in American System ideas. To some degree or another they are all taught economics based on the English school.

The 1970s featured new calls for an open, global economic system. Part of this globalism was Anglo-American free trade imperialism under a new label. In fact, as the decade ended, the most ambitious effort ever to force countries to submit to free trade imperialist policies would be under way. High oil prices, high interest rates, and global economic slowdown were the circumstances that forced countries to conform to IMF policies. The calls for a global, free trade, laissez faire system came in part from the leadership of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and from a new organization created by that leadership.

Between the early 1950s and the 1970s the Establishment committed itself and the country to an agenda. At the heart of this agenda have been some very self-serving goals and purposes. Within the United States the goals have included a more passive and compliant federal government. In part this meant a big reduction in the portion of upper-class wealth taken by the government, and it involved the adoption of a policy of laissez faire in relation to government’s regulatory role and in government’s response to mergers and acquisitions and to all forms of speculation. This significantly reduced the role of the federal government in shaping the economy. Consistent with this has been the reduction in government’s role in or expenditures for research and development, science and technology, and infrastructure. This, too, means a reduction in government’s ability to shape or influence the economy. This agenda has also included a reduction in government’s role in regulating trade, a policy tied to the promotion of so-called free trade and laissez faire globally. The global laissez faire policy has put the U.S. Establishment in direct opposition to all forms of government-led economic development and put the United States and international institutions, led by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), in the position of pushing imperialist economic policies. The elimination of foreign exchange controls and of import-export controls and the opening up of countries to foreign investors have been key IMF policies.

Of course, the United States has had an upper class, or classes, as long as it has existed, and before that in the colonial period. This was an evolving and changing upper class, and the evolution and changes that took place in the late 1800s and early 1900s produced something that was new for the United States. What emerged in that period was a national upper class that was socially cohesive, politically organized, in command of great wealth and large economic institutions, and increasingly international in its orientation. In important ways, that international orientation came to resemble England’s colonial and imperial policies. There was some irony in this since the United States was created in the midst of a struggle against those English policies. The extent of the irony is, however, reduced by at least two factors. First, much of the colonial upper strata did not want a revolution. There was at the upper levels an indifference to revolution or a loyalty to England and its rulers. This Anglophile tendency would survive to the 1919 Paris meeting and beyond. Second, neither the United States as a nation nor the upper class had the capacity to be an imperial power in its early history; that changed by the late 1800s.

Adam Smith spoke for entrenched interests. His theories provided a rationale and parts of a strategy for maintaining England’s recently developed advantages over other countries in manufacturing and provided a defense of the developing investor class. Smith argued that other countries should trade with England to get manufactured goods and should not undertake policies to promote their own production. Government should not try to direct the behavior of wealth holders. Cain and Hopkins point out that in an English economy still dominated by agriculture at the end of the 1700s, at least 75 percent of all agricultural land “was owned by no more than 4,000–5,000 aristocrats and gentry.”1 Smith had no apparent problem with this, and his ideas supported freedom of action for these aristocrats and gentry, who also were part of the investor class, as well as for financiers, traders, and manufacturers. At its core this was completely consistent with John Locke’s argument that government and society exist to protect property and to carry out various military and police functions. The American System school of thought was in opposition to the ideas of Smith and Locke and others of the English “liberal” school such as Thomas Malthus and David Ricardo.

The 1970s began a period in which the American Establishment got much of what it wanted in domestic and international affairs. This period of overall Establishment success began with Ford and Carter, and it has lasted at least up through 2008, roughly thirty-five years. If we focus on foreign policy only, the period is longer, roughly forty-five years. As we will see, there are clear signs that in some areas, such as the effort to expand and deepen “free trade,” this period is ending for much of the world. As will be explained later, the laissez faire policy is quite clearly a failure for most people. That, however, does not mean that the policies of the Establishment will be changed any time soon. The Anglo-American Establishment is likely to continue to press the same set of policies they have been supporting in recent decades and, in the case of England, on and off for two centuries or more.

