Breaking into the boys' club : an analysis of the experiences of women journalists entering the sports journalism arena

Historically, women sports journalists encounter frequent instances of objectification, harassment, and discrimination from sources, colleagues, and higher ups (Hardin & Shain, 2005), and women in the current sports journalism industry remain greatly outnumbered compared to their counterparts who are men (Lapchick et al., 2021). This study examines the challenges new women sports journalists face during their first few years in the sports journalism industry in a current, postfeminist context utilizing Joan Acker's theory of gendered organizations to analyze gendered practices within the field. Challenges experienced by new women sports journalists found in this research suggest ongoing explicit and implicit genderbased harassment, discrimination, and obstacles to their professional endeavors; however, these challenges do not always persist in the same form as those seen by women in the past and are more indicative of a current, postfeminist sports journalism field. The positive professional experiences of new women sports journalists indicate growing acceptance of the presence and upward mobility of women in sports journalism, as well as the breaking down of previous traditional assumptions of male superiority and female inferiority within the industry.Includes bibliographical references

Therapeutic strategies to address neuronal nitric oxide synthase deficiency and the loss of nitric oxide bioavailability in Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy.

Abstract Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy is a rare and fatal neuromuscular disease in which the absence of dystrophin from the muscle membrane induces a secondary loss of neuronal nitric oxide synthase and the muscles capacity for endogenous nitric oxide synthesis. Since nitric oxide is a potent regulator of skeletal muscle metabolism, mass, function and regeneration, the loss of nitric oxide bioavailability is likely a key contributor to the chronic pathological wasting evident in Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. As such, various therapeutic interventions to re-establish either the neuronal nitric oxide synthase protein deficit or the consequential loss of nitric oxide synthesis and bioavailability have been investigated in both animal models of Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy and in human clinical trials. Notably, the efficacy of these interventions are varied and not always translatable from animal model to human patients, highlighting a complex interplay of factors which determine the downstream modulatory effects of nitric oxide. We review these studies herein

Defects in Mitochondrial ATP Synthesis in Dystrophin-Deficient Mdx Skeletal Muscles May Be Caused by Complex I Insufficiency

Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy is a chronic, progressive and ultimately fatal skeletal muscle wasting disease characterised by sarcolemmal fragility and intracellular Ca2+ dysregulation secondary to the absence of dystrophin. Mounting literature also suggests that the dysfunction of key energy systems within the muscle may contribute to pathological muscle wasting by reducing ATP availability to Ca2+ regulation and fibre regeneration. No study to date has biochemically quantified and contrasted mitochondrial ATP production capacity by dystrophic mitochondria isolated from their pathophysiological environment such to determine whether mitochondria are indeed capable of meeting this heightened cellular ATP demand, or examined the effects of an increasing extramitochondrial Ca2+ environment. Using isolated mitochondria from the diaphragm and tibialis anterior of 12 week-old dystrophin-deficient mdx and healthy control mice (C57BL10/ScSn) we have demonstrated severely depressed Complex I-mediated mitochondrial ATP production rate in mdx mitochondria that occurs irrespective of the macronutrient-derivative substrate combination fed into the Kreb's cycle, and, which is partially, but significantly, ameliorated by inhibition of Complex I with rotenone and stimulation of Complex II-mediated ATP-production with succinate. There was no difference in the MAPR response of mdx mitochondria to increasing extramitochondrial Ca2+ load in comparison to controls, and 400 nM extramitochondrial Ca2+ was generally shown to be inhibitory to MAPR in both groups. Our data suggests that DMD pathology is exacerbated by a Complex I deficiency, which may contribute in part to the severe reductions in ATP production previously observed in dystrophic skeletal muscle

Metabogenic and Nutriceutical Approaches to Address Energy Dysregulation and Skeletal Muscle Wasting in Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy

Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD) is a fatal genetic muscle wasting disease with no current cure. A prominent, yet poorly treated feature of dystrophic muscle is the dysregulation of energy homeostasis which may be associated with intrinsic defects in key energy systems and promote muscle wasting. As such, supplementative nutriceuticals that target and augment the bioenergetical expansion of the metabolic pathways involved in cellular energy production have been widely investigated for their therapeutic efficacy in the treatment of DMD. We describe the metabolic nuances of dystrophin-deficient skeletal muscle and review the potential of various metabogenic and nutriceutical compounds to ameliorate the pathological and clinical progression of the disease

Weighted risk assessment of critical source areas for soil phosphorus losses through surface runoff mechanisms

This work was supported by the NERC QUADRAT DTP [grant number 2280708].Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Skeletal muscle atrophy in sedentary Zucker obese rats is not caused by calpain-mediated muscle damage or lipid peroxidation induced by oxidative stress.

