The Catholic Church, Martin Luther King Jr., and the March in St. Augustine

In 1963 and 1964, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference selected St. Augustine, Florida, as a target city for a new round of civil rights protests. It marked the first major SCLC campaign since the Freedom Rides and Birmingham demonstrations of 1961. In St. Augustine, local chapters of the National Association of Colored People and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference labored to enlist local Roman Catholics in the cause for civil rights, hoping that a cooperative relationship might help desegregate local businesses, civil service agencies, and restaurants. As demonstrations in St. Augustine developed, however, King\u27s brand of social protest began to test the ethics of both local church and civic leaders

Identification of atropine-and P2X1 receptor antagonist-reistant, neurogenic contractions of the urinary bladder

Acetylcholine and ATP are excitatory cotransmitters in parasympathetic nerves. We used P2X1 receptor antagonists to further characterize the purinergic component of neurotransmission in isolated detrusor muscle of guinea pig urinary bladder. In the presence of atropine (1 μm) and prazosin (100 nm), pyridoxalphosphate-6-azophenyl-2′,4′-disulfonic acid (PPADS) (0.1–100 μm) and suramin (1–300 μm) inhibited contractions evoked by 4 Hz nerve stimulation in a concentration-dependent manner (IC50 of 6.9 and 13.4 μm, respectively). Maximum inhibition was 50–60%, which was unaffected by coadministration of the ectonucleotidase inhibitor ARL67156 (6-N,N-diethyl-d-β,γ-dibromomethyleneATP) (100 μm). The remaining responses were abolished by tetrodotoxin (1 μm). PPADS and suramin also reduced contractions to exogenous ATP (300 μm) by 40–50%, but abolished those to the P2X1 agonist α,β-methyleneATP (α,β-meATP) (1 μm). The P2X1 antagonists reactive blue 2, NF279 (8,8′-[carbonylbis(imino-4,1-phenylenecarbonylimino-4,1-phenylenecarbonylimino)] bis-1,3,5-naphthalenetrisulfonic acid), MRS2159 (pyridoxal-α5-phosphate-6-phenylazo-4′-carboxylic acid) (100 μm), and NF449 [4,4′,4,4-(carbonylbis(imino-5,1,3-benzenetriylbis(carbonylimino)))tetrakis-benzene-1,3-disulfonic acid] (3 μm) abolished contractions to α,β-meATP (1 μm; n = 4–5), but only reduced contractions evoked by 4 Hz nerve stimulation by ∼40–60% (n = 4–6) and ATP by 30–60% (n = 4–7). However, prolonged exposure to α,β-meATP (50 μm) abolished contractions evoked by all three stimuli (n = 5–12). PPADS (100 μm) and suramin (300 μm) reduced the peak neurogenic contraction of the mouse urinary bladder to 30–40% of control. At the same concentrations, the P2X1 antagonists abolished the nonadrenergic, purinergic component of neurogenic contractions in the guinea pig vas deferens (n = 4–5). Thus, P2X1 receptor antagonists inhibit, but do not abolish, the noncholinergic component of neurogenic contractions of guinea pig and mouse urinary bladder, indicating a second mode of action of neuronally released ATP. This has important implications for treatment of dysfunctional urinary bladder, for which this atropine- and P2X1 antagonist-resistant site represents a novel therapeutic target

