A decline in nutritional status is inferred from data on the height and weight of West Point cadets in the antebellum period. The decline was geographically widespread and affected farmers and blue-collar workers the most; middle-class cadets did not experience a decline in nutritional status until the Civil War. Nutritional status declined because meat output did not keep pace with population growth. Urbanization and the expansion of the industrial labor force increased the demand for food. However, the agricultural labor force grew at a slower pace, and productivity growth in food production was insufficient to redress the imbalance.

The interest generated by the anthropometric research program since the pioneering publications of the late 1970s has been predicated to a considerable degree on the discovery of previously unknown cycles in human physical stature since the Industrial Revolution in both Europe and North America. 1 A diminution in the physical stature of Americans born in the late 1830s was first reported by Robert Margo and Richard Steckel in 1983 on the basis of Union Army records (Figure 1) 2 This discovery, as well as the subsequent finding of a similar trend in life expectancy, called into question the common wisdom that the rapid expansion of the US economy during the antebellum decades brought about an unambiguous and monotonic improvement in the human condition. 3 The biological standard of living was hardly expected to decline at a time when per capita output rose by some 50 percent between 1830 and 1860. 4 After all, food is a normal good whose consumption should not diminish at a time of general economic prosperity. 5 That Europeans were not exempt from such anthropometric cycles was discovered two years later. 6 The first decrease in physical stature occurred earlier in Europe, coinciding with the onset of the Industrial Revolution (c.1760 to 1800). 7 It is less paradoxical than the subsequent height cycle beginning in the 1830s, inasmuch as real wages fell consistently

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Flow-through sediment column experiments examined the reoxidation of microbially reduced uranium with either oxygen or nitrate supplied as the oxidant. The uranium was reduced and immobilized via long-term (70 days) acetate biostimulation resulting in 62-92% removal efficiency of the 20 microM influent uranium concentration. Uranium reduction occurred simultaneously with iron reduction as the dominant electron accepting process. The columns were reoxidized by discontinuing the supply of acetate and either replacing the anaerobic gas used to purge the influent media with a gas mixture containing 20% oxygen (resulting in a dissolved oxygen concentration of 0.27 mM) or adding 1.6 mM nitrate to the influent media. Both oxygen and nitrate resolubilized the majority (88 and 97%, respectively) of the uranium precipitated during bioreduction within 54 days. Although oxygen is more thermodynamically favorable an oxidant than nitrate, nitrate-dependent uranium oxidation occurred significantly faster than oxygen-dependent uranium oxidation at the beginning of our experiment due, in part, to oxygen reacting more strongly with other reduced compounds. Nitrate breakthrough at the effluent of the column occurred within 12 h, which was significantly earlier than when oxygen was detected at the effluent (26 days). Although, over time, the majority of uranium was reoxidized by either oxidant, these results indicate that the type of oxidant and its reactivity with other reduced compounds will influence the fate of reduced uranium during a short-term oxidation event that may occur during a uranium bioremediation scenario.

Within the course of the 20th century the American population went through a metamorphosis from being the tallest in the world, to being among the most overweight. The American height advantage over Western and Northern Europeans was between 3 and 9 cm in the middle of the 19 th century. Americans were also underweight. However, today, the exact opposite is the case as the Dutch, Swedes, and Norwegians are the tallest, and the Danes, British and Germans -even the East-Germans -are also taller, towering over the Americans by as much as 3-7 cm. Americans also live shorter. The hypothesis is worth considering that this adverse development is related to the greater social inequality, an inferior health-care system, and fewer social safety nets in the United States than in Western and NorthernEurope, in spite of higher per capita income. The West-and Northern European welfare states, with cradle to grave health and unemployment insurance currently provide a more propitious environment for the biological standard of living than its US counterpart.Word Count of Abstract: 168

