289 research outputs found
A survey of elementary school banking in New England
Thesis (Ed.M.)--Boston Universit
Construction of an instrument for the measurement of educational philosophy
Thesis (M.Ed.)--Boston Universit
Most Common Single-Nucleotide Polymorphisms Associated With Rheumatoid Arthritis in Persons of European Ancestry Confer Risk of Rheumatoid Arthritis in African Americans
Objective. Large-scale genetic association studies have identified \u3e20 rheumatoid arthritis (RA) risk alleles among individuals of European ancestry. The influence of these risk alleles has not been comprehensively studied in African Americans. We therefore sought to examine whether these validated RA risk alleles are associated with RA risk in an African American population. Methods. Twenty-seven candidate single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) were genotyped in 556 autoantibody-positive African Americans with RA and 791 healthy African American control subjects. Odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals (95% CIs) for each SNP were compared with previously published ORs for RA patients of European ancestry. We then calculated a composite genetic risk score (GRS) for each individual based on the sum of all risk alleles. Results. Overlap of the ORs and 95% CIs between the European and African American populations was observed for 24 of the 27 candidate SNPs. Conversely, 3 of the 27 SNPs (CCR6 rs3093023, TAGAP rs394581, and TNFAIP3 rs6920220) demonstrated ORs in the opposite direction from those reported for RA patients of European ancestry. The GRS analysis indicated a small but highly significant probability that African American patients relative to control subjects were enriched for the risk alleles validated in European RA patients (P = 0.00005). Conclusion. The majority of RA risk alleles previously validated for RA patients of European ancestry showed similar ORs in our population of African Americans with RA. Furthermore, the aggregate GRS supports the hypothesis that these SNPs are risk alleles for RA in the African American population. Future large-scale genetic studies are needed to validate these risk alleles and identify novel RA risk alleles in African Americans
Science and Ideology in Economic, Political, and Social Thought
This paper has two sources: One is my own research in three broad areas: business cycles, economic measurement and social choice. In all of these fields I attempted to apply the basic precepts of the scientific method as it is understood in the natural sciences. I found that my effort at using natural science methods in economics was met with little understanding and often considerable hostility. I found economics to be driven less by common sense and empirical evidence, then by various ideologies that exhibited either a political or a methodological bias, or both. This brings me to the second source: Several books have appeared recently that describe in historical terms the ideological forces that have shaped either the direct areas in which I worked, or a broader background. These books taught me that the ideological forces in the social sciences are even stronger than I imagined on the basis of my own experiences.
The scientific method is the antipode to ideology. I feel that the scientific work that I have done on specific, long standing and fundamental problems in economics and political science have given me additional insights into the destructive role of ideology beyond the history of thought orientation of the works I will be discussing
Severe Psychiatric Problems in Right Hepatic Lobe Donors for Living Donor Liver Transplantation
The morbidity and mortality from donation of a right hepatic lobe for living donor liver transplantation (LDLT) is an important issue for this procedure. We report the prevalence of severe psychiatric postoperative complications from the Adult-to-Adult Living Donor Liver Transplantation Cohort study (A2ALL), which was established to define the risks and benefits of LDLT for donors and recipients
The osteoarthritis prevention study (TOPS) - A randomized controlled trial of diet and exercise to prevent Knee Osteoarthritis:Design and rationale
Background: Osteoarthritis (OA), the leading cause of disability among adults, has no cure and is associated with significant comorbidities. The premise of this randomized clinical trial is that, in a population at risk, a 48-month program of dietary weight loss and exercise will result in less incident structural knee OA compared to control. Methods/design: The Osteoarthritis Prevention Study (TOPS) is a Phase III, assessor-blinded, 48-month, parallel 2 arm, multicenter randomized clinical trial designed to reduce the incidence of structural knee OA. The study objective is to assess the effects of a dietary weight loss, exercise, and weight-loss maintenance program in preventing the development of structural knee OA in females at risk for the disease. TOPS will recruit 1230 ambulatory, community dwelling females with obesity (Body Mass Index (BMI) ââ„ â30 âkg/m2) and aged â„50 years with no radiographic (Kellgren-Lawrence grade â€1) and no magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) evidence of OA in the eligible knee, with no or infrequent knee pain. Incident structural knee OA (defined as tibiofemoral and/or patellofemoral OA on MRI) assessed at 48-months from intervention initiation using the MRI Osteoarthritis Knee Score (MOAKS) is the primary outcome. Secondary outcomes include knee pain, 6-min walk distance, health-related quality of life, knee joint loading during gait, inflammatory biomarkers, and self-efficacy. Cost effectiveness and budgetary impact analyses will determine the value and affordability of this intervention. Discussion: This study will assess the efficacy and cost effectiveness of a dietary weight loss, exercise, and weight-loss maintenance program designed to reduce incident knee OA.Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT05946044.</p