Since the beginning of the country’s existence there have been intermittent and often lengthy conflicts over what should shape the country’s future. On one side have been those who embraced the idea that governmental powers could be used to shape, support, stimulate, or influence economic and social processes in order to promote the general welfare. On the other side have been groups who have argued that the future of the country is best left in the hands of those who control private wealth and property. Markets have often been represented as a mechanism by which private interests would be transformed into public good through the setting of prices and the rational allocation of resources.1 These conflicts and this rivalry have been more subtle than that involving the global clash between socialism and capitalism, but in some ways, more profound and lasting. This rivalry has not been so much about property, profits, and markets as it has been about the purposes of our decisions, actions, and policies.

The end of the 1800s and the beginning of the 1900s featured a series of fundamental changes in the nature of American society. Among those changes were the closing of the American frontier, the movement of people away from the farms and the growth of urban areas, the growth of a new urban middle class, large-scale immigration, the decline of small business in favor of large corporations and monopolies, and the emergence of the United States as a world power.1 In the decades following the Civil War the two tendencies, which were already articulated by the time of Washington’s presidency, Smithian and Hamiltonian, continued to be the main rivals in U.S. politics. National policies were often compromises or admixtures of the two. Throughout the post—Civil War period, as noted earlier, the United States was the most protectionist country in the world, perhaps more protectionist than it needed to be in trade with economic equals. Throughout the period, the federal, state, and local governments continued various programs of internal improvements. These ranged from land grants for railroad construction and the funding of agricultural research at the national level to pure-food laws and expenditures for public education at the state and local levels. In 1878 there were only about 800 public high schools in the country. By 1900 there were more than 6,000. The number of students in high school rose from around 100,000 to 520,000 in the same period.

The objective of this thesis is to demonstrate some new applications of seismic techniques for hydrogeological applications. A compressional-wave, surface-based, reflection seismic technique is used to map aquifer boundaries within a series of Pleistocene near-surface sediments. The interpretation uses both water wells and sequence stratigraphic concepts to identify the boundaries of new and existing aquifers. The use of the cone penetrometer is an integral part of this thesis. The seismic cone is demonstrated to be both cost-effective and reliable for the acquisition of high-quality vertical seismic profile (VSP) data. Other data from the cone, in particular the tip resistance data, are shown to be an integral link for the conversion of shear-wave velocities to values of hydraulic conductivity. Surface-based, shear-wave reflection seismic data are used to image an aquifer contained within Holocene deltaic sediments. A Bayesian inversion of the shear-wave seismic amplitudes (using cone-derived velocities) results in the generation of a two-dimensional profile of shear-wave velocity that is a direct indication of aquifer heterogeneity. Conversion of the velocity to hydraulic conductivity (using a cone-derived relationship) results in the distribution of a key hydrogeologic property within the aquifer. The results from the thesis show significant promise for improving groundwater flow models and providing new techniques for the management and protection of our groundwater resources.

The objective of this thesis is to evaluate bender elements as a source and receiver of elastic waves in cohesionless sand. The techniques used to build the benders that are detailed include the use of an impedance analyzer to monitor changes in the electrical and mechanical response. Placing the benders in a bucket of sand demonstrated the short compact nature of the bender waveform in both a shear and compressional wave orientation. An experiment in a non-homogeneous sandbox showed the change in shear waveform with separation of the elements. A Plexiglas cylinder with benders was used to measure changes in shear and compressional wave velocity as a function of confining pressure and the saturation with water and silicon oil. The effects of friction along the walls of the cylinder resulted in an unknown and irreproducible confining stress on the sand between the benders. An experiment to study the effect of silicon oil viscosity on shear modulus was inconclusive as a result of the unknown stress condition. The bender elements proved to be an excellent source and receiver of elastic waves in cohesionless sand.