Ursinus College Alumni Journal, March 1958

What is college for? • Founders\u27 Day ceremonies honor Dean Camilla B. Stahr • Library receives grant • Chemistry Department receives DuPont grant • Women\u27s dormitory group dedicated • Dedication service • Language and the liberal arts • Ursinus Woman\u27s Club • New York area alumni change Spring dinner date • Alumni Day Saturday, June 7, 1958 • Reunion Committee chairmen • Lehigh Valley alumni to meet April 25 • May Day activities • January 1958 report of the Loyalty Fund campaign • Alumni funds in thirteen Pennsylvania colleges • Mid-year Loyalty Fund report • Philadelphia alumni hold fifth annual dinner dance • New Ursinus College alumni directory 1949-1957 • The Ursinus chair • Washington alumni plan banquet Friday, May 23, 1958 • Longacre scholarship • July issue: Alumni Journal • Winterthur Museum included in History Department curriculum • The campus song • Alumni elections • Soccer 1957 • Alumnae hockey team goes undefeated • Aucott, Stadler and Gros secure All American honors • Varsity Belles complete successful season • Football 1957 • Wrestling 1958 • News about ourselves • Weddings • Births • Necrology • Two chemical corporations announce gift matching programs • Collegeville alumni in local politics • 20th anniversary Messiahhttps://digitalcommons.ursinus.edu/alumnijournal/1061/thumbnail.jp

Shape memory polymers based on uniform aliphatic urethane networks

Aliphatic urethane polymers have been synthesized and characterized, using monomers with high molecular symmetry, in order to form amorphous networks with very uniform supermolecular structures which can be used as photo-thermally actuable shape memory polymers (SMPs). The monomers used include hexamethylene diisocyanate (HDI), trimethylhexamethylenediamine (TMHDI), N,N,N{prime},N{prime}-tetrakis(hydroxypropyl)ethylenediamine (HPED), triethanolamine (TEA), and 1,3-butanediol (BD). The new polymers were characterized by solvent extraction, NMR, XPS, UV/VIS, DSC, DMTA, and tensile testing. The resulting polymers were found to be single phase amorphous networks with very high gel fraction, excellent optical clarity, and extremely sharp single glass transitions in the range of 34 to 153 C. Thermomechanical testing of these materials confirms their excellent shape memory behavior, high recovery force, and low mechanical hysteresis (especially on multiple cycles), effectively behaving as ideal elastomers above T{sub g}. We believe these materials represent a new and potentially important class of SMPs, and should be especially useful in applications such as biomedical microdevices

General Practitioners involvement in enteral tube feeding at home: a qualitative study

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Complex medical treatment is moving from hospital to primary care and General Practitioners (GPs) are increasingly asked to undertake new roles. There are now an estimated 19,500 patients being fed in the UK in the community on enteral tube feeding using a variety of different feeding tubes (Percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy (PEG), Jejunostomy, or nasogastric (NG). The majority of patients are over the age of 65 years when they had artificial feeding initiated and mainly because of dysphagia. The aim of this study was to explore GPs knowledge, attitudes and skills relating to enteral feeding in the community.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Semi-structured one-to-one interviews with a convenience sample of GPs in Northern Ireland.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Twenty-three GPs in three health boards in Northern Ireland participated in the study. Most found dealing with enteral feeding to be a predominantly negative experience. They had little involvement in patient selection for the procedure and poor or no discharge information. GPs felt inadequately trained, there was poor communication between primary and secondary care and little support. There was anger and frustration among GPs about lack of resources (funding and training), and the perception that primary care was used as a dumping ground.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Moving complex medical treatment from secondary to primary care has major implications for GPs who should be included in the patient selection process, have adequate discharge information about their patients, be adequately resourced and have appropriate support and training.</p

First narrow-band search for continuous gravitational waves from known pulsars in advanced detector data

Spinning neutron stars asymmetric with respect to their rotation axis are potential sources of continuous gravitational waves for ground-based interferometric detectors. In the case of known pulsars a fully coherent search, based on matched filtering, which uses the position and rotational parameters obtained from electromagnetic observations, can be carried out. Matched filtering maximizes the signalto- noise (SNR) ratio, but a large sensitivity loss is expected in case of even a very small mismatch between the assumed and the true signal parameters. For this reason, narrow-band analysis methods have been developed, allowing a fully coherent search for gravitational waves from known pulsars over a fraction of a hertz and several spin-down values. In this paper we describe a narrow-band search of 11 pulsars using data from Advanced LIGO’s first observing run. Although we have found several initial outliers, further studies show no significant evidence for the presence of a gravitational wave signal. Finally, we have placed upper limits on the signal strain amplitude lower than the spin-down limit for 5 of the 11 targets over the bands searched; in the case of J1813-1749 the spin-down limit has been beaten for the first time. For an additional 3 targets, the median upper limit across the search bands is below the spin-down limit. This is the most sensitive narrow-band search for continuous gravitational waves carried out so far

Eavesdropping on Plant Volatiles by a Specialist Moth: Significance of Ratio and Concentration

