Exposure assessment and initial intervention regarding fish consumption of tribal members of the Upper Great Lakes Region in the United States

Abstract:While Africans are generally satisfied that a person of African descent was reelected to the White House following a campaign in which vicious and racist attacks were made against him, the U.S. Africa policy under President Barack Obama will continue to be guided by the strategic interests of the United States, which are not necessarily compatible with the popular aspirations for democracy, peace, and prosperity in Africa. Obama’s policy in the Great Lakes region provides an excellent illustration of this point. Since Rwanda and Uganda are Washington’s allies in the “war against terror” in Darfur and Somalia, respectively, the Obama administration has done little to stop Kigali and Kampala from destabilizing the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and looting its natural resources, either directly or through proxies. Rwanda and Uganda have even been included in an international oversight mechanism that is supposed to guide governance and security sector reforms in the DRC, but whose real objective is to facilitate Western access to the enormous natural wealth of the Congo and the Great Lakes region.

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A Methodology for Flash Drought Identification: Application of Flash Drought Frequency across the United States

Journal of Hydrometeorology ◽

10.1175/jhm-d-18-0198.1 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 20 (5) ◽

pp. 833-846 ◽

Cited By ~ 18

Author(s):

Jordan I. Christian ◽

Jeffrey B. Basara ◽

Jason A. Otkin ◽

Eric D. Hunt ◽

Ryann A. Wakefield ◽

...

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Great Lakes ◽

Great Plains ◽

Hot Spot ◽

The United States ◽

General Definition ◽

Corn Belt ◽

Great Lakes Region ◽

Rapid Rate ◽

Western Great Lakes

Abstract With the increasing use of the term “flash drought” within the scientific community, Otkin et al. provide a general definition that identifies flash droughts based on their unusually rapid rate of intensification. This study presents an objective percentile-based methodology that builds upon that work by identifying flash droughts using standardized evaporative stress ratio (SESR) values and changes in SESR over some period of time. Four criteria are specified to identify flash droughts: two that emphasize the vegetative impacts of flash drought and two that focus on the rapid rate of intensification. The methodology was applied to the North American Regional Reanalysis (NARR) to develop a 38-yr flash drought climatology (1979–2016) across the United States. It was found that SESR derived from NARR data compared well with the satellite-based evaporative stress index for four previously identified flash drought events. Furthermore, four additional flash drought cases were compared with the U.S. Drought Monitor (USDM), and SESR rapidly declined 1–2 weeks before a response was evident with the USDM. From the climatological analysis, a hot spot of flash drought occurrence was revealed over the Great Plains, the Corn Belt, and the western Great Lakes region. Relatively few flash drought events occurred over mountainous and arid regions. Flash droughts were categorized based on their rate of intensification, and it was found that the most intense flash droughts occurred over the central Great Plains, Corn Belt, and western Great Lakes region.

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ARGONAUT II Study of the In Vitro Activity of Plazomicin against Carbapenemase-Producing Klebsiella pneumoniae

Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy ◽

10.1128/aac.00012-20 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 64 (5) ◽

Author(s):

Michael R. Jacobs ◽

Caryn E. Good ◽

Andrea M. Hujer ◽

Ayman M. Abdelhamed ◽

Daniel D. Rhoads ◽

...

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

16S Rrna ◽

Klebsiella Pneumoniae ◽

Great Lakes ◽

The United States ◽

Great Lakes Region ◽

In Vitro Activity ◽

Content Type ◽

Carbapenem Resistant

ABSTRACT Plazomicin was tested against 697 recently acquired carbapenem-resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae isolates from the Great Lakes region of the United States. Plazomicin MIC50 and MIC90 values were 0.25 and 1 mg/liter, respectively; 680 isolates (97.6%) were susceptible (MICs of ≤2 mg/liter), 9 (1.3%) intermediate (MICs of 4 mg/liter), and 8 (1.1%) resistant (MICs of >32 mg/liter). Resistance was associated with rmtF-, rmtB-, or armA-encoded 16S rRNA methyltransferases in all except 1 isolate.

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