Iowa Commission on the Status of African Americans Annual Report, Fiscal Year 2006

A Public Intellectual recently suggested that I read the book Life Out Of Context by the very productive writer Walter Mosley. In this book, Mosley began to summarize a speech that was given by Harry Belafonte. Belafonte made a comparison between a particular Olympic relay race and the Civil Rights Movement. In the race, an experienced runner stumbled a little while passing the baton, and the race was lost. For Belafonte, this momentary slip was a metaphor for the failure of the Civil Rights Movement to “pass the baton” to the younger generation as “it moved past its original phase and into the latter part of the century.” Regardless of your views of the strengths and weaknesses of the Civil Rights Movement, I think all of us would agree that the current issues facing Black Iowa today--e.g., the need for economic development, increased educational achievement and more political involvement in our communities--demand our immediate attention and action. This urgency requires that we cross generational, class, and territorial boundaries within the state to collaborate among ourselves and with others to deal constructively with these issues. We cannot afford to have another “momentary slip.” Serving as the Administrator for ICSAA allows me to serve Black Iowa in a significant way, and Kimberly Cheeks and I in this Division look forward to the work ahead over the next several months and years. Working closely with Walter Reed, Director of the Department of Human Rights, along with so many others across this state, we are keenly aware that we are provided with a great opportunity to positively impact the quality of life for African-Americans in Iowa.

Iowa Commission on the Status of African-Americans Department of Human Rights Strategic Plan, 2004

The Commission on the Status of African-Americans, formerly known as the Commission on the Status of Blacks, was created by statute in 1988. The nine members of the commission are appointed by the Governor and represent each region of the State where there is a significant African-American population. Meetings are open to the public. The commission sets policy for and provides direction to the Division of the Status of African-Americans within the Department of Human Rights. The division administrator is appointed by the Governor and confirmed by the Iowa Senate.

Iowa Commission on the Status of African-Americans Department of Human Rights Strategic Plan, August 1999

The Commission on the Status of African-Americans, formerly known as the Commission on the Status of Blacks, was created by statute in 1988. The nine members of the commission are appointed by the Governor and represent each region of the State where there is a significant African-American population. Meetings are open to the public. The commission sets policy for and provides direction to the Division of the Status of African-Americans within the Department of Human Rights. The division administrator is appointed by the Governor and confirmed by the Iowa Senate.

Iowa Commission on the Status of African-Americans Department of Human Rights Strategic Plan, August 2000

The Commission on the Status of African-Americans, formerly known as the Commission on the Status of Blacks, was created by statute in 1988. The nine members of the commission are appointed by the Governor and represent each region of the State where there is a significant African-American population. Meetings are open to the public. The commission sets policy for and provides direction to the Division of the Status of African-Americans within the Department of Human Rights. The division administrator is appointed by the Governor and confirmed by the Iowa Senate.

Iowa Commission on the Status of African-Americans Department of Human Rights Strategic Plan, August 2001

The Commission on the Status of African-Americans, formerly known as the Commission on the Status of Blacks, was created by statute in 1988. The nine members of the commission are appointed by the Governor and represent each region of the State where there is a significant African-American population. Meetings are open to the public. The commission sets policy for and provides direction to the Division of the Status of African-Americans within the Department of Human Rights. The division administrator is appointed by the Governor and confirmed by the Iowa Senate.

Iowa Commission on the Status of African-Americans Department of Human Rights Strategic Plan, August 2002

The Commission on the Status of African-Americans, formerly known as the Commission on the Status of Blacks, was created by statute in 1988. The nine members of the commission are appointed by the Governor and represent each region of the State where there is a significant African-American population. Meetings are open to the public. The commission sets policy for and provides direction to the Division of the Status of African-Americans within the Department of Human Rights. The division administrator is appointed by the Governor and confirmed by the Iowa Senate.

Iowa Commission on the Status of African-Americans Department of Human Rights Strategic Plan, August 2003

The Commission on the Status of African-Americans, formerly known as the Commission on the Status of Blacks, was created by statute in 1988. The nine members of the commission are appointed by the Governor and represent each region of the State where there is a significant African-American population. Meetings are open to the public. The commission sets policy for and provides direction to the Division of the Status of African-Americans within the Department of Human Rights. The division administrator is appointed by the Governor and confirmed by the Iowa Senate.

