Follow-up study of twenty-six women known to the prenatal clinic of the Boston City Hospital between 1940-1942 who were diagnosed as active or inactive cases of tuberculosis on the basis of routine X-ray examinations taken during their clinic visit

Thesis (M.S.)--Boston University, 1948. This item was digitized by the Internet Archive

Attitudinal and Dispositional Predictors of Environmentally-Responsible Behavior

Measures of locus of control, optimism, consideration of future consequences of behavior, environmental concern, belief in global warming, biospheric altruism, corporate skepticism, economic motivation, recycling attitudes and motivation, and political ideology were used to predict environmentally-responsible behaviors. Regression analyses revealed that the best predictors were perceived importance of recycling, economic motivation, recycling motivation, and corporate skepticism. These results suggest that global dispositional variables, such as optimism and locus of control, are not particularly useful predictors of environmentally-responsible behaviors. Instead, environmentally-specific dispositions, such as economic motivation and recycling motivation are much better predictors, as well as attitudinal dimensions such as perceived importance of recycling, environmental concern, belief in global warming, corporate skepticism, and political ideology. This suggests that efforts to increase environmentally-responsible behaviors are best directed at impacting environmentally-relevant dispositions and attitudes

Single-cell RNA-sequencing of differentiating iPS cells reveals dynamic genetic effects on gene expression.

Recent developments in stem cell biology have enabled the study of cell fate decisions in early human development that are impossible to study in vivo. However, understanding how development varies across individuals and, in particular, the influence of common genetic variants during this process has not been characterised. Here, we exploit human iPS cell lines from 125 donors, a pooled experimental design, and single-cell RNA-sequencing to study population variation of endoderm differentiation. We identify molecular markers that are predictive of differentiation efficiency of individual lines, and utilise heterogeneity in the genetic background across individuals to map hundreds of expression quantitative trait loci that influence expression dynamically during differentiation and across cellular contexts

Brunner's Gland Hyperplasia: Treatment of Severe Diffuse Nodular Hyperplasia Mimicking a Malignancy on Pancreatic-Duodenal Area

Brunner's gland hyperplasia is a benign tumor of the duodenum and it is rarely associated with clinical symptoms. We report on a 64-yr-old man with Brunner's gland hyperplasia who had undergone a duodenocephalo-pancreatectomy. The reason is that he presented upper gastrointestinal obstructive symptoms and the esophagogastroduodenoscopic finding revealed the lesion to be an infiltrating type mass on the second portion of the duodenum with luminal narrowing. An abdominal computed tomography showed a 2.5 cm-sized mass in the duodenal second portion with a suspicious pancreatic invasion and 7 mm-sized lymph node around the duodenum. Duodenocephalopancreatectomy was successfully performed. Histological examination revealed a Brunner's gland hyperplasia. The final diagnosis was the coexistence of Brunner's gland hyperplasia and pancreatic heterotopia with a pancreatic head invasion. The literature on Brunner's gland hyperplasia is reviewed

A comparison of Eulerian and Lagrangian transport and non-linear reaction algorithms

