Significant Facts in the History of the Metric system for Teachers of Junior and Senior High School Mathematics

1929 ◽  
Vol 22 (7) ◽  
pp. 373-381
Author(s):  
Edwin W. Schreiber

It was down in old Mexico that I had my first real introduction to the metric system. 'Tis true I had met the meter and her children, centimeter, millimeter, and little micron, in a formal way whiJe busy in the laboratories at the university in my undergraduate clays-but it was a cold and scientific acquaintance. Under a warm southern sky, with the sun doing its full share to brighten the picture, I read in no uncertain letters on a freshly painted sign which was posted on a little rail way station in old Sonora: "To Calexico, 33.5 Km." So here upon a common road (not a royal one) Kilometer and I met face to face. From that friendly meeting of a member of the metric system a desire was kindled within me to know more about the family history of the meter, and since that time (1913) I have picked up some interesting facts covering the whole family, some of which it is my purpose to relate at this time.

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 237802311982933 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter K. Enns ◽  
Youngmin Yi ◽  
Megan Comfort ◽  
Alyssa W. Goldman ◽  
Hedwig Lee ◽  
...  

What percentage of Americans have ever had a family member incarcerated? To answer this question, we designed the Family History of Incarceration Survey (FamHIS). The survey was administered in the summer of 2018 by NORC at the University of Chicago using their AmeriSpeak Panel. It was funded by FWD.us, which released a separate report using the data. The data show that 45 percent of Americans have ever had an immediate family member incarcerated. The incarceration of an immediate family member was most prevalent for blacks (63 percent) but common for whites (42 percent) and Hispanics (48 percent) as well. College graduates had a lower risk of having a family member incarcerated, but the risk for black college graduates was comparatively high. The most common form of family member incarceration was the incarceration of a sibling.


2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (9) ◽  
pp. 4700
Author(s):  
Michelle M. Monasky ◽  
Emanuele Micaglio ◽  
Giuseppe Ciconte ◽  
Ilaria Rivolta ◽  
Valeria Borrelli ◽  
...  

Genetic testing in Brugada syndrome (BrS) is still not considered to be useful for clinical management of patients in the majority of cases, due to the current lack of understanding about the effect of specific variants. Additionally, family history of sudden death is generally not considered useful for arrhythmic risk stratification. We sought to demonstrate the usefulness of genetic testing and family history in diagnosis and risk stratification. The family history was collected for a proband who presented with a personal history of aborted cardiac arrest and in whom a novel variant in the SCN5A gene was found. Living family members underwent ajmaline testing, electrophysiological study, and genetic testing to determine genotype-phenotype segregation, if any. Patch-clamp experiments on transfected human embryonic kidney 293 cells enabled the functional characterization of the SCN5A novel variant in vitro. In this study, we provide crucial human data on the novel heterozygous variant NM_198056.2:c.5000T>A (p.Val1667Asp) in the SCN5A gene, and demonstrate its segregation with a severe form of BrS and multiple sudden deaths. Functional data revealed a loss of function of the protein affected by the variant. These results provide the first disease association with this variant and demonstrate the usefulness of genetic testing for diagnosis and risk stratification in certain patients. This study also demonstrates the usefulness of collecting the family history, which can assist in understanding the severity of the disease in certain situations and confirm the importance of the functional studies to distinguish between pathogenic mutations and harmless genetic variants.


2021 ◽  
Vol Publish Ahead of Print ◽  
Author(s):  
Hyo Geun Choi ◽  
Wook Chun ◽  
Kuk Hyun Jung

2014 ◽  
Vol 8 (11-12) ◽  
pp. 783 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Walker ◽  
Alyssa Louis ◽  
Alejandro Berlin ◽  
Sheri Horsburgh ◽  
Robert G. Bristow ◽  
...  

Introduction: The prostate-specific antigen (PSA) era and resultant early detection of prostate cancer has presented clinicians with the challenge of distinguishing indolent from aggressive tumours. Mutations in the BRCA1/2 genes have been associated with prostate cancer risk and prognosis. We describe the prostate cancer screening characteristics of BRCA1/2 mutation carriers, who may be classified as genetically-defined high risk, as compared to another high-risk cohort of men with a family history of prostate cancer to evaluate the utility of a targeted screening approach for these men.Methods: We reviewed patient demographics, clinical screening characteristics, pathological features, and treatment outcomes between a group of BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutation carriers and age-matched men with a family history of prostate cancer followed at our institutional Prostate Cancer Prevention Clinic from 1995 to 2012.Results: Screening characteristics were similar between the mutation carriers (n = 53) and the family history group (n = 53). Some cancers would be missed in both groups by using a PSA cut-off of >4 ug/L. While cancer detection was higher in the family history group (21% vs. 15%), the mutation carrier group was more likely to have intermediate- or high-risk disease (88% vs. 36%). BRCA2 mutation carriers were more likely to have aggressive disease, biological recurrence, and distant metastasis.Conclusions: In our cohort, regular screening appears justified for detecting prostate cancer in BRCA1 and BRCA2 carriers and other high-risk populations. Lowering PSA cut-offs and defining monitoring of PSA velocity as part of the screening protocol may be useful. BRCA2 is associated with more aggressive disease, while the outcome for BRCA1 mutation carriers requires further study. Large multinational studies will be important to define screening techniques for this unique high-risk population.


