Fitting the Professional to the Job: Idealism and Realism

This article examines a number of factors related to job satisfaction among financial aid professionals. How well the job matches the individual\u27s expectations of employment, regardless of intrinsic or extrinsic job orientation, accounts for the greater proportion of explained job satisfaction. The implications of these findings for management of financial aid offices are discussed. An earlier version of this paper was presented to the Southwestern Sociological Association

Information Flow and Staff Contact: A Quick Evaluation of Financial Aid

The authors examine the relationship between financial aid staff and students and attempt to analyze how the experience at one institution might provide some insight. The problem is viewed from the client perspective based upon day to day contact with various services provided to students by the financial aid office

Time-intensive geoelectrical monitoring under winter wheat

Several studies have explored the potential of electrical resistivity tomography to monitor changes in soil moisture associated with the root water uptake of different crops. Such studies usually use a set of limited below-ground measurements throughout the growth season but are often unable to get a complete picture of the dynamics of the processes. With the development of high-throughput phenotyping platforms, we now have the capability to collect more frequent above-ground measurements, such as canopy cover, enabling the comparison with below-ground data. In this study hourly DC resistivity data were collected under the Field Scanalyzer platform at Rothamsted Research with different winter wheat varieties and nitrogen treatments in 2018 and 2019. Results from both years demonstrate the importance of applying the temperature correction to interpret hourly electrical conductivity (EC) data. Crops which received larger amounts of nitrogen showed larger canopy cover and more rapid changes in EC, especially during large rainfall events. The varieties showed contrasted heights although this does not appear to have influenced EC dynamics. The daily cyclic component of the EC signal was extracted by decomposing the time series. A shift in this daily component was observed during the growth season. For crops with appreciable difference in canopy cover, high frequency DC resistivity monitoring was able to distinguish the different below-ground behaviors. The results also highlight how coarse temporal sampling may affect interpretation of resistivity data from crop monitoring studies

Accounting for heterogeneity in θ-σ relationship:application to wheat phenotyping using ΕMI

Geophysical methods, such as electromagnetic induction (EMI), can be effective for monitoring changes in soil moisture at the field scale, particularly in agricultural applications. The electrical conductivity (σ) inferred from EMI needs to be converted to soil moisture content (θ) using an appropriate relationship. Typically, a single global relationship is applied to an entire agricultural field, however, soil heterogeneity at the field scale may limit the effectiveness of such an approach. One application area that may suffer from such an effect is crop phenotyping. Selecting crop varieties based on their root traits is important for crop breeding and maximizing yield. Hence, high throughput tools for phenotyping the root system architecture and activity at the field-scale are needed. Water uptake is a major root activity and, under appropriate conditions, can be approximated by measuring changes in soil moisture from time-lapse geophysical surveys. We examine here the effect of heterogeneity in the θ-σ relationship using a crop phenotyping study for illustration. In this study, the θ-σ relationship was found to vary substantially across a field site. To account for this, we propose a range of local (plot specific) θ-σ models. We show that the large number of parameters required for these models can be estimated from baseline σ and θ measurements. Finally, we compare the use of global (field scale) and local (plot scale) models with respect to ranking varieties based on the estimated soil moisture content change

A novel grass hybrid to reduce flood generation in temperate regions

We report on the evaluation of a novel grass hybrid that provides efficient forage production and could help mitigate flooding. Perennial ryegrass (Lolium perenne) is the grass species of choice for most farmers, but lacks resilience against extremes of climate. We hybridised L. perenne onto a closely related and more stress-resistant grass species, meadow fescue Festuca pratensis. We demonstrate that the L. perenne × F. pratensis cultivar can reduce runoff during the events by 51% compared to a leading UK nationally recommended L. perenne cultivar and by 43% compared to F. pratensis over a two year field experiment. We present evidence that the reduced runoff from this Festulolium cultivar was due to intense initial root growth followed by rapid senescence, especially at depth. Hybrid grasses of this type show potential for reducing the likelihood of flooding, whilst providing food production under conditions of changing climate

Novel Selective Agents for the Degradation of Androgen Receptor Variants to Treat Castration-Resistant Prostate Cancer

Acknowledgements: The authors thank Mr. Maron Lee Barrett and Ms. Mayra Star for their technical help. The authors thank Dr. Dejian Ma for his technical help with the NMR studies. The authors thank the UTHSC and St. Jude NMR core for their help with the NMR studies. The authors thank Drs. Robert Getzenberg and Michael Mohler for providing useful comments on the manuscript. The authors thank Ms. Brandy Grimes for her help with tissue procurement. The authors thank Dr. Daniel Johnson of UT BioCore for microarray data analysis and Mr. Lorne Rose of UT-MRC core for microarray studies. Funding Source: The research presented in this manuscript was supported by a research funding provided by GTx, Inc. Memphis, TN to R. Narayanan and by a research funding provided by West Cancer Center to R. Narayanan.Peer reviewedPostprin

