Consumer Advisory Bulletin, Mounting Mortgage Payments? Call the Iowa Mortgage Help Hotline!, December 2010

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Consumer Advisory Bulletin, Tax Refund Loans: High Costs for Quick Cash, January 2011

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Consumer Advisory Bulletin, Online “Steals”: Internet Counterfeiting and Piracy, January 2011

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Consumer Advisory Bulletin, Credit Cards vs. Debit Cards: They May Look the Same, But They’re Different!, March 2011

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Consumer Advisory Bulletin, Credit Cards vs. Nailing Down Home Repair Rip-Offs & Disputes, April 2011

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Vacancy and interstitial depth profiles in ion-implanted silicon

An experimental method of studying shifts between concentration-versus-depth profiles of vacancy- and interstitial-type defects in ion-implanted silicon is demonstrated. The concept is based on deep level transient spectroscopy measurements utilizing the filling pulse variation technique. The vacancy profile, represented by the vacancy¿oxygen center, and the interstitial profile, represented by the interstitial carbon¿substitutional carbon pair, are obtained at the same sample temperature by varying the duration of the filling pulse. The effect of the capture in the Debye tail has been extensively studied and taken into account. Thus, the two profiles can be recorded with a high relative depth resolution. Using low doses, point defects have been introduced in lightly doped float zone n-type silicon by implantation with 6.8 MeV boron ions and 680 keV and 1.3 MeV protons at room temperature. The effect of the angle of ion incidence has also been investigated. For all implantation conditions the peak of the interstitial profile is displaced towards larger depths compared to that of the vacancy profile. The amplitude of this displacement increases as the width of the initial point defect distribution increases. This behavior is explained by a simple model where the preferential forward momentum of recoiling silicon atoms and the highly efficient direct recombination of primary point defects are taken into account.

Cardiovascular risk factor profiles and their social gradient from adolescence to age 74 in a Swiss region.

BACKGROUND: Few European studies have investigated how cardiovascular risk factors (CRF) in adults relate to those observed in younger generations. OBJECTIVE: To explore this issue in a Swiss region using two population health surveys of 3636 adolescents ages 9-19 years and 3299 adults ages 25-74 years. METHODS: Age patterns of continuous CRF were estimated by robust locally weighted regression and those of high-risk groups were calculated using adult criteria with appropriate adjustment for children. RESULTS: Gender differences in height, weight, blood pressure, and HDL cholesterol observed in adults were found to emerge in adolescents. Overweight, affecting 10-12% of adolescents, was increasing steeply in young adults (three times among males and twice among females) in parallel with inactivity. Median age at smoking initiation was decreasing rapidly from 18 to 20 years in young adults to 15 in adolescents. A statistically significant social gradient in disfavor of the lower education level was observed for overweight in all age groups of women above 16 (odds ratios (ORs) 2.4 to 3.3, P < 0.01), for inactivity in adult males (ORs 1.6 to 2.0, P < 0.05), and for regular smoking in older adolescents (OR 1.9 for males, 2.7 for females, P < 0.005), but not for elevated blood pressure. CONCLUSION: Discontinuities in the cross-sectional age patterns of CRF indicated the emergence of a social gradient and the need for preventive actions against the early adoption of persistent unhealthy behaviors, to which low-educated girls and women are particularly exposed.

Consumer Advisory Bulletin, ID Theft: Prevent & Protect, May 2011

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Consumer Advisory Bulletin, Door-to-Door Sales: Your Right to Cancel, June 2011

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Consumer Advisory Bulletin, Be Wary of Online Payday Loans, July 2011

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Persistence of a biocontrol Pseudomonas inoculant as high populations of culturable and non-culturable cells in 200-cm-deep soil profiles

Little is known about the ecology of soil inoculants used for pathogen biocontrol, biofertilization and bioremediation under field conditions. We investigated the persistence and the physiological states of soil-inoculated Pseudomonas protegens (previously Pseudomonas fluorescens) CHA0 (108 CFU g−1 surface soil) in different soil microbial habitats in a planted ley (Medicago sativa L.) and an uncovered field plot. At 72 days, colony counts of the inoculant were low in surface soil (uncovered plot) and earthworm guts (ley plot), whereas soil above the plow pan (uncovered plot), and the rhizosphere and worm burrows present until 1.2 m depth (ley plot) were survival hot spots (105-106 CFU g−1 soil). Interestingly, strain CHA0 was also detected in the subsoil of both plots, at 102-105 CFU g−1 soil between 1.8 and 2 m depth. However, non-cultured CHA0 cells were also evidenced based on immunofluorescence microscopy. Kogure's direct viable counts of nutrient-responsive cells showed that many more CHA0 cells were in a viable but non-culturable (VBNC) or a non-responsive (dormant) state than in a culturable state, and the proportion of cells in those non-cultured states depended on soil microbial habitat. At the most, cells in a VBNC state amounted to 34% (above the plow pan) and those in a dormant state to 89% (in bulk soil between 0.6 and 2 m) of all CHA0 cells. The results indicate that field-released Pseudomonas inoculants may persist at high cell numbers, even in deeper soil layers, and display a combination of different physiological states whose prevalence fluctuates according to soil microbial habitats.

Consumer Advisory Bulletin, How to Avoid Buying a Salvage, Damaged or Flood Vehicle, August 2011

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Consumer Advisory Bulletin, Some Guidance on Giving Avoiding charity fraud, October 2011

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Consumer Advisory Bulletin, Avoiding Holiday Headaches: Shopping Tips, December 2011

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Consumer Advisory Bulletin, Identity Theft & Medical Identity Theft Target Older Iowans, January 2012

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