IgE Response to Bordetella pertussis Components

Pertussis vaccine and pertussis toxin (PT) are well known as IgE adjuvants for a variety of protein antigens. However, there is very little information on whether PT acts as an IgE adjuvant for the antigens of B. pertussis itself, as studied in this investigation. Initial experiments with ovalbumin (0a) showed that an anti-0a IgE response in mice was produced after both one-dose and three-dose immunization schedules, with PT as adjuvant for the first doses only. The one-dose schedule involved injected 0a and bioactive PT as adjuvant on day 0, then bleeding on day 10, 21 or 28. The sera in the one-dose immunization were IgE-positive only when tested individually, and became unreactive when pooled. The mice, in this instance, thus acted as high or low responders for IgE production. The optimal concentration of PT in this one-dose sheme was I mug per mouse. This adjuvant dose of PT was kept constant in subsequent experiments with the three-dose immunization schedule A persistent boosterabie IgE response was detected with a three-dose immunization schedule, which involved injecting antigen (Ag) and adjuvant (Adj) on Day 0, then boosting on days 28 and 56, with Ag alone, and bleeding on day 63 The sera, when pooled, contained a high IgE titre but only from mice given the 0.1 mug and 1 mug 0a immunization doses. These titrations for anti-0a IgE were done by passive cutaneous anaphylaxis (PCA) test and by ELISA. The PCA test, with anti-0a IgE. was optimal with a two-day sensitization interval after the intracutaneous injection of the serum and with a challenge dose of 1 mg of antigen with Evans blue. The usual 30 min heating at 5

Crystalline Silicates in Comets: Modeling Irregularly-Shaped Forsterite Crystals and Its Implications on Condensation Conditions

Crystalline silicates in comets are a product of the condensation in the hot inner regions (T > or approx. equals 1400 K [1]) of our proto-planetary disk or annealing at somewhat lower temperatures (T > or approx. equals 1000-1200 K) [2, 3, 4] in shocks coupled with disk evolutionary processes that include radial transport of crystals from their formation locations out to the cold outer regions where comet nuclei formed. The grain shape of forsterite (crystals) could be indicative of their formation pathways at high temperatures through vapor-solid condensation or at lower temperatures through vapor-liquid-solid formation and growth [5, 6, 7]. Experiments demonstrate that crystals that formed from a rapidly cooled highly supersaturated silicate vapor are characterized by bulky, platy, columnar/needle and droplet shapes for values of temperature and supersaturation, T and sigma, of 1000-1450 C and 230, respectively [7]. The experimental columnar/needle shapes, which form by vapor-liquid-solid at lower temperatures (<820 C), are extended stacks of plates, where the extension is not correlated with an axial direction: columnar/needles may be extended in the c-axis or a-axis direction, can change directions, and/or are off-kilter or a bit askew extending in a combination of the a- and c-axis direction

Online Professional Development for Child Care Providers: Do They Have Appropriate Access to and Comfort with the Internet?

With the expansion of online trainings today, Extension professionals have an opportunity to reach child care providers in more convenient ways. However, having convenient, reliable Internet access can be a barrier to online training for some child care providers, especially those with limited financial resources. This study investigated child care providers’ ability to access online training through convenient, reliable Internet access by asking 494 child care providers in Georgia about their access to and comfort with the Internet. Participants completed a brief 12-question survey that included questions about their Internet access and use for both personal and professional purposes (i.e., whether or not they have Internet access, where they have access, how often they use it, and how comfortable they feel using it). The majority of child care providers reported having Internet access (89.68%) and feeling comfortable using the Internet (68.62%), and therefore, have the technological resources to participate in online professional development

Bacterial meningitis pathogens identified in clinical samples using a SERS DNA detection assay

This communication reports the first demonstration of the detection of Streptococcus pneumoniae and Neisseria meningitidis bacterial DNA extracted from anonymous patient CSF samples and assesses the applicability of a previously developed SERS based DNA detection assay as a platform for the detection of multiple meningitis pathogens from clinical samples

Absorption Efficiencies of Forsterite. I: DDA Explorations in Grain Shape and Size

We compute the absorption efficiency (Qabs) of forsterite using the discrete dipole approximation (DDA) in order to identify and describe what characteristics of crystal grain shape and size are important to the shape, peak location, and relative strength of spectral features in the 8-40 {\mu}m wavelength range. Using the DDSCAT code, we compute Qabs for non-spherical polyhedral grain shapes with a_eff = 0.1 {\mu}m. The shape characteristics identified are: 1) elongation/reduction along one of three crystallographic axes; 2) asymmetry, such that all three crystallographic axes are of different lengths; and 3) the presence of crystalline faces that are not parallel to a specific crystallographic axis, e.g., non-rectangular prisms and (di)pyramids. Elongation/reduction dominates the locations and shapes of spectral features near 10, 11, 16, 23.5, 27, and 33.5 {\mu}m, while asymmetry and tips are secondary shape effects. Increasing grain sizes (0.1-1.0 {\mu}m) shifts the 10, 11 {\mu}m features systematically towards longer wavelengths and relative to the 11 {\mu}m feature increases the strengths and slightly broadens the longer wavelength features. Seven spectral shape classes are established for crystallographic a-, b-, and c-axes and include columnar and platelet shapes plus non-elongated or equant grain shapes. The spectral shape classes and the effects of grain size have practical application in identifying or excluding columnar, platelet or equant forsterite grain shapes in astrophysical environs. Identification of the shape characteristics of forsterite from 8-40 {\mu}m spectra provides a potential means to probe the temperatures at which forsterite formed.Comment: 55 pages, 15 figure

