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