Inducing effect of skeletal muscle extracts on the appearance of calbindin-immunoreactive dorsal root ganglion cells in culture.

Calbindin D-28k is a calcium-binding protein which is not expressed by dorsal root ganglion cells cultured from 6-day-old (E6) chick embryos. When soluble muscle extracts from embryos at E11, E18 or chickens 2 weeks after hatching were added immediately after seeding, dorsal root ganglia cells grown at E6 displayed neuronal subpopulations expressing calbindin immunoreactivity with time; the effect of muscle extract on the percentage of calbindin-immunoreactive dorsal root ganglia cells followed a dose-response curve. When muscle extract was added to cultures after a 3 day delay, the percentage of calbindin-expressing neurons was unchanged. The effect produced by muscle extract and, to a lesser degree, skin extract on the appearance of calbindin-positive neurons was not reproduced by brain or liver extracts while all four exerted a trophic action on cultured neurons. Hence it is assumed that muscle extract contains a factor which produces an inductive effect on the initiation of calbindin-expression by uncommitted subpopulations of sensory neurons rather than a trophic influence on the selective survival of covertly committed neuronal subpopulations. The fact that muscle extract promoted calbindin expression by dorsal root ganglia cells in neuron-enriched as well as in mixed dorsal root ganglion cell cultures indicates that the factor would act directly on sensory neurons rather than indirectly through mediation of non-neuronal cells. Since the active muscular factor was non-dialysable, heat-inactivated, trypsin-sensitive and retained by molecular filters with a cut-off of 30 K, this factor is probably a protein.

Resource Guide For Job Seekers, November 2009

A Step-by-step guide to dealing with a job loss, starting a new job and everything in between.

Regenerating cortical connections in a dish: the entorhino-hippocampal organotypic slice co-culture as tool for pharmacological screening of molecules promoting axon regeneration

We present a method for using long-term organotypic slice co-cultures of the entorhino-hippocampal formation to analyze the axon-regenerative properties of a determined compound. The culture method is based on the membrane interphase method, which is easy to perform and is generally reproducible. The degree of axonal regeneration after treatment in lesioned cultures can be seen directly using green fluorescent protein (GFP) transgenic mice or by axon tracing and histological methods. Possible changes in cell morphology after pharmacological treatment can be determined easily by focal in vitro electroporation. The well-preserved cytoarchitectonics in the co-culture facilitate the analysis of identified cells or regenerating axons. The protocol takes up to a month.

Report to the Governor and General Assembly on the Status of Out-of School Arts Programming for Youth, December 2006

In the 2006 Iowa General Assembly, House File 2797 called for a study on the status of afterschool arts programs and appropriated $5,000 for the study. In accordance with the legislation, the Iowa Arts Council, who received the charge, contracted with the Iowa Afterschool Alliance to form a Resource Group of out-of-school arts providers and experts to develop and oversee the study, review its results, and make recommendations for the expansion of arts programs that operate outside the normal school day. As a part of its charge in HF 2797, the Iowa Arts Council also documented a sampling of out-of-school arts programs statewide. Five are featured in this report.

PROBLEMATIQUE DE LA CULTURE EN MEDECINE DE FAMILLE, UNE APPROCHE CENTREE SUR LE PATIENT

Problématique : En réaction à l'émergence de société plurielle, la communauté médicale a mis en place des outils de prise en charge de l'altérité. Cependant, la culture, issue notamment des origines, des croyances et des expériences est unique à chaque patient et lui sert à appréhender la maladie. Ce pourquoi, les outils de prise en compte de la culture, et de valorisation du patient, peuvent être potentiellement étendus à tous. Objectifs : Déterminer la place de la culture en médecine de famille, les enjeux qui en dépendent et la pertinence de l'utilisation des compétences transculturelles avec tous les patients. Perfectionner ces compétences dans le but de créer un modèle bio-psycho-socio-culturel améliorant la communication et la compréhension entre patients et thérapeutes. Méthodologie : Réalisation d'une revue de la littérature en déterminant comment la culture est intégrée à la médecine sous forme de savoir théorique. Réalisation d'une recherche qualitative de type exploratoire sur la base d'entretiens enregistrés auprès de 7 médecins de famille romands, pour montrer comment la notion de culture est intégrée en pratique. Comparaison entre médecine transculturelle et approche pratique de terrain. Résultats : La culture influe sur toutes les étapes de la consultation. La pratique des médecins est influencée par leur conception de la culture. La construction commune d'une représentation de la maladie, basée sur les conceptions du patient, améliore la collaboration thérapeutique. Les compétences cliniques transculturelles actuelles semblent être applicables à tous, mais nécessitent un léger développement en intégrant l'expérience pratique quotidienne de la médecine de famille. Conclusion : L'utilisation des compétences cliniques transculturelles (savoir, savoir-faire, savoir-être) avec tous les patients est réalisable et peut être affinée d'une quatrième compétence le savoir- percevoir : capacité d'être alerte et réceptif à toute subtilité culturelle qui ressurgit de l'interaction.

