Criminal Justice in the 21st Century: Allegheny County Courts and Probation

Criminal Justice in the 21st Century: Allegheny County Courts and Probation examines the structure, responsibilities, successes, and opportunities within Allegheny County's courts and probation department. The report highlights initiatives and innovations implemented by the Fifth Judicial District’s Criminal Division and key local data indicators. It also identifies current challenges within the county’s court and probation system and potential national best practices to address these challenges

Criminal Justice in the 21st Century: Allegheny County Law Enforcement

Criminal Justice in the 21st Century: Allegheny County Law Enforcement examines the role of the police both nationally and in Allegheny County. The report identifies local law enforcement agencies and their role within the county criminal justice system. This report also highlights key local data trends and discusses the impact of law enforcement on the criminal justice system. It also highlights national best practices in policing

Criminal Justice in the 21st Century: Allegheny County Pretrial Decisions

Criminal Justice in the 21st Century: Allegheny County Pretrial Decisions examines the pretrial procedures and decisions made within the county criminal justice system. The report examines how pretrial decisions are made and national standards for pretrial services. The report highlights innovative practices occurring within the county and key local data. It also outlines national best practices in pretrial decisions

Criminal Justice in the 21st Century: Allegheny County Prosecution and Defense

Criminal Justice in the 21st Century: Allegheny County Prosecution and Defense examines the roles of prosecution and defense nationally and within the county including the offices of the district attorney and public defender. The report looks at key local data and opportunities within criminal court procedures to reduce the county jail population and the number of people under correctional control. The report highlights innovation national best practices in the area of prosecution and defense

Massachusetts Education Partnership: Policy, Leadership, Labor-Management Collaboration

The Massachusetts Education Partnership (MEP) is a collaborative endeavor on the part of four education-related organizations representing teachers, superintendents, and school committees and four research institutions. By working together, the Partnership aims to improve student achievement through labor-management collaboration and to foster the development of collaborative cultures in Massachusetts school districts. As of March 1, 2014, the MEP has trained labor and management leaders from 34 school districts in interest-based bargaining (IBB) and provided intensive facilitation to seven school districts where labor and management are working collaboratively on a program or issue of their choosing

Religious Identity, Religious Attendance, and Parental Control

Using a national sample of adolescents aged 10–18 years and their parents (N = 5,117), this article examines whether parental religious identity and religious participation are associated with the ways in which parents control their children. We hypothesize that both religious orthodoxy and weekly religious attendance are related to heightened levels of three elements of parental control: monitoring activities, normative regulations, and network closure. Results indicate that an orthodox religious identity for Catholic and Protestant parents and higher levels of religious attendance for parents as a whole are associated with increases in monitoring activities and normative regulations of American adolescents

Transplantation in Remission Improves the Disease-Free Survival of Patients with Advanced Myelodysplastic Syndromes Treated with Myeloablative T Cell-Depleted Stem Cell Transplants from HLA-Identical Siblings

AbstractFrom 1985 to 2004, 49 patients with advanced myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS) (≥5% blasts) or acute myeloid leukemia (AML) transformed from MDS underwent T cell depleted bone marrow or peripheral blood hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) from HLA-identical siblings following conditioning with a myeloablative regimen that included total body irradiation (44 patients) or busulfan (5 patients). Thirty-six patients received chemotherapy (3 low dose and 33 induction doses) before conditioning, and 13 patients did not receive any chemotherapy. Prior to transplantation, 22 of the 36 treated patients were in hematologic remission; 4 were in a second refractory cytopenia phase (26 responders); 8 had failed to achieve remission; and 2 of the responders had progression or relapse of their MDS (10 failures). No post-transplantation pharmacologic prophylaxis for graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) was given. The median age was 48 yrs (range 13-61). Forty-five of the 49 patients engrafted; 2 had primary graft failure; and 2 died before engraftment. Only 3 patients developed acute GVHD (aGVHD) (grades I and III) and 1 chronic GVHD (cGVHD). At 3 yrs post-transplantation, the overall survival (OS) was 54% in the responders; 31% in the untreated group; and 0% in the failure group (P=.0004). The disease free survival (DFS) was 50%, 15% and 0% in each group respectively (P=.0008). In multivariate analysis, disease status before cytoreduction remained highly correlated with DFS (P<.001). The cumulative incidence (CI) of relapse at 2-yrs post-transplantation for the responders was 23%; for the untreated group was 38%; and for the failures was 50%. The CI of non-relapse mortality at 2-yrs post-transplantation, for the responders was 23%; for the untreated group was 38%; and for the failures was 40%. All survivors achieved a Karnofsky Performance Status (KPS) of ≥90. These results indicate that patients with advanced MDS who achieve and remain in remission or a second refractory cytopenia phase with chemotherapy before conditioning can achieve successful long-term remissions following a myeloablative T cell depleted allogeneic HSCT

A 5-Enolpyruvylshikimate 3-Phosphate Synthase Functions as a Transcriptional Repressor in Populus.

Long-lived perennial plants, with distinctive habits of inter-annual growth, defense, and physiology, are of great economic and ecological importance. However, some biological mechanisms resulting from genome duplication and functional divergence of genes in these systems remain poorly studied. Here, we discovered an association between a poplar (Populus trichocarpa) 5-enolpyruvylshikimate 3-phosphate synthase gene (PtrEPSP) and lignin biosynthesis. Functional characterization of PtrEPSP revealed that this isoform possesses a helix-turn-helix motif in the N terminus and can function as a transcriptional repressor that regulates expression of genes in the phenylpropanoid pathway in addition to performing its canonical biosynthesis function in the shikimate pathway. We demonstrated that this isoform can localize in the nucleus and specifically binds to the promoter and represses the expression of a SLEEPER-like transcriptional regulator, which itself specifically binds to the promoter and represses the expression of PtrMYB021 (known as MYB46 in Arabidopsis thaliana), a master regulator of the phenylpropanoid pathway and lignin biosynthesis. Analyses of overexpression and RNAi lines targeting PtrEPSP confirmed the predicted changes in PtrMYB021 expression patterns. These results demonstrate that PtrEPSP in its regulatory form and PtrhAT form a transcriptional hierarchy regulating phenylpropanoid pathway and lignin biosynthesis in Populus

Mycobacterium intermedium Granulomatous Dermatitis from Hot Tub Exposure

Nontuberculous mycobacteria, which are widespread in the environment, frequently cause opportunistic infections in immunocompromised patients. We report the first case of a patient with chronic granulomatous dermatitis caused by a rarely described organism, Mycobacterium intermedium. The infection was associated with exposure in a home hot tub