BACKGROUND: Skeletal muscle undergoes significant atrophy in Type 2 diabetic patients and animal models. We aimed to determine if atrophy of Zucker rat skeletal muscle was due to the activation of intracellular damage pathways induced by excess reactive oxygen species production (specifically those associated with the peroxidation of lipid membranes) and calpain activity. 14 week old obese Zucker rats and littermate lean controls were injected with 1% Evan’s Blue Dye. Animals were anaesthetised and extensor digitorum longus and soleus muscles were dissected, snap frozen and analysed for ROS-mediated F(2)-isoprostane production and calpain activation/autolysis. Contralateral muscles were histologically analysed for markers of muscle membrane permeability and atrophy. RESULTS: Muscle mass was lower in extensor digitorum longus and soleus of obese compared with lean animals, concomitant with reduced fibre area. Muscles from obese rats had a higher proportional area of Evan’s Blue Dye fluorescence, albeit this was localised to the interstitium/external sarcolemma. There were no differences in F(2)-isoprostane production when expressed relative to arachidonic acid content, which was lower in the obese EDL and soleus muscles. There were no differences in the activation of either μ-calpain or calpain-3. CONCLUSIONS: This study highlights that atrophy of Zucker rat skeletal muscle is not related to sarcolemmal damage, sustained hyperactivation of the calpain proteases or excessive lipid peroxidation. As such, establishing the correct pathways involved in atrophy is highly important so as to develop more specific treatment options that target the underlying cause. This study has eliminated two of the potential pathways theorised to be responsible

Applications of ML-Based Surrogates in Bayesian Approaches to Inverse Problems

Neural networks have become a powerful tool as surrogate models to provide numerical solutions for scientific problems with increased computational efficiency. This efficiency can be advantageous for numerically challenging problems where time to solution is important or when evaluation of many similar analysis scenarios is required. One particular area of scientific interest is the setting of inverse problems, where one knows the forward dynamics of a system are described by a partial differential equation and the task is to infer properties of the system given (potentially noisy) observations of these dynamics. We consider the inverse problem of inferring the location of a wave source on a square domain, given a noisy solution to the 2-D acoustic wave equation. Under the assumption of Gaussian noise, a likelihood function for source location can be formulated, which requires one forward simulation of the system per evaluation. Using a standard neural network as a surrogate model makes it computationally feasible to evaluate this likelihood several times, and so Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods can be used to evaluate the posterior distribution of the source location. We demonstrate that this method can accurately infer source-locations from noisy data.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures, submitted to NeurIPS Workshop on Machine Learning for Physical Science

D1.3 Data Management Plan

This report is the second version of the Data Management Plan (DMP) for the OPTIMAI project, provided as D1.3 - Data Management Plan - 2nd version in month 12 of the project. The overall purpose of this document is to support the data management lifecycle for all data that will be collected, stored, processed or generated by the project in order to maximise its access, according to the H2020 Pilot on Open Research Data (ORDP) in which the project participates. The DMP aims to identify the scope for data management within the project and then to consider in turn the datasets present within the project. The OPTIMAI approach will be in full compliance with the EU legislative and regulatory framework for ethics and data protection. So, in this document main regulations and basic concepts of the EU legal framework are summarised. A Data Management Plan Methodology is defined to provide the general rules and mechanisms for the access management of project data. Each dataset in the project is identified and described and information is provided about the extent to which it is standard compliant, and how the data will be available, accessible, interoperable and reusable. The approach to data management within OPTIMAI is presented by establishing the types of data likely to be encountered, the FAIR approach to data management and how it is specifically applied within the project, processes for the management of personal data and further ethical and security considerations. The complete legal and ethical framework of OPTIMAI will be developed and reported in WP9. The final part of the report then reviews each work package and task for any related data management requirements identified until M12, establishing an initial list of datasets within the project. So far, a total of 22 datasets have been identified in this version of the deliverable, being most of them data that will be collected and processed by the four pilot use cases. Other datasets are mostly stakeholders' information and public deliverables produced within the project scope. Although at this stage, some of this information remains incomplete or is yet to be determined this overview provides a solid basis for the data management lifecycle. Overall, the OPTIMAI data management plan is intended to be a living document that is regularly updated throughout the remainder of the project as information about the data present within the project becomes more complete and new datasets emerge. As living document, it will be updated during the course of the project in new versions at M24 and M3

3D immuno-confocal image reconstruction of fibroblast cytoskeleton and nucleus architecture

Computational models of cellular structures generally rely on simplifying approximations and assumptions that limit biological accuracy. This study presents a comprehensive image processing pipeline for creating unified three‐dimensional (3D) reconstructions of the cell cytoskeletal networks and nuclei. Confocal image stacks of these cellular structures were reconstructed to 3D isosurfaces (Imaris), then tessellations were simplified to reduce the number of elements in initial meshes by applying quadric edge collapse decimation with preserved topology boundaries (MeshLab). Geometries were remeshed to ensure uniformity (Instant Meshes) and the resulting 3D meshes exported (ABAQUS) for downstream application. The protocol has been applied successfully to fibroblast cytoskeletal reorganisation in the scleral connective tissue of the eye, under mechanical load that mimics internal eye pressure. While the method herein is specifically employed to reconstruct immunofluorescent confocal imaging data, it is also more widely applicable to other biological imaging modalities where accurate 3D cell structures are required