LSST: from Science Drivers to Reference Design and Anticipated Data Products
(Abridged) We describe here the most ambitious survey currently planned in
the optical, the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST). A vast array of
science will be enabled by a single wide-deep-fast sky survey, and LSST will
have unique survey capability in the faint time domain. The LSST design is
driven by four main science themes: probing dark energy and dark matter, taking
an inventory of the Solar System, exploring the transient optical sky, and
mapping the Milky Way. LSST will be a wide-field ground-based system sited at
Cerro Pach\'{o}n in northern Chile. The telescope will have an 8.4 m (6.5 m
effective) primary mirror, a 9.6 deg field of view, and a 3.2 Gigapixel
camera. The standard observing sequence will consist of pairs of 15-second
exposures in a given field, with two such visits in each pointing in a given
night. With these repeats, the LSST system is capable of imaging about 10,000
square degrees of sky in a single filter in three nights. The typical 5
point-source depth in a single visit in will be (AB). The
project is in the construction phase and will begin regular survey operations
by 2022. The survey area will be contained within 30,000 deg with
, and will be imaged multiple times in six bands, ,
covering the wavelength range 320--1050 nm. About 90\% of the observing time
will be devoted to a deep-wide-fast survey mode which will uniformly observe a
18,000 deg region about 800 times (summed over all six bands) during the
anticipated 10 years of operations, and yield a coadded map to . The
remaining 10\% of the observing time will be allocated to projects such as a
Very Deep and Fast time domain survey. The goal is to make LSST data products,
including a relational database of about 32 trillion observations of 40 billion
objects, available to the public and scientists around the world.Comment: 57 pages, 32 color figures, version with high-resolution figures
available from https://www.lsst.org/overvie
Constitutive Overexpression of the OsNAS Gene Family Reveals Single-Gene Strategies for Effective Iron- and Zinc-Biofortification of Rice Endosperm
BACKGROUND: Rice is the primary source of food for billions of people in developing countries, yet the commonly consumed polished grain contains insufficient levels of the key micronutrients iron (Fe), zinc (Zn) and Vitamin A to meet daily dietary requirements. Experts estimate that a rice-based diet should contain 14.5 ”g gâ1 Fe in endosperm, the main constituent of polished grain, but breeding programs have failed to achieve even half of that value. Transgenic efforts to increase the Fe concentration of rice endosperm include expression of ferritin genes, nicotianamine synthase genes (NAS) or ferritin in conjunction with NAS genes, with results ranging from two-fold increases via single-gene approaches to six-fold increases via multi-gene approaches, yet no approach has reported 14.5 ”g gâ1 Fe in endosperm. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Three populations of rice were generated to constitutively overexpress OsNAS1, OsNAS2 or OsNAS3, respectively. Nicotianamine, Fe and Zn concentrations were significantly increased in unpolished grain of all three of the overexpression populations, relative to controls, with the highest concentrations in the OsNAS2 and OsNAS3 overexpression populations. Selected lines from each population had at least 10 ”g gâ1 Fe in polished grain and two OsNAS2 overexpression lines had 14 and 19 ”g gâ1 Fe in polished grain, representing up to four-fold increases in Fe concentration. Two-fold increases of Zn concentration were also observed in the OsNAS2 population. Synchrotron X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy demonstrated that OsNAS2 overexpression leads to significant enrichment of Fe and Zn in phosphorus-free regions of rice endosperm. CONCLUSIONS: The OsNAS genes, particularly OsNAS2, show enormous potential for Fe and Zn biofortification of rice endosperm. The results demonstrate that rice cultivars overexpressing single rice OsNAS genes could provide a sustainable and genetically simple solution to Fe and Zn deficiency disorders affecting billions of people throughout the world.Alexander A. T. Johnson, Bianca Kyriacou, Damien L. Callahan, Lorraine Carruthers, James Stangoulis, Enzo Lombi and Mark Teste
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