I Am, Because We Are: Intersubjectivity and the Ethics of Care in Student-Teacher Relationships

100/200-level Award recipient for 2019. Project completed for course EDUC 215. Supporting faculty: Deepa Vasudeva

Integrin Signaling in Oligodendrocytes and Its Importance in CNS Myelination

Multiple sclerosis is characterized by repeated demyelinating attacks of the central nervous system (CNS) white matter tracts. To tailor novel therapeutics to halt or reverse disease process, we require a better understanding of oligodendrocyte biology and of the molecular mechanisms that initiate myelination. Cell extrinsic mechanisms regulate CNS myelination through the interaction of extracellular matrix proteins and their transmembrane receptors. The engagement of one such receptor family, the integrins, initiates intracellular signaling cascades that lead to changes in cell phenotype. Oligodendrocytes express a diverse array of integrins, and the expression of these receptors is developmentally regulated. Integrin-mediated signaling is crucial to the proliferation, survival, and maturation of oligodendrocytes through the activation of downstream signaling pathways involved in cytoskeletal remodeling. Here, we review the current understanding of this important signaling axis and its role in oligodendrocyte biology and ultimately in the myelination of axons within the CNS

Effect of Pancuronium on Plasma Free-Norepinephrine and Epinephrine in Adult Cardiac Surgical Patients

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/65996/1/j.1399-6576.1978.tb01318.x.pd

Low dose intravenous infusion technique with ketamine

Low dose ketamine is a relatively new technique. The recommended doses vary considerably. It was therefore decided to establish the minimum dose of ketamine required to produce satisfactory analgesia, sedation and amnesia in 50% of a population of adult volunteers. Twenty adult volunteers aged 20 to 42 years were the subjects of the study. Twenty minutes following intravenous (iv) pre-treatment with 0·3 mg of atropine and 0·2 mg/kg of diazepam each volunteer received a bolus of ketamine 1·0 mg/kg iv followed by ketamine iv infusion at the rate of either0·5 mg/kg/hour(10cases) or 1·0 mg/kg/hour (10 cases). The grade of sedation was determined on a scale of 1–5 and the frequency of amnesia was assessed using visual memory cards. Analgesia was determined by pin prick. Diazepam alone produced no analgesia and only moderate degree of sedation. Ketamine produced satisfactory analgesia to pin prick in both the groups. Ketamine bolus produced marked sedation for about 20 min followed by moderate sedation during iv infusion in both the groups. During the iv infusion of ketamine at arate of 0·5 mg/kg/hour the amnesic effects declined to 20% in 45 minutes, while during infusion of 10 mg/kg/hour the frequency reached a maximum at 50–60%. The minimum dose of ketamine required to produce amnesia in 50% of this population was therefore 1·0 mg/kg/hour after a bolus injection of 1·0 mg/kg given iv.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/75725/1/j.1365-2044.1980.tb03882.x.pd

Intravenous Dezocine for Postoperative Pain: A Double‐Blind, Placebo‐Controlled Comparison With Morphine

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/97255/1/j.1552-4604.1986.tb03523.x.pd

Derivation of Enriched Oligodendrocyte Cultures and Oligodendrocyte/Neuron Myelinating Co-cultures from Post-natal Murine Tissues

Identifying the molecular mechanisms underlying OL development is not only critical to furthering our knowledge of OL biology, but also has implications for understanding the pathogenesis of demyelinating diseases such as Multiple Sclerosis (MS). Cellular development is commonly studied with primary cell culture models. Primary cell culture facilitates the evaluation of a given cell type by providing a controlled environment, free of the extraneous variables that are present in vivo. While OL cultures derived from rats have provided a vast amount of insight into OL biology, similar efforts at establishing OL cultures from mice has been met with major obstacles. Developing methods to culture murine primary OLs is imperative in order to take advantage of the available transgenic mouse lines

Learning Interpretable Style Embeddings via Prompting LLMs

Style representation learning builds content-independent representations of author style in text. Stylometry, the analysis of style in text, is often performed by expert forensic linguists and no large dataset of stylometric annotations exists for training. Current style representation learning uses neural methods to disentangle style from content to create style vectors, however, these approaches result in uninterpretable representations, complicating their usage in downstream applications like authorship attribution where auditing and explainability is critical. In this work, we use prompting to perform stylometry on a large number of texts to create a synthetic dataset and train human-interpretable style representations we call LISA embeddings. We release our synthetic stylometry dataset and our interpretable style models as resources

Treatment of cirrhotic rats with epidermal growth factor and insulin accelerates liver DNA synthesis after partial hepatectomy

Prevention of postoperative hepatic failure is important after hepatic resection. In patients with cirrhosis, impaired liver function and regenerative capacity after major hepatic resection are associated with increased morbidity and mortality. In this study, a combination of epidermal growth factor (EGF) and insulin were used as hepatotrophic factors in an attempt to stimulate DNA synthesis after 70 hepatectomy (HTX). Regenerative capacity was evaluated in normal and cirrhotic rat liver by measuring DNA synthesis in vivo. Micronodular liver cirrhosis was established by the simultaneous oral administration of CCl 4 and phenobarbital. Epidermal growth factor plus insulin was injected subcutaneously immediately after and 12 h after HTX or sham operation was performed. Rats were killed 24 h after the operation and liver regeneration was estimated by [ 3 H]-thymidine incorporation into DNA as well as an autoradiographic nuclear labelling index. Hepatectomy increased [ 3 H]-thymidine incorporation significantly in both normal and cirrhotic rats. In cirrhotic rats, [ 3 H]-thymidine incorporation after HTX was significantly lower than in normal rats and administration of a combination of EGF and insulin after HTX enhanced [ 3 H]-thymidine incorporation. In conclusion, DNA synthesis 24 h after HTX is decreased in cirrhotic rats compared with normal rats and EGF supplementation with insulin accelerates DNA synthesis in hepatectomized cirrhotic rats. The data suggest that administration of combinations of exogenous hepatotrophic factors may play a useful role in the treatment of cirrhotic patients undergoing major hepatic resection.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/75018/1/j.1440-1746.1998.01791.x.pd

Hearts of Dystonia musculorum Mice Display Normal Morphological and Histological Features but Show Signs of Cardiac Stress

Dystonin is a giant cytoskeletal protein belonging to the plakin protein family and is believed to crosslink the major filament systems in contractile cells. Previous work has demonstrated skeletal muscle defects in dystonin-deficient dystonia musculorum (dt) mice. In this study, we show that the dystonin muscle isoform is localized at the Z-disc, the H zone, the sarcolemma and intercalated discs in cardiac tissue. Based on this localization pattern, we tested whether dystonin-deficiency leads to structural defects in cardiac muscle. Desmin intermediate filament, microfilament, and microtubule subcellular organization appeared normal in dt hearts. Nevertheless, increased transcript levels of atrial natriuretic factor (ANF, 66%) β-myosin heavy chain (beta-MHC, 95%) and decreased levels of sarcoplasmic reticulum calcium pump isoform 2A (SERCA2a, 26%), all signs of cardiac muscle stress, were noted in dt hearts. Hearts from two-week old dt mice were assessed for the presence of morphological and histological alterations. Heart to body weight ratios as well as left ventricular wall thickness and left chamber volume measurements were similar between dt and wild-type control mice. Hearts from dt mice also displayed no signs of fibrosis or calcification. Taken together, our data provide new insights into the intricate structure of the sarcomere by situating dystonin in cardiac muscle fibers and suggest that dystonin does not significantly influence the structural organization of cardiac muscle fibers during early postnatal development