Plastic brain mechanisms for attaining auditory temporal order judgment proficiency.

Accurate perception of the order of occurrence of sensory information is critical for the building up of coherent representations of the external world from ongoing flows of sensory inputs. While some psychophysical evidence reports that performance on temporal perception can improve, the underlying neural mechanisms remain unresolved. Using electrical neuroimaging analyses of auditory evoked potentials (AEPs), we identified the brain dynamics and mechanism supporting improvements in auditory temporal order judgment (TOJ) during the course of the first vs. latter half of the experiment. Training-induced changes in brain activity were first evident 43-76 ms post stimulus onset and followed from topographic, rather than pure strength, AEP modulations. Improvements in auditory TOJ accuracy thus followed from changes in the configuration of the underlying brain networks during the initial stages of sensory processing. Source estimations revealed an increase in the lateralization of initially bilateral posterior sylvian region (PSR) responses at the beginning of the experiment to left-hemisphere dominance at its end. Further supporting the critical role of left and right PSR in auditory TOJ proficiency, as the experiment progressed, responses in the left and right PSR went from being correlated to un-correlated. These collective findings provide insights on the neurophysiologic mechanism and plasticity of temporal processing of sounds and are consistent with models based on spike timing dependent plasticity.

Ejaculation failure on the day of oocyte retrieval for IVF: case report.

Unexpected ejaculation failure on the day of oocyte retrieval for IVF occurs once or twice a year in our Reproductive Medicine Unit, where approximately 500 oocyte retrievals are performed each year. Two clinical situations which occurred in 2001 are presented. In the first case, sperm were finally obtained by epididymal aspiration and resulted in the fertilization of five oocytes by ICSI. The transfer of two fresh embryos did not result in a pregnancy and the three supernumerary zygotes were cryopreserved. The male patient presented an anxio-depressive episode necessitating psychiatric hospitalization 1 week after the oocyte retrieval. In the second case, no sperm were obtained and the four oocytes were therefore lost. The couple went through a crisis in their relationship and tried another cycle of IVF 10 months later, after the preventive cryopreservation of a sperm sample. On the day of oocyte retrieval the patient was unable to produce a fresh sample but three zygotes were obtained through ICSI using the back-up cryopreserved sperm. Two embryos were transferred but no pregnancy ensued. The clinical decision-making processes for these two cases are described, as well as the measures employed to help prevent these unfortunate situations.

Iowa election day registration guide, January 2008

A guide describing the steps, requirements and procedures necessary to register to vote in Iowa.

RAGBRAI Learn about the Land; Day 1, July 2008

Want to know what conditions to expect over the next stage of RAGBRAI? How hilly will it be, what towns and parks are between here and there, or what services are coming up in the next town?

RAGBRAI Learn about the Land; Day 2, July 2008

On today’s ride we continue riding across the Southern Iowa Drift Plain. This landform region covers over 40% of the state and comprises most of southern Iowa. Over the last several million years Iowa was subjected to at least seven glacial advances. The last of these older advances occurred approximately 500,000 years ago. Since then the landscape has been subjected to stream erosion and from12,500-24,000 years ago was mantled with a thick blanket of loess before being further eroded.

RAGBRAI Learn about the Land; Day 3, July 2008

Although during much of its geologic history Iowa was part of an interior sea, today what we see on the land surface has been heavily influenced by recent glaciation. Everything from Iowa soils, rivers, lakes, and hills has been influenced by glaciation. Most of Iowa’s bedrock is hidden beneath a thick mantle of deposits from the Cenozoic (i.e., new life) Era, spanning the last 65 million years. Geologists have divided the Cenozoic Era into two periods. These are the Tertiary (1.8-65 million years ago) and Quaternary Periods (recent to 1.8 million years ago). Most geologic records in Iowa are from the Quaternary period, and include glacial till and loess.

RAGBRAI Learn about the Land; Day 4, July 2008

Today’s ride departs Ames and heads towards Nevada. The Ames area is one of the classic areas to view elongated hummocks. These landforms are discontinous, lower relief curvilinear ridges which are east-west trending features. At one time geologists thought these hummocks formed at the base of the glacier due to glacial movement. It is now understood that these features may have developed within the glacier, in a large crevasse field that formed behind the ice (Bemis Moraine) margin as the ice stagnated and melted.

