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You are What You Eat, Which is Hopefully Something: Minimum Weight Regulations for High School and Intercollegiate Wrestlers
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Mashing up the Copyright Act: How to Mitigate the Deadweight Loss Created by the Audio Mashup
Get PDFCauses of Hatching Failure in Great Tit (Parus major) and Blue Tit (Cyanistes caeruleus) Populations in Comparison of Urban-Rural Areas
No full textBird populations around the globe are facing declines due to various factors, including climate change, pollution, and urbanization. Urbanization in particular presents a unique challenge, as various types of pollution impact reproductive success for a variety of bird species. In this study of Southern Sweden, we investigate the causes of hatching failure in urban and rural populations of Great tits (Parus major) and Blue tits (Cyanistes caeruleus). Through nest monitoring and egg dissections, we explore various causes of hatching failure, including abandonment, predation, and multiple types of embryo fatality. We hypothesized that there would be higher rates of hatching failure among the urban populations, with early embryo death being the leading factor in urban failure. We also predicted that predation would be the leading cause of hatching failure among rural populations. Our results reveal significant differences in nest fate between urban and rural populations, with higher rates of abandonment observed in urban Great tit populations and predation primarily affecting rural nests. Despite hypothesized differences in causes of hatching failure, early embryo death emerges as a prominent factor across all populations. The study highlights the importance of understanding urbanization\u27s impact on avian reproductive success. Recommendations for future research include continued monitoring and analysis to interpret the complex interactions between urbanization, pollution, and avian reproductive outcomes. Overall, this study contributes to our understanding of the ecological consequences of urbanization on bird populations and highlights the need for conservation efforts to protect avian biodiversity in urban environments
Understanding the Relationship Between Exposure to Violence During Childhood and/or Adulthood, Gross Cognitive Function, and Psychosocial Vulnerabilities Among Justice-Involved Adults with Brain Injuries
No full textThe current study examined the relationship between age of exposure to violence, cognitive function, and psychosocial vulnerabilities among justice-involved persons with a history of traumatic brain injury. Records from 985 people were analyzed from an existing dataset and grouped by the age at which they were victimized by violence. People who were victimized as a child and again as an adult performed poorer on tests of learning, attention/processing speed, working memory, and delayed memory. Analyses were also conducted to see if there was a relationship between exposure to violence and psychosocial vulnerabilities including reported mental illness and substance use histories. People who had never been exposed to violence were less likely to have a history of mental illness. There was no relationship between substance use and exposure to violence; lifetime exposure to violence did not affect the rate of reported substance use histories among this population. These results can be used to inform childhood violence prevention programming of the risk of poorer cognitive functioning in adulthood if children are victimized again in adulthood
Forced Pooling: The Unconstitutional Taking of Private Property
Get PDFOur society’s continued addiction to fossil fuels poses an existential threat to our future. The scientific consensus clearly tells us that we must stop burning fossil fuels as fast as possible. This poses a huge political challenge, as many people make a lot of money from the fossil fuel industry, and they resist change. But an overlooked legal doctrine shows that we are not even going after the lowest hanging fruit. Oil and gas rights are often privately held in the United States. Some owners of those rights would be happy to leave their oil and gas safely in the ground. But most states have laws which allow for “forced pooling” of oil and gas rights, allowing operators to extract even the minerals of non-consenting landowners. Halting the extraction of oil and gas owned by those set on profiting from it will be challenging enough. Surely we can start by not forcing private property owners to extract oil and gas against their will.There is a ready legal solution to the problem posed by forced pooling in the Takings Clause. Recent cases such as Horne and Cedar Point have clarified two kinds of government actions that per se violate the takings clause. If government regulations, even longstanding ones, physically take control of personal property such as raisins (or oil and gas), that is automatically a taking. And if government laws take away the right to exclude and thus authorize invasion of private property by others, that is also a per se taking. Both of these precedents would apply where forced pooling laws allow oil and gas companies to invade private property and physically remove the oil and gas found there.Changes in the oil and gas industry also justify a change in the legal regime of forced pooling. Forced pooling was designed to address problems caused by the rule of capture, which applies to migratory resources such as water, wildlife, or historically to oil and gas. Modern technology in the oil and gas industry, including horizontal drilling and fracking, instead has enabled the extraction of non-migratory oil and gas, to which the rule of capture logically does not apply.These changes in the law and the oil and gas industry both justify a reexamination of forced pooling on constitutional takings grounds. Perhaps surprisingly, the strong property rights approach taken by the Supreme Court in recent cases can actually be used to protect progressive property owners who wish to leave their oil and gas safely in the ground
Collective Case Study Career Critique of Social Entrepreneurs Who Are Gifted Adults
