The Demographics, Psychographics, Reasons for Giving, and Reasons for Not Giving of Alumni Donors and Nondonors to Two Seventh-day Adventist Universities

Problem Adventist universities rely on donor support. The predictors of Adventist alumni giving behavior are vital in order to optimize the fundraising capability of a university, but perceptions of who gives among Adventist alumni and why they give or do not give are not based on research. Method This empirical study analyzed the relationships between independent variables (demographics, psychographics, reasons for giving, and reasons for not giving) and dependent variables (donor status, level of support measured by largest gift and cumulative gift total, and frequency of support measured by percentage of gift years). The dependent variables were derived from gift data of two comprehensive Adventist universities. The independent variables were created from responses to a survey mailed to alumni of the Universities. The Identification Theory, rather than social exchange, altruism, or obligation theories, was used as a framework for the reasons for giving and not giving. Chi-square, analysis of variance (ANOVA), and correlation tests were used to analyze the relationships between individual variables; multiple regression tests were used to analyze models composed of selected variables. Results Significant differences between donors and nondonors and significant relationships with level and frequency of support variables existed for all four types of independent variables. Being older, having a spouse with a degree, and receiving the highest degree earlier were demographic predictors of donors. Psychographic predictors of giving behavior included: giving to more than three nonprofits and being involved with the University. Reasons for giving predictive of giving behavior included: being asked to give, believing in the mission, respecting past and current faculty, and returning help as one was helped. Conclusions The discovery of predictors of Adventist alumni giving behavior will assist university personnel both in identifying alumni who are potential donors and preparing effective funding proposals to optimize philanthropic education and resource acquisition. Additional study of the relationships between the various predictors of Adventist alumni giving behavior is recommended. Encouraging philanthropy, in general, by alumni appears to enhance alumni-giving behavior to their Adventist alma mater

The Ah receptor: adaptive metabolism, ligand diversity, and the xenokine model

Author Posting. © American Chemical Society, 2020. This is an open access article published under an ACS AuthorChoice License. The definitive version was published in Chemical Research in Toxicology, 33(4), (2020): 860-879, doi:10.1021/acs.chemrestox.9b00476.The Ah receptor (AHR) has been studied for almost five decades. Yet, we still have many important questions about its role in normal physiology and development. Moreover, we still do not fully understand how this protein mediates the adverse effects of a variety of environmental pollutants, such as the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), the chlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins (“dioxins”), and many polyhalogenated biphenyls. To provide a platform for future research, we provide the historical underpinnings of our current state of knowledge about AHR signal transduction, identify a few areas of needed research, and then develop concepts such as adaptive metabolism, ligand structural diversity, and the importance of proligands in receptor activation. We finish with a discussion of the cognate physiological role of the AHR, our perspective on why this receptor is so highly conserved, and how we might think about its cognate ligands in the future.This review is dedicated in memory of the career of Alan Poland, one of the truly great minds in pharmacology and toxicology. This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health Grants R35-ES028377, T32-ES007015, P30-CA014520, P42-ES007381, and U01-ES1026127, The UW SciMed GRS Program, and The Morgridge Foundation. The authors would like to thank Catherine Stanley of UW Media Solutions for her artwork

Parafascicular Thalamic and Orbitofrontal Cortical Inputs to Striatum Represent States for Goal-Directed Action Selection

Several lines of evidence accrued over the last 5-10 years have converged to suggest that the parafascicular nucleus of the thalamus and the lateral orbitofrontal cortex each represent or contribute to internal state/context representations that guide action selection in partially observable task situations. In rodents, inactivations of each structure have been found to selectively impair performance in paradigms testing goal-directed action selection, but only when that action selection relies on state representations. Electrophysiological evidence has suggested that each structure achieves this function via inputs onto cholinergic interneurons (CINs) in the dorsomedial striatum. Here, we briefly review these studies, then point to anatomical evidence regarding the afferents of each structure and what they suggest about the specific features that each contribute to internal state representations. Finally, we speculate as to whether this role might be achieved interdependently through direct PF→OFC projections, or through the convergence of independent direct orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) and parafascicular nucleus of the thalamus (PF) inputs onto striatal targets

