Major League Baseball and Drugs: Fight the Problem or the Player?

The drug abuse issue is one of the most emotionally charged and important questions facing sports and society today

In Vivo Multimodal Imaging of Drusenoid Lesions in Rhesus Macaques.

Nonhuman primates are the only mammals to possess a true macula similar to humans, and spontaneously develop drusenoid lesions which are hallmarks of age-related macular degeneration (AMD). Prior studies demonstrated similarities between human and nonhuman primate drusen based on clinical appearance and histopathology. Here, we employed fundus photography, spectral domain optical coherence tomography (SD-OCT), fundus autofluorescence (FAF), and infrared reflectance (IR) to characterize drusenoid lesions in aged rhesus macaques. Of 65 animals evaluated, we identified lesions in 20 animals (30.7%). Using the Age-Related Eye Disease Study 2 (AREDS2) grading system and multimodal imaging, we identified two distinct drusen phenotypes - 1) soft drusen that are larger and appear as hyperreflective deposits between the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) and Bruchs membrane on SD-OCT, and 2) hard, punctate lesions that are smaller and undetectable on SD-OCT. Both exhibit variable FAF intensities and are poorly visualized on IR. Eyes with drusen exhibited a slightly thicker RPE compared with control eyes (+3.4 μm, P=0.012). Genetic polymorphisms associated with drusenoid lesions in rhesus monkeys in ARMS2 and HTRA1 were similar in frequency between the two phenotypes. These results refine our understanding of drusen development, and provide insight into the absence of advanced AMD in nonhuman primates

Characterization of slow and fast phase nystagmus

A current literature review of the analog and digital process of vestibular and optical kinetic nystagmus reveals little agreement in the methods used by various labs. The strategies for detection of saccade (fast phase velocity component of nystagmus) vary between labs, and most of the process have not been evaluated and validated with a standard database. A survey was made of major vestibular labs in the U.S. that perform computer analyses of vestibular and optokinetic reflexes to stimuli, and a baseline was established from which to standardize data acquisition and analysis programs. The concept of an Error Index was employed as the criterium for evaluating the performance of the vestibular analysis software programs. The performance criterium is based on the detection of saccades and is the average of the percentages of missed detections and false detections. Evaluation of the programs produced results for lateral gaze with saccadic amplitude of one, two, three, five, and ten degrees with various signal-to-noise ratios. In addition, results were obtained for sinusoidal pursuit of 0.05, 0.10, and 0.50 Hz with saccades from one to ten degrees at various signal-to-noise ratios. Selection of the best program was made from the performance in the lateral gaze with three degrees of saccadic amplitude and in the 0.10 Hz sinusoid with three degrees of saccadic amplitude

Hubble OPAL Observations of Uranus and Neptune: 2014-2019

No abstract availabl

Full Court Press: Northwestern University, A New Challenge To The NCAA

In recent years, a host of issues have arisen between the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and the college athletes who provide the labor from which the NCAA and its member universities derive their profits. Many of these issues have been heavily publicized and have spurred a heated debate over the status of college athletes and the future of the collegiate athletic system. This Article primarily focuses on the issue of college athletes’ status as employees for purposes of federal labor law. The significant increase in the popularity of college sports in recent years has led to conference realignment, facility building and arms race, governance issues and litigation. The student-athletes, the players in the highly lucrative college football and basketball games have been left behind. They have resorted to challenging the NCAA’s system in many different ways. Recently, football players at Northwestern University successfully petitioned their local Regional Director of the National Labor Relations Board for a union representation election, arguing that they are employees of the University and as such are entitled to collective bargaining rights and other protections under the National Labor Relations Act. Northwestern University has rejected this argument and has appealed the Regional Director’s decision to the National Labor Relations Board in Washington, D.C. This Article provides a background for the highly contested dispute, refutes some of the common arguments made against the potential unionization of college athletics, and discusses some of the potential implications if players can and do form a union

Linking Illness to Food: Summary of a Workshop on Food Attribution

To identify and prioritize effective food safety interventions, it is critical not only to identify the pathogens responsible for illness, but also to attribute cases of foodborne disease to the specific food vehicle responsible. A wide variety of such “food attribution” approaches and data are used around the world, including the analysis of and extrapolation from outbreak and other surveillance data, case-control studies, microbial subtyping and source-tracking methods, and expert judgment, among others. The Food Safety Research Consortium sponsored the Food Attribution Data Workshop in October 2003 to discuss the virtues and limitations of these approaches and to identify future options for the collection of food attribution data in the United States. This discussion paper summarizes workshop discussions and identifies challenges that affect progress in this critical component of a risk-based approach to improving food safety.foodborne illness, food attribution, outbreaks, case-control studies, microbial fingerprinting, microbial subtyping, FoodNet

Anachronistic Grain Growth and Global Structure of the Protoplanetary Disk Associated with the Mature Classical T Tauri Star, PDS 66

We present ATCA interferometric observations of the old (13 Myr), nearby (86pc) classical T Tauri star, PDS 66. Unresolved 3 and 12 mm continuum emission is detected towards PDS 66, and upper limits are derived for the 3 and 6 cm flux densities. The mm-wave data show a spectral slope flatter than that expected for ISM-sized dust particles, which is evidence of grain growth. We also present HST/NICMOS 1.1 micron PSF-subtracted coronagraphic imaging of PDS 66. The HST observations reveal a bilaterally symmetric circumstellar region of dust scattering about 0.32% of the central starlight, declining radially in surface brightness. The light-scattering disk of material is inclined 32 degrees from face-on, and extends to a radius of 170 AU. These data are combined with published optical and longer wavelength observations to make qualitative comparisons between the median Taurus and PDS 66 spectral energy distributions (SEDs). By comparing the near-infrared emission to a simple model, we determine that the location of the inner disk radius is consistent with the dust sublimation radius (1400 K at 0.1 AU). We place constraints on the total disk mass using a flat-disk model and find that it is probably too low to form gas giant planets according to current models. Despite the fact that PDS 66 is much older than a typical classical T Tauri star (< 5 Myr), its physical properties are not much different.Comment: 31 pages, 7 figure