Earth Virtualization Engines (EVE)

To manage Earth in the Anthropocene, new tools, new institutions, and new forms of international cooperation will be required. Earth Virtualization Engines is proposed as an international federation of centers of excellence to empower all people to respond to the immense and urgent challenges posed by climate change

Wnt4 Enhances Murine Hematopoietic Progenitor Cell Expansion Through a Planar Cell Polarity-Like Pathway

Background: While the role of canonical (b-catenin-mediated) Wnt signaling in hematolymphopoiesis has been studied extensively, little is known of the potential importance of non-canonical Wnt signals in hematopoietic cells. Wnt4 is one of the Wnt proteins that can elicit non-canonical pathways. We have previously shown that retroviral overexpression of Wnt4 by hematopoietic cells increased thymic cellularity as well as the frequency of early thymic progenitors and bone marrow hematopoietic progenitor cells (HPCs). However, the molecular pathways responsible for its effect in HPCs are not known. Methodology/Principal Findings: Here we report that Wnt4 stimulation resulted in the activation of the small GTPase Rac1 as well as Jnk kinases in an HPC cell line. Jnk activity was necessary, while b-catenin was dispensable, for the Wnt4-mediated expansion of primary fetal liver HPCs in culture. Furthermore, Jnk2-deficient and Wnt4 hemizygous mice presented lower numbers of HPCs in their bone marrow, and Jnk2-deficient HPCs showed increased rates of apoptosis. Wnt4 also improved HPC activity in a competitive reconstitution model in a cell-autonomous, Jnk2-dependent manner. Lastly, we identified Fz6 as a receptor for Wnt4 in immature HPCs and showed that the absence of Wnt4 led to a decreased expression of four polarity complex genes. Conclusions/Significance: Our results establish a functional role for non-canonical Wnt signaling in hematopoiesis throug

Earth Virtualization Engines (EVE)

To manage Earth in the Anthropocene, new tools, new institutions, and new forms of international cooperation will be required. Earth Virtualization Engines is proposed as an international federation of centers of excellence to empower all people to respond to the immense and urgent challenges posed by climate change

Earth Virtualization Engines (EVE)

To manage Earth in the Anthropocene, new tools, new institutions, and new forms of international cooperation will be required. Earth Virtualization Engines is proposed as an international federation of centers of excellence to empower all people to respond to the immense and urgent challenges posed by climate change

Mapping new junctions on the old royal road: Psychotherapists dreaming of their patients

Dreams about the patient, sometimes called countertransference dreams, have received little attention in the literature and have rarely been discussed in the context of psychotherapy as opposed to psychoanalysis. This study explored the experience of dreaming about the patient in two groups of psychoanalytically-oriented psychotherapists. Data were gathered through in-depth interviews with 11 psychotherapists, with follow-up approximately one year later, and through a survey of a larger group of 79 psychotherapists. The experience of dreaming about the patient was quite common and varied in these samples. Approximately 80 to 90% of therapists could recall dreaming about a patient at least once over the course of their careers. Typically, therapists recalled having such dreams at least once or twice per year, although many reported dreaming of patients as frequently as once per month. The settings and themes of dreams were observed to vary widely. Therapists described a range of emotional reactions to dreaming about the patient, including positive and welcoming feelings as well as discomfort tinged with a sense of the forbidden. In contrast to the emphasis in the literature, therapists observed such dreams to arise in a variety of treatment environments, not only those characterized by subjective distress in the clinician. Therapists made use of the dreams as tools for discovery, drawing insight or discerning news from them. The news played the role of clarifying, affirming, or newly identifying dynamics in the treatment. Most therapists incorporated dreams into the treatment indirectly, through affective shifts or changes in their listening stance or behavior, rather than telling patients directly of their dreams. Some therapists noted that their fears concerning the propriety of dreaming about the patient could interfere with their ability to have, remember, and examine such dreams, as well as with their ability to share the dreams in wider professional forums. Given the gains associated with exploring dreams about the patient, the study concludes that it is important to shape environments to further encourage the examination of such dreams, in part through representing their role not as indicators of deficient practice but of an ongoing search for understanding