Total Colony-Forming Units Are a Strong, Independent Predictor of Neutrophil and Platelet Engraftment after Unrelated Umbilical Cord Blood Transplantation: A Single-Center Analysis of 435 Cord Blood Transplants

Graft failure occurs in approximately 20% of patients after unrelated umbilical cord blood transplantation (UCBT). This could be because of inadequate potency of the cord blood unit (CBU). To this end, we investigated the impact of graft characteristics on engraftment and survival of 435 primarily pediatric (median age: 5.3 years) patients receiving a single-unit unrelated UCBT after myeloablative conditioning from 2000 to 2008. Pre-cryopreservation (pre-cryo) graft characteristics were provided by the banks. Post-thaw parameters were measured on dextran/albumin-washed grafts. Post-thaw recovery of the colony-forming unit (CFU), a biological assay reflecting functional viability of the cord blood cells was the lowest percent age (median 21.2%, mean 36.5%) of the pre-cryo value, regardless of the bank of origin. The cumulative incidences of neutrophil and platelet engraftment were 76.9% (95%, confidence interval [CI], 71.3%-82.5%) and 55% (95% CI, 49.3%-60.7%), respectively. Univariate and separate multivariate models using pre-cryo and post-thaw datasets including clinical parameters identified predictors of engraftment and survival. In multivariate modeling, higher CFU dosing was the only pre-cryo graft characteristic predictive of neutrophil (P = .0024) and platelet engraftment (P = .0063). In the post-thaw model, CFU dose best predicted neutrophil and platelet engraftment (both P < .0001). Comparatively, CD34+ and total nucleated cell (TNC) were only weakly predictive in post-thaw neutrophil and platelet engraftment models, respectively. In conclusion, CFU dose is a strong independent predictor of engraftment after unrelated UCBT and should be used to assess potency when selecting CBUs for transplantation

The Grizzly, April 28, 2005

Commencement 2005 • Students Protest Laptop Buyback • Got Talent? • Kaleidoscope Opens • Diversity Week a Success • Ursinus Dancers Preview Work in the Scope • Students Prove Educational Value in Buffy • How to Have a Great Summer • Let the Art Speak for Itself : Preview of the Annual Art Exhibition • Opinions: Most Controversial; Thoughts of a Rising Senior; Turn from Intolerance • Road to the Playoffs in Sight • Lacrosse Team Denied First Conference Win • Intramural Sports Becoming a Popular Alternativehttps://digitalcommons.ursinus.edu/grizzlynews/1585/thumbnail.jp

Iron Dynamics Shape Host-Pathogen Interactions

Hosts and their pathogens often compete for trace metal elements that are essential to each of their survival. Iron is one of these trace metal elements and consequently, iron dynamics are central in host-pathogen interactions. Here we review how competition for iron during infection influences host-pathogen interactions and shapes disease outcomes. Hosts have developed diverse mechanisms to limit nutrient availability to the pathogen, also known as nutritional immunity. In response to infection, vertebrate, invertebrate, and plant hosts generate a hypoferremic environment using a variety of iron-binding proteins and chelators, alongside iron transporters, to limit pathogen replication. To counter nutritional immunity responses, pathogens use TonB-dependent (e.g., siderophores) and TonB-independent mechanisms to scavenge ferric and ferrous iron. Pathogens also compete with the host-associated microbiota to access iron. Competition between microbes for iron can either hinder or facilitate pathogen establishment and proliferation within hosts. Iron dynamics are an exciting new avenue for therapeutic interventions that may be employed against a broad range of pathogens

A Geologic Study to Determine the Potential to Create an Appalachian Storage Hub for Natural Gas Liquids

The Marcellus and Utica shale plays continue to lead the way in an ever-expanding shale revolution with average daily production, growing from about 3 billion cubic feet (BCF) in 2010 to more than 24 BCF today. Forecasts suggest that this could grow to as much as 40 BCF in the next 5 years. Fortunately, sweet spots in the Utica in eastern Ohio and in the Marcellus in northern West Virginia and southwestern Pennsylvania are areas of wet gas production, downdip from oil production and updip from dry gas. Production in these regions represents about 40 percent of the total from the Marcellus and Utica shales and is expected to represent a disproportionate share of future production growth. Because of the amount of natural gas liquids (NGLs) contained in this production, development of these shale plays has the potential to have a large impact on the petrochemical industry

Exploration of Burnout, Emotional Thriving, and Emotional Recovery in an Academic Medical Center: a Mixed Methods Quality Improvement Project

