Legacy and Novel Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances in Juvenile Seabirds from the U.S. Atlantic Coast

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are anthropogenic, globally distributed chemicals. Legacy PFAS, including perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS), have been regularly detected in marine fauna but little is known about their current levels or the presence of novel PFAS in seabirds. We measured 36 emerging and legacy PFAS in livers from 31 juvenile seabirds from Massachusetts Bay, Narragansett Bay, and the Cape Fear River Estuary (CFRE), United States. PFOS was the major legacy perfluoroalkyl acid present, making up 58% of concentrations observed across all habitats (range: 11–280 ng/g). Novel PFAS were confirmed in chicks hatched downstream of a fluoropolymer production site in the CFRE: a perfluorinated ether sulfonic acid (Nafion byproduct 2; range: 1–110 ng/g) and two perfluorinated ether carboxylic acids (PFO4DA and PFO5DoDA; PFO5DoDA range: 5–30 ng/g). PFOS was inversely associated with phospholipid content in livers from CFRE and Massachusetts Bay individuals, while δ 13C, an indicator of marine versus terrestrial foraging, was positively correlated with some long-chain PFAS in CFRE chick livers. There is also an indication that seabird phospholipid dynamics are negatively impacted by PFAS, which should be further explored given the importance of lipids for seabirds

N-arachidonylglycine is a caloric state-dependent circulating metabolite which regulates human CD4+T cell responsiveness

Acknowledgments We thank Drs. Zoe Hall and Sonia Liggi of the University of Cambridge Biochemistry Department for their contributions to metabolomics analysis and data processing. Shahin Hassanzadeh of the Laboratory of Mitochondrial Biology and Metabolism for developing the PBMC RNAseq library.Matthew Rodman of the Laboratory of Mitochondrial Biology and Metabolism for preparing lean/obese samples. Dr. Duck-Yeon Lee of the NHLBI Biochemistry Core for NAGly analysis in cell culture. Special thanks to the National Institutes of Health Oxford-Cambridge Scholars Program and the International Biomedical Research Alliance for their sponsorship and support. Funding: NHLBI Division of Intramural Research (MNS – ZIA-HL005199) and the UK MRC (JLG – MR/P011705/2; UKDRI-5002; MAPUK).Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Gastric emptying following Finney pyloroplasty and vagotomy

Gastric emptying was evaluated in a series of unanesthetized dogs in the intact state, following Finney pyloroplasty, and with the addition of vagotomy. Sodium chromate labeled test meals of glucose, trisodium citrate, and trisodium citrate-fat were used. Finney pyloroplasty resulted in a trend for delayed emptying of fat from the stomach. The trisodium citrate test meal increased the levels of gastric secretion after pyloroplasty.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/44373/1/10620_2005_Article_BF02239291.pd

The Productivity of Care: Contextualizing Care in Situated Interaction and Shedding Light on its Latent Purposes

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Ethics and Social Welfare on 27th May 2011, available online: http://wwww.tandfonline.com/10.1080/17496535.2011.571063Care work may be connected with emotional and psychological exhaustion but also gratification, reward, and self-empowerment. Caregivers experience both positive and negative emotional states in caring situations, and further studies on the rewarding and energizing aspects of care may help us to broaden our understanding of how we can reduce the degree of burden while increasing the sense of satisfaction. This article shows how the focus on emotion is a necessary step to show the ambivalences and the grey areas connected with the concept of care as well as to challenge the not fully explored assumption that care is often associated with burden and stress and viewed as a result of circumstances. It reports the findings of a micro-situated study of daily care activities among 80 caregivers. Care is seen as a strategic site to grasp deeper insights into the interactional mechanisms through which the emotional dynamics revolving around care produce unanticipated outcomes in terms of symbolic and practical productivity

Polymorphisms in the P2X7 receptor gene are associated with low lumbar spine bone mineral density and accelerated bone loss in post-menopausal women

The P2X7 receptor gene (P2RX7) is highly polymorphic with five previously described loss-of-function (LOF) single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP; c.151+1G>T, c.946G>A, c.1096C>G, c.1513A>C and c.1729T>A) and one gain-of-function SNP (c.489C>T). The purpose of this study was to determine whether the functional P2RX7 SNPs are associated with lumbar spine (LS) bone mineral density (BMD), a key determinant of vertebral fracture risk, in post-menopausal women. We genotyped 506 post-menopausal women from the Aberdeen Prospective Osteoporosis Screening Study (APOSS) for the above SNPs. Lumbar spine BMD was measured at baseline and at 6–7 year follow-up. P2RX7 genotyping was performed by homogeneous mass extension. We found association of c.946A (p.Arg307Gln) with lower LS-BMD at baseline (P=0.004, β=−0.12) and follow-up (P=0.002, β=−0.13). Further analysis showed that a combined group of subjects who had LOF SNPs (n=48) had nearly ninefold greater annualised percent change in LS-BMD than subjects who were wild type at the six SNP positions (n=84; rate of loss=−0.94%/year and −0.11%/year, respectively, P=0.0005, unpaired t-test). This is the first report that describes association of the c.946A (p.Arg307Gln) LOF SNP with low LS-BMD, and that other LOF SNPs, which result in reduced or no function of the P2X7 receptor, may contribute to accelerated bone loss. Certain polymorphic variants of P2RX7 may identify women at greater risk of developing osteoporosis

