Supporting Underserved Pregnant Women through Smoking Cessation

This project assessed smoking behaviors and supported smoking cessation in underserved pregnant women. Using a longitudinal design, women were recruited from a community prenatal center. Using the Transtheoretical model, interventions were designed to support the subjects’ movement along the stages of change. Subjects willing to quit were given a smoking cessation “quit kit.” For subjects not contemplating smoking cessation, information about the harmful effects of smoking was distributed to encourage movement towards quitting. Women who were smoking were followed throughout their pregnancy and up to one year after delivery. Subjects (N = 134) ranged in age from 18 to 41; 71% were single; and 63% had household incomes less than $20,000 per year. Subjects were primarily African American (40%). 57% had previously smoked. 35% were current smokers. Of the smokers (n = 27), 26% were not considering quitting (pre-contemplation), 56% had planned to quit (contemplation), and 18% had an action plan (preparation). Six weeks post-delivery (n = 12), one woman quit smoking and the others were planning to quit. Six months post-delivery (n = 7), two women quit smoking and the remaining smokers were planning to quit. One year post-delivery (n = 9), one woman quit smoking and of the remaining smokers only six planned to quit. Results will add to the growing body of evidence about smoking patterns of underserved pregnant women

Opinions about Anti-Tobacco Marketing Strategies from the Undergraduate Student Perspective

The purpose of this project was to assess undergraduate college students’ opinions of anti-tobacco marketing strategies. The college environment offers an excellent setting for implementation of smoking abstinence interventions for young adults. Freshmen students at Valparaiso University were invited to join group sessions in the residence halls to evaluate anti-tobacco YouTube videos, print materials, and Quit Kit materials. Undergraduate nursing students functioned as group session facilitators. Participants (N = 39) included: 59% males, 87% non-smokers, and 92% who chose to attend for CORE credit. YouTube videos were found to be effective if a dramatic, age appropriate, simple message was connected to tobacco use. Print materials were effective if they included bright colors, brief statistics, few words, humor, and were immediately relevant. Quit Kit materials were selected if they included humor, pictures, had few words, and were useful. Quit Kits items included cozies, chip clips, stress relievers, and cinnamon flavored gum. Ninety-two percent indicated that their opinions about smoking, second-hand smoke exposure, and decisions whether to smoke were affected by these sessions. Data from this study will add to the growing body of evidence about college students’ opinions concerning marketing strategies and form a foundation for a longitudinal study of students’ changing opinions toward smoking

EchoFusion: Tracking and Reconstruction of Objects in 4D Freehand Ultrasound Imaging without External Trackers

Ultrasound (US) is the most widely used fetal imaging technique. However, US images have limited capture range, and suffer from view dependent artefacts such as acoustic shadows. Compounding of overlapping 3D US acquisitions into a high-resolution volume can extend the field of view and remove image artefacts, which is useful for retrospective analysis including population based studies. However, such volume reconstructions require information about relative transformations between probe positions from which the individual volumes were acquired. In prenatal US scans, the fetus can move independently from the mother, making external trackers such as electromagnetic or optical tracking unable to track the motion between probe position and the moving fetus. We provide a novel methodology for image-based tracking and volume reconstruction by combining recent advances in deep learning and simultaneous localisation and mapping (SLAM). Tracking semantics are established through the use of a Residual 3D U-Net and the output is fed to the SLAM algorithm. As a proof of concept, experiments are conducted on US volumes taken from a whole body fetal phantom, and from the heads of real fetuses. For the fetal head segmentation, we also introduce a novel weak annotation approach to minimise the required manual effort for ground truth annotation. We evaluate our method qualitatively, and quantitatively with respect to tissue discrimination accuracy and tracking robustness.Comment: MICCAI Workshop on Perinatal, Preterm and Paediatric Image analysis (PIPPI), 201

PGX Technology: Novel tailor-made and tuneable Delivery Systems for poorly water-soluble Bioactives

The delivery of poorly water-soluble bioactives, including active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) and nutraceutical components is of great interest for existing drugs and new drug developments, cosmetic formulations, functional foods and nutraceuticals. This article presents a novel patented technology called PGX Technology, which utilizes pressurized gas expanded (PGX) liquids to dry, micronize, purify and functionalize water-soluble polymers. PGX Technology can generate open-porous nanostructured polymer carriers composed of one or several water-soluble polymers forming powders, granules, nano-fibrils, aerogels and exfoliated nano-composites with specific surface areas (SSA) ranging from tens to several hundred m2/g. Such mesoporous water-soluble carrier systems can be impregnated with a bioactive by means of adsorptive precipitation, utilizing supercritical carbon dioxide, leading to the uniform deposition of nano-scale particles (<120 nm) throughout the porous matrix, forming a bioactive-polymer complex, for example coenzyme Q10 on β-glucan (CoQ10-iBG). A nano-dispersion of CoQ10 is formed when such CoQ10-iBG complex is dissolved in water, which is stable over 6 months at room temperature. The bioavailability of the CoQ10-iBG complex tested in rats compared favorably with a positive control (CoQ10 in triolein) and a commercial CoQ10-cyclodextrin complex

Review essay: Anthony Howe. Byron and the Forms of Thought (Liverpool: Liverpool UP, 2013) and Carla Pomare. Byron and the Discourse of History (Farnham and Burlington: Ashgate, 2013).