Categorizing and Assessing the Severity of Disruptive Cyber Incidents

Faced with a rapidly growing volume and range of cyber attacks, policymakers and organizational leaders have had difficulty setting priorities, allocating resources, and responding effectively without a standard way to categorize cyber events and estimate their consequences. Presidential Policy Directive 41 laid out the Obama administration’s principles for executive branch responses to significant cyber incidents in the public or private sector. But it neither drew important distinctions between different types of cyber incidents, nor gave a standard way to determine where a particular incident falls on its 0-5 point severity scale. This policy brief demonstrates how an analytical framework developed at the Center for International and Security Studies at the University of Maryland (CISSM) can help address these problems. It first differentiates between low-level incidents and more significant cyber events that result in either exploitation of information and/or disruption of operations. It categorizes five types of disruptive events and analyzes 2,030 cyber events in a dataset developed from media sources, showing that cyber exploitation remains more common than disruption, and that most disruptive activity fits into two categories: message manipulation and external denial of service attacks. Finally, the brief offers a standard method to assess the severity of different categories of disruptive attacks against different kinds of organizations based on the scope, magnitude, and duration of the event. This Cyber Disruption Index (CDI) is then applied to survey data on Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks in the private sector to assess severity within a common category of disruptive events. Of 3,900 cases reported, only 5 events (less than 1% of the DDoS cases) had a combined scope, magnitude, and duration severe enough to be a priority for prevention and potentially warrant government involvement

An anthropometric model to estimate neonatal fat mass using air displacement plethysmography

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Current validated neonatal body composition methods are limited/impractical for use outside of a clinical setting because they are labor intensive, time consuming, and require expensive equipment. The purpose of this study was to develop an anthropometric model to estimate neonatal fat mass (kg) using an air displacement plethysmography (PEA POD^®Infant Body Composition System) as the criterion.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A total of 128 healthy term infants, 60 females and 68 males, from a multiethnic cohort were included in the analyses. Gender, race/ethnicity, gestational age, age (in days), anthropometric measurements of weight, length, abdominal circumference, skin-fold thicknesses (triceps, biceps, sub scapular, and thigh), and body composition by PEA POD^®were collected within 1-3 days of birth. Backward stepwise linear regression was used to determine the model that best predicted neonatal fat mass.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The statistical model that best predicted neonatal fat mass (kg) was: -0.012 -0.064*gender + 0.024*day of measurement post-delivery -0.150*weight (kg) + 0.055*weight (kg)²+ 0.046*ethnicity + 0.020*sum of three skin-fold thicknesses (triceps, sub scapular, and thigh); R²= 0.81, MSE = 0.08 kg.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Our anthropometric model explained 81% of the variance in neonatal fat mass. Future studies with a greater variety of neonatal anthropometric measurements may provide equations that explain more of the variance.</p

Functional Analysis of a Naturally Occurring Mutant myc Gene

The c-myc gene plays a role in the aetiology of various cancers of humans and animals. Feline leukaemia virus has also been demonstrated to have oncogenic potential, and in approximately one third of tumours where FeLV is present aberrant expression of a myc gene occurs. This changed expression pattern is mainly due to FeLV transduction of the myc gene, but can also occur by insertional mutagenesis. Until recently v-myc genes have been found to be virtually equivalent to c-myc, with few mutations in the coding sequence. This project focuses on a FeLV-transduced v-myc, termed T17-myc, which is exceptional in that it is highly mutated. Mutations include partial loss of a domain previously identified as crucial for transformation, as well as an insertion in the basic region (BR) sequence-specific DNA binding domain. The aim of this work was to characterise the mutant oncogene at the biological and biochemical level, to discover whether various Myc functions could be dissociated using the mutant. I have shown that the original mutations are maintained in secondary lymphomas which occurred rapidly after inoculation of the T17 virus complex, arguing that the mutant is a relatively efficient oncogene. Despite its apparent in vivo efficiency, it was transformation defective in chick embryo fibroblasts, and was unable to induce apoptosis in the same cells. Chimaeric genes showed that the transformation and apoptosis defects were caused by the N-terminal mutation. However, the C-terminal BR mutation independently lowered transformation efficiency and growth rate, although the mutation did not prevent binding to DNA along with Max, either in vitro or in vivo. Analysis of gene expression in the original T17 lymphoma-derived cell line showed that putative Myc regulated, and Myc regulating genes were expressed in the mutant Myc cell line, although the mutant Myc was able to interact with the transcriptional repressor pi07 in vitro. The data presented in this thesis are consistent with a model where mutations in the N-terminal domain of Myc abolish the negative growth effects of the myc gene, with relatively little consequence for its oncogenic function in T cells. Also consistent with these data is the ability of Myc to interact with cell type specific factors involved in transcription of Myc-regulated genes