Acme Wheat

Acme wheat, S. D. No. 284 (C. I. No. 5284) was developed by selective breeding at the Highmore experiment farm. Acme is a selection from Kubanka, a tested wheat for South Dakota. Comparative results with Kubanka may be found in South Dakota bulletin 146. This bulletin also quotes the history of Kubanka wheat as follows: It has medium or short heads that are white with occasionally a slight bluish bloom, and have rather long beards. The grain is large, yellowish white and very hard. The variety is much grown by the Kirghiz and Turghai people on the Siberian border, where it is absolutely impossible to grow ordinary wheats of any kind because of extreme drouth [sic], the rainfall being as low as 10 inches per annum. It is cultivated throughout the entire Volga River region from Kazaii to the Caspian Sea, and eastward into the Kirghiz steppes and Turkestan. It is the most popular bread wheat of the lower Volga region

Blood and marrow transplantation compensation: Perspective in payer and provider relations

AbstractThe high cost per patient of hematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT) causes this therapy to be the focus of much controversy, given the competing societal demands to provide all possible therapy to preserve life while simultaneously limiting global health care expenditures. Treatment and eligibility decisions for HCT often are heavily scrutinized by both governmental and private payers and not simply determined by physicians, facility providers, and the patient. In an effort to control costs, payers have administrative infrastructure to review resource utilization by these patients. Additionally payers have developed payment methodologies, usually in the form of a case rate payment structure, that place facilities and physician providers of HCT at financial risk for adverse patient financial outcomes in an effort to promote optimal utilization and selection of patients for HCT. As providers enter into such financial risk arrangements with payers, the providers need to understand the true cost of care and be able to identify predictable and unpredictable outlier risks for the financial consequences of medical complications. HCT providers try to protect themselves from excessive financial risk by having different payment rates for different types of transplant, eg, autologous versus HLA or genotypically matched related versus HLA mismatched transplants. Because at certain times in the HCT process risk is more unpredictable, HCT providers require different payment system strategies for the different time periods of care such as evaluation, pre-transplant disease management, harvesting, and cell processing, as well as short- and long-term follow-up. Involvement by clinicians is essential for this process to be done well, especially given the rapid changes technological innovation brings to HCT. Constant dialogue and interaction between providers and payers on these difficult financial issues with HCT is essential to preserve patient access to this potentially lifesaving therapy

Expression and function of ryanodine receptor related pathways in PCB tolerant Atlantic killifish (Fundulus heteroclitus) from New Bedford Harbor, MA, USA

Author Posting. © The Author(s), 2014. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Elsevier for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Aquatic Toxicology 159 (2015): 156-166, doi:10.1016/j.aquatox.2014.12.017.Atlantic killifish (Fundulus heteroclitus) thrive in New Bedford Harbor (NBH), MA, highly contaminated with polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). Resident killifish have evolved tolerance to dioxin-like (DL) PCBs, whose toxic effects through the aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AhR) are well studied. In NBH, non-dioxin like PCBs (NDL PCBs), which lack activity toward the AhR, vastly exceed levels of DL congeners yet how killifish counter NDL toxic effects has not been explored. In mammals and fish, NDL PCBs are potent activators of ryanodine receptors (RyR), Ca2+ release channels necessary for a vast array of physiological processes. In the current study we compared the expression and function of RyR related pathways in NBH killifish with killifish from the reference site at Scorton Creek (SC, MA). Relative to the SC fish, adults from NBH displayed increased levels of skeletal muscle RyR1 protein, and increased levels of FK506-binding protein 12 kDa (FKBP12), an accessory protein essential for NDL PCB-triggered changes in RyR channel function. In accordance with increased RyR1 levels, NBH killifish displayed increased maximal ligand binding, increased maximal response to Ca2+ activation and increased maximal response to activation by the NDL PCB congener PCB 95. Compared to SC, NBH embryos and larvae had increased levels of mtor and ryr2 transcripts at multiple stages of development, and generations, while levels of serca2 were decreased at 9 days post-fertilization in the F1 and F2 generations. These findings suggest that there are compensatory and heritable changes in RyR mediated Ca2+ signaling proteins or potential signaling partners in NBH killifish.Funding was provided through the NIEHS Superfund Research Program UC Davis (INP and EBF; P42-ES004699) and Boston University (JJS and JVG; P42-ES007381). Support was supplied via the UC Davis NHLBI Training Grant (T32-HL086350, EBF). Additional support came from NIEHS 1R01-ES014901, 1R01-ES017425, the UC Davis Center for Children’s Environmental Health (1P01-ES011269, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Grant 8354320), and an unrestricted JB Johnson Foundation gift grant.2015-12-1