The biological reduction and precipitation of uranium in groundwater has the potential to prevent uranium migration from contaminated sites. Although previous research has shown that uranium bioremediation is maximized during iron reduction, little is known on how long-term iron/uranium reducing conditions can be maintained. Questions also remain about the stability of uranium and other reduced species after a long-term biostimulation scheme is discontinued and oxidants (i.e., oxygen) re-enter the bioreduced zone. To gain further insights into these processes, four columns, packed with sediment containing iron as Fe-oxides (mainly Al-goethite) and silicate Fe (Fe-containing clays), were operated in the laboratory under field-relevant flow conditions to measure the long-term (>200 day) removal efficiency of uranium from a simulated groundwater during biostimulation with an electron donor (3 mM acetate) under low sulfate conditions. The biostimulation experiments were then followed by reoxidation of the reduced sediments with oxygen.During biostimulation, Fe(III) reduction occurred simultaneously with U(VI) reduction. Both Fe-oxides and silicate Fe(III) were partly reduced, and silicate Fe(III) reduction was detected only during the first half of the biostimulation phase while Fe-oxide reduction occurred throughout the whole biostimulation period. Mö ssbauer measurements indicated that the biogenic Fe(II) precipitate resulting from Fe-oxide reduction was neither siderite nor FeS 0.09 (mackinawite). U(VI) reduction efficiency increased throughout the bioreduction period, while the Fe(III) reduction gradually decreased with time. Effluent Fe(II) concentrations decreased linearly by only 30% over the final 100 days of biostimulation, indicating that bioreducible Fe(III) in the sediment was not exhausted at the termination of the experiment. Even though Fe(III) reduction did not change substantially with time, microorganisms not typically associated with Fe(III) and U(VI) reduction (including methanogens) became a significant fraction of the total microbial population during long-term biostimulation, meaning that most acetate was utilized for biological processes other than Fe(III) and U(VI) reduction. This corresponds with an electron donor/acceptor mass balance showing that the amount of Fe(III), U(VI) and SO 4 2À reduced accounted for very little (<2%) of the acetate consumed after day 104 of bioreduction.Selected columns were reoxidized after 209 days by discontinuing acetate addition and purging the influent media with a gas containing 20% oxygen. Uranium reoxidation occurred rapidly with a very large uranium spike exiting the column (7-8 times higher than the original influent concentration) which resulted in 61% of the precipitated uranium resolubilized and transported out of the column after 21 days and virtually all of the uranium being removed by day 122. During the first 21 days of reoxidation, the Fe(III) and U(VI) reducing microbial population, as measured by quantitative PCR, remained at pre-oxidation lev...

It is hypothesized that recent trends in US and worldwide obesity are, in part, related to an increase in the marginal rate of time preference, where time preference refers to the rate at which people are willing to trade current benefit for future benefit. The higher the rate of time preference, the larger is the factor by which individuals discount the future health risks associated with current consumption. Data from the United States, as well as international evidence, suggest that a relationship between these two variables is plausible. The authors encourage researchers to explore the possible link between obesity and time preference, as important insights are likely to result.

Background: The secular trend in the height of the US population has been almost neglected in a comparative perspective, despite its being a useful indicator of early-life biological conditions. Aim: The study estimated the height of the US population and compared it to Western European trends after World War II. Subjects and method: The complete set of NHES and NHANES data were analyzed, collected between 1959 and 2004 by the National Center for Health Statistics, in order to construct trends of the physical stature of US-born men and women limited to non-Hispanic blacks and whites. Also analyzed was the trend in the height of US military personnel whose parents were also born in the USA. The trends and levels were compared with those of several European populations. Results: The increase in the physical stature of US adults slowed down by mid-century concurrent with a substantial acceleration in height attainment in Western and Northern Europe. Military data corroborate this finding in the main. After being the tallest population in the world ever since colonial times, Americans are now shorter than most Western and Northern Europeans and as much as 4.7-5.7 cm shorter than the Dutch, who are the tallest in world today. Conclusion: Given the well-established relationship between adult stature and early-life biological welfare, it was hypothesized that either American diets are sub-optimal or that the universal health care systems and social safety net of the European welfare states are providing a more favorable early-life health environment than does the American health care system.