No-Nit Policies in Schools: Time for Change

No-nit policies that exist in many schools throughout the United States were established years ago based on fear and misinformation, rather than scientific evidence. Children who are found to have live lice are no more infectious on the day of diagnosis than they had been prior to the discovery. Transmission of head lice requires close personal contact, which is not common in the school setting. To date, no scientific literature exists to support the exclusion of children from school due to head lice infestation. Therefore, there is a need to develop updated school policies using research-based evidence to determine the best method of treating infestations while allowing children to remain in school

Hypertonicity-induced transmitter release at Drosophila neuromuscular junctions is partly mediated by integrins and cAMP/protein kinase A

The frequency of quantal transmitter release increases upon application of hypertonic solutions. This effect bypasses the Ca2+ triggering step, but requires the presence of key molecules involved in vesicle fusion, and hence could be a useful tool for dissecting the molecular process of vesicle fusion. We have examined the hypertonicity response at neuromuscular junctions of Drosophila embryos in Ca2+-free saline. Relative to wild-type, the response induced by puff application of hypertonic solution was enhanced in a mutant, dunce, in which the cAMP level is elevated, or in wild-type embryos treated with forskolin, an activator of adenylyl cyclase, while protein kinase A (PKA) inhibitors decreased it. The response was also smaller in a mutant, DC0, which lacks the major subunit of PKA. Thus the cAMP/PKA cascade is involved in the hypertonicity response. Peptides containing the sequence Arg-Gly-Asp (RGD), which inhibit binding of integrins to natural ligands, reduced the response, whereas a peptide containing the non-binding sequence Arg-Gly-Glu (RGE) did not. A reduced response persisted in a mutant, myospheroid, which expresses no integrins, and the response in DC0 was unaffected by RGD peptides. These data indicate that there are at lease two components in the hypertonicity response: one that is integrin mediated and involves the cAMP/PKA cascade, and another that is not integrin mediated and does not involve the cAMP/PKA cascade

The role of CO2 capture and utilization in mitigating climate change

To offset the cost associated with CO2 capture and storage (CCS), there is growing interest in finding commercially viable end-use opportunities for the captured CO2. In this Perspective, we discuss the potential contribution of carbon capture and utilization (CCU). Owing to the scale and rate of CO2 production compared to that of utilization allowing long-term sequestration, it is highly improbable the chemical conversion of CO2 will account for more than 1% of the mitigation challenge, and even a scaled-up enhanced oil recovery (EOR)-CCS industry will likely only account for 4–8%. Therefore, whilst CO2-EOR may be an important economic incentive for some early CCS projects, CCU may prove to be a costly distraction, financially and politically, from the real task of mitigation