2007 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 23-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
N.H. Noran ◽  
N. Salleh ◽  
M. Zahari

The objective of this study is to evaluate the relationship between reproductive exposures and age-related cataract among women. This was a hospital based case-control study. The study population included female patients, aged 50 years and above who attended the Eye clinic at the University of Malaya Medical Centre. The outcome measurement was based on ophthalmologic examination by an ophthalmologist. The data on exposure was obtained from face to face interview using a structured questionnaire. In order to reduce the recall bias, patients' medical records were used to substantiate the exposure status. Multiple logistic regression was used to assess the association of age-related cataract with exogenous estrogen usage (HRT and OCP) and duration of menses. Important confounders such as age, history of diabetes, cigarette smoking and steroids usage were controlled for in the analysis. Females with 29 years or less of endogenous estrogen exposure of, have almost three times the risk of developing age related cataract (adjusted OR 3.42: 95% CI: 1.28,9.16), similarly among those with exposure of 30- 32 years (adjusted OR 3.64: 95% CI: 1.08,12.26). Hormone Replacement Therapy used for more than three years was found to be a protective factor of age-related cataract. There is evidence that reproductive exposure may play a role in reducing the occurrence of age-related cataract among Malaysian women. Asia Pac J Public Health 2007; 19(2): 23-28.


PEDIATRICS ◽  
1957 ◽  
Vol 19 (5) ◽  
pp. 908-915
Author(s):  
Eugene F. Diamond

A study of cases of rheumatic fever admitted to La Rabida Sanitarium over a 5-year period was carried out to evaluate heredity and environment as etiologic factors in rheumatic disease. The incidence of rheumatic fever was shown to be higher in families where one or both parents were known to have a positive family history of rheumatic fever. The incidence of rheumatic fever was compared in environmental groups. A totally unfavorable environment was shown to increase the incidence of rheumatic fever. No single unfavorable environmental factor changed the incidence of rheumatic fever. The incidence of rheumatic fever in each environmental group was higher when there was a positive family history for rheumatic fever, indicating an hereditary factor in the family incidence of rheumatic fever. Analysis of the various mating types in the families with a positive rheumatic trait was carried out. Agreement with a simple autosomal recessive gene inheritance was obtained in families where both parents had a definite family history, but no agreement was obtained in cases where only one parent gave a positive family history.


Author(s):  
Jonathan Rose

Every student should, before graduating, see the 2006 teen-comedy movie Accepted. It’s a broad satire built around some high-school misfits whom no college admissions officer in his right mind would accept, not even in this economy. So they commandeer an abandoned mental asylum and construct their own college based on Marxism (Groucho), and they do to higher education what A Night at the Opera did to Il Trovatore. To a flabbergasted visitor, the teenage president of the college recommends the school newspaper, The Rag. “There’s a great op-ed piece in there about not believing everything you read,” he explains. Like all absurdist comedy, Accepted poses that subversive question, “Who’s absurd here?” It stands upside-down all the pretenses of university life, including its most fundamental pretense, that if we spend years here reading, we will get closer to the truth. Is there, though, any necessary relation between reality and what we find on the printed page? It’s a question that has become particularly acute today, when it seems that every man is his own deconstructionist. When Paul Ricoeur coined the phrase “hermeneutic of suspicion,” he was only recommending this reading strategy to literary theorists, but his students took it quite seriously and in 1968 turned the University of Nanterre into, well, something like the campus in Accepted. And today that skepticism is thoroughly mainstream. According to the Gallup Poll, only 32 percent of Americans in 2016 have confidence in the media, down from a high of 72 percent in 1976, post-Woodward and Bernstein. Among millennials (18-to-29-year-olds), just 11 percent trust the media. In Britain, back in 1975, only about a third of tabloid readers and just 3 percent of readers of “quality” broadsheets felt that their paper “often gets its facts wrong.” But by 2012 no British daily was trusted by a majority of the public “to report fairly and accurately.” In something of a contradiction, the Sun enjoyed both the largest circulation and the lowest level of trust (just 9 percent).


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