Impact of Early Mobilization on 90-Day Outcomes in Thrombectomy Patients

Introduction: Early mobilization of ischemic stroke patients receiving IV alteplase (tPA) did not worsen 90-day outcome at two urban stroke centers in a prior study, but there are no studies evaluating outcomes of early mobilization after thrombectomy. The mobility protocol used in the previous study was also utilized to mobilize stroke patients receiving thrombectomy treatment at these two centers, once minimum number of hours for groin precautions was complete and the groin puncture site was stable. The objective of this study was to determine for post-thrombectomy patients mobilized within 24 hours, whether earlier mobilization worsened outcomes. Methods: Medical records of ischemic stroke patients receiving thrombectomy at two urban stroke centers between May 2013 and December 2017 were reviewed for early mobilization (within 24 hours of groin puncture). Patients who did not expire in hospital and had complete data were included in the analysis. Ordinal regression was used to determine if, with each hour delay in time first up, patients’ functional outcomes worsened at 90 days using the modified Rankin scale (mRS), adjusting for pre-symptom onset mRS, admission NIHSS, age, sex, and post-treatment thrombolysis in cerebral infarction (TICI) grade. The mRS at 90 days was categorized as no symptoms or no significant disability (0 - 1), mild or moderate disability (2 - 3), and severe disability or death (4 - 6). Results: Of 147 patients mobilized within 24 hours, 91 patients were included in the analysis. Overall, 51% (n=46) were female, 74% (n=67) had no disability prior to their stroke, mean age was 68.0 (±14.1), mean admission NIHSS was 15.9 (±6.7), and 85% (n=78) had a post treatment TICI score of 2b or greater. Median time first mobilized was 14.1 hours [interquartile range: 9.4, 19.1]. Ordinal regression showed no evidence that earlier mobilization had an effect on patient outcomes at 90 days, patients were neither worse or better by time first mobilized within the first 24 hours (p=.706). Conclusions: Ischemic stroke patients receiving thrombectomy were mobilized within 24 hours of groin puncture by the early mobility protocol. Patients experienced no impact on outcomes at 90 days by time first mobilized. This result may have been limited by small sample size.https://digitalcommons.psjhealth.org/other_pubs/1070/thumbnail.jp

Predicting the Quality of Revisions in Argumentative Writing

The ability to revise in response to feedback is critical to students' writing success. In the case of argument writing in specific, identifying whether an argument revision (AR) is successful or not is a complex problem because AR quality is dependent on the overall content of an argument. For example, adding the same evidence sentence could strengthen or weaken existing claims in different argument contexts (ACs). To address this issue we developed Chain-of-Thought prompts to facilitate ChatGPT-generated ACs for AR quality predictions. The experiments on two corpora, our annotated elementary essays and existing college essays benchmark, demonstrate the superiority of the proposed ACs over baselines.Comment: In The 18th BEA Workshop, held in conjunction with The Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL), July 202

Circulating emm types of Streptococcus pyogenes in Scotland: 2011-2015

No abstract available

Utilizing Natural Language Processing for Automated Assessment of Classroom Discussion

Rigorous and interactive class discussions that support students to engage in high-level thinking and reasoning are essential to learning and are a central component of most teaching interventions. However, formally assessing discussion quality 'at scale' is expensive and infeasible for most researchers. In this work, we experimented with various modern natural language processing (NLP) techniques to automatically generate rubric scores for individual dimensions of classroom text discussion quality. Specifically, we worked on a dataset of 90 classroom discussion transcripts consisting of over 18000 turns annotated with fine-grained Analyzing Teaching Moves (ATM) codes and focused on four Instructional Quality Assessment (IQA) rubrics. Despite the limited amount of data, our work shows encouraging results in some of the rubrics while suggesting that there is room for improvement in the others. We also found that certain NLP approaches work better for certain rubrics.Comment: to be published in AIED 202

Successful at Scale: 500 Faculty, 39 Classrooms, 6 Years: A Case Study

Despite trending investment in active learning infrastructure to support student learning, inclusion, and career preparedness, few universities have achieved the orchestration of campus stakeholders and pedagogical reform at scale. This article presents a process-oriented model for developing faculty and students for success in these evolving academic environments. Key features of the model developed include: holistic and strategic involvement of campus teams, rapid iteration of a portfolio of learning space types, and flexible, future-proofed spaces aligned with faculty preparedness. This approach can be translated to inform hyflex teaching and learning planning as institutions pivot to serve students in a post-pandemic world