Similarity Queries for Temporal Toxicogenomic Expression Profiles

We present an approach for answering similarity queries about gene expression time series that is motivated by the task of characterizing the potential toxicity of various chemicals. Our approach involves two key aspects. First, our method employs a novel alignment algorithm based on time warping. Our time warping algorithm has several advantages over previous approaches. It allows the user to impose fairly strong biases on the form that the alignments can take, and it permits a type of local alignment in which the entirety of only one series has to be aligned. Second, our method employs a relaxed spline interpolation to predict expression responses for unmeasured time points, such that the spline does not necessarily exactly fit every observed point. We evaluate our approach using expression time series from the Edge toxicology database. Our experiments show the value of using spline representations for sparse time series. More significantly, they show that our time warping method provides more accurate alignments and classifications than previous standard alignment methods for time series

The East African Long Rains in Observations and Models

Decadal variability of the East African precipitation during the season of March–May (long rains) is examined and the performance of a series of models in simulating the observed features is assessed. Observational results show that the drying trend of the long rains is associated with decadal natural variability associated with sea surface temperature (SST) variations over the Pacific Ocean. Empirical orthogonal function (EOF), linear regression, and composite analyses all show the spatial pattern of the associated SST field to be La Niña like. The SST-forced International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI) forecast models are able to capture the East African precipitation climatology, the decadal variability of the long rains, and the associated SST anomaly pattern but are not consistent with observations from the 1970s. The multimodel mean of the SST-forced models from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 5 (CMIP5) Atmospheric Model Intercomparison Project (AMIP) experiment captures the climatology and the drying trend in recent decades. The fully coupled models from the CMIP5 historical experiment, however, have systematic errors in simulating the East African precipitation climatology by underestimating the long rains while overestimating the short rains. The multimodel mean of the historical simulations of the long rains anomalies, which is the best estimate of the radiatively forced change, shows a weak wetting trend associated with anthropogenic forcing. The SST anomaly pattern associated with the long rains has large discrepancies with the observations. The results herein suggest caution in projections of East African precipitation from CMIP5 or the relationship between the East African precipitation and the SST spatial pattern found in paleoclimate studies with coupled climate models

EDGE3: A web-based solution for management and analysis of Agilent two color microarray experiments

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The ability to generate transcriptional data on the scale of entire genomes has been a boon both in the improvement of biological understanding and in the amount of data generated. The latter, the amount of data generated, has implications when it comes to effective storage, analysis and sharing of these data. A number of software tools have been developed to store, analyze, and share microarray data. However, a majority of these tools do not offer all of these features nor do they specifically target the commonly used two color Agilent DNA microarray platform. Thus, the motivating factor for the development of EDGE³was to incorporate the storage, analysis and sharing of microarray data in a manner that would provide a means for research groups to collaborate on Agilent-based microarray experiments without a large investment in software-related expenditures or extensive training of end-users.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>EDGE³has been developed with two major functions in mind. The first function is to provide a workflow process for the generation of microarray data by a research laboratory or a microarray facility. The second is to store, analyze, and share microarray data in a manner that doesn't require complicated software. To satisfy the first function, EDGE³has been developed as a means to establish a well defined experimental workflow and information system for microarray generation. To satisfy the second function, the software application utilized as the user interface of EDGE³is a web browser. Within the web browser, a user is able to access the entire functionality, including, but not limited to, the ability to perform a number of bioinformatics based analyses, collaborate between research groups through a user-based security model, and access to the raw data files and quality control files generated by the software used to extract the signals from an array image.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Here, we present EDGE³, an open-source, web-based application that allows for the storage, analysis, and controlled sharing of transcription-based microarray data generated on the Agilent DNA platform. In addition, EDGE³provides a means for managing RNA samples and arrays during the hybridization process. EDGE³is freely available for download at <url>http://edge.oncology.wisc.edu/</url>.</p

