The Use of Retinoic Acid to Promote Atrial and Ventricular “like” cells to Aid in Atrial Fibrillation Research

Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the irregular contraction of the atria, which are the top chambers of the heart. AF is the most common cardiac arrhythmia, affecting nearly 2.3 million people in the United States, common among people 40 and older. When AF is present the electrical signals that control this process is unbalance. Without proper diagnoses and treatment AF can be a life-treating condition. The use of human cellderived cardiomyocytes will allow the study of cells involvement in atrial fibrillation development. The addition of retinoic acid during a 30-day time course to myocytes allowed us, to investigate retinoic functions, by comparing RA treated cultures to nontreated cultures. As data analysis is currently being reviewed future investigation is needed to determine results.https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/u_poster_2018/1013/thumbnail.jp

Conflict Resolution to Preserve Church Unity

God has called the church into unity that reflects the unity of the Triune God in the midst of a culture that is polarized and entertained by drama caused by conflict. Local churches are comprised of relationships, and conflict is a byproduct of relationship. Conflict can lead to divisiveness that causes disunity in the congregation, or it can be a spark that leads to relational growth that encourages unity. Pastors and ministry leaders can learn skills and conflict management strategies from businesses, marriage experts, and the life and ministry of Jesus and Paul. Workplace conflict teaches church leaders how crucial it is to take time, evaluate outcomes and goals, strategize a plan, and equip people for inevitable conflict. Marriage conflict research reveals it is of the utmost importance to prioritize the relationship of the people involved, to resolve the conflict in ways that uphold the relationship, and to discover the art of the pause when tension and frustration become evident. Throughout Jesus’ ministry, he taught the importance of forgiveness, spoke truth with grace, and turned conflict into opportunities to teach. Paul gives instructions to the church on how to preserve and protect the unity of the church. Ultimately, how people resolve conflict is a choice. Corporate spiritual disciplines, table time, and play all form community and can help people choose to resolve conflict in constructive ways to preserve the unity of the church

A Community Approach to Prevention: The Development and Assessment of a Bystander Intervention Program

In response to a growing concern about assaults on college campuses, universities are beginning to focus on the capacity of bystanders to intervene. Some schools have started bystander intervention programs for college students, which address bystander effect and barriers to bystander intervention. Schools teach participants how to become active bystanders. These programs rely on research regarding obstacles to intervention that have been tested on general population samples. But because the research focuses on scenarios less likely to occur to college students, there is a gap in understanding what barriers are salient to college student bystanders. Through a qualitative case study, a bystander intervention program was developed and piloted with a group of college students. This intervention program was designed to gain a more in-depth understanding of barriers to intervention that are salient to college students. Results from this study found three emergent themes that inhibit intervention: ambiguity, violation of social norms, and bystander efficacy. This research study contributes to a greater understanding of obstacles that are significant to college students and the college culture. As such, this study has implications for the development of intervention programming for universities

A New Hybrid Framework to Efficiently Model Lines of Sight to Gravitational Lenses

In strong gravitational lens systems, the light bending is usually dominated by one main galaxy, but may be affected by other mass along the line of sight (LOS). Shear and convergence can be used to approximate the contributions from less significant perturbers (e.g. those that are projected far from the lens or have a small mass), but higher order effects need to be included for objects that are closer or more massive. We develop a framework for multiplane lensing that can handle an arbitrary combination of tidal planes treated with shear and convergence and planes treated exactly (i.e., including higher order terms). This framework addresses all of the traditional lensing observables including image positions, fluxes, and time delays to facilitate lens modelling that includes the non-linear effects due to mass along the LOS. It balances accuracy (accounting for higher-order terms when necessary) with efficiency (compressing all other LOS effects into a set of matrices that can be calculated up front and cached for lens modelling). We identify a generalized multiplane mass sheet degeneracy, in which the effective shear and convergence are sums over the lensing planes with specific, redshift-dependent weighting factors.Comment: 13 pages, 2 figure