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\"Weaving together environmental and social history, David Biggs offers an innovative history of the impact of war on central Vietnam in the long twentieth century, from the imposition of French colonial rule in 1885 to the end of American military involvement in 1973. The long history of conflict around the city of Huمâe produced belts of degraded lands and village societies deeply marred by the demands of war or periods of conflict. Once military units occupy a space, they change it in physical, legal, and cultural terms so that even long after the troopers leave, their footprints continue to shape patterns of land use and local memories of place. There are tombs, cemeteries, and war monuments; and there are the spaces in between, the subterrains of \"wilderness\" haunted by ghostlike presences of suspected chemical or munitions hazards. Digging below the surface, one risks being maimed by unexploded ordnance, getting ill from toxic chemical residues, or perhaps worst of all, being haunted by the ghosts of war dead who died violently or did not receive proper burials. Critical to this study are previously little used archives of maps and images created by technologies developed at the same time as the Indochinese wars, 1945 to 1975: aerial photography, high-altitude photography, satellite photography, and satellite-based, multi-band scanning. In this richly illustrated book, author David Biggs uses these new kinds of imagery to reveal the impact of war in the land\"-- Provided by publisher.

Winner of the 2012 George Perkins Marsh Prize for Best Book in Environmental History In the twentieth century, the Mekong Delta has emerged as one of Vietnam s most important economic regions. Its swamps, marshes, creeks, and canals have played a major role in Vietnam s turbulent past, from the struggles of colonialism to the Cold War and the present day. Quagmire considers these struggles, their antecedents, and their legacies through the lens of environmental history. Beginning with the French conquest in the 1860s, colonial reclamation schemes and pacification efforts centered on the development of a dense network of new canals to open land for agriculture. These projects helped precipitate economic and environmental crises in the 1930s, and subsequent struggles after 1945 led to the balkanization of the delta into a patchwork of regions controlled by the Viet Minh, paramilitary religious sects, and the struggling Franco-Vietnamese government. After 1954, new settlements were built with American funds and equipment in a crash program intended to solve continuing economic and environmental problems. Finally, the American military collapse in Vietnam is revealed as not simply a failure of policy makers but also a failure to understand the historical, political, and environmental complexity of the spaces American troops attempted to occupy and control. By exploring the delta as a quagmire in both natural and political terms, Biggs shows how engineered transformations of the Mekong Delta landscape - channelized rivers, a complex canal system, hydropower development, deforestation - have interacted with equally complex transformations in the geopolitics of the region. Quagmire delves beyond common stereotypes to present an intricate, rich history that shows how closely political and ecological issues are intertwined in the human interactions with the water environment in the Mekong Delta. Watch the book trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gp1-UItZqsk Winner of the 2012 George Perkins Marsh Prize for Best Book in Environmental History In the twentieth century, the Mekong Delta has emerged as one of Vietnam s most important economic regions. Its swamps, marshes, creeks, and canals have played a major role in Vietnam s turbulent past, from the struggles of colonialism to the Cold War and the present day. Quagmire considers these struggles, their antecedents, and their legacies through the lens of environmental history. Beginning with the French conquest in the 1860s, colonial reclamation schemes and pacification efforts centered on the development of a dense network of new canals to open land for agriculture. These projects helped precipitate economic and environmental crises in the 1930s, and subsequent struggles after 1945 led to the balkanization of the delta into a patchwork of regions controlled by the Viet Minh, paramilitary religious sects, and the struggling Franco-Vietnamese government. After 1954, new settlements were built with American funds and equipment in a crash program intended to solve continuing economic and environmental problems. Finally, the American military collapse in Vietnam is revealed as not simply a failure of policy makers but also a failure to understand the historical, political, and environmental complexity of the spaces American troops attempted to occupy and control. By exploring the delta as a quagmire in both natural and political terms, Biggs shows how engineered transformations of the Mekong Delta landscape - channelized rivers, a complex canal system, hydropower development, deforestation - have interacted with equally complex transformations in the geopolitics of the region. Quagmire delves beyond common stereotypes to present an intricate, rich history that shows how closely political and ecological issues are intertwined in the human interactions with the water environment in the Mekong Delta. Watch the book trailer: http://www.youtube.com/user/UWashingtonPress#p/u/2/gp1-UItZqsk

The addition of olanzapine to a neurokinin receptor blocker, a serotonin receptor blocker, and dexamethasone markedly improved the control of nausea and vomiting in previously untreated patients receiving highly emetogenic chemotherapy. Chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting are associated with a significant deterioration in quality of life and are perceived by patients as major adverse effects of cancer treatment. 1 The use of 5-hydroxytryptamine type 3 (5-HT 3 ) receptor antagonists, 2 dexamethasone, 2 and neurokinin-1 (NK 1 ) receptor antagonists 3 – 9 has significantly improved the control of this troublesome side effect. International guidelines 10 – 12 recommend combinations of these agents to prevent chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting in patients receiving moderately or highly emetogenic chemotherapy. Nonetheless, nausea remains a major problem for many patients. 1 , 2 Olanzapine is approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as an . . .

