Thermal relations and molecular measures in salmonidae gene expression

Arctic, boreal and temperate latitudes are characterised by conspicuous shifts in photoperiod and temperature, which restricts ecosystem productivity and compels resident taxa to anticipate and coordinate physiological processes to the cyclic variability of environmental conditions. The increase in temperature of high latitude habitats due to climate change is likewise complicit in asserting a progressive phenological incongruence between photoperiod and temperature, the repercussions of which on circadian and seasonal rhythms remain veiled in uncertainty. An organism’s capacity to physiologically adjust to a changing environment relies upon the induction of gene expression programmes quantifiable through steady-state mRNA level, which has long served as a proxy for transcription and functional inferences in ecophysiological studies, although it is ultimately determined by the integrated processes of nuclear transcription and nucleocytoplasmic degradation. There is consequently an inadequate appreciation of upstream and downstream regulatory elements that finely control gene expression. Pursuant to these considerations is the molecular regulation of heat shock proteins, which presents a suitable system to evaluate temperature inducible gene expression and the thermal and temporal relations in transcription, steady-state mRNA level and translation upon temperature acclimation and heat shock of ecologically and economically valuable salmonids. The studies comprising this thesis revealed temperature acclimation manifests in the alteration of whole organism upper thermal tolerance and ventricle morphology (I), which at the cellular level involved modifications to inducible hsp70 expression during chronic and acute temperature exposure (II). Although not directly measured, evidence for post-transcriptional regulation in the acclimation process and hsp70 expression is presented and discussed (II & III), whilst gaining fundamental insights in the final study (IV) assessing the effect of elevated temperature on gene transcription and its temporal relationship with steady-state mRNA level in a thermally sensitive salmonid at the forefront of climate change effects. These studies provide a detailed perspective on the capacity of salmonids to acclimate to novel habitat temperatures, and the potential practical application of molecular level measures that could be beneficial in the management and conservation of vulnerable wild and domesticated fish populations

An Interpretive Analysis: Black Men, Masculinities, and the Field of Tropic Play

While much has been written about the participation of Black Men in higher education, such scholarship has often been predicated on empirically derived insights that have privileged phenomenological experiences as a primary point of departure for analysis. While this literature has done much to illuminate how higher education scholars and practitioners understand what Black men pursuing higher education experience, I use this study as an opportunity to think differently about this demographic and those experiences. With the aim of not only providing nuanced understanding of Black men in college, but also a general methodological shift in how they are studied as raced and gendered beings, I utilized philosophical inquiry as my mode of analysis. More specifically, I analyzed how cultural texts derived from popular culture, such as Dear White People, linked with scholarly higher education literature to arrive at conclusions about the college milieu. It is important to acknowledge that the gateway that allowed me both to produce and explore my research topic further was the rhetorical/literary device of the trope. Elaborating further, the trope is generally understood as the commonplace heuristics that serve as readily recognizable scripts for identifying concepts, texts, and even raced and gendered bodies. Concerning the demographic of study, the trope not only served as a vehicle of analysis, but it more importantly framed how I understood representations, both artistic and scholarly, of Black masculine being and subjectivity. In reading theory alongside my tropic analysis, I engaged the methodological praxis of diffractive analysis. Through performing these diffractive readings, new insights around tropic realities of being emerged. Consequently, I offer alternative understandings of such tropic performances as “Black Excellence,” “The Magical Negro,” and “The Black Community” to pose additional questions about how Black Men in college purportedly align with these ready-made frames, but how they also often complicate or potentially contest these archetypes altogether. Thus, I understand texts like Dear White People as not only depicting college-life from the perspective of multiple characters identifying as Black men—and reciprocally identifiable as such—but as also being generally rife with examples of tropes pertaining to Black Men attending college. This is of significance because of how the ubiquity of these archetypes aid in understanding material realities. This philosophical inquiry thus went beyond the widely accepted readings of text and produced analyses that looked at alternative readings of Black masculine embodiment and subjectivity. Ultimately this study suggests the importance of drawing conclusions and parallels between popular artistic endeavors and the overlapping real-world happenings that work to order socio-political identities and realities

Hospital Collaboration in Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic in Kansas City Metropolitan Region