Get PDFThis dissertation describes a qualitative research study that grows our understanding of the career development experiences, supports, and barriers of social entrepreneurs who are gifted adults (SEGA) so that we may nurture the career development of future SEGA. Research questions for this study probed the career development experiences, supports, and barriers of SEGA and the shared social value they create. The conceptual frameworks for this study are the ecological model for human development (Bronfenbrenner, 1979); the theory of positive disintegration (Dąbrowski, 1964/2016); social cognitive career theory (SCCT; Lent et al., 1994); the perceived instructional arc (Uhrmacher et al., 2017); and my curricular career spiral of social entrepreneurs. The methodological frameworks for this study are a collective case study of the quintain of SEGA (Creswell & Poth, 2018; Stake, 2006) and my collaborative connoisseurship and critique (CC&C), which incorporates methodologies from educational connoisseurship and criticism (C&C; Eisner, 2017; Uhrmacher et al., 2017). A systematic review of qualitative literature explores themes of social entrepreneur education in the United States. A recruitment survey consisting of the Ksiazak Adult Giftedness Scale (KAGS; Ksiazak, 2010) and the Social Entrepreneurship Orientation Scale (SEOS; Dwivedi & Weerawardena, 2018) supported intensive purposeful sampling of five participants. Each SEGA participated in interviews, artifact collection, an observation, and a focus group that fostered CC&C. Collective case study descriptions are reported and incorporate opening and closing vignettes (Creswell & Poth, 2018; Uhrmacher et al., 2017). Key findings included that learning about gifted neurodivergence positively develops self-awareness; self-awareness and curiosity impact self-education, which influences self-efficacy; frustration with work experiences spurs positive disintegration of career paths; intellectual knowledge and creativity help SEGA innovate a career for social good; a strong value system and career supports help SEGA develop a career ideal; business acumen or partnerships are necessary to build a sustainable enterprise; a collaborative network provides inspiration, encouragement, and guidance; investments by others help form, grow, and sustain social enterprises; and feedback helps social entrepreneurs understand their impact and refine their work. This study illuminates a gap in the literature by creating an academic understanding of the educational and career development experiences of gifted adults who are social entrepreneurs in the United States, how they achieve secondary integration (Dąbrowski, 1964/2016) of a career ideal, and the shared social value they create. This study informs gifted people, education, business, and psychology through CC&C of collective cases to nurture the career development of both social entrepreneurs and the gifted
Characterization of Oxidized Tau Protein Aggregation and Inhibition of Tau Aggregation via MAP2
No full textNeurofibrillary tangles (NFT) composed of the microtubule stabilizing protein Tau are a pathological hallmark of Alzheimer\u27s disease (AD) and many other dementia related diseases specified as Tauopathies. Due to alternative mRNA splicing, intrinsically disordered Tau exists as six separate isoforms in the adult human brain where they are categorized by the lack or inclusion of the second repeat in the microtubule binding domain (3R or 4R respectively). Isoforms are subcategorized by the inclusion or lack thereof, one or two N-terminal inserts. Many studies show that Tau aggregates into amyloid fibrils and these fibrils can break into small oligomeric units known as seeds which are more efficient at recruiting native monomers in a template-assisted manner similar to a prion-like mechanism.
A vast number of researchers consider fibrils/seeds to be toxic to neurons because they interact unfavorably with cellular membranes as well as cytosolic chaperones and compete with microtubules for native monomers resulting in the loss of their vital, native function. Once recruited, monomers are locked in an ultra-stable conformation unable to return to functional monomers. Preventing incorporation of monomers to preformed aggregates has been an intense focus of our lab and other research labs. MAP2 is another intrinsically disordered protein that aids microtubule stabilization and also possesses high sequence homology with Tau. This similarity provided the motivation to explore whether MAP2 has an affinity for Tau aggregates and possibly prevents Tau monomer addition. Here we show that MAP2Ctr (truncated 3R homolog) and MAP2Dtr (truncated 4R homolog) were able to inhibit truncated Tau monomer as well as full length cellular Tau monomer incorporation.
Literature strongly suggests post translational modifications are a modulator of Tau aggregation in vivo. Previous studies inferred that oxidation may be a post translational modification that plays a role in the amyloidogenesis of Tau. However, conflicting reports left some uncertainty, stating that intramolecular oxidized Tau monomers were incapable of forming fibrils. Our lab decided to investigate this further because cellular oxidative stress has gained momentum as a central modulator of numerous neurodegenerative diseases including AD. Here we demonstrate that oxidized full length Tau forms semi-stable fibrils that seed other oxidized monomers regardless of oxidation method (peroxide or air oxidized). Oxidized Tau exists in the form of a compact monomer as it possesses an intramolecular disulfide linkage between cysteines at positions 291 and 322. Interestingly, Cryo-EM data has shown that the fibrils these monomers aggregate into contain an intermolecular disulfide bond throughout the fibril which implies a switch from intra- to intermolecular linkage of monomers within the fibril. Experiments in HEK293 cell line overexpressing hT40P301S-EYFP, a full-length disease mutant tau construct C-terminally tagged with an Enhanced Yellow Fluorescence Protein, show air oxidized aggregates seed intracellular monomers and possess similar properties to the original in vitro aggregates. This data supports the notion that oxidized Tau may have a physiological role whether that be a preventative or accelerating aggregation mechanism