Electroweak Bioenantioselection

This paper reviews evidence for the view that biomolecular chirality was determined not by chance but by the electroweak interaction. Other influences (such as the Earth\u27s magnetic and gravitational fields, or circularly polarized light) are either falsely chiral or else even-handed on a time and space average, leaving the weak interaction as the only consistent universal chiral influence. Electroweak bioenantioselection could occur either through p-radiolysis or through the small parity-violating energy differences (PVED) between enantiomers. The PVED produces an electroweak enantiomeric excess of only 10-17, but this can be amplified to homochirality within 104 years by the powerful Kondepudi mechanism. Calculations of the PVED show that the natural L-amino acids are more stable than their »unnatural« n-enantiomers, and natural n-glyceraldehyde and D-deoxyribose are also PVED-stabilized. The PVED can also explain the observed 1% excess of l(-)-quartz, which, through pre-biotic mineral catalysis, could increase the electroweak enantiomeric excess to 10-4

Perceived Impact of Non-contact Boxing on Daily Life and Occupational Participation at Home Among Individuals with Parkinson’s Disease

The aim of this project was to determine whether individuals with Parkinson\u27s disease perceive an impact on their daily life and occupational participation at home secondary to participation in non-contact boxing. Semi-structured open-ended interview questions were conducted with 17 participants (3 female) who have been diagnosed with Parkinson\u27s disease for(i.e., self-care, home and health maintenance, sleep, intimacy, social and leisure interests, etc.) in the home environment. Interviews were transcribed and analyzed utilizing thematic analysis. Data analysis derived three overarching themes including psychological benefits, sense of community, and framework to develop routines. Subsequent research exploring how non-contact boxing directly impacts specific occupations completed in the home environment would further support this study.https://soar.usa.edu/otdcapstonespring2020/1019/thumbnail.jp

Turning Everyday Activities into Play: Building Relationships and Fostering Connections for Adopted and Foster Children

Turning Everyday Activities into Play is a program that was created for foster children, adopted children, and individuals who work with this population in the community. This program uses everyday activities to foster the connection between children and adults. The goal of this program is to use the power of play to support regulation and build stronger bonds and relationships by turning everyday activities into play.https://soar.usa.edu/otdcapstonessummer2020/1008/thumbnail.jp

An Occupational Therapy Approach to Education for Foster Parents

The focus of this project is to enhance current programming for foster parent pre-licensure education courses in San Diego, California. This capstone project focused on the preferred learning styles of foster parents and utilized adult learning theories to create suggestions to enhance the current pre-licensure class curriculum. Data collected during verbal interviews with foster parents helped guide the suggestions to enhance the current curriculum. Utilizing specific occupational therapy group strategies, occupational therapists can help enhance education for foster parents by increasing the saliency of the learning material. The increased saliency facilitates a deeper understanding of the material and increases the retention of knowledge amongst participants. The capstone project will explore how occupational therapists can help enhance the current pre-licensure curriculum for foster parents to be more inclusive of different learning styles.https://soar.usa.edu/otdcapstonespring2020/1011/thumbnail.jp

Virtual reality forensics: Forensic analysis of Meta Quest 2

The Meta Quest 2 is one of the most popular Virtual Reality (VR) entertainment headsets to date. The headset, developed by Meta Platforms Inc., immerses the user in a completely simulated environment. Some VR environments can be shared over the Internet to allow users to communicate and interact with one another and share their experiences. Unfortunately, the safety of these VR environments cannot always be guaranteed, generating a risk that users may be exposed to illicit online behaviour in the form of online harassment, grooming, and cyberbullying. Therefore, forensic examiners must be able to conduct sound forensic analysis of VR headsets to investigate these criminal investigations. In this study, we conduct digital forensic acquisition and analysis of the Meta Quest 2 VR headset. Analysis of the forensic image exemplified that there were several digital artefacts relating to user activities, device information and stored digital artefacts that can be extracted in a forensically sound manner. The main contributions of this study include a detailed description of the forensic acquisition process, identification of internal file storage locations, and recovery and analysis of digital artefacts that can be used to aid VR forensic investigations