When laboratory-measured chemical reaction rates are used in simulations at the field-scale, the models typically overpredict the apparent reaction rates. The discrepancy is primarily due to poorer mixing of chemically distinct waters at the larger scale. As a result, realistic field-scale predictions require accurate simulation of the degree of mixing between fluids. The Lagrangian particle-tracking (PT) method is a now-standard way to simulate the transport of conservative or sorbing solutes. The method’s main advantage is the absence of numerical dispersion (and its artificial mixing) when simulating advection. New algorithms allow particles of different species to interact in nonlinear (e.g., bimolecular) reactions. Therefore, the PT methods hold a promise of more accurate field-scale simulation of reactive transport because they eliminate the masking effects of spurious mixing due to advection errors inherent in grid-based methods. A hypothetical field-scale reaction scenario is constructed and run in PT and Eulerian (finite-volume/finite-difference) simulators. Grid-based advection schemes considered here include 1st- to 3rd-order spatially accurate total-variation-diminishing flux-limiting schemes, both of which are widely used in current transport/reaction codes. A homogeneous velocity field in which the Courant number is everywhere unity, so that the chosen Eulerian methods incur no error when simulating advection, shows that both the Eulerian and PT methods can achieve convergence in the L1 (integrated concentration) norm, but neither shows stricter pointwise convergence. In this specific case with a constant dispersion coefficient and bimolecular reaction A+B¿P, the correct total amount of product is 0.221MA0, where MA0 is the original mass of reactant A. When the Courant number drops, the grid-based simulations can show remarkable errors due to spurious over- and under-mixing. In a heterogeneous velocity field (keeping the same constant and isotropic dispersion), the PT simulations show an increased reaction total from 0.221MA0 to 0.372MA0 due to fluid deformation, while the 1st-order Eulerian simulations using ˜ 106 cells (with a classical grid Peclet number ¿x/aL of 10) have total product of 0.53MA0, or approximately twice as much additional reaction due to advection error. The 3rd-order TVD algorithm fares better, with total product of 0.394MA0, or about 1.14 times the increased reaction total. A very strict requirement on grid Peclet numbers for Eulerian simulations will be required for realistic reactions because of their nonlinear nature. We analytically estimate the magnitude of the effect for the end-member cases of very fast and very slow reactions and show that in either case, the mass produced is proportional to View the MathML source where Pe is the Peclet number. Therefore, extra mass is produced according to View the MathML source where the dispersion includes any numerical dispersion error. We test two PT methods, one that kills particles upon reaction and another that decrements a particle’s mass. For the bimolecular reaction studied here, the computational demands of the particle-killing methods are much smaller than, and the particle-number-preserving algorithm are on par with, the fastest Eulerian methods.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Publisher Correction: Single-cell RNA-sequencing of differentiating iPS cells reveals dynamic genetic effects on gene expression.

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper

Publisher Correction: Single-cell RNA-sequencing of differentiating iPS cells reveals dynamic genetic effects on gene expression.

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper

Caldendrin–Jacob: A Protein Liaison That Couples NMDA Receptor Signalling to the Nucleus

NMDA (N-methyl-D-aspartate) receptors and calcium can exert multiple and very divergent effects within neuronal cells, thereby impacting opposing occurrences such as synaptic plasticity and neuronal degeneration. The neuronal Ca2+ sensor Caldendrin is a postsynaptic density component with high similarity to calmodulin. Jacob, a recently identified Caldendrin binding partner, is a novel protein abundantly expressed in limbic brain and cerebral cortex. Strictly depending upon activation of NMDA-type glutamate receptors, Jacob is recruited to neuronal nuclei, resulting in a rapid stripping of synaptic contacts and in a drastically altered morphology of the dendritic tree. Jacob's nuclear trafficking from distal dendrites crucially requires the classical Importin pathway. Caldendrin binds to Jacob's nuclear localization signal in a Ca2+-dependent manner, thereby controlling Jacob's extranuclear localization by competing with the binding of Importin-α to Jacob's nuclear localization signal. This competition requires sustained synapto-dendritic Ca2+ levels, which presumably cannot be achieved by activation of extrasynaptic NMDA receptors, but are confined to Ca2+ microdomains such as postsynaptic spines. Extrasynaptic NMDA receptors, as opposed to their synaptic counterparts, trigger the cAMP response element-binding protein (CREB) shut-off pathway, and cell death. We found that nuclear knockdown of Jacob prevents CREB shut-off after extrasynaptic NMDA receptor activation, whereas its nuclear overexpression induces CREB shut-off without NMDA receptor stimulation. Importantly, nuclear knockdown of Jacob attenuates NMDA-induced loss of synaptic contacts, and neuronal degeneration. This defines a novel mechanism of synapse-to-nucleus communication via a synaptic Ca2+-sensor protein, which links the activity of NMDA receptors to nuclear signalling events involved in modelling synapto-dendritic input and NMDA receptor–induced cellular degeneration

A Glial Variant of the Vesicular Monoamine Transporter Is Required To Store Histamine in the Drosophila Visual System

Unlike other monoamine neurotransmitters, the mechanism by which the brain's histamine content is regulated remains unclear. In mammals, vesicular monoamine transporters (VMATs) are expressed exclusively in neurons and mediate the storage of histamine and other monoamines. We have studied the visual system of Drosophila melanogaster in which histamine is the primary neurotransmitter released from photoreceptor cells. We report here that a novel mRNA splice variant of Drosophila VMAT (DVMAT-B) is expressed not in neurons but rather in a small subset of glia in the lamina of the fly's optic lobe. Histamine contents are reduced by mutation of dVMAT, but can be partially restored by specifically expressing DVMAT-B in glia. Our results suggest a novel role for a monoamine transporter in glia that may be relevant to histamine homeostasis in other systems