Nanotools for Neuroscience and Brain Activity Mapping

Neuroscience is at a crossroads. Great effort is being invested into deciphering specific neural interactions and circuits. At the same time, there exist few general theories or principles that explain brain function. We attribute this disparity, in part, to limitations in current methodologies. Traditional neurophysiological approaches record the activities of one neuron or a few neurons at a time. Neurochemical approaches focus on single neurotransmitters. Yet, there is an increasing realization that neural circuits operate at emergent levels, where the interactions between hundreds or thousands of neurons, utilizing multiple chemical transmitters, generate functional states. Brains function at the nanoscale, so tools to study brains must ultimately operate at this scale, as well. Nanoscience and nanotechnology are poised to provide a rich toolkit of novel methods to explore brain function by enabling simultaneous measurement and manipulation of activity of thousands or even millions of neurons. We and others refer to this goal as the Brain Activity Mapping Project. In this Nano Focus, we discuss how recent developments in nanoscale analysis tools and in the design and synthesis of nanomaterials have generated optical, electrical, and chemical methods that can readily be adapted for use in neuroscience. These approaches represent exciting areas of technical development and research. Moreover, unique opportunities exist for nanoscientists, nanotechnologists, and other physical scientists and engineers to contribute to tackling the challenging problems involved in understanding the fundamentals of brain function

Clam Terrace Rock Walls: The Ecology and Social Significance of Monumental Places

When we think of the monumental works of the indigenous peoples of the Northwest Coast, we typically think of long houses, canoes, and totem poles. But the First Peoples are also monumental movers of stone in the making of resource sites like clam terraces and root gardens. Clam terraces are special places that enhance beaches for clam production, and are used to harvest not only clams but an entire suite of algae and animals. While many studies have focused on the ability of clam gardens to enhance clam productivity, few have examined the role of the rock wall itself. These stories describe the monumental work of Indigenous peoples of the Northwest Coast to create these rock wall structures, indelibly shaping land and seascapes with their creation and inscribing the physical world with visible records of familial connections to places, while significantly managing food resources. In other words, the moving of stone at this monumental scale entangles the production of key foods with the making histories and places. These stories highlight the importance of these features in shaping our seascapes as well as our ecosystems. By creating new habitat, rock walls change intertidal ecological communities and alter the availability of non-clam food species, bringing foods like crab, urchin, seaweeds, and octopus into the garden and onto the plate

Using Situated Knowledge and Remote Sensing to Assess Climate Change Vulnerability for Coastal Ecosystems of High Cultural Importance

Joan Morris was born and raised at Tl’ches, an island group near present-day Victoria on southern Vancouver Island. Within the territory of the Songhees Coast Salish Nation, it is a Cultural Keystone Place permanently occupied by Lekwungen families for generations. The island is an ecosystem shaped by millennia of resource management and subsistence practices, including important resource sites such as camas (Camassia spp.) prairies, tidal marsh root beds, seabird nesting rocks, and clam beds. There are also many sites associated with the harvesting of crabs, sea urchins, marine algae (kelps and edible red laver seaweed) and fish (including rockfish and salmon). Within Joan’s life, tangible environmental changes have occurred at Tl’ches. In 1957, a drinking water shortage forced Joan and other residents to move to Vancouver Island. Invasive species have since taken root. Today, global climate change is threatening to further impact the island chain. To understand both the deep history of Lekwungen inhabitation, and their future use of Tl’ches, our approach is twofold. First, in collaboration with the Songhees Nation, we have been using drone photography to capture images of the coastline of Tl’ches as a first step to inventorying the archaeological and other surficial cultural features of this land- and seascape. The resulting imagery will also provide baseline visual data for the current coastline ecosystem, allowing comparisons to be made in the future about beach composition, size of kelp beds and eelgrass beds, and potential erosion of coastline and the infilling of lagoons. Second, we are using high precision Lidar and orthophotos to model near-future sea level, tidal heights, and extreme weather events associated with global climate change. To date, we have identified specific risks of erosion for key village sites as well as intertidal and near-shore habitats resulting from projected sea level change

Breaking the Ice

Students and faculty members at Chapman University frequently friend the performing arts librarian on the popular social networking site Facebook. Statistics of reference interactions with all library users from the Conservatory of Music were kept during the fall 2012 semester to determine if library users who are Facebook friends with the librarian were more likely to have reference interactions than patrons who were not connected to the librarian on Facebook. Data analysis demonstrates there is a significant correlation between the numbers of reference interactions with Facebook friends than with non- Facebook friends. It is hypothesized that the creation of personal relationships with library users through social media helps to alleviate library anxiety and increases the amount of librarian interaction during the users' information seeking process. Other facets of users' information seeking behavior, such as where and how long, are also analyzed to provide more insight into the information seeking behavior of this user group

Racial and ethnic disparities in coronavirus disease 2019 disease incidence independent of comorbidities, among people with HIV in the United States

ObjectivesTo define the incidence of clinically detected coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in people with HIV (PWH) in the United States and evaluate how racial and ethnic disparities, comorbidities, and HIV-related factors contribute to risk of COVID-19.DesignObservational study within the CFAR Network of Integrated Clinical Systems cohort in seven cities during 2020.MethodsWe calculated cumulative incidence rates of COVID-19 diagnosis among PWH in routine care by key characteristics including race/ethnicity, current and lowest CD4+ cell count, and geographic area. We evaluated risk factors for COVID-19 among PWH using relative risk regression models adjusted with disease risk scores.ResultsAmong 16 056 PWH in care, of whom 44.5% were black, 12.5% were Hispanic, with a median age of 52 years (IQR 40-59), 18% had a current CD4+ cell count less than 350 cells/μl, including 7% less than 200; 95.5% were on antiretroviral therapy (ART), and 85.6% were virologically suppressed. Overall in 2020, 649 PWH were diagnosed with COVID-19 for a rate of 4.94 cases per 100 person-years. The cumulative incidence of COVID-19 was 2.4-fold and 1.7-fold higher in Hispanic and black PWH respectively, than non-Hispanic white PWH. In adjusted analyses, factors associated with COVID-19 included female sex, Hispanic or black identity, lowest historical CD4+ cell count less than 350 cells/μl (proxy for CD4+ nadir), current low CD4+ : CD8+ ratio, diabetes, and obesity.ConclusionOur results suggest that the presence of structural racial inequities above and beyond medical comorbidities increased the risk of COVID-19 among PWH. PWH with immune exhaustion as evidenced by lowest historical CD4+ cell count or current low CD4+ : CD8+ ratio had greater risk of COVID-19

Clinical relevance of host immunity in breast cancer: from TILs to the clinic.

The clinical relevance of the host immune system in breast cancer has long been unexplored. Studies developed over the past decade have highlighted the biological heterogeneity of breast cancer, prompting researchers to investigate whether the role of the immune system in this malignancy is similar across different molecular subtypes of the disease. The presence of high levels of lymphocytic infiltration has been consistently associated with a more-favourable prognosis in patients with early stage triple-negative and HER2-positive breast cancer. These infiltrates seem to reflect favourable host antitumour immune responses, suggesting that immune activation is important for improving survival outcomes. In this Review, we discuss the composition of the immune infiltrates observed in breast cancers, as well as data supporting the clinical relevance of host antitumour immunity, as represented by lymphocytic infiltration, and how this biomarker could be used in the clinical setting. We also discuss the rationale for enhancing immunity in breast cancer, including early data on the efficacy of T-cell checkpoint inhibition in this setting.SCOPUS: re.jinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishe