Gerodiversity - How Facing Adversity across the Lifespan can Foster Workplace Resilience

Symposium Topic: Older Women Who Work: Examinations of Grey and Grit Chair: Lisa Hollis-Sawyer, PhD, Northeastern Illinois University Participants: Mary Gergen, PhD, Penn State University; and Ellen Cole, PhD, The Sage Colleges. When Just Getting by Is Getting Old: Women Working in Later Life to Pay the Bills- Monica Teixeira, MA, Columbia College. The Impact of Aging and Authentic Leadership in a Higher Education Latina Leader - Julie Hicks Patrick, PhD, West Virginia University. Appalachian Grit and Older Working Women - Niva Piran, PhD, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada. Missions Continued: The Meaning of Work in Older Women’s Lifelong Journey - Ashley Stripling, PhD, and Jodie Maccarrone, MS, Nova Southeastern University. Gerodiversity - How Facing Adversity Across the Lifespan Can Facilitate Workplace Resilience Discussant: Ellen Cole, PhD, The Sage College

EXPERIMENTAL VALIDATION OF A HIGH ACCURACY TEST OF THE EQUIVALENCE PRINCIPLE WITH THE SMALL SATELLITE "GALILEO GALILEI"

The small satellite "Galileo Galilei" (GG) has been designed to test the equivalence principle (EP) to 10-17 with a total mass at launch of 250 kg. The key instrument is a differential accelerometer made up of weakly coupled coaxial, concentric test cylinders rapidly spinning around the symmetry axis and sensitive in the plane perpendicular to it, lying at a small inclination from the orbit plane. The whole spacecraft spins around the same symmetry axis so as to be passively stabilized. The test masses are large (10 kg each, to reduce thermal noise), their coupling is very weak (for high sensitivity to differential effects), and rotation is fast (for high frequency modulation of the signal). A 1 g version of the accelerometer ("Galileo Galilei on the Ground" — GGG) has been built to the full scale — except for coupling, which cannot be as weak as in the absence of weight, and a motor to maintain rotation (not needed in space due to angular momentum conservation). GGG has proved: (i) high Q; (ii) auto-centering and long term stability; (iii) a sensitivity to EP testing which is close to the target sensitivity of the GG experiment provided that the physical properties of the experiment in space are going to be fully exploited

Sustainable Tourism Stewardship Council - raising the standards and benefits of sustainable tourism and ecotourism certification

Certification of sustainable tourism and ecotourism can help to reduce the negative environmental and social impacts of tourism, ensure that the tourism industry is held accountable and provide marketing benefits to those firms that meet the certification standards. Reports by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the World Tourism Organization (WTO) have cited the benefits of certification and many governments, NGOs and other stakeholders are introducing national, regional and international certification programs. There is consensus that the increasing numbers of certification programs would benefit from shared functions such as marketing, training and development, while supply chains and consumers would benefit from the setting of standards. Some two years ago, the Rainforest Alliance, with funding from the Ford Foundation and help from its Advisory Committees of NGOs, multilateral agencies and industry representatives, initiated a study of the feasibility of establishing an international Sustainable Tourism Stewardship Council (STSC) to promote globally recognized, high-quality certification programs for sustainable tourism and ecotourism through a process of information sharing, marketing, and assessment of standards. (Certification is defined as the procedure by which the certification/awarding body gives written assurance and awards a logo (to the consumer and the industry in general) to signify that a product, process, service, or management system conforms to specified requirements. Accreditation is key to the role of a Stewardship Council, a body that grants certifying powers. In effect it certifies that the certifiers are doing their job correctly.) This report summarizes the findings over the two years of the study. During the study period, the authors documented growing international agreement about the need for a sound accreditation program to assess and help standardize the rapidly growing number of certification programs for the sustainable and ecotourism markets. The study involved a broad range of experts around the globe from grassroots and indigenous community activists to key tourism firms to high-level officials in UN and international environmental organizations. The need for a STSC was publicly endorsed at the World Ecotourism Summit (WES) and incorporated in its final communiqué. The Rainforest Alliance (and this project's Advisory Committees) acknowledges that certification and accreditation are not a panacea for all the problems associated with unsustainable tourism. Certification is one important tool currently being used and its merits and weaknesses must be recognized. However the study and the report presented hereby are intended to address specifically the feasibility of implementing a Stewardship Council as an accreditation organization for sustainable tourism and ecotourism certification. This report analyzes the state of the art in tourism certification and the lessons to be learned from accreditation in other sectors. Based on extensive consultation, it profiles key stakeholders and considers needs that the STSC can satisfy, and methods to do so. It proposes an organizational blueprint for a STSC that grows through a phased implementation to allow for bottom-up development of agendas and structures. It benchmarks the criteria used in certification at present to consider the feasibility of an international standard, and it also benchmarks principles and guidelines for managing tourism certification that can form the basis of accreditation criteria. As a result of the extensive consultation process, we propose three phases of development aimed at improving the quality of certification programs (and thus the sustainability of tourism) and address different issues affecting tourism certification. • Phase 1: STSC-Network to share information and gain consensus on priorities and processes. It is recommended that the STSC starts as a Network for a period of two years within which a wide range of stakeholders can consider the results of this feasibility study and the applicability in different regions, discuss the contents of a possible international standard and the necessary regional variations. The Network phase also gives tourism certification programs a vehicle to build trust and to take ownership of the systems proposed. • Phase 2: STSC-Association to market certified products, provide guidance to countries seeking to establish or upgrade certification programs, and reach agreement on standards and processes. The STSC-Association phase allows tourism certification programs and other stakeholders to agree on international standards and criteria and methods to assess how programs meet these standards, while benefiting from joint marketing and training that increases the exposure of the tourism certification programs and improves their performance. The Association phase is a necessary stepping-stone to allow tourism certification programs to make the necessary improvements to be able to meet accreditation requirements. • Phase 3: STSC-Accreditation to accredit and market certification programs that meet the agreed upon standards and demonstrate capacity to certify. This phase finally includes all key functions of the STSC by building on the agreements made at the Association phase and introducing the key element of accreditation. Structures from the Association are kept and the function of accreditation is outsourced to be able to maintain training and marketing functions separate from decision-making on which certification programs are accredited, and in doing so, guarantee independence and transparency and avoid conflicts of interest