The North American Cordilleran Anatectic Belt

The North American Cordilleran Anatectic Belt (CAB) is a ~3,000 km long region in the hinterland of the Cordillera that comprises numerous exposures of Late Cretaceous to Eocene intrusive rocks and anatectic rocks associated with crustal melting. As such, it is comparable in size and volume to major anatectic provinces including the Himalayan leucogranite belt. The CAB rocks are chiefly peraluminous, muscovite-bearing leucogranite produced primarily by anatexis of Proterozoic to Archean metasedimentary rocks. The CAB rocks lack extrusive equivalents and were typically emplaced as thick sheets, laccoliths, and dike/sill complexes. The extent, location, and age of the CAB suggests that it is integral to understanding the tectonic evolution of North America, however, the belt is rarely considered as a whole. This paper reviews localities associated with crustal melting in the CAB and compiles geochemical, geochronologic, and isotopic data to evaluate the melt conditions and processes that generated these rocks. The geochemistry and partial melting temperatures (ca. 675–775 °C) support water-absent muscovite dehydration melting and/or water-deficient melting as the primary melt reactions and are generally inconsistent with water-excess melting and high-temperature (biotite to amphibole) dehydration melting. The CAB rocks are oldest in the central U.S. Cordillera and become younger towards both the north and south. At any single location, partial melting appears to have been a protracted process (≥10 Myr) and evidence for re-melting and remobilization of magmas is common. End-member hypotheses for the origin of the CAB include decompression, crustal thickening, fluid-flux melting, and increased heat flux from the mantle. Different parts of the CAB support different hypotheses and no single model may be able to explain the entirety of the anatectic event. Regardless, the CAB is a distinct component of the Cordilleran orogenic system

A Joint Search for Gravitational Wave Bursts with AURIGA and LIGO

The first simultaneous operation of the AURIGA detector and the LIGO observatory was an opportunity to explore real data, joint analysis methods between two very different types of gravitational wave detectors: resonant bars and interferometers. This paper describes a coincident gravitational wave burst search, where data from the LIGO interferometers are cross-correlated at the time of AURIGA candidate events to identify coherent transients. The analysis pipeline is tuned with two thresholds, on the signal-to-noise ratio of AURIGA candidate events and on the significance of the cross-correlation test in LIGO. The false alarm rate is estimated by introducing time shifts between data sets and the network detection efficiency is measured with simulated signals with power in the narrower AURIGA band. In the absence of a detection, we discuss how to set an upper limit on the rate of gravitational waves and to interpret it according to different source models. Due to the short amount of analyzed data and to the high rate of non-Gaussian transients in the detectors noise at the time, the relevance of this study is methodological: this was the first joint search for gravitational wave bursts among detectors with such different spectral sensitivity and the first opportunity for the resonant and interferometric communities to unify languages and techniques in the pursuit of their common goal.Comment: 18 pages, IOP, 12 EPS figure

Evolution of an Eurasian Avian-like Influenza Virus in Naïve and Vaccinated Pigs

Influenza viruses are characterized by an ability to cross species boundaries and evade host immunity, sometimes with devastating consequences. The 2009 pandemic of H1N1 influenza A virus highlights the importance of pigs in influenza emergence, particularly as intermediate hosts by which avian viruses adapt to mammals before emerging in humans. Although segment reassortment has commonly been associated with influenza emergence, an expanded host-range is also likely to be associated with the accumulation of specific beneficial point mutations. To better understand the mechanisms that shape the genetic diversity of avian-like viruses in pigs, we studied the evolutionary dynamics of an Eurasian Avian-like swine influenza virus (EA-SIV) in naïve and vaccinated pigs linked by natural transmission. We analyzed multiple clones of the hemagglutinin 1 (HA1) gene derived from consecutive daily viral populations. Strikingly, we observed both transient and fixed changes in the consensus sequence along the transmission chain. Hence, the mutational spectrum of intra-host EA-SIV populations is highly dynamic and allele fixation can occur with extreme rapidity. In addition, mutations that could potentially alter host-range and antigenicity were transmitted between animals and mixed infections were commonplace, even in vaccinated pigs. Finally, we repeatedly detected distinct stop codons in virus samples from co-housed pigs, suggesting that they persisted within hosts and were transmitted among them. This implies that mutations that reduce viral fitness in one host, but which could lead to fitness benefits in a novel host, can circulate at low frequencies

Subcortical brain atrophy persists even in HAART-regulated HIV disease

The purpose of this study was to determine the pattern and extent of caudate nucleus and putamen atrophy in HIV-infected men with well-controlled immune status and viral replication. 155 men underwent structural brain magnetic resonance imaging; 84 were HIV-infected and 71 were uninfected controls. MRI data were processed using the Fully Deformable Segmentation routine, producing volumes for the right and left caudate nucleus and putamen, and 3-D maps of spatial patterns of thickness. There was significant atrophy in the HIV-infected men in both the caudate and putamen, principally in the anterior regions. The volume of the basal ganglia was inversely associated with the time since first seropositivity, suggesting that either there is a chronic, subclinical process that continues in spite of therapy, or that the extent of the initial insult caused the extent of atrophy