TRAUMATIC AXONAL INJURY IN THE MOUSE BRAIN

Despite decades of research into neurotrauma prevention and treatment, the underlying mechanisms responsible for Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) are not well understood. This is a result of inadequate mechanical characterization of the brain during the traumatic event (e.g. blunt head impact), the resulting biochemical cascade occurring that the cellular level, and the following neurocognitive deficits that evolve over time. Traumatic Axonal Injury (TAI) can lead to widespread white matter disruption and is believed to play a large role in the neurocognitive outcomes of TBI patients, but the ability to assess TAI in humans is limited since most pathologies are only observable post-mortem. This creates a fundamental problem in the TBI research community: how can the deformations of the brain be linked with the pathological outcomes if both are difficult to measure in living humans? One solution to this problem is to evaluate TAI using animal models. Mouse models are commonly used together with blunt impact experiments to understand the pathologies and neurophysiological deficits related to TAI at different times post-injury, but the relationships between the initial impact, the subsequent motion of the mouse head, and the brain tissue distortion are not well established. To address this gap, this work examines the mechanics of the mouse brain during dynamic head rotations, which occur during head impacts in both the mouse and human. The first portion of the current work presents optical measurements of post-mortem mouse brain tissue during forced dynamic rotations. Using the experimental strain field measurements as a validation source, a Finite Element Model (FEM) of the mouse brain is developed in the second portion of the current work. The purpose of the mouse brain FEM is to calculate tissue strains that occur for a given rigid-body motion of the skull. In the third portion of current work, the FEM brain strain calculations are presented for a recent CHIMERA (Closed Head Impact Model of Engineered Rotational Acceleration) mouse experiments, and the axonal strains calculated by the model are compared TAI patterns observed in the experiments. The results here give insight to TAI mechanisms and thresholds, which is critical to better understanding TBI in humans

LPS differentially regulates adhesion and transendothelial migration of human monocytes under static and flow conditions

One of the key components of the innate immune response is the recognition of microbial products such as LPS by Toll-like receptors on monocytes and neutrophils. We show here that short-term stimulation of primary human monocytes with LPS led to an increase in adhesion of monocytes to endothelial cells and a dramatic decrease in transendothelial migration under static conditions. In contrast, under normal physiological flow, monocyte adhesion and migration across a human umbilical vein endothelial cell monolayer appeared to be unaffected by LPS treatment. LPS stimulation of monocytes activated β1 and β2 integrins, but did not increase their surface expression levels. During septic shock, reduction in blood flow as a result of vasodilation and vascular permeability leads to adhesion and accumulation of LPS-stimulated circulating monocytes onto the blood vessel walls. The different findings of monocyte migration under static and flow conditions in our study may offer one explanation for this phenomenon. The rapid engagement of LPS-activated monocytes preventing transendothelial migration could represent a novel mechanism of bacterial exclusion from the vasculature. This occurs during the early stages of sepsis, and in turn may modulate the severity of the pathophysiolog

Adaptive Differentiation in Response to Water Stress by Edaphic Races of \u3ci\u3eLasthenia californica\u3c/i\u3e (Asteraceae)

Two edaphic races of Lasthenia californica sensu Ornduff (races A and C) grow in parapatry on a serpentine outcrop at Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve, California. The races occupy distinct edaphic habitats that have different water‐holding capacities. We predict that the two races will show differentiation in reproductive strategies related to their response to water stress. In order to test this hypothesis, we performed a greenhouse experiment to characterize the reaction norms of the two races exposed to a gradient in water availability. We measured the response of five variables to the watering treatments: early survivorship, days to flowering, root/shoot dry mass ratio, total dry mass, and a measure of reproductive fitness, number of flower heads. We found that the races differ in their allocation patterns to roots compared with shoots and in days to flowering, indicating genetic differentiation for these traits. Race A consistently allocates relatively more biomass to roots while race C flowers earlier. However, the reaction norms of the two races for all nonreproductive traits are parallel, indicating that races do not differ in their plastic response to drought stress. The number of flower heads, our measure of reproductive fitness, did, however, exhibit differential response to water availability between the two races. Under low watering treatment, race C plants are able to maintain flower head production, while race A plants show a monotonic decrease in head production as water stress increases. Results indicate that race C plants are better adapted to drought; they are able to maintain a high reproductive output under low water availability. However, as the phenotype of race A is affected by drought, reproductive output decreases, as we would predict for plants that rarely experience drought in their natural environment