307 research outputs found
The Museum That Would Not Die: The Strange Persistence of the Maine State Museum
Maine is the only New England state with a substanÂtial state museum supported in large part by state appropriations. The present museum can be said to have been founded in 1836, but it was closed or eliminated six times over the next 135 years before being resurÂrected for the seventh time in 1971. In this article describing the history of the Maine State Museum, museum director Bernard P. Fishman argues that its perseverance arises from basic communal and indeed human needs and also from Maineâs particular circumstances
Panel #3: Circulating Images: The Production, Distribution & Reception of Visual Culture During the Statehood Era
A panel featuring four presentations:
Visualizing Historic Maine: 19th Century Maine Life in Stereophotography (presented in actual 3D), Bernard Fishman
Tovookan\u27s Narrative: Depicting Freedom in Maine During the Statehood Era, Martha J. McNamara
Popular Print and Visual Culture in Statehood Period Maine, Kevin D. Murphy
Rufus Porter in Maine: Art, Spatial Thinking, and the Curious Mind, Justin Wolf
Adult hematopoietic progenitors are pluripotent in chimeric mice
18 pages, 7 figures.Embryonic stem cells (ESCs) and adult somatic cells, induced to pluripotency (iPSCs) by genetic manipulation, display high self-Âârenewal potential and the capacity to differentiate into multiple cell lineages. We asked whether there are in adult mammals natural stem cells that are pluripotent. We previously reported that normal adult mammalian bone marrow contains a sub-Ââpopulation of CD34+ cells, that naturally expresses genes characteristic of ESCs and those required to generate iPSCs, but have a limited lifespan and do not form teratomas. In addition, these CD34+ cells spontaneously express, without genetic manipulation, genes characteristic of the three embryonic germ layers: i.e., ectodermal neural, mesodermal cardiac muscle, and endodermal pancreatic and intestinal lineage genes (Pessac, B, et al. 2011. Hematopoietic progenitors express embryonic stem cell and germ layer genes. Comptes Rendus Biologies 334: 300-Ââ306). This suggested that these cells may be pluripotent. Here we have transplanted these CD34+ bone marrow stem cells from adult male C56Bl/6J ROSA mice, that carry two markers: the Ă-Ââgalactosidase gene and the male Y chromosome, into blastocysts of wildtype C57Bl/6J mice. These blastocysts develop normally and give rise to healthy adult chimeric mice. Each female ROSA chimeric mouse had a distinct pattern of male organs expressing Ă-Ââgalactosidase derived from each of the three embryonic germ layers: ectodermal brain, dorsal root ganglia and skin; mesodermal heart, bone and bone marrow; and endodermal pancreas, intestine, and liver. Thus, adult mammals still carry cells that appear to exhibit a developmental potential comparable to ESCs and iPSCs suggesting that CD34+ cells from adult bone marrow could be used for cell therapy
Investigating usersâ perspectives on the development of bike-sharing in Shanghai
High levels of car dependence have caused tremendous challenges for sustainable transport development. Transport planners, therefore, seek ways of replacing motor vehicles, as well as increasing the proportion of active travel. The bike-sharing scheme can be seen as an effective way of doing so, particularly in Asian cities. The aim of this paper is to investigate usersâ perspectives on the development of bike-sharing using Shanghai as an example. Semi-structured interviews are used to examine the main factors motivating and impeding the development of the bike-sharing scheme in Shanghai. Our findings show that convenience, saving time and financial savings are the major motivations; whereas problems with bicycles being poorly maintained and abused by users, operational issues, financial issues and an unsuitable business model are the major obstacles. In addition, the findings also suggest that a public and private partnership could be the best option for running a sustainable bike-sharing scheme with clear areas of responsibility. Financial incentives, a bicycle-friendly infrastructure, regular operational management and supportive policies should be prioritised. In order to achieve the targets set by the Shanghai Master Plan 2035, transport planners and policymakers should integrate the bike-sharing scheme within the wider active travel system
Revising the Language Map of Korea
As linguists develop a deeper understanding of the properties of individual varieties of speech, they often find it necessary to reclassify dialects as independent languages, based on the criterion of intelligibility. This criterion is applied here to Jejueo, the traditional variety of speech used on Jeju Island, a province of the Republic of Korea. Although Jejueo has long been classified as a nonstandard dialect of Korean, evidence from an intelligibility experiment shows that it is not comprehensible to monolingual speakers of Korean and therefore should be treated as a separate language, in accordance with the usual practice within linguistics. This finding calls for a revision to the standard language map of Kore
The clinical features of the piriformis syndrome: a systematic review
Piriformis syndrome, sciatica caused by compression of the sciatic nerve by the piriformis muscle, has been described for over 70 years; yet, it remains controversial. The literature consists mainly of case series and narrative reviews. The objectives of the study were: first, to make the best use of existing evidence to estimate the frequencies of clinical features in patients reported to have PS; second, to identify future research questions. A systematic review was conducted of any study type that reported extractable data relevant to diagnosis. The search included all studies up to 1 March 2008 in four databases: AMED, CINAHL, Embase and Medline. Screening, data extraction and analysis were all performed independently by two reviewers. A total of 55 studies were included: 51 individual and 3 aggregated data studies, and 1 combined study. The most common features found were: buttock pain, external tenderness over the greater sciatic notch, aggravation of the pain through sitting and augmentation of the pain with manoeuvres that increase piriformis muscle tension. Future research could start with comparing the frequencies of these features in sciatica patients with and without disc herniation or spinal stenosis
A dynamic risk score for early prediction of cardiogenic shock using machine learning
Myocardial infarction and heart failure are major cardiovascular diseases
that affect millions of people in the US. The morbidity and mortality are
highest among patients who develop cardiogenic shock. Early recognition of
cardiogenic shock is critical. Prompt implementation of treatment measures can
prevent the deleterious spiral of ischemia, low blood pressure, and reduced
cardiac output due to cardiogenic shock. However, early identification of
cardiogenic shock has been challenging due to human providers' inability to
process the enormous amount of data in the cardiac intensive care unit (ICU)
and lack of an effective risk stratification tool. We developed a deep
learning-based risk stratification tool, called CShock, for patients admitted
into the cardiac ICU with acute decompensated heart failure and/or myocardial
infarction to predict onset of cardiogenic shock. To develop and validate
CShock, we annotated cardiac ICU datasets with physician adjudicated outcomes.