We investigated the role that the ratio and concentration of ubiquitous plant volatiles play in providing host specificity for the diet specialist grape berry moth Paralobesia viteana (Clemens) in the process of locating its primary host plant Vitis sp. In the first flight tunnel experiment, using a previously identified attractive blend with seven common but essential components (“optimized blend”), we found that doubling the amount of six compounds singly [(E)- & (Z)-linalool oxides, nonanal, decanal, β-caryophyllene, or germacrene-D], while keeping the concentration of other compounds constant, significantly reduced female attraction (average 76% full and 59% partial upwind flight reduction) to the synthetic blends. However, doubling (E)-4,8-dimethyl 1,3,7-nonatriene had no effect on female response. In the second experiment, we manipulated the volatile profile more naturally by exposing clonal grapevines to Japanese beetle feeding. In the flight tunnel, foliar damage significantly reduced female landing on grape shoots by 72% and full upwind flight by 24%. The reduction was associated with two changes: (1) more than a two-fold increase in total amount of the seven essential volatile compounds, and (2) changes in their relative ratios. Compared to the optimized blend, synthetic blends mimicking the volatile ratio emitted by damaged grapevines resulted in an average of 87% and 32% reduction in full and partial upwind orientation, respectively, and the level of reduction was similar at both high and low doses. Taken together, these results demonstrate that the specificity of a ubiquitous volatile blend is determined, in part, by the ratio of key volatile compounds for this diet specialist. However, P. viteana was also able to accommodate significant variation in the ratio of some compounds as well as the concentration of the overall mixture. Such plasticity may be critical for phytophagous insects to successfully eavesdrop on variable host plant volatile signals

Synergistic Actions of Hematopoietic and Mesenchymal Stem/Progenitor Cells in Vascularizing Bioengineered Tissues

Poor angiogenesis is a major road block for tissue repair. The regeneration of virtually all tissues is limited by angiogenesis, given the diffusion of nutrients, oxygen, and waste products is limited to a few hundred micrometers. We postulated that co-transplantation of hematopoietic and mesenchymal stem/progenitor cells improves angiogenesis of tissue repair and hence the outcome of regeneration. In this study, we tested this hypothesis by using bone as a model whose regeneration is impaired unless it is vascularized. Hematopoietic stem/progenitor cells (HSCs) and mesenchymal stem/progenitor cells (MSCs) were isolated from each of three healthy human bone marrow samples and reconstituted in a porous scaffold. MSCs were seeded in micropores of 3D calcium phosphate (CP) scaffolds, followed by infusion of gel-suspended CD34+ hematopoietic cells. Co-transplantation of CD34+ HSCs and CD34− MSCs in microporous CP scaffolds subcutaneously in the dorsum of immunocompromized mice yielded vascularized tissue. The average vascular number of co-transplanted CD34+ and MSC scaffolds was substantially greater than MSC transplantation alone. Human osteocalcin was expressed in the micropores of CP scaffolds and was significantly increased upon co-transplantation of MSCs and CD34+ cells. Human nuclear staining revealed the engraftment of transplanted human cells in vascular endothelium upon co-transplantation of MSCs and CD34+ cells. Based on additional in vitro results of endothelial differentiation of CD34+ cells by vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), we adsorbed VEGF with co-transplanted CD34+ and MSCs in the microporous CP scaffolds in vivo, and discovered that vascular number and diameter further increased, likely owing to the promotion of endothelial differentiation of CD34+ cells by VEGF. Together, co-transplantation of hematopoietic and mesenchymal stem/progenitor cells may improve the regeneration of vascular dependent tissues such as bone, adipose, muscle and dermal grafts, and may have implications in the regeneration of internal organs

Two Factor Reprogramming of Human Neural Stem Cells into Pluripotency

BACKGROUND:Reprogramming human somatic cells to pluripotency represents a valuable resource for the development of in vitro based models for human disease and holds tremendous potential for deriving patient-specific pluripotent stem cells. Recently, mouse neural stem cells (NSCs) have been shown capable of reprogramming into a pluripotent state by forced expression of Oct3/4 and Klf4; however it has been unknown whether this same strategy could apply to human NSCs, which would result in more relevant pluripotent stem cells for modeling human disease. METHODOLOGY AND PRINCIPAL FINDINGS:Here, we show that OCT3/4 and KLF4 are indeed sufficient to induce pluripotency from human NSCs within a two week time frame and are molecularly indistinguishable from human ES cells. Furthermore, human NSC-derived pluripotent stem cells can differentiate into all three germ lineages both in vitro and in vivo. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE:We propose that human NSCs represent an attractive source of cells for producing human iPS cells since they only require two factors, obviating the need for c-MYC, for induction into pluripotency. Thus, in vitro human disease models could be generated from iPS cells derived from human NSCs

Effects of antiplatelet therapy on stroke risk by brain imaging features of intracerebral haemorrhage and cerebral small vessel diseases: subgroup analyses of the RESTART randomised, open-label trial

Background Findings from the RESTART trial suggest that starting antiplatelet therapy might reduce the risk of recurrent symptomatic intracerebral haemorrhage compared with avoiding antiplatelet therapy. Brain imaging features of intracerebral haemorrhage and cerebral small vessel diseases (such as cerebral microbleeds) are associated with greater risks of recurrent intracerebral haemorrhage. We did subgroup analyses of the RESTART trial to explore whether these brain imaging features modify the effects of antiplatelet therapy