Short Sleep Is Associated With Low Bone Mineral Density and Osteoporosis in the Women’s Health Initiative

Short sleep duration, recognized as a public health epidemic, is associated with adverse health conditions, yet little is known about the association between sleep and bone health. We tested the associations of usual sleep behavior and bone mineral density (BMD) and osteoporosis. In a sample of 11,084 postmenopausal women from the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI; mean age 63.3â years, SD = 7.4), we performed a crossâ sectional study of the association of selfâ reported usual hours of sleep and sleep quality (WHI Insomnia Rating Score) with whole body, total hip, femoral neck, and spine BMD using linear regression models. We also studied the association of sleep duration and quality with dualâ energy Xâ ray absorptiometry (DXA)â defined low bone mass (Tâ scoreâ <â â 2.5 to <â 1) and osteoporosis (Tâ scoreâ â ¤â â 2.5) using multinomial regression models. We adjusted for age, DXA machine, race, menopausal symptoms, education, smoking, physical activity, body mass index, alcohol use, physical function, and sleep medication use. In adjusted linear regression models, women who reported sleeping 5â hours or less per night had on average 0.012 to 0.018â g/cm2 significantly lower BMD at all four sites compared with women who reported sleeping 7â hours per night (reference). In adjusted multinomial models, women reporting 5â hours or less per night had higher odds of low bone mass and osteoporosis of the hip (odds ratio [OR] =â 1.22; 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.03â 1.45, and 1.63; 1.15â 2.31, respectively). We observed a similar pattern for spine BMD, where women with 5â hours or less per night had higher odds of osteoporosis (adjusted OR = 1.28; 95% CI 1.02â 1.60). Associations of sleep quality and DXA BMD failed to reach statistical significance. Short sleep duration was associated with lower BMD and higher risk of osteoporosis. Longitudinal studies are needed to confirm the crossâ sectional effects of sleep duration on bone health and explore associated mechanisms. © 2019 American Society for Bone and Mineral Research.Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/154418/1/jbmr3879_am.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/154418/2/jbmr3879.pd

The chemerin knockout rat reveals chemerin dependence in female, but not male, experimental hypertension

Measures of the adipokine chemerin are elevated in multiple cardiovascular diseases, including hypertension, but little mechanistic work has been done to implicate chemerin as being causative in such diseases. The chemerin knockout (KO) rat was created to test the hypothesis that removal of chemerin would reduce pressure in the normal and hypertensive state. Western analyses confirmed loss of chemerin in the plasma and tissues of the KO vs. wild‐type (WT) rats. Chemerin concentration in plasma and tissues was lower in WT females than in WT males, as determined by Western analysis. Conscious male and female KO rats had modest differences in baseline measures vs. the WT that included systolic, diastolic, mean arterial and pulse pressures, and heart rate, all measured telemetrically. The mineralocorticoid deoxycorticosterone acetate (DOCA) and salt water, combined with uninephrectomy as a hypertensive stimulus, elevated mean and systolic blood pressures of the male KO higher than the male WT. By contrast, all pressures in the female KO were lower than their WT throughout DOCA‐salt treatment. These results revealed an unexpected sex difference in chemerin expression and the ability of chemerin to modify blood pressure in response to a hypertensive challenge.—Watts, S. W., Darios, E. S., Mullick, A. E., Garver, H., Saunders, T. L., Hughes, E. D., Filipiak, W. E., Zeidler, M. G., McMullen, N., Sinal, C. J., Kumar, R. K., Ferland, D. J., Fink, G. D. The chemerin knockout rat reveals chemerin dependence in female, but not male, experimental hypertension. FASEB J. 32, 6596–6614 (2018). www.fasebj.orgPeer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/154357/1/fsb2fj201800479.pd

Architecture and secondary structure of an entire HIV-1 RNA genome

Single-stranded RNA viruses encompass broad classes of infectious agents and cause the common cold, cancer, AIDS, and other serious health threats. Viral replication is regulated at many levels, including using conserved genomic RNA structures. Most potential regulatory elements within viral RNA genomes are uncharacterized. Here we report the structure of an entire HIV-1 genome at single nucleotide resolution using SHAPE, a high-throughput RNA analysis technology. The genome encodes protein structure at two levels. In addition to the correspondence between RNA and protein primary sequences, a correlation exists between high levels of RNA structure and sequences that encode inter-domain loops in HIV proteins. This correlation suggests RNA structure modulates ribosome elongation to promote native protein folding. Some simple genome elements previously shown to be important, including the ribosomal gag-pol frameshift stem-loop, are components of larger RNA motifs. We also identify organizational principles for unstructured RNA regions. Highly used splice acceptors lie in unstructured motifs and hypervariable regions are sequestered from flanking genome regions by stable insulator helices. These results emphasize that the HIV-1 genome and, potentially, many coding RNAs are punctuated by numerous previously unrecognized regulatory motifs and that extensive RNA structure may constitute an additional level of the genetic code