Late Pan-African magmatism in the Himalaya: new geochronological and geochemical data from the Ordovician Tso Morari metagranites (Ladakh, NW India)

Two granitic plutons, the Tso Morari gneiss and the Rupshu metagranite, crop out in the Tso Morari area. The Polokongka La granite, classically interpreted as a young intrusion in the Tso Morari gneiss, has been recognized as the undeformed facies of the latter. Conventional isotope dilution U-Pb zircon dating on single-grain and small multi-grain fractions yielded magmatic ages of 479 +/- 2 Ma for the Tso Morari gneiss and the Polokongka La granite, and 482.5 +/- 1 Ma for the Rupshu granite. There is a great difference in zircon morphology between the Tso Morari gneiss (peraluminous type) and the Rupshu granite (alkaline type). This difference is confirmed by whole-rock chemistry. The Tso Morari gneiss is a typical deformed S-type granite, resulting from crustal anatexis. On the other hand, the Rupshu granite is an essentially metaluminous alkali-calcic intrusion derived from a different source material. Data compilation from other Himalayan Cambro-Ordovician granites reveals huge and widespread magmatic activity all along and beyond the northern Indian plate between 570 and 450 Ma, with a peak at 500-480 Ma. A major, continental-scale tectonic event is required to generate such a large magmatic belt; it has been tentatively compared to the Variscan post-orogenic extensional regime of Western Europe, as a late evolution stage of a Pan-African orogenic event.

Relationship between motion of coronary arteries and diaphragm during free breathing: lessons from real-time MR imaging.

OBJECTIVE: Diaphragmatic navigators are frequently used in free-breathing coronary MR angiography, either to gate or prospectively correct slice position or both. For such approaches, a constant relationship between coronary and diaphragmatic displacement throughout the respiratory cycle is assumed. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the relationship between diaphragmatic and coronary artery motion during free breathing. SUBJECTS AND METHODS: A real-time echoplanar MR imaging sequence was used in 12 healthy volunteers to obtain 30 successive images each (one per cardiac cycle) that included the left main coronary artery and the domes of both hemidiaphragms. The coronary artery and diaphragm positions (relative to isocenter) were determined and analyzed for effective diaphragmatic gating windows of 3, 5, and 7 mm (diaphragmatic excursions of 0-3, 0-5, and 0-7 mm from the end-expiratory position, respectively). RESULTS: Although the mean slope correlating the displacement of the right diaphragm and the left main coronary artery was approximately 0.6 for all diaphragmatic gating windows, we also found great variability among individual volunteers. Linear regression slopes varied from 0.17 to 0.93, and r2 values varied from .04 to .87. CONCLUSION: Wide individual variability exists in the relationship between coronary and diaphragmatic respiratory motion during free breathing. Accordingly, coronary MR angiographic approaches that use diaphragmatic navigator position for prospective slice correction may benefit from patient-specific correction factors. Alternatively, coronary MR angiography may benefit from a more direct assessment of the respiratory displacement of the heart and coronary arteries, using left ventricular navigators.

A Motion compensated filtering approach to remove sunlight flicker in shallow water images

A common problem in video surveys in very shallow waters is the presence of strong light fluctuations, due to sun light refraction. Refracted sunlight casts fast moving patterns, which can significantly degrade the quality of the acquired data. Motivated by the growing need to improve the quality of shallow water imagery, we propose a method to remove sunlight patterns in video sequences. The method exploits the fact that video sequences allow several observations of the same area of the sea floor, over time. It is based on computing the image difference between a given reference frame and the temporal median of a registered set of neighboring images. A key observation is that this difference will have two components with separable spectral content. One is related to the illumination field (lower spatial frequencies) and the other to the registration error (higher frequencies). The illumination field, recovered by lowpass filtering, is used to correct the reference image. In addition to removing the sunflickering patterns, an important advantage of the approach is the ability to preserve the sharpness in corrected image, even in the presence of registration inaccuracies. The effectiveness of the method is illustrated in image sets acquired under strong camera motion containing non-rigid benthic structures. The results testify the good performance and generality of the approach