CShock achieved an area under the receiver operator characteristic curve
(AUROC) of 0.820, which substantially outperformed CardShock (AUROC 0.519), a
well-established risk score for cardiogenic shock prognosis. CShock was
externally validated in an independent patient cohort and achieved an AUROC of
0.800, demonstrating its generalizability in other cardiac ICUs
Anatomical, Clinical and Electrical Observations in Piriformis Syndrome
<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>We provided clinical and electrical descriptions of the piriformis syndrome, contributing to better understanding of the pathogenesis and further diagnostic criteria.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Between 3550 patients complaining of sciatica, we concluded 26 cases of piriformis syndrome, 15 females, 11 males, mean age 35.37 year-old. We operated 9 patients, 2 to 19 years after the onset of symptoms, 5 had piriformis steroids injection. A dorsolumbar MRI were performed in all cases and a pelvic MRI in 7 patients. The electro-diagnostic test was performed in 13 cases, between them the H reflex of the peroneal nerve was tested 7 times.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>After a followup 1 to 11 years, for the 17 non operated patients, 3 patients responded to conservative treatment. 6 of the operated had an excellent result, 2 residual minor pain and one failed. 3 new anatomical observations were described with atypical compression of the sciatic nerve by the piriformis muscle.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>While the H reflex test of the tibial nerve did not give common satisfaction in the literature for diagnosis, the H reflex of the peroneal nerve should be given more importance, because it demonstrated in our study more specific sign, with six clinical criteria it contributed to improve the method of diagnosis. The cause of this particular syndrome does not only depend on the relation sciatic nerve-piriformis muscle, but the environmental conditions should be considered with the series of the anatomical anomalies to explain the real cause of this pain.</p
Thermal critical behavior and universality aspects of the three-dimensional random-field Ising model
The three-dimensional bimodal random-field Ising model is investigated using
the N-fold version of the Wang-Landau algorithm. The essential energy subspaces
are determined by the recently developed critical minimum energy subspace
technique, and two implementations of this scheme are utilized. The random
fields are obtained from a bimodal discrete distribution, and we
study the model for various values of the disorder strength ,
and 2, on cubic lattices with linear sizes . We
extract information for the probability distributions of the specific heat
peaks over samples of random fields. This permits us to obtain the phase
diagram and present the finite-size behavior of the specific heat. The question
of saturation of the specific heat is re-examined and it is shown that the open
problem of universality for the random-field Ising model is strongly influenced
by the lack of self-averaging of the model. This property appears to be
substantially depended on the disorder strength.Comment: 17 pages, 6 figure
Segmental Duplications Arise from Pol32-Dependent Repair of Broken Forks through Two Alternative Replication-Based Mechanisms
The propensity of segmental duplications (SDs) to promote genomic instability is of increasing interest since their involvement in numerous human genomic diseases and cancers was revealed. However, the mechanism(s) responsible for their appearance remain mostly speculative. Here, we show that in budding yeast, replication accidents, which are most likely transformed into broken forks, play a causal role in the formation of SDs. The Pol32 subunit of the major replicative polymerase PolÎŽ is required for all SD formation, demonstrating that SDs result from untimely DNA synthesis rather than from unequal crossing-over. Although Pol32 is known to be required for classical (Rad52-dependant) break-induced replication, only half of the SDs can be attributed to this mechanism. The remaining SDs are generated through a Rad52-independent mechanism of template switching between microsatellites or microhomologous sequences. This new mechanism, named microhomology/microsatellite-induced replication (MMIR), differs from all known DNA double-strand break repair pathways, as MMIR-mediated duplications still occur in the combined absence of homologous recombination, microhomology-mediated, and nonhomologous end joining machineries. The interplay between these two replication-based pathways explains important features of higher eukaryotic genomes, such as the strong, but not strict, association between SDs and transposable elements, as well as the frequent formation of oncogenic fusion genes generating protein innovations at SD junctions
- âŠ