Human in vitro models for understanding mechanisms of autism spectrum disorder.

Early brain development is a critical epoch for the development of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). In vivo animal models have, until recently, been the principal tool used to study early brain development and the changes occurring in neurodevelopmental disorders such as ASD. In vitro models of brain development represent a significant advance in the field. Here, we review the main methods available to study human brain development in vitro and the applications of these models for studying ASD and other psychiatric disorders. We discuss the main findings from stem cell models to date focusing on cell cycle and proliferation, cell death, cell differentiation and maturation, and neuronal signaling and synaptic stimuli. To be able to generalize the results from these studies, we propose a framework of experimental design and power considerations for using in vitro models to study ASD. These include both technical issues such as reproducibility and power analysis and conceptual issues such as the brain region and cell types being modeled

Academic Librarianship and Career Adaptability

The inspiration for this essay is Barbara Fister’s assertion that librarians must embrace functions that have not traditionally been part of the academic librarian’s portfolio. We shall examine the need for career adaptability in librarianship and use a case study to illustrate the four attributes librarians need to develop to ensure career adaptability. The case study involved collaboration between Kansas State University (KSU) Libraries, an agronomy professor, and the Global Research Alliance to develop an open access croplands research database. We will draw upon the field of vocational psychology to discuss career adaptability and ways librarians can develop the traits needed for good career adaptability: career concern, career control, career curiosity and career confidence (4 Cs) (Savickas, 2005)

Designing dark energy afterglow experiments

Chameleon fields, which are scalar field dark energy candidates, can evade fifth force constraints by becoming massive in high-density regions. However, this property allows chameleon particles to be trapped inside a vacuum chamber with dense walls. Afterglow experiments constrain photon-coupled chameleon fields by attempting to produce and trap chameleon particles inside such a vacuum chamber, from which they will emit an afterglow as they regenerate photons. Here we discuss several theoretical and systematic effects underlying the design and analysis of the GammeV and CHASE afterglow experiments. We consider chameleon particle interactions with photons, Fermions, and other chameleon particles, as well as with macroscopic magnetic fields and matter. The afterglow signal in each experiment is predicted, and its sensitivity to various properties of the experimental apparatus is studied. Finally, we use CHASE data to exclude a wide range of photon-coupled chameleon dark energy models.Comment: 29 pages, 31 figures, 1 tabl

Khovanov Homology, Lee Homology and a Rasmussen Invariant for Virtual Knots

The paper contains an essentially self-contained treatment of Khovanov homology, Khovanov-Lee homology as well as the Rasmussen invariant for virtual knots and virtual knot cobordisms which directly applies to classical knot and classical knot cobordisms. To do so, we give an alternate formulation for the Manturov definition of Khovanov homology for virtual knots and links with arbitrary coefficients. This approach uses cut loci on the knot diagram to induce a conjugation operator in the Frobenius algebra. We then discuss the implications of the maps induced in the aforementioned theory to the universal Frobenius algebra for virtual knots. Next we show how one can apply the Karoubi envelope approach of Bar-Natan and Morrison on abstract link diagrams with cross cuts to construct the canonical generators of the Khovanov-Lee homology. Using these canonical generators we derive a generalization of the Rasmussen invariant for virtual knot cobordisms and furthermore generalize Rasmussen's result on the slice genus for positive knots to the case of positive virtual knots. It should also be noted that this generalization of the Rasmussen invariant provides an easy to compute obstruction to knot cobordisms in $S_g \times I \times I$ in the sense of Turaev