Table of Contents

Table of Contents for the Inaugural Issue (December 2005

Psychedelics for brain injury: A mini-review

Objective: Stroke and traumatic brain injury (TBI) are among the leading causes of disability. Even after engaging in rehabilitation, nearly half of patients with severe TBI requiring hospitalization are left with major disability. Despite decades of investigation, pharmacologic treatment of brain injury is still a field in its infancy. Recent clinical trials have begun into the use of psychedelic therapeutics for treatment of brain injury. This brief review aims to summarize the current state of the science's relevance to neurorehabilitation, and may act as a resource for those seeking to understand the precedence for these ongoing clinical trials.Methods: Narrative mini-review of studies published related to psychedelic therapeutics and brain injury.Results: Recent in vitro, in vivo, and case report studies suggest psychedelic pharmacotherapies may influence the future of brain injury treatment through modulation of neuroinflammation, hippocampal neurogenesis, neuroplasticity, and brain complexity.Conclusions: Historical data on the safety of some of these substances could serve in effect as phase 0 and phase I studies. Further phase II trials will illuminate how these drugs may treat brain injury, particularly TBI and reperfusion injury from stroke

TCU: Honors Research Across the Disciplines

Panel Chair: Wendy Williams, TC

Ancient expansion of the Hox cluster in Lepidoptera generated four homeobox genes implicated in extra-embryonic tissue formation

Gene duplications within the conserved Hox cluster are rare in animal evolution, but in Lepidoptera an array of divergent Hox-related genes (Shx genes) has been reported between pb and zen. Here, we use genome sequencing of five lepidopteran species (Polygonia c-album, Pararge aegeria, Callimorpha dominula, Cameraria ohridella, Hepialus sylvina) plus a caddisfly outgroup (Glyphotaelius pellucidus) to trace the evolution of the lepidopteran Shx genes. We demonstrate that Shx genes originated by tandem duplication of zen early in the evolution of large clade Ditrysia; Shx are not found in a caddisfly and a member of the basally diverging Hepialidae (swift moths). Four distinct Shx genes were generated early in ditrysian evolution, and were stably retained in all descendent Lepidoptera except the silkmoth which has additional duplications. Despite extensive sequence divergence, molecular modelling indicates that all four Shx genes have the potential to encode stable homeodomains. The four Shx genes have distinct spatiotemporal expression patterns in early development of the Speckled Wood butterfly (Pararge aegeria), with ShxC demarcating the future sites of extraembryonic tissue formation via strikingly localised maternal RNA in the oocyte. All four genes are also expressed in presumptive serosal cells, prior to the onset of zen expression. Lepidopteran Shx genes represent an unusual example of Hox cluster expansion and integration of novel genes into ancient developmental regulatory networks

Socioeconomic factors that affect artisanal fishers’ readiness to exit a declining fishery

The emerging world crisis created by declining fish stocks poses a challenge to resource users and managers. The problem is particularly acute in poor nations, such as those in East Africa, where fishing is an important subsistence activity but high fishing intensity and use of destructive gear have resulted in declining catches. In this context developing effective management strategies requires an understanding of how fishers may respond to declines in catch. We examined the readiness of 141 Kenyan fishers to stop fishing under hypothetical scenarios of declines in catch and how socioeconomic conditions influenced their decisions. As expected, the proportion of fishers that would exit the fishery increased with magnitude of decline in catch. Fishers were more likely to say they would stop fishing if they were from households that had a higher material style of life and a greater number of occupations. Variables such as capital investment in the fishery and the proportion of catch sold had weak, nonsignificant relationships. Our finding that fishers from poorer households would be less likely to exit a severely declining fishery is consistent with the literature on poverty traps, which suggests the poor are unable to mobilize the necessary resources to overcome either shocks or chronic low-income situations and consequently may remain in poverty. This finding supports the proposition \ud that wealth generation and employment opportunities directed at the poorest fishers may help reduce fishing effort on overexploited fisheries, but successful interventions such as these will require an understanding of the socioeconomic context in which fishers operate. \u

Phase II multicentre, double-blind, randomised trial of ustekinumab in adolescents with new-onset type 1 diabetes (USTEK1D): trial protocol

Introduction Most individuals newly diagnosed with type 1 diabetes (T1D) have 10%–20% of beta-cell function remaining at the time of diagnosis. Preservation of residual beta-cell function at diagnosis may improve glycaemic control and reduce longer-term complications.Immunotherapy has the potential to preserve endogenous beta-cell function and thereby improve metabolic control even in poorly compliant individuals. We propose to test ustekinumab (STELARA), a targeted and well-tolerated therapy that may halt T-cell and cytokine-mediated destruction of beta-cells in the pancreas at the time of diagnosis.Methods and analysis This is a double-blind phase II study to assess the safety and efficacy of ustekinumab in 72 children and adolescents aged 12–18 with new-onset T1D.Participants should have evidence of residual functioning beta-cells (serum C-peptide level >0.2nmol/L in the mixed-meal tolerance test (MMTT) and be positive for at least one islet autoantibody (GAD, IA-2, ZnT8) to be eligible.Participants will be given ustekinumab/placebo subcutaneously at weeks 0, 4 and 12, 20, 28, 36 and 44 in a dose depending on the body weight and will be followed for 12 months after dose 1.MMTTs will be used to measure the efficacy of ustekinumab for preserving C-peptide area under the curve at week 52 compared with placebo. Secondary objectives include further investigations into the efficacy and safety of ustekinumab, patient and parent questionnaires, alternative methods for measuring insulin production and exploratory mechanistic work

The use and calibration of read-out streaks to increase the dynamic range of the Swift Ultraviolet/Optical Telescope

The dynamic range of photon counting micro-channel-plate (MCP) intensified charged-coupled device (CCD) instruments such as the Swift Ultraviolet/Optical Telescope (UVOT) and the XMM-Newton Optical Monitor (XMM-OM) is limited at the bright end by coincidence loss, the superposition of multiple photons in the individual frames recorded by the CCD. Photons which arrive during the brief period in which the image frame is transferred for read out of the CCD are displaced in the transfer direction in the recorded images. For sufficiently bright sources, these displaced counts form read-out streaks. Using UVOT observations of Tycho-2 stars, we investigate the use of these read-out streaks to obtain photometry for sources which are too bright (and hence have too much coincidence loss) for normal aperture photometry to be reliable. For read-out-streak photometry, the bright-source limiting factor is coincidence loss within the MCPs rather than the CCD. We find that photometric measurements can be obtained for stars up to 2.4 magnitudes brighter than the usual full-frame coincidence-loss limit by using the read-out streaks. The resulting bright-limit Vega magnitudes in the UVOT passbands are UVW2=8.80, UVM2=8.27, UVW1=8.86, u=9.76, b=10.53, v=9.31 and White=11.71; these limits are independent of the windowing mode of the camera. We find that a photometric precision of 0.1 mag can be achieved through read-out streak measurements. A suitable method for the measurement of read-out streaks is described and all necessary calibration factors are given.Comment: 11 pages, accepted for publication in MNRAS. Code available from the calibration link at http://www.mssl.ucl.ac.uk/www_astro/uvo