Optimizing anther culture for barley breeding

Selostus: Ponsiviljelymenetelmän optimointi ohranjalostuksen käyttöön

Increased connexin43 expression in human saphenous veins in culture is associated with intimal hyperplasia.

OBJECTIVE: Intimal hyperplasia is a vascular remodelling process that occurs after a vascular injury. The mechanisms involved in intimal hyperplasia are proliferation, dedifferentiation, and migration of medial smooth muscle cells towards the subintimal space. We postulated that gap junctions, which coordinate physiologic processes such as cell growth and differentiation, might participate in the development of intimal hyperplasia. Connexin43 (Cx43) expression levels may be altered in intimal hyperplasia, and we therefore evaluated the regulated expression of Cx43 in human saphenous veins in culture in the presence or not of fluvastatin, an inhibitor of 3-hydroxy-3-methylglutaryl-coenzyme A reductase activity. METHODS: Segments of harvested human saphenous veins, obtained at the time of bypass graft, were opened longitudinally with the luminal surface uppermost and maintained in culture for 14 days. Vein fragments were then processed for histologic examination, neointimal thickness measurements, immunocytochemistry, RNA, and proteins analysis. RESULTS: Of the four connexins (Cx37, 40, 43, and 45), we focused on Cx43 and Cx40, which we found by real-time polymerase chain reaction to be expressed in the saphenous vein because they are the predominant connexins expressed by smooth muscle cells and endothelial cells. After 14 days of culture, histomorphometric analysis showed a significant increase in the intimal thickness as observed during the process of intimal hyperplasia. A time-course analysis revealed a progressive upregulation of Cx43 to reach a maximal increase of sixfold to eightfold at both transcript and protein levels after 14 days in culture. In contrast, the expression of Cx40, abundantly expressed in the endothelial cells, was not altered. Immunofluorescence showed a large increase in Cx43 within smooth muscle cell membranes of the media layer. The development of intimal hyperplasia in vitro was decreased in presence of fluvastatin and was associated with reduced Cx43 expression. CONCLUSIONS: These data show that Cx43 is increased in vitro during the process of intimal hyperplasia and that fluvastatin could prevent this induction, supporting a critical role for Cx43-mediated gap-junctional communication in the human vein during the development of intimal hyperplasia. CLINICAL RELEVANCE: Stenosis due to intimal hyperplasia is the most common cause of failure of venous bypass grafts. To better understand the development of intimal hyperplasia, we used an ex vivo organ culture model to study saphenous veins harvested from patients undergoing a lower limb bypass surgery. In this model, the morphologic and functional integrity of the vessel wall is maintained and significant intimal hyperplasia development occurs after 14 days in culture. We have postulated that gap junctions, which coordinate physiologic processes such as cell growth and differentiation, may participate in the development of intimal hyperplasia. Indeed, intimal hyperplasia consists of proliferation and migration of smooth muscle cells into the subendothelial space. Intercellular communication is responsible for the direct transfer of ions and small molecules from one cell to the other through gap-junction channels found at cell-cell appositions. No study to date has evaluated whether gap junctional communication is involved in the process of intimal hyperplasia in humans. This assertion was investigated by using the aforementioned organ culture model of intimal hyperplasia in human saphenous veins, and our data support a critical role for Cx43-mediated gap junctional communication in human vein during the development of intimal hyperplasia.

Time consistent Pareto solutions in common access resource gameswith asymmetric players

In the analysis of equilibrium policies in a di erential game, if agents have different time preference rates, the cooperative (Pareto optimum) solution obtained by applying the Pontryagin's Maximum Principle becomes time inconsistent. In this work we derive a set of dynamic programming equations (in discrete and continuous time) whose solutions are time consistent equilibrium rules for N-player cooperative di erential games in which agents di er in their instantaneous utility functions and also in their discount rates of time preference. The results are applied to the study of a cake-eating problem describing the management of a common property exhaustible natural resource. The extension of the results to a simple common property renewable natural resource model in in nite horizon is also discussed.

Personality and Culture Cross-Cultural Psychology at the Next Crossroads

A review of nearly three decades of cross-cultural research shows that this domain still has to address several issues regarding the biases of data collection and sampling methods, the lack of clear and consensual definitions of constructs and variables, and measurement invariance issues that seriously limit the comparability of results across cultures. Indeed, a large majority of the existing studies are still based on the anthropological model, which compares two cultures and mainly uses convenience samples of university students. This paper stresses the need to incorporate a larger variety of regions and cultures in the research designs, the necessity to theorize and identify a larger set of variables in order to describe a human environment, and the importance of overcoming methodological weaknesses to improve the comparability of measurement results. Cross-cultural psychology is at the next crossroads in it's development, and researchers can certainly make major contributions to this domain if they can address these weaknesses and challenges.

The effect of genotype on anther culture response of cultivated and wild oats

Selostus: Genotyypin vaikutus kauran, kuorettoman kauran ja villikauran ponsiviljelyvasteeseen