Trinocular System for 3D motion and Dense Stucture Estimation

The relief of the seafloor is an important source of data for many scientists. In this paper we present an optical system to deal with underwater 3D reconstruction. This system is formed by three cameras that take images synchronously in a constant frame rate scheme. We use the images taken by these cameras to compute dense 3D reconstructions. We use Bundle Adjustment to estimate the motion ofthe trinocular rig. Given the path followed by the system, we get a dense map of the observed scene by registering the different dense local reconstructions in a unique and bigger one

Three-dimensional magnetic resonance myocardial motion tracking from a single image plane.

Three-dimensional imaging for the quantification of myocardial motion is a key step in the evaluation of cardiac disease. A tagged magnetic resonance imaging method that automatically tracks myocardial displacement in three dimensions is presented. Unlike other techniques, this method tracks both in-plane and through-plane motion from a single image plane without affecting the duration of image acquisition. A small z-encoding gradient is subsequently added to the refocusing lobe of the slice-selection gradient pulse in a slice following CSPAMM acquisition. An opposite polarity z-encoding gradient is added to the orthogonal tag direction. The additional z-gradients encode the instantaneous through plane position of the slice. The vertical and horizontal tags are used to resolve in-plane motion, while the added z-gradients is used to resolve through-plane motion. Postprocessing automatically decodes the acquired data and tracks the three-dimensional displacement of every material point within the image plane for each cine frame. Experiments include both a phantom and in vivo human validation. These studies demonstrate that the simultaneous extraction of both in-plane and through-plane displacements and pathlines from tagged images is achievable. This capability should open up new avenues for the automatic quantification of cardiac motion and strain for scientific and clinical purposes.

UBVRI photoelectric photometry of high proper motion stars

UBVRI photoelectric photometry is presented for 269 late spectral type, high proper motion stars belonging to the 'Lowell Proper Motion Survey' and included in the present version of the Hipparcos Input Catalogue. The observations and data reduction are described. The external errors obtained by comparison of the results with those obtained in other studies are presented.

Reduction in range of cervical motion on serial long-term follow-up in patients undergoing oblique corpectomy for cervical spondylotic myelopathy.

PURPOSE: To determine whether motion preservation following oblique cervical corpectomy (OCC) for cervical spondylotic myelopathy (CSM) persists with serial follow-up. METHODS: We included 28 patients with preoperative and at least two serial follow-up neutral and dynamic cervical spine radiographs who underwent OCC for CSM. Patients with an ossified posterior longitudinal ligament (OPLL) were excluded. Changes in sagittal curvature, segmental and whole spine range of motion (ROM) were measured. Nathan's system graded anterior osteophyte formation. Neurological function was measured by Nurick's grade and modified Japanese Orthopedic Association (JOA) scores. RESULTS: The majority (23 patients) had a single or 2-level corpectomy. The average duration of follow-up was 45 months. The Nurick's grade and the JOA scores showed statistically significant improvements after surgery (p < 0.001). 17% of patients with preoperative lordotic spines had a loss of lordosis at last follow-up, but with no clinical worsening. 77% of the whole spine ROM and 62% of segmental ROM was preserved at last follow-up. The whole spine and segmental ROM decreased by 11.2° and 10.9°, respectively (p ≤ 0.001). Patients with a greater range of segmental movement preoperatively had a statistically greater range of movement at follow-up. The analysis of serial radiographs indicated that the range of movement of the whole spine and the range of movement at the segmental spine levels significantly reduced during the follow-up period. Nathan's grade showed increase in osteophytosis in more than two-thirds of the patients (p ≤ 0.01). The whole spine range of movement at follow-up significantly correlated with Nathan's grade. CONCLUSIONS: Although the OCC preserves segmental and whole spine ROM, serial measurements show a progressive decrease in ROM albeit without clinical worsening. The reduction in this ROM is probably related to degenerative ossification of spinal ligaments.