A recent trend of regreening formerly bare hills in central Vietnam is often described in the media as a form of recovery from 1960s wartime destruction. However, this modern framework of wartime “wasting” and regreening obscures a longer history of bare hills. Colonial explorers noted eroded slopes in 1877, and imperial land surveyors described stretches of “idle, fallow land” decades earlier. This article describes a longer history of a “wasteland” not only to challenge a presentist framing of environmental decline but also to recognize the historic roles people played in producing these spaces, often in response or resistance to state policies. Colonial engagements with land clearing and customary uses of “open” lands gave shape to colonial visions of “wasteland” and later spurred colonial environmentalist critiques, even calls for a new form of green colonialism via exotic tree plantations. Writing the history of such a “wasteland” is one way to decenter imperial, colonial, and nationalist teleologies that tend to emphasize the environmental “footprints” of state actions but not the reverse. This history of “bare hills” draws from a mix of historical sources to show how people produced this “wasteland” and why, at times, they maintained it despite state efforts at reclamation.

Lung cancer remains the leading cause of cancer death throughout the world. Despite new chemotherapeutic, immunomodulating and molecularly targeted agents, patients with locally advanced or metastatic disease still have a poor prognosis. This trial looked to combine antiangiogenic therapy with a first‐line cytotoxic chemotherapy doublet, hoping to extend median progression‐free survival (PFS) while minimizing toxicity in patients with advanced nonsquamous non–small‐cell lung cancer (NSCLC). In this single institution, single‐arm study, 51 patients (age >18 yo) were followed from 2007 to 2012. Patients with stage IV nonsquamous NSCLC and patients with recurrent unresectable disease (nonradiation candidates) were eligible. Treatment consisted of carboplatin AUC 5 IV 30‐60 minutes, pemetrexed 500/mg2 IV 10 minutes, bevacizumab 15 mg/kg IV (90 minutes 1st dose, 60 minutes 2nd dose, 30 minutes subsequent doses). Treatment was administered every 21 days and planned for 6 cycles, in the absence of disease progression or unacceptable toxicities. Growth factor support was not permitted prophylactically but allowed for toxicities, as were dose reductions. Maintenance treatment for those with stable disease or better consisted of Bevacizumab 15 mg/kg every 3 weeks for up to 1 year. Between November 2007 and March 2012, 51 patients were followed in the phase II trial of carboplatin, pemetrexed, and bevacizumab. Patients were enrolled over a 24‐month period. After the end of treatment visits, subjects were followed at least every 3 months for survival data. The median follow‐up period was 49 weeks (6 weeks to 178), and the median number of treatment cycles was 6 (range, 1‐6). Among the 50 patients assessable for response, median overall survival was 49 weeks (95% CI, 0‐62.7) with median PFS of 28 weeks (95% CI, 0‐132.4). A complete or partial response was seen in 28 (59.5%) patients. Grade 3‐4 treatment‐related adverse events occurred in 9 (17.6%) of 51 patients; the most common were thrombocytopenia (4 [7.8%]) and neutropenia (3 [5.9%]). Three (5.8%) of 51 patients were discontinued because of treatment‐related adverse events (grade 3 diarrhea, thrombocytopenia, dehydration, fatigue, and grade 4 respiratory distress), and 1 patient (1.9%) was found to be ineligible due to anticoagulation use. A novel 3‐drug combination for advanced nonsquamous NSCLC shows promising efficacy with modest toxicity. Lung cancer remains the leading cause of cancer death throughout the world. This single‐institution trial looked to combine a molecularly targeted therapy, bevacizumab, with a first‐line cytotoxic chemotherapy doublet, carboplatin and pemetrexed. A novel 3‐drug combination for advanced NSCLC shows promising efficacy with modest toxicity.

Hybridization in the wild between closely related species is not unusual. In some cases, hybridization may prove beneficial for a rare taxon. Under certain conditions, however, a rare taxon can be driven rapidly to extinction by hybridizing with a more common taxon. This problem is urgent because human activities are increasingly bringing together cross-compatible species that were previously geographically isolated. US conservation policy has yet to address how to deal with hybrid-derived individuals whose ancestry includes an endangered species. Developing sound science-based conservation policy that addresses hybridization requires cross-disciplinary social-science and life-science research to address the following two questions: (1) How do human decisions with regard to species protection, trade, transportation, land use, and other factors affect the opportunities for, and rates of hybridization between, rare species and more common relatives? and (2) How do the positive or negative perceived values regarding hybrids and hybrid-derived individuals compare with values regarding their nonhybridized counterparts from social, cultural, economic, and environmental perspectives? In this article we explore the ways to inform such policy using a multidisciplinary approach.

This essay addresses a more global history of dioxin's drift via the herbicide 2,4,5-T, better known in Vietnam as the dioxin-tainted herbicide in Agent Orange, but also widely available as a commercial herbicide. Drawing on theories of metabolic flow that challenge Marxist and other notions of a social-nature divide, the essay uses 2,4,5-T and dioxin as a focus for writing a metabolic history to examine how the origins, delivery and fate of a herbicide can pass far beyond expected boundaries. It uses the concept of drift with respect to the herbicide and its contaminant to get at a core challenge facing writers in environmental history and the environmental humanities: how to describe environmental phenomena with multiple and often divergent cascades of causal effects in different social, economic and ecological settings. A focus on a toxic molecule's drift through multiple metabolic webs challenges readers to think beyond dominant moral frameworks and re-orient themselves to a more dynamic, multi-threaded approach.