RAGBRAI Learn about the Land; Day 5, July 2008

Today, after you descend into the valley of the Iowa River north of Marengo, the route turns east on county road F15 and approaches the historic Amana Society. Settled in the late 1850s by German immigrants of the Community of True Inspiration, the new arrivals utilized the local timber and stone resources to construct their buildings. During these early years several stone quarries were opened in the hills along the north wall of the Iowa River valley near East, Middle, and West Amana. Riders will pass close to one of these old quarries 0.7 miles west of West Amana. The stone taken from these quarries is beautiful quartz-rich sandstone that is cemented by light brown to orange tinged iron oxide. This stone was used in the construction of many buildings in Amana.

RAGBRAI Learn about the Land; Day 6, July 2008

Today you will be biking over the Iowa and Cedar rivers, two major rivers hit by the Iowa flood of 2008. Three miles northeast of North Liberty you’ll cross the Iowa River. The river crested on June 15, 2008 at a record 31.53 ft., three feet higher than the previous record during the flood of 1993. The flooding river caused extensive damage to the University of Iowa (see cover photo of Iowa Memorial Union taken by Univ. Relations, Univ. of Iowa), Coralville, and numerous smaller towns. The flooding of the Cedar River, which RAGBRAI will cross at Sutliff, caused even greater damage. At Cedar Rapids, the 2008 flood crest of 31.12 ft. was over 11 ft. higher than the previous record set in 1851! This massive amount of water inundated downtown Cedar Rapids, Palo, and Columbus Junction and caused massive damage to buildings and infrastructure. When crossing the Cedar River at Sutliff, be sure to look to your right to see the remains of the Historic Sutliff Bridge, one of the many casualties of the Iowa flood of 2008.

RAGBRAI Learn about the Land; Day 7, July 2008

Iowa’s land was mapped long before it was declared a state. Since Lewis and Clark published their journey across the North American west in 1814, many different uses for maps have been found. Today there are maps of Iowa’s roads, waterways, landscape features, geology, and land use. One of the more recent mapping efforts has involved using a technology called LiDAR. This technology creates a topographic map of Iowa’s elevation that is accurate to within eight inches, ten times higher resolution than in previous elevation maps.

Rebuild Iowa 45 - Day Report to Governor Chet Culver, 2008

The Commission will deliver a "120-Day" report for the Governor with long-term recommendations by November 17, 2008.

On heuristic and linear models of judgment: Mapping the demand for knowledge

Research on judgment and decision making presents a confusing picture of human abilities. For example, much research has emphasized the dysfunctional aspects of judgmental heuristics, and yet, other findings suggest that these can be highly effective. A further line of research has modeled judgment as resulting from as if linear models. This paper illuminates the distinctions in these approaches by providing a common analytical framework based on the central theoretical premise that understanding human performance requires specifying how characteristics of the decision rules people use interact with the demands of the tasks they face. Our work synthesizes the analytical tools of lens model research with novel methodology developed to specify the effectiveness of heuristics in different environments and allows direct comparisons between the different approaches. We illustrate with both theoretical analyses and simulations. We further link our results to the empirical literature by a meta-analysis of lens model studies and estimate both human andheuristic performance in the same tasks. Our results highlight the trade-off betweenlinear models and heuristics. Whereas the former are cognitively demanding, the latterare simple to use. However, they require knowledge and thus maps of when andwhich heuristic to employ.

Rebuild Iowa Advisory Commission (RIAC) 45-Day Report

The Rebuild Iowa Advisory Commission (RIAC) 45-Day Report offers the initial recommendations and priorities for Iowa's recovery from the devastating storms, flooding and tornadoes of 2008. The RIAC is a 15-member bipartisan commission appointed by Governor Chet Culver to lay out a blueprint to recovery.

Rebuild Iowa Advisory Commission (RIAC) 120-Day Report

The Rebuild Iowa Advisory Commission (RIAC) 120-Day Report offers the recommendations and priorities for Iowa's long-term recovery from the devastating storms, flooding and tornadoes of 2008. The RIAC is a 15-member bipartisan commission appointed by Governor Chet Culver to lay out a blueprint to recovery