Low Income Housing Tax Credits: strategies for year 15

As the Low Income Housing Tax Credit 15-year compliance period begins to expire on affordable housing projects across the country, the Wyndham Financial Group’s William S. Hettinger examines how organizations are addressing this issue and offers strategies for success.Tax credits ; Tax Reform Act of 1986 ; Rental housing ; Real estate development ; Income tax

Long-term vascular access ports as a means of sedative administration in a rodent fMRI survival model

The purpose of this study is to develop a rodent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) survival model with the use of heparin-coated vascular access devices. Such a model would ease the administration of sedative agents, reduce the number of animals required in survival experiments and eliminate animal-to-animal variability seen in previous designs. Seven male Sprague-Dawley rats underwent surgical placement of an MRI-compatible vascular access port, followed by implantable electrode placement on the right median nerve. Functional MRI during nerve stimulation and resting-state functional connectivity MRI (fcMRI) were performed at times 0, 2, 4, 8 and 12 weeks postoperatively using a 9.4 T scanner. Anesthesia was maintained using intravenous dexmedetomidine and reversed using atipamezole. There were no fatalities or infectious complications during this study. All vascular access ports remained patent. Blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD) activation by electrical stimulation of the median nerve using implanted electrodes was seen within the forelimb sensory region (S1FL) for all animals at all time points. The number of activated voxels decreased at time points 4 and 8 weeks, returning to a normal level at 12 weeks, which is attributed to scar tissue formation and resolution around the embedded electrode. The applications of this experiment extend far beyond the scope of peripheral nerve experimentation. These vascular access ports can be applied to any survival MRI study requiring repeated medication administration, intravenous contrast, or blood sampling

A Journey Toward Mastery Teaching: STEM Faculty Engagement in a Year-Long Faculty Learning Community

As part of an institutional focus on STEM student success, a group of STEM faculty participated in a year-long faculty learning community (FLC) to explore and adopt research-based best practice in their teaching. The authors assessed the effectiveness of the FLC in influencing faculty perceptions about teaching and increasing their use of best teaching practices. Their research design used pre- and post-analysis of participants\u27 teaching logs, classroom observations, and a survey instrument that probed attitudes toward teaching and learning. Data analysis shows that the sustained support provided by the FLC increased faculty knowledge of best teaching practices and catalyzed faculty to try new pedagogical and assessment approaches. However, over the year of the FLC experience, only small shifts were observed in faculty perceptions and practice, as measured by a survey and a descriptive observation protocol, respectively. Results suggest the experience primarily supported modest faculty exploration of new strategies

IFT proteins interact with HSET to promote supernumerary centrosome clustering in mitosis.

Centrosome amplification is a hallmark of cancer, and centrosome clustering is essential for cancer cell survival. The mitotic kinesin HSET is an essential contributor to this process. Recent studies have highlighted novel functions for intraflagellar transport (IFT) proteins in regulating motors and mitotic processes. Here, using siRNA knock-down of various IFT proteins or AID-inducible degradation of endogenous IFT88 in combination with small-molecule inhibition of HSET, we show that IFT proteins together with HSET are required for efficient centrosome clustering. We identify a direct interaction between the kinesin HSET and IFT proteins, and we define how IFT proteins contribute to clustering dynamics during mitosis using high-resolution live imaging of centrosomes. Finally, we demonstrate the requirement of IFT88 for efficient centrosome clustering in a variety of cancer cell lines naturally harboring supernumerary centrosomes and its importance for cancer cell proliferation. Overall, our data unravel a novel role for the IFT machinery in centrosome clustering during mitosis in cells harboring supernumerary centrosomes

Theory of the c-Axis Penetration Depth in the Cuprates

Recent measurements of the London penetration depth tensor in the cuprates find a weak temperature dependence along the c-direction which is seemingly inconsistent with evidence for d-wave pairing deduced from in-plane measurements. We demonstrate in this paper that these disparate results are not in contradiction, but can be explained within a theory based on incoherent quasiparticle hopping between the CuO2 layers. By relating the calculated temperature dependence of the penetration depth \lambda_c(T) to the c-axis resistivity, we show how the measured ratio \lambda_c^2(0) / \lambda_c^2(T) can provide insight into the behavior of c-axis transport below Tc and the related issue of ``confinement.''Comment: 4 pages, REVTEX with psfig, 3 PostScript figures included in compressed for

Computational exploration of molecular receptive fields in the olfactory bulb reveals a glomerulus-centric chemical map

© The Author(s) 2020. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.Progress in olfactory research is currently hampered by incomplete knowledge about chemical receptive ranges of primary receptors. Moreover, the chemical logic underlying the arrangement of computational units in the olfactory bulb has still not been resolved. We undertook a large-scale approach at characterising molecular receptive ranges (MRRs) of glomeruli in the dorsal olfactory bulb (dOB) innervated by the MOR18-2 olfactory receptor, also known as Olfr78, with human ortholog OR51E2. Guided by an iterative approach that combined biological screening and machine learning, we selected 214 odorants to characterise the response of MOR18-2 and its neighbouring glomeruli. We found that a combination of conventional physico-chemical and vibrational molecular descriptors performed best in predicting glomerular responses using nonlinear Support-Vector Regression. We also discovered several previously unknown odorants activating MOR18-2 glomeruli, and obtained detailed MRRs of MOR18-2 glomeruli and their neighbours. Our results confirm earlier findings that demonstrated tunotopy, that is, glomeruli with similar tuning curves tend to be located in spatial proximity in the dOB. In addition, our results indicate chemotopy, that is, a preference for glomeruli with similar physico-chemical MRR descriptions being located in spatial proximity. Together, these findings suggest the existence of a partial chemical map underlying glomerular arrangement in the dOB. Our methodology that combines machine learning and physiological measurements lights the way towards future high-throughput studies to deorphanise and characterise structure-activity relationships in olfaction.Peer reviewe