Performance of Optically Readout GEM-based TPC with a 55Fe source

Optical readout of large Time Projection Chambers (TPCs) with multiple Gas Electron Multipliers (GEMs) amplification stages has shown to provide very interesting performances for high energy particle tracking. Proposed applications for low-energy and rare event studies, such as Dark Matter search, ask for demanding performance in the keV energy range. The performance of such a readout was studied in details as a function of the electric field configuration and GEM gain by using a $^{55}$Fe source within a 7 litre sensitive volume detector developed as a part of the R\&D for the CYGNUS project. Results reported in this paper show that the low noise level of the sensor allows to operate with a 2~keV threshold while keeping a rate of fake-events lesser than 10 per year. In this configuration, a detection efficiency well above 95\% along with an energy resolution ($\sigma$) of 18\% is obtained for the 5.9 keV photons, demonstrating the very promising capabilities of this technique

Cryotolerance of equine spermatozoa correlates with specific fatty acid pattern: A pilot study

Sperm cryopreservation represents a powerful tool for horse breeding. To improve the efficiency of artificial insemination in the horse using cryopreserved spermatozoa, an adequate understanding of the underlying biophysical properties that affect sperm cryosurvival needs to be reached yet. In this pilot study, we described isolation and analysis of the main fatty acids from sperms of stallions classified as good and poor freezers (7 GF and 5 PF, according to sperm motility and viability, before and after cryopreservation). Fatty acid profiles were only assessed in pre-thaw sperms. Eight main fatty acids were identified, using gas chromatography, and their contents were expressed as percentage of the total lipid content. We found that lauric, myristic and oleic acid (C12:0, C14:0 and C18:1n9c) turned out to be about 2-fold more abundant in the sperm cells of the GFs compared with PFs. Moreover, we described for the first time the presence of a very high amount of a trans geometrical isomer of linoleic acid, linolelaidic acid (C18:2n6t), in pre-thaw PF spermatozoa. Notably, we found in fresh sperms of PF stallions a ratio of unsaturated fatty acids to saturated fatty acids which was twice that of those of GF group, suggesting a positive effect of a high saturated-to-unsaturated fatty acid ratio for the “freezability” of equine spermatozoa. Finally, principal component analysis (PCA) confirmed the relationships between specific fatty acids and cryotolerance of equine spermatozoa, also providing a graphical classification and additional information about the dominant variables governing the classification process

Proteomic profile of maternal-aged blastocoel fluid suggests a novel role for ubiquitin system in blastocyst quality

