Synthetic Peptide CK2.3 Enhances Bone Mineral Density in Senile Mice.

Background: Osteoporosis is a silent disease caused by low bone mineral density that results in bone fractures in 1 out of 2 women and 1 in 4 men over the age of 50. Although several treatments for osteopenia and osteoporosis are available, they have severe side effects and new treatments are desperately needed. Current treatments usually target osteoclasts and inhibit their activity or differentiation. Treatments that decrease osteoclast differentiation and activity but enhance osteogenesis and osteoblast activity are not available. We recently developed a peptide, CK2.3, that induces bone formation and increases bone mineral density as demonstrated by injection over the calvaria of 6 to 9-day-old mice and tail vein injection of 8-week-old mice. CK2.3 also decreased osteoclast formation and activity. However, these studies raise questions: does CK2.3 induce similar results in old mice and if so, what is the effective CK2.3 concentration and, is the bone mineral density of vertebrae of the spinal column increased as well? Methods: CK2.3 was systematically injected into the tail vein of female 6-month old mice with various concentrations of CK2.3: 0.76 μg/kg, 2.3 μg/kg, or 6.9 μg/kg per mice. Mice were sacrificed one week, two weeks, and four weeks after the first injection. Their spines and femurs were collected and analyzed for bone formation. Results: Femur and lumbar spine analyses found increased bone mineral density (BMD) and mineral apposition rate, with greater stiffness observed in femoral samples four weeks after the first injection. Histochemistry showed that osteoclastogenesis was suppressed in CK2.3 treated senile mice. Conclusions: For the first time, this study showed the increase of lumbar spine BMD by CK2.3. Moreover, it showed that enhancement of femur BMD was accompanied by increased femur stiffness only at medium concentration of CK2.3 four weeks after the first injection indicating the maintenance of bone\u27s structural integrity by CK2.3

CAPE FEAR STORIES

The following work is a collection of short stories, each of which is set in Southeastern North Carolina in a particular medium-sized town. The stories are concerned with the idea of place and with what it is like to have lived all of one’s life in one setting. Thus, the characters here range from childhood to old age, they are from various social classes, and they occupy varying roles in both traditional and non-traditional families. The concern of this collection is how people of all stripes occupy a single place for generations, and more specifically what the nature of community is

Bayesian spatial prediction of the site index in the study of the Missouri Ozark Forest Ecosystem Project

This paper presents a Bayesian spatial method for analysing the site index data from the Missouri Ozark Forest Ecosystem Project (MOFEP). Based on ecological background and availability, we select three variables, the aspect class, the soil depth and the land type association as covariates for analysis. To allow great flexibility of the smoothness of the random field, we choose the Matérn family as the correlation function. We adopt the reference prior as an appropriate prior because there is no previous knowledge of the parameters in the model. An efficient algorithm based on the generalized Ratio-of-Uniforms method is developed for the posterior simulation. One advantage of the algorithm is that it generates independent samples from the required posterior distribution, which is much more efficient for both statistical inference of the parameters and prediction of the site indexes at unsampled locations. Our results show that the aspect class and the soil depth are both significant while the land type association is less significant. The model validation is briefly discussed. In addition, our simulation method allows easy realization for computing quantities from the posterior predictive distributions.

Can Assisted Tree Migration Today Sustain Forest Ecosystem Goods and Services for the Future?

Forest managers are exploring options to proactively facilitate forest adaptation to climate change (resistance or resilience) or to introduce species (transition) that are better suited to future climates. Forest managers must have confidence that implementing an assisted migration (AM) transition strategy will maintain a more reliable stream of goods and services than strategies emphasizing resistance or resilience. The outcome of transition strategies can be evaluated with forest landscape models having direct links to climate and atmospheric drivers. We used the LANDIS-II forest landscape model to conduct a simulation experiment in northern Wisconsin (USA) with climate scenarios and AM strategies as treatment factors, and metrics of ecosystem goods and services as response variables. We found that major forest functional types were maintained under some climate change with AM strategies that selected species having similar silvics and site adaptations as existing species but sourced from different climate regions. We also found that AM alone was increasingly unable to maintain ecosystem goods and services (e.g., productivity, wildlife food) with increasing severity of climate change. For instance, total woody biomass, total harvested biomass, and species and age class richness were largely determined by the climate scenario and not AM strategy. Our results suggest that modest changes in climate are likely to enhance species diversity and increase biomass production through longer growing seasons and CO2 fertilization, but that under extreme climate change even the most aggressive AM strategies fail to mitigate the deleterious effects of moisture stress and increased respiration on overall productivity. Where AM strategies were successful, there were subtle and unintended changes in the extent of available landscape goods and services. Additional research is needed to further refine AM strategies to conserve a complete range of goods and services under changing climate

Changes in aboveground biomass following alternative harvesting in oak-hickory forests in the eastern USA

Managing forest lands for the sustainability of ecosystem functions and services by developing and implementing sound silvicultural methods through site-specific practices is a core concept in ecosystem management. In this study, we used long-term data collected at the extensive plots of the Missouri Forest Ecosystem Project (MOFEP) in the southeastern Missouri Ozarks (USA) to study the changes in aboveground biomass (AGB) under three silvicultural treatments: even-aged management sites (EAM), uneven-aged management sites (UAM), and non-harvested management sites (NHM). Treatments changed the magnitude of AGB dynamics. The forests maintained an AGB of 147.9 Mg ha-1 in 1990 and it increased to 175.6 Mg ha-1 by 2009. The forests were manipulated with four treatments: clear-cut, non-harvest, uneven-aged single-tree, and uneven-aged group selection and yielded AGB values of 30.7, 139.5, 125.7, and 148.7 Mg ha-1 of AGB in 2009, respectively. Over the 18-year study period, these forests accumulated 1.78 ± 0.26 Mg ha-1 yr-1, ranging from 1.60 to 1.94 Mg ha-1 yr-1 at the NHM plots. Changes in the net AGB growth rate were contributed by different growth rates of live trees and mortality and exhibited clear intra-annual variation during the five sampling periods. We observed a decreasing contribution of Quercus velutina (black oak) AGB (~6%), an increasing trend for Q. alba (white oak), and a stable change for Q. coccinea (scarlet oak) during the study period

Physical and behavioural health of dogs belonging to homeless people

Homeless persons with dogs are often the subject of stigma, with the public criticising them for not having a proper lifestyle to care for a pet. There is solid documentation of how dogs enhance a homeless person’s life, but there are few publications that address the welfare of the dog. This descriptive study assesses the physical and behavioural health of dogs belonging to homeless persons through a One Welfare lens by observing animal/human well-being, environment, and “a life worth living”. A survey was carried out along with a visual assessment of the condition of the dog for 100 human-dog dyads in the Western United States. Results showed that dogs of homeless persons were well cared for and physically healthy (which was consistent with other studies), and had few behavioural problems, but did display evidence of separation distress while the owner was away. Results from this study can provide information that may lead to policy and practice changes, including, for example, changes to policies and practices prohibiting dogs from being kept with their owner while staying at a homeless shelter. Typically, shelters report that they do not have the resources to care for a person with a dog