INTRODUCTION. The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2 aka COVID-19) virus has evolved into a WHO-declared pandemic which has strained our regional critical care and hospital resources.  METHOD. In response, we report the creation of a Critical Care Task Force in the Kansas City metro area and surrounding areas. We also report demographic and therapeutic factors affecting patients admitted to medical intensive care units in the Kansas City metro area using a retrospective case-control study examining gender, race, and therapeutic options including modes of ventilation, vasopressor requirements, renal-replacement therapy, and disposition. CONCLUSIONS. Hospitalized patients being treated for COVID-19 in the Kansas City Metropolitan area have similar demographics to those being reported in the U.S.  Additionally, we found establishing a Critical Care Task Force in response to the pandemic helpful in preparing for a potential surge, establishing capacity and disseminating timely information to policy makers and Critical Care workers in the front line.

Analytical Approximations of Critical Clearing Time for Parametric Analysis of Power System Transient Stability

An analytic approximation for the critical clearing time (CCT) metric is derived from direct methods for power system stability. The formula has been designed to incorporate as many features of transient stability analysis as possible such as different fault locations and different post-fault network states. The purpose of this metric is to analyse trends in stability (in terms of CCT) of power systems under the variation of a system parameter. The performance of this metric to measure stability trends is demonstrated on an aggregated power network, the so-called two machine infinite bus network, by varying load parameters in the full bus admittance matrix using numerical continuation. The metric is compared to two other expressions for the CCT which incorporate additional non-linearities present in the model

A Chandra view of NGC 3621: a bulgeless galaxy hosting an AGN in its early phase?

We report the detection of a weak X-ray point source coincident with the nucleus of the bulgeless disk galaxy NGC 3621, recently discovered by Spitzer to display high ionization mid-infrared lines typically associated with AGN. These Chandra observations provide confirmation for the presence of an AGN in this galaxy, adding to the growing evidence that black holes do form and grow in isolated bulgeless disk galaxies. Although the low signal-to-noise ratio of the X-ray spectrum prevents us from carrying out a detailed spectral analysis of the nuclear source, the X-ray results, combined with the IR and optical spectroscopic results, suggests that NGC 3621 harbors a heavily absorbed AGN, with a supermassive black hole of relatively small mass accreting at a high rate. Chandra also reveals the presence of two bright sources straddling the nucleus located almost symmetrically at 20" from the center. Both sources have X-ray spectra that are well-fitted by an absorbed power-law model. Assuming they are at the distance of NGC 3621, these two sources have luminosities of the order of 1.e39 erg/s, which make them ULXs and suggest that they are black hole systems. Estimates of the black hole mass based on the X-ray spectral analysis and scaling laws of black hole systems suggest that the 2 bright sources might be intermediate mass black holes with M_BH of the order of a few thousand solar masses. However, higher quality X-ray data combined with multi-wavelength observations are necessary to confirm these conclusions.Comment: 12 pages, 9 figures, 1 table, accepted for publication in Ap

Examining the optimal timing for closed loop auditory stimulation of slow wave sleep in young and older adults

Study Objectives Closed loop auditory stimulation (CLAS) is a method for enhancing slow oscillations (SOs) through the presentation of auditory clicks during sleep. CLAS boosts SOs amplitude and sleep spindle power, but the optimal timing for click delivery remains unclear. Here, we determine the optimal time to present auditory clicks to maximise the enhancement of SO amplitude and spindle likelihood. Methods We examined the main factors predicting SO amplitude and sleep spindles in a dataset of twenty-one young and seventeen older subjects. The participants received CLAS during slow-wave-sleep in two experimental conditions: sham and auditory stimulation. Post-stimulus SOs and spindles were evaluated according to the click-phase on the SOs and compared between and within conditions. Results We revealed that auditory clicks applied anywhere on the positive portion of the SO increased SO amplitudes and spindle likelihood, although the interval of opportunity was shorter in the older group. For both groups, analyses showed that the optimal timing for click delivery is close to the SO peak phase. Click-phase on the SO wave was the main factor determining the impact of auditory stimulation on spindle likelihood for young subjects, whereas for older participants the temporal lag since the last spindle was a better predictor of spindle likelihood. Conclusions Our data suggest that closed-loop auditory stimulation can more effectively boost SOs during specific phase windows, and these differ between young and older participants. It is possible that this is due to the fluctuation of sensory inputs modulated by the thalamocortical networks during the SO