Purpose: The etiology of maternal aging, a common cause of female factor infertility and a rate-limiting step in vitro fertilization (IVF) success, remains still unclear. Proteomic changes responsible for the impaired successful pregnancy outcome after IVF with aged blastocysts have not been yet evaluated. The objective of this prospective study was to employ proteomic techniques and bioinformatic tools to enlight differences at the protein level in blastocoel fluid of aged and younger woman. Methods: Protein composition of human blastocoel fluid isolated by micromanipulation from 46 blastocysts of women aged <37 years (group A) and 29 of women aged 6537 years (group B) have been identified by a shotgun proteomic approach based on high-resolution nano-liquid chromatography electrospray-ionization-tandem mass spectrometry (nLC-ESI-MS/MS) using label free for the relative quantification of their expression levels. Results: The proteomic analysis leads to the identification and quantification of 148 proteins; 132 and 116 proteins were identified in groups A and B, respectively. Interestingly, the identified proteins are mainly involved in processes aimed at fine tuning embryo implantation and development. Among the 100 proteins commonly expressed in both groups, 17 proteins are upregulated and 44 downregulated in group B compared to group A. Overall, the analysis identified 33 proteins, which were increased or present only in B while 76 were decreased in B or present only in A. Conclusions: Data revealed that maternal aging mainly affects blastocyst survival and implantation through unbalancing the equilibrium of the ubiquitin system known to play a crucial role in fine-tuning several aspects required to ensure successful pregnancy outcome

Bisphenol a deranges the endocannabinoid system of primary sertoli cells with an impact on inhibin b production

Bisphenol A (BPA) is an endocrine disruptor that negatively affects spermatogenesis, a process where Sertoli cells play a central role. Thus, in the present study we sought to ascertain whether BPA could modulate the endocannabinoid (eCB) system in exposed mouse primary Sertoli cells. Under our experimental conditions, BPA turned out to be cytotoxic to Sertoli cells with an half-maximal inhibitory concentration (IC50) of ~6.0 µM. Exposure to a non-cytotoxic dose of BPA (i.e., 0.5 µM for 48 h) increased the expression levels of specific components of the eCB system, namely: type-1 cannabinoid (CB1) receptor and diacylglycerol lipase-α (DAGL-α), at mRNA level, type-2 cannabinoid (CB2) receptor, transient receptor potential vanilloid 1 (TRPV1) receptors, and DAGL-β, at protein level. Interestingly, BPA also increased the production of inhibin B, but not that of transferrin, and blockade of either CB2 receptor or TRPV1 receptor further enhanced the BPA effect. Altogether, our study provides unprecedented evidence that BPA deranges the eCB system of Sertoli cells towards CB2-and TRPV1-dependent signal transduction, both receptors being engaged in modulating BPA effects on inhibin B production. These findings add CB2 and TRPV1 receptors, and hence the eCB signaling, to the other molecular targets of BPA already known in mammalian cells

Effects of Rare Phytocannabinoids on the Endocannabinoid System of Human Keratinocytes

The decriminalization and legalization of cannabis has paved the way for investigations into the potential of the use of phytocannabinoids (pCBs) as natural therapeutics for the treatment of human diseases. This growing interest has recently focused on rare (less abundant) pCBs that are non-psychotropic compounds, such as cannabigerol (CBG), cannabichromene (CBC), Δ9-tetrahydrocannabivarin (THCV) and cannabigerolic acid (CBGA). Notably, pCBs can act via the endocannabinoid system (ECS), which is involved in the regulation of key pathophysiological processes, and also in the skin. In this study, we used human keratinocytes (HaCaT cells) as an in vitro model that expresses all major ECS elements in order to systematically investigate the effects of CBG, CBC, THCV and CBGA. To this end, we analyzed the gene and protein expression of ECS components (receptors: CB1, CB2, GPR55, TRPV1 and PPARα/γ/δ; enzymes: NAPE-PLD, FAAH, DAGLα/β and MAGL) using qRT-PCR and Western blotting, along with assessments of their functionality using radioligand binding and activity assays. In addition, we quantified the content of endocannabinoid(-like) compounds (AEA, 2-AG, PEA, etc.) using UHPLC-MS/MS. Our results demonstrated that rare pCBs modulate the gene and protein expression of distinct ECS elements differently, as well as the content of endocannabinoid(-like) compounds. Notably, they all increased CB1/2 binding, TRPV1 channel stimulation and FAAH and MAGL catalytic activity. These unprecedented observations should be considered when exploring the therapeutic potential of cannabis extracts for the treatment of human skin diseases