The human myometrium differentially expresses mTOR signalling components before and during pregnancy: Evidence for regulation by progesterone

Emerging studies implicate the signalling of the mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) in a number of reproductive functions. To this date, there are no data regarding the expression of mTOR signalling components in the human myometrium during pregnancy. We hypothesized that mTOR-related genes might be differentially expressed in term or preterm labour as well as in labour or non-labour myometria during pregnancy. Using quantitative RT-PCR we demonstrate for first time that there is a significant downregulation of mTOR, DEPTOR, and Raptor in preterm labouring myometria when compared to non-pregnant tissues taken from the same area (lower segment). We used an immortalized myometrial cell line (ULTR) as an in vitro model to dissect further mTOR signalling. In ULTR cells DEPTOR and Rictor had a cytoplasmic distribution, whereas mTOR and Raptor were detected in the cytoplasm and the nucleus, indicative of mTORC1 shuttling. Treatment with inflammatory cytokines caused only minor changes in gene expression of these components, whereas progesterone caused significant down-regulation. We performed a non-biased gene expression analysis of ULTR cells using Nimblegen human gene expression microarray (n = 3), and selected genes were validated by quantitative RT-PCR in progesterone treated myometrial cells. Progesterone significantly down-regulated key components of the mTOR pathway. We conclude that the human myometrium differentially expresses mTOR signalling components and they can be regulated by progesterone. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled 'Pregnancy and Steroids'.This research was funded by National Institutes of Health Grant ESO12961

Looking and learning: using participatory video to improve health and safety in the construction industry

Construction health and safety (H&S)is usually managed using a top-down approach of regulating workers' behaviour through the implementation and enforcement of prescriptive rules and procedures. This management approach privileges technical knowledge over knowledge based on workers' tacit and informal ways of knowing about H&S. The aim is to investigate the potential for participatory video to: (1) identify areas in which formal policies and procedures do not reflect as practised by workers; (2) encourage creative thinking and elicit workers' ideas for H&S improvements; and (3) provide an effective mechanism for capturing and sharing tacit H&S knowledge in construction organizations. Interviews were conducted in two case study organizations (CSOs) in the Australian construction industry. The results suggest reflexive participatory video enabled workers and managers to view their work practices from a different perspective. Workers identified new hazards, reflected about the practical difficulties in performing work in accordance with documented procedures and reframed their work practices and developed safer ways of working. Workers described how the participatory video capturing the way they work enabled them to have more meaningful input into H&S decision-making than they had previously experienced. Workers also expressed a strong preference for receiving H&S information in a visual format and commented that video was better suited to communicating H&S 'know how' than written documents. The research is significant in providing initial evidence that participatory video has the potential to improve H&S in construction

Experience and imagination in transdisciplinary design: The fabpod

© 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This article examines how techniques for imagining atmospheres are conceptualized and practiced in architecture, anthropology and acoustic measurement in order to advance discussion of how transdisciplinary theory and practice might be realized. Building on research into the experience of atmospheres of already existing architectural spaces, it discusses how architects, anthropologists and users of designed environments imagine atmospheres. This is explored through an examination of the processes of design, making, quantitative measurement and ethnographic study of an acoustically designed prototype meeting space, the FabPod. It is argued that transdisciplinary dialogue and collaboration offers architecture a new mode through which to participate in imagining and designing atmosphere

Deriding Revealed Religions? Baha'is in Egypt

When on 10 May 1925, the appellate sharica court of Biba annulled the marriages of three Upper Egyptian Baha'is to their Muslim wives, declaring that the Baha'i faith was not part of Islam and therefore Muslims embracing it were to be considered apostates, this verdict was, paradoxically, hailed by the international Baha'i community as 'the first Charter of the emancipation of the Cause of Baha'u'llah from the fetters of Islamic orthodoxy'. The National Spiritual Assembly (NSA) of the Baha'is of Egypt and the Sudan, one of the first NSAs to be founded worldwide, felt inspired by the verdict that finally made the Egyptian public aware of the existence of an active Baha'i community in their country. It was clear to everyone now that the Baha'i faith could no longer be regarded as an Islamic reform movement, as had been the case before World War I, when Abd'ul'baha's visits to Alexandria had caused a first wave of interest in the new religion

The scaling infrared DSE solution as a critical end-point for the family of decoupling ones

Both regular (the zero-momentum ghost dressing function not diverging), also named decoupling, and critical (diverging), also named scaling, Yang-Mills propagators solutions can be obtained by analyzing the low-momentum behaviour of the ghost propagator Dyson-Schwinger equation (DSE) in Landau gauge. The asymptotic expression obtained for the regular or decoupling ghost dressing function up to the order ${\cal O}(q^2)$ fits pretty well the low-momentum ghost propagator obtained through the numerical integration of the coupled gluon and ghost DSE in the PT-BFM scheme. Furthermore, when the size of the coupling renormalized at some scale approaches some critical value, the PT-BFM results seems to tend to the the scaling solution as a limiting case.Comment: Presented in QCSHS09; Madrid (Spain), 30 Aug. 201

Pure Anderson Motives and Abelian \tau-Sheaves

Pure t-motives were introduced by G. Anderson as higher dimensional generalizations of Drinfeld modules, and as the appropriate analogs of abelian varieties in the arithmetic of function fields. In order to construct moduli spaces for pure t-motives the second author has previously introduced the concept of abelian \tau-sheaf. In this article we clarify the relation between pure t-motives and abelian \tau-sheaves. We obtain an equivalence of the respective quasi-isogeny categories. Furthermore, we develop the elementary theory of both structures regarding morphisms, isogenies, Tate modules, and local shtukas. The later are the analogs of p-divisible groups.Comment: final version as it appears in Mathematische Zeitschrif

Fandom, food, and folksonomies: The methodological realities of studying fun life-contexts

As Library and Information Science research has evolved, new domains of interest have shaped the field, and with them comes a need to question the appropriateness of applying traditional methodologies to these new domains. This panel focuses on the methodological realities of studying fun life-contexts and will address how researching a new domain comes with challenges and opportunities. The group of scholars on this panel all share an appreciation for identifying and exploring the unique information experiences within fun life-contexts, and engage with a variety of subfields, including information behavior, information organization, embodied information, and fan communities. This interactive panel will consist of five short presentations from each of the panelists and a moderated Q&A led by moderator, Jenna Hartel. The panelists each share some examples of their recent work studying fun life-contexts, reflect on their experience researching in a new domain, and develop themes and questions that should be addressed in future work

Scaling Behaviour and Complexity of the Portevin-Le Chatelier Effect

The plastic deformation of dilute alloys is often accompanied by plastic instabilities due to dynamic strain aging and dislocation interaction. The repeated breakaway of dislocations from and their recapture by solute atoms leads to stress serrations and localized strain in the strain controlled tensile tests, known as the Portevin-Le Chatelier (PLC) effect. In this present work, we analyse the stress time series data of the observed PLC effect in the constant strain rate tensile tests on Al-2.5%Mg alloy for a wide range of strain rates at room temperature. The scaling behaviour of the PLC effect was studied using two complementary scaling analysis methods: the finite variance scaling method and the diffusion entropy analysis. From these analyses we could establish that in the entire span of strain rates, PLC effect showed Levy walk property. Moreover, the multiscale entropy analysis is carried out on the stress time series data observed during the PLC effect to quantify the complexity of the distinct spatiotemporal dynamical regimes. It is shown that for the static type C band, the entropy is very low for all the scales compared to the hopping type B and the propagating type A bands. The results are interpreted considering the time and length scales relevant to the effect.Comment: 35 pages, 6 figure