Introduction: Healthcare provider burnout, an indicator of wellbeing, impacts patient safety, provider distress, and employee turnover. In this mixed methods, multi-site quality improvement study conducted \u3c6 months prior to the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, we assessed employee wellbeing in a large clinical department. Methods: Wellbeing surveys were sent electronically to Department of Medicine clinicians, researchers, administrators, and staff from August-September 2019 assessing perceptions of Burnout, Emotional Thriving (ET), and Emotional Recovery (ER). Qualitative responses were reviewed for themes using mixed inductive-deductive analysis. The initial coding was done by small teams with consensus obtained through large group discussions. This study was IRB-approved as non-human subjects research. Results: Of the 671 respondents, 54% met criteria for burnout (Burnout+), 65% for ER (ER+), and 61% for ET (ET+). ER+ and ET+ were present in nearly half of Burnout+ respondents (53% and 43% respectively). Several themes emerged in the qualitative analysis: workload and expectations; tangible resources; work culture; and salary/benefits, with leadership influencing each of the domains. Conclusion: Burnout, ET, and ER can co-exist within the same individual. Employee wellbeing is not adequately reflected by the binary of whether or not an individual is experiencing burnout. All employees at academic medical centers, including staff, researchers, and clinicians, are vulnerable to the same workplace factors driving burnout. Our findings have been used to target areas of intervention during the COVID-19 pandemic at our institution. We propose that other academic medical centers may have similar workplace stressors that they could assess and target for improvement

word~river literary review (2009)

wordriver is a literary journal dedicated to the poetry, short fiction and creative nonfiction of adjuncts and part-time instructors teaching in our universities, colleges, and community colleges. Our premier issue was published in Spring 2009. We are always looking for work that demonstrates the creativity and craft of adjunct/part-time instructors in English and other disciplines. We reserve first publication rights and onetime anthology publication rights for all work published. We define adjunct instructors as anyone teaching part-time or full-time under a semester or yearly contract, nationwide and in any discipline. Graduate students teaching under part-time contracts during the summer or who have used up their teaching assistant time and are teaching with adjunct contracts for the remainder of their graduate program also are eligible.https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/word_river/1002/thumbnail.jp

A Geologic Play Book for Utica Shale Appalachian Basin Exploration

This “Geologic Play Book for Utica Shale Appalachian Basin Exploration” (hereafter referred to as the “Utica Shale Play Book Study” or simply “Study”) represents the results of a two-year research effort by workers in five different states with the financial support of fifteen oil and gas industry partners. The Study was made possible through a coordinated effort between the Appalachian Basin Oil & Natural Gas Research Consortium (AONGRC) and the West Virginia University Shale Research, Education, Policy and Economic Development Center

The HST/ACS Coma Cluster Survey. II. Data Description and Source Catalogs

The Coma cluster was the target of a HST-ACS Treasury program designed for deep imaging in the F475W and F814W passbands. Although our survey was interrupted by the ACS instrument failure in 2007, the partially completed survey still covers ~50% of the core high-density region in Coma. Observations were performed for 25 fields that extend over a wide range of cluster-centric radii (~1.75 Mpc) with a total coverage area of 274 arcmin^2. The majority of the fields are located near the core region of Coma (19/25 pointings) with six additional fields in the south-west region of the cluster. In this paper we present reprocessed images and SExtractor source catalogs for our survey fields, including a detailed description of the methodology used for object detection and photometry, the subtraction of bright galaxies to measure faint underlying objects, and the use of simulations to assess the photometric accuracy and completeness of our catalogs. We also use simulations to perform aperture corrections for the SExtractor Kron magnitudes based only on the measured source flux and half-light radius. We have performed photometry for ~73,000 unique objects; one-half of our detections are brighter than the 10-sigma point-source detection limit at F814W=25.8 mag (AB). The slight majority of objects (60%) are unresolved or only marginally resolved by ACS. We estimate that Coma members are 5-10% of all source detections, which consist of a large population of unresolved objects (primarily GCs but also UCDs) and a wide variety of extended galaxies from a cD galaxy to dwarf LSB galaxies. The red sequence of Coma member galaxies has a constant slope and dispersion across 9 magnitudes (-21<M_F814W<-13). The initial data release for the HST-ACS Coma Treasury program was made available to the public in 2008 August. The images and catalogs described in this study relate to our second data release.Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJS. A high-resolution version is available at http://archdev.stsci.edu/pub/hlsp/coma/release2/PaperII.pd

Determining the Electronic Confinement of a Subsurface Metallic State

Dopant profiles in semiconductors are important for understanding nanoscale electronics. Highly conductive and extremely confined phosphorus doping profiles in silicon, known as Si:P δ-layers, are of particular interest for quantum computer applications, yet a quantitative measure of their electronic profile has been lacking. Using resonantly enhanced photoemission spectroscopy, we reveal the real-space breadth of the Si:P δ-layer occupied states and gain a rare view into the nature of the confined orbitals. We find that the occupied valley-split states of the δ-layer, the so-called 1Γ and 2Γ, are exceptionally confined with an electronic profile of a mere 0.40 to 0.52 nm at full width at half-maximum, a result that is in excellent agreement with density functional theory calculations. Furthermore, the bulk-like Si 3pz orbital from which the occupied states are derived is sufficiently confined to lose most of its pz-like character, explaining the strikingly large valley splitting observed for the 1Γ and 2Γ states