Rapid Isolation of Dorsal Root Ganglion Macrophages.

There are growing interests to study the molecular and cellular interactions among immune cells and sensory neurons in the dorsal root ganglia after peripheral nerve injury. Peripheral monocytic cells, including macrophages, are known to respond to a tissue injury through phagocytosis, antigen presentation, and cytokine release. Emerging evidence has implicated the contribution of dorsal root ganglia macrophages to neuropathic pain development and axonal repair in the context of nerve injury. Rapidly phenotyping (or "rapid isolation of") the response of dorsal root ganglia macrophages in the context of nerve injury is desired to identify the unknown neuroimmune factors. Here we demonstrate how our lab rapidly and effectively isolates macrophages from the dorsal root ganglia using an enzyme-free mechanical dissociation protocol. The samples are kept on ice throughout to limit cellular stress. This protocol is far less time consuming compared to the standard enzymatic protocol and has been routinely used for our Fluorescence-activated Cell Sorting analysis

Ready, Set, Go: The Costs of Prerequisites for National Voluntary Accreditation of Public Health Agencies

Analyzes the cost for a public health agency to complete a community or statewide needs assessment, public health improvement plan, and strategic plan in order to apply for voluntary accreditation. Considers factors that facilitate completion

The Preservation of Cued Recall in the Acute Mentally Fatigued State: A Randomised Crossover Study.

The objective of this study is to investigate the impact of acute mental fatigue on the recall of clinical information in the non-sleep-deprived state. Acute mental fatigue in the non-sleep-deprived subject is rarely studied in the medical workforce. Patient handover has been highlighted as an area of high risk especially in fatigued subjects. This study evaluates the deterioration in recall of clinical information over 2 h with cognitively demanding work in non-sleep-deprived subjects.A randomised crossover study involving twenty medical students assessed free (presentation) and cued (MCQ) recall of clinical case histories at 0 and 2 h under low and high cognitive load using the N-Back task. Acute mental fatigue was assessed through the Visual Analogue Scale, Stanford Scale and NASA-TLX Mental Workload Rating Scale.Free recall is significantly impaired by increased cognitive load (p < 0.05) with subjects demonstrating perceived mental fatigue during the high cognitive load assessment. There was no significant difference in the amount of information retrieved by cued recall under high and low cognitive load conditions (p = 1).This study demonstrates the loss of clinical information over a short time period involving a mentally fatiguing, high cognitive load task. Free recall for the handover of clinical information is unreliable. Memory cues maintain recall of clinical information. This study provides evidence towards the requirement for standardisation of a structured patient handover. The use of memory cues (involving recognition memory and cued recall methodology) would be beneficial in a handover checklist to aid recall of clinical information and supports evidence for their adoption into clinical practice

El Cuidado de la Casa Común y la Apuesta por la Vida: La Encíclica Laudato Si’ y el Pensamiento Ambiental Latinoamericano

En la conferencia que se presenta, Enrique Leff Zimmerman analiza, desde su perspectiva epistemológica, filosófica y pedagógica, basada en el saber, la racionalidad y la complejidad ambiental, los planteamientos del papa Francisco: la dura crítica que hace al consumismo y al desarrollo irresponsable, y el llamado a combatir la degradación ambiental y el cambio climátic

Complejidad, racionalidad ambiental y diálogo de saberes: hacia una pedagogía ambiental

Conferenc

A complexidade ambiental

[Resumo] A análise da complexidade ambiental neste texto demárcase das visións da xeneratividade da physis, da ecoloxización da mente, das ciencias da complexidade e dos métodos interdisciplinarios e do pensamento complexo. A complexidade ambiental concíbese na perspectiva dunha crise do coñecemento, da obxectivación do mundo, da intervención do coñecemento sobre a natureza e a emerxencia de entes híbridos que desbordan o sentido tradicional da ontoloxía e a epistemoloxía. A racionalidade ambiental fórxase nun reencontro do real e do simbólico, na resignificación do mundo e da natureza, nunha armazón de relacións de otredad entre seres e nun diálogo de saberes, onde se reconfigura o ser, se reconstitúen as súas identidades e se forxan novos actores sociais nunha política da diferenza guiada por un desexo de saber e de xustiza na reapropiación social do mundo e da natureza[Abstract] The approach to environmental complexity in this text dissociates itself from the notions of physis generativity, the ecologization of the mind, the sciences of complexity, interdisciplinary methods and complex thought. Environmental complexity is conceived from the perspective of a crisis of knowledge, the objectification of the world, the intervention of knowledge about nature, and the appearance of hybrid entities that go beyond the traditional meaning of ontology and epistemology. Environmental rationality is based on a new meeting of the real and the symbolic, on the resignification of the world and nature, on a network of relationships of otherness among beings, and on a dialogue of knowledge, where the being is reconfigured, its identities are reconstituted, and new social actors are created within a policy of difference guided by the desire for knowledge and justice in the social reappropriation of the world and nature

Memory erasure in small systems

We consider an overdamped nanoparticle in a driven double-well potential as a generic model of an erasable one-bit memory. We study in detail the statistics of the heat dissipated during an erasure process and show that full erasure may be achieved by dissipating less heat than the Landauer bound. We quantify the occurrence of such events and propose a single-particle experiment to verify our predictions. Our results show that Landauer's principle has to be generalized at the nanoscale to accommodate heat fluctuations.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Serum antioxidants as predictors of the adult respiratory distress syndrome in septic patients

Adult respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) can develop as a complication of various disorders, including sepsis, but it has not been possible to identify which of the patients at risk will develop this serious disorder. We have investigated the ability of six markers, measured sequentially in blood, to predict development of ARDS in 26 patients with sepsis. At the initial diagnosis of sepsis (6-24 h before the development of ARDS), serum manganese superoxide dismutase concentration and catalase activity were higher in the 6 patients who subsequently developed ARDS than in 20 patients who did not develop ARDS. These changes in antioxidant enzymes predicted the development of ARDS in septic patients with the same sensitivity, specificity, and efficiency as simultaneous assessments of serum lactate dehydrogenase activity and factor VIII concentration. By contrast, serum glutathione peroxidase activity and α1Pi-elastase complex concentration did not differ at the initial diagnosis of sepsis between patients who did and did not subsequently develop ARDS, and were not as effective in predicting the development of ARDS. Measurement of manganese superoxide dismutase and catalase, in addition to the other markers, should facilitate identification of patients at highest risk of ARDS and allow prospective treatment

Universal efficiency at optimal work with Bayesian statistics

If the work per cycle of a quantum heat engine is averaged over an appropriate prior distribution for an external parameter $a$, the work becomes optimal at Curzon-Ahlborn efficiency. More general priors of the form $\Pi(a) \propto 1/a^{\gamma}$ yield optimal work at an efficiency which stays close to CA value, in particular near equilibrium the efficiency scales as one-half of the Carnot value. This feature is analogous to the one recently observed in literature for certain models of finite-time thermodynamics. Further, the use of Bayes' theorem implies that the work estimated with posterior probabilities also bears close analogy with the classical formula. These findings suggest that the notion of prior information can be used to reveal thermodynamic features in quantum systems, thus pointing to a new connection between thermodynamic behavior and the concept of information.Comment: revtex4, 5 pages, abstract changed and presentation improved; results unchanged. New result with Bayes Theorem adde