This essay is a comparative review of two recently published books in Byron studies: Anthony Howe's Byron and the Forms of Thought (Liverpool: Liverpool UP, 2013) and Carla Pomare's Byron and the Discourse of History (Farnham and Burlington: Ashgate, 2013)

Chronic high fat feeding restricts islet mRNA translation initiation independently of ER stress via DNA damage and p53 activation

Under conditions of high fat diet (HFD) consumption, glucose dyshomeostasis develops when β-cells are unable to adapt to peripheral insulin demands. Few studies have interrogated the molecular mechanisms of β-cell dysfunction at the level of mRNA translation under such conditions. We sought to address this issue through polyribosome profile analysis of islets from mice fed 16-weeks of 42% HFD. HFD-islet analysis revealed clear trends toward global reductions in mRNA translation with a significant reduction in the polyribosome/monoribosome ratio for Pdx1 mRNA. Transcriptional and translational analyses revealed endoplasmic reticulum stress was not the etiology of our findings. HFD-islets demonstrated evidence of oxidative stress and DNA damage, as well as activation of p53. Experiments in MIN-6 β-cells revealed that treatment with doxorubicin to directly induce DNA damage mimicked our observed effects in islets. Islets from animals treated with pioglitazone concurrently with HFD demonstrated a reversal of effects observed from HFD alone. Finally, HFD-islets demonstrated reduced expression of multiple ribosome biogenesis genes and the key translation initiation factor eIF4E. We propose a heretofore unappreciated effect of chronic HFD on β-cells, wherein continued DNA damage owing to persistent oxidative stress results in p53 activation and a resultant inhibition of mRNA translation

Effects of centrally administered etanercept on behaviour, histology and TNF-α expression in mice following a peripheral immune challenge

Background: Peripheral cytokines affect central nervous system (CNS) function, triggering anxiety and cognitive decline. Although peripheral blockade of tumor necrosis factor (TNF-α) by etanercept, has been effective in alleviating rheumatoid arthritis, it is yet unknown whether central blockade of TNF-α is beneficial for immune-challenged CNS function. This study investigated effects of central etanercept administration post-peripheral immune challenge, on behaviour and histology. Methods: 12-week-old C57BL/6 mice (n=40) were challenged with either LPS or saline, administered peripherally 24hr before being treated with etanercept or artificial CSF (aCSF), via intracerebroventricular injection. Mice underwent behavioural analyses for locomotion (open field test: OFT), memory (Y maze) and anxiety (elevated zero maze: EZM) 24hr post etanercept/aCSF treatment. Brain tissue was then collected to estimate number of hippocampal microglia and expression of Tnfa. Results: Acute systemic challenge with LPS decreased weight in mice at 24hr, and impaired locomotor activity. LPS significantly increased anxiety-like behaviour (2-way ANOVA: Interaction: P=0.096; Saline/LPS challenge: P=0.0006, aCSF/etanercept treatment: P=0.0008), which was reversed by etanercept and significantly reduced cognition in the Y Maze (Interaction: P=0.037, Saline/LPS challenge: P=0.31, aCSF/etanercept treatment: P=0.80), which was not reversed by etanercept. LPS challenge also increased Tnfa expression in the hippocampus (Interaction: F(1,13)=28.04, P=0.0001, Saline/LPS challenge: P=0.0003, aCSF/etanercept treatment: P=0.021) and etanercept treatment was effective in reducing this Tnfa expression (P=0.001). Etanercept also significantly reduced microglial numbers within the hippocampus, which were increased following LPS administration (2-way ANOVA: Interaction: P= 0.0041; Saline/LPS challenge: P<0.0001, etanercept/aCSF: P=0.08,). Conclusion: A single dose of etanercept was found to be effective in significantly decreasing anxiety, Tnfa expression and microglia numbers 48hr post-peripheral immune challenge. The present study suggests that there is effective cross-talk between peripheral and central immune systems. Additionally behavioural and biological changes caused by LPS challenge which may be mediated by TNF-α related central inflammation, were reversed by etanercept treatment

Palmitate induces mRNA translation and increases ER protein load in islet β-cells via activation of the mammalian target of rapamycin pathway

Saturated free fatty acids (FFAs) have complex effects on the islet β-cell, acutely promoting adaptive hyperplasia but chronically impairing insulin release. The acute effects of FFAs remain incompletely defined. To elucidate these early molecular events, we incubated mouse β-cells and islets with palmitate and then studied mRNA translation by polyribosomal profiling and analyzed signaling pathways by immunoblot analysis. We found that palmitate acutely increases polyribosome occupancy of total RNA, consistent with an increase in mRNA translation. This effect on translation was attributable to activation of mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) pathways via L-type Ca(2+) channels but was independent of insulin signaling. Longer incubations led to depletion of polyribosome-associated RNA, consistent with activation of the unfolded protein response (UPR). Pharmacologic inhibition of mTOR suppressed both the acute effects of palmitate on mRNA translation and the chronic effects on the UPR. Islets from mice fed a high-fat diet for 7 days showed increases in polyribosome-associated RNA and phosphorylation of S6K, both consistent with activation of mTOR. Our results suggest that palmitate acutely activates mRNA translation and that this increase in protein load contributes to the later UPR

The Grizzly, January 28, 2010

Ursinus Students Celebrate MLK Jr. Day • Recyclemania: Ursinus to Get in the Game • Bisphenol-A: Focus of Ursinus Professor\u27s Research • Ursinus is Top 100 • Making the Landscape at the Berman • Spring Dancing Brings Fundraising and Events • Bouncing Souls Celebrate • Opinion: Liberal Arts Education in the Real World • UC Women\u27s Swimming Makes Big Splash in Conference Poolhttps://digitalcommons.ursinus.edu/grizzlynews/1803/thumbnail.jp