Astrocyte-mediated short-term synaptic depression in the rat hippocampal CA1 area: two modes of decreasing release probability

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Synaptic burst activation feeds back as a short-term depression of release probability at hippocampal CA3-CA1 synapses. This short-term synaptic plasticity requires functional astrocytes and it affects both the recently active (< 1 s) synapses (post-burst depression) as well as inactive neighboring synapses (transient heterosynaptic depression). The aim of this study was to investigate and compare the components contributing to the depression of release probability in these two different scenarios.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>When tested using paired-pulses, following a period of inactivity, the transient heterosynaptic depression was expressed as a reduction in the response to only the first pulse, whereas the response to the second pulse was unaffected. This selective depression of only the first response in a high-frequency burst was shared by the homosynaptic post-burst depression, but it was partially counteracted by augmentation at these recently active synapses. In addition, the expression of the homosynaptic post-burst depression included an astrocyte-mediated reduction of the pool of release-ready primed vesicles.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Our results suggest that activated astrocytes depress the release probability via two different mechanisms; by depression of vesicular release probability only at inactive synapses and by imposing a delay in the recovery of the primed pool of vesicles following depletion. These mechanisms restrict the expression of the astrocyte-mediated depression to temporal windows that are typical for synaptic burst activity.</p

Regulation of human intestinal T-cell responses by type 1 interferon-STAT1 signaling is disrupted in inflammatory bowel disease

This work was supported by a research fellowship grant from the Crohn’s and Colitis in Childhood Research Association (CICRA) and a small project grant from Crohn’s and Colitis UK (CCUK). We would like to acknowledge Professor Ian Sanderson, who helped with the initial design of this work, and provided important support throughout. We would also like to thank Dr Gary Warne for his advice and assistance in the use of the sorting by flow cytometry. We would also like to thank Dr Raj Lahiri and Professor Graham Foster for the kind gift of the primers for the ISGs (2’5’ OAS and MxA)

Inhibition of human NK-induced cell lysis and soluble cell-lytic molecules with anti-human LT antisera and various saccharides

The present study examines and compares the cytolysis of K-562 and MOLT-4 cells mediated by human natural killer (NK) cells from fresh peripheral blood and lymphotoxins (LT) derived from human lymphoid cell populations after lectin stimulation in vitro. Lymphotoxins were obtained from 5-hr concanavalin A (Con A)-restimulated human peripheral blood lymphocytes (PBL) which were precultured for 5 days in medium and fetal calf serum or with allogeneic human B-lymphoid cell lines. Two classes of probes were employed in both direct (cell) and indirect (supernatant) induced target-cell lysis: (a) various saccharides and (b) antibodies reactive with human LT forms. Two sugars, N-acetylglucosamine and alpha-methylmannoside, were able to inhibit direct cell lysis of both MOLT-4 and K-562 target cells. However, saccharide inhibition was distinct for each type of target even when effector cells were obtained from the same donor. These same saccharides were also able to inhibit 20-30% of the total LT activity in a supernatant for L-929 cells and 50-90% of the lytic activity on MOLT-4 cells. Anti-human F(ab')2 (IgG) and rabbit anti-alpha 2 LT sera blocked direct cell lysis of MOLT-4 and K-562 targets in 50% of the experiments. The anti-alpha 2 LT serum only recognizes a portion of the LT forms in these supernatants. These results reveal that, while both direct and indirect cell lysis are complex phenomena, they may both occur in some cases by a common mechanism(s)

Mergers and Acquisitions in Latin America: Industrial Productivity and Corporate Governance

This paper examines the impact of industrial productivity on transnationals M&As from OECD countries towards Latin American countries in the period 1996 to 2010. It also analyzes the relationship between external mechanism of corporate governance and transnational M&As. For this purpose we use a gravitational model at the industry level. We find that industry productivity and higher standards of corporate governance in the country of origin promote transnational M&As activity. However, it is also found that higher levels of capital and technological productivity decreases transnational M&As activity