An analysis of modifiable risk factors, genetic underpinnings, and current medications for Alzheimer's disease

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a widespread neurodegenerative disorder that affects tens of millions of patients worldwide. Throughout the last two decades an incredible amount of time and resources have been funneled into hopefully finding medications that would provide a cure. Unfortunately, no such compound has been identified and instead the only FDA approved medications for AD to date target symptomatic management and may not even be effective for longer than a couple of years. To this end, this paper sets out to identify modifiable risk factors for AD as well as provide recommendations for clinicians on how best to utilize the tools currently available to them to treat AD. Additionally this paper addresses common flaws in AD clinical trial study designs and provides future research directions to expand outside of the popular amyloid hypothesis and instead potentially focus on a multi-pathway mechanism of the disease. The following thesis will outline several potential mechanisms that can lead to the hallmark pathologies seen in AD, primarily amyloid deposition and neurofibrillary tangles as well as neuronal death. The majority of commercial and research interest into AD has been focused on the amyloid hypothesis and the notion that stopping the formation of amyloid plaques would stop the disease course. However, in recent years other mechanisms and neurotoxic pathways such as inhibition of tricarboxylic acid (TCA) cycle enzymes, neuroinflammation, and tauopathy have been shown to contribute both to the formation of amyloid plaques as well as contributing to AD pathology in their own right. The modifiable risk factors explored in this paper include the effects of triglycerides as well as intake of antioxidant vitamins and omega-3-fatty acids, both of which are beneficial for brain health. This paper will also highlight some of the extensive research on the Apolipoprotein E gene and the effects the various alleles have on AD risk. These being the putative protective effect of the APOE2 allele, “neutral” effect of the most commonly found APOE3 allele, and finally the deleterious effects of the APOE4 allele, believed to be the strongest genetic risk factor for late-onset AD

The effect of economic changes on voters’ choices is strong for around a year and a half, but approaches zero after five years

Jack Bailey estimates voters’ economic time frames using a new model that measures both how the economy affects voting behaviour and how voters remember economic change. He shows that after around a year and a half, economic voting effects halve in size. After five years, they approach zero. Yet he argues that economic growth over the past five years affects how people vote nonetheless. This is because as economic time frames grow, so too do rates of economic growth

Internet Users’ Manual for English Language Teaching Professionals: Enjoyable Internet Understanding

This paper serves as an overview of the Internet and its resources available to English Language Teaching professionals. The intended audience is both instructors new to Internet technologies as well as those well versed in the Net but looking for further resources. Initial sections give the reader a brief overview of the Internet, its history, and its most prominent component parts including e-mail, mailing lists, newsgroups and chat rooms. Primary emphasis is placed on the categorizing and description of key web sites most useful to English Language instructors and administrators. Each site listing contains addresses (URLs), general site descriptions and other pertinent information about the site and its usefulness to ELT professionals

Crowdsourcing the UK’s constitution: why the status quo is not an option

LSE’s Institute of Public Affairs and Department of Law, and Democratic Audit have recently teamed up for a project which will crowdsource a UK written constitution. In advance of project launch event, Jack Bailey of the LSE Institute of Public Affairs and Sean Kippin of Democratic Audit explain why the current state of affairs is untenable, and how the process of crowdsourcing will work in practice

Quantifying Operational Constraints of Low-Latency Telerobotics for Planetary Surface Operations

NASA's SLS and Orion crew vehicle will launch humans to cislunar space to begin the new era of space exploration. NASA plans to use the Orion crew vehicle to transport humans between Earth and cislunar space where there will be a stationed habitat known as the Deep Space Gateway (DSG). The proximity to the lunar surface allows for direct communication between the DSG and surface assets, which enables low-latency telerobotic exploration. The operational constraints for telerobotics must be fully explored on Earth before being utilized on space exploration missions. We identified two constraints on space exploration using low-latency surface telerobotics and attempts to quantify these constraints. A constraint associated with low-latency surface telerobotics is the bandwidth available between the orbiting command station and the ground assets. The bandwidth available will vary during operation. As a result, it is critical to quantify the operational video conditions required for effective exploration. We designed an experiment to quantify the threshold frame rate required for effective exploration. The experiment simulated geological exploration via low-latency surface telerobotics using a COTS rover in a lunar analog environment. The results from this experiment indicate that humans should operate above a threshold frame rate of 5 frames per second. In a separate, but similar experiment, we introduced a 2.6 second delay in the video system. This delay recreated the latency conditions present when operating rovers on the lunar farside from an Earth-based command station. This time delay was compared to low-latency conditions for teleoperation at the DSG ($\leq$0.4 seconds). The results from this experiment show a 150% increase in exploration time when the latency is increased to 2.6 seconds. This indicates that such a delay significantly complicates real-time exploration strategies.Comment: 10 pages, 8 figures, Proceedings of the IEEE Aerospace Conference, Big Sky, MT. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1706.0375

Jack Bailey: A Texas Drover\u27s Diary, 1868

Introduction: In the late nineteenth century, thousands sought adventure and fortune on the cattle trails. Unfortunately, few committed their experiences to writing. The journal of Jack Bailey, which records the activities of a Texas cowboy from August 5 to November 8, 1868, is the earliest known daily account of life on the trail in the years following the Civil War. [Note: materially originally published by David Dary (ed.) in A Texas Cowboy\u27s Journal: Up the Trail to Kansas in 1868