The Type I Interferon Anti-Viral Pathway Contributes To Macrophage Polarization Following Infection With Oncolytic Vesicular Stomatitis Virus

Vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) is a promising oncolytic agent that directly kills cancer cells, but which also modulates immune elements within the tumor microenvironment. Here we were interested in how VSV affects tumor-associated macrophages (TAMs), a cell type that interconverts along a spectrum of polarizations from pro-cancer M2 to anti-cancer M1 subtypes. We hypothesized that VSV infections would switch M2 TAMs to an M1 phenotype via activation of the type I interferon anti-viral response. Such was the case with a mutant strain of VSV (rM51R-M) where the lack of a functional M protein led to activation of the anti-viral response and the upregulation of M1 markers (i.e. IFNa, STAT1, P-STAT1, MHC-II, and CD80, but not IRF5) in model M2 THP-1 macrophages. Our data suggest that rM51R-M virus has a previously unappreciated immunogenic potential based on modulation of TAM phenotypes

The Promotion Of Nutrient-Dense Foods In Andasibe, Madagascar

Purpose: Due to a lack of resources, Madagascar has high levels of poverty and malnutrition. Nutrition education has shown to be an effective approach to increasing health in low-resource areas worldwide. The purpose of this study was to pilot a tailored nutrition education program to improve diet diversity and health promoting practices in Andasibe, Madagascar. Methods: Twenty caregivers were recruited. Diet diversity and nutrition knowledge were assessed using a pre/post-test design. Nutritional status was assessed using height, weight, mid-upper-arm circumference measurements, and Raman spectroscopy technology. The intervention consisted of individualized counseling sessions with education materials. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and paired sample t-tests. Results: Significant increases were found in the consumption of vitamin A-rich foods for adults (p = 0.01), and the use of treated water to wash fruits and vegetables before consumption (p = 0.01). All but one caregiver (95.0%) made dietary changes by increasing diet diversity and by focusing on colorful foods. Conclusions: Findings suggested nutrition education was effective in increasing nutrition knowledge. Further, an individualized approach to education in a low resource country can improve diet diversity, nutrition knowledge, and health practices with potential to increase the consumption of foods associated with micronutrient deficiencies

The Peachtree Valley and Valley Town mission : a baptist recategorization of a Cherokee landscape

Peachtree Valley in Clay county, North Carolina has a long history of diversity in plant, animal, and human habitation. The Cherokee, who have inhabited the valley for thousands of years, have a deep history of relationships with the cultural and biological diversity of the mountains. An intricate web of Cherokee knowledge and ways of thinking once maintained a sense of balance and well-being within existing ecological systems. The arrival of Europeans in the Cherokee world presented challenges in maintaining balance, communicating useful ideas, and establishing functional social and ecological relationships. The Baptists, who established a mission in the Peachtree Valley in 1819, were more successful in navigating Cherokee modes of thinking and communicating than other missionaries. Baptist success was rooted in their eventual willingness to learn from Cherokee systems. Cherokees categorizations of the world and engaged relationships with plants and animals of the landscape came to be connected with biblical ideas and Jesus’ morality through the work of Reverend Evan Jones and a small group of Cherokees he baptized and taught. The history of the Valley Towns Baptist mission demonstrates ways that ecological awareness and landscape-based sensibilities classified Christian and Baptist ideas in uniquely Cherokee ways, even as those same ideas simplified diverse Cherokee categorizations of the world

An Approach To Testing And Teaching In Elementary Gymnastics For Secondary School Boys

It was the purpose of this study (1) to develop an experimental teaching program in beginning gymnastics for high school boys; (2) to show the relationship between selected fitness test items and the gymnastic abilities demonstrated at the end of the experimental program; and (3) to suggest areas for future research in gymnastics teaching and testing

North Carolina's federalists in an evolving public sphere, 1790-1810

Frustrated by electoral defeat at the hands of Jefferson and his allies in 1800, North Carolina’s Federalists devised a plan in 1802 to send the Minerva, a Raleigh newspaper edited by William Boylan, to leading Federalists across the state. These Federalist leaders, including Duncan Cameron, William R. Davie, and Alfred Moore, all prominent politicians and lawyers, believed that the public mind had been corrupted by the newspaper propaganda of the Jeffersonian Republicans. The dissemination of the Minerva, however, could restore the public to a deferential position as well as increase their knowledge about the true state of political affairs. Though the newspapers found their way to each judicial district in North Carolina, they failed to transform the public sphere. The editor of the Minerva, William Boylan, increased the rancor of his partisan invective throughout 1802 and 1803, even though Federalist electoral success still remained elusive. Boylan also pursued the position of state printer, a job which he and his uncle had held for a number of years, but which had been given to Joseph Gales, an Englishman and Republican editor of the Raleigh Register. When Boylan failed to obtain the position of state printer in 1804, he became increasingly bitter toward Gales. When Gales accused Boylan of burning down the press of the Raleigh Register, Boylan responded by beating Gales savagely on the streets of Raleigh in 1804. Boylan, humbled in court by a fine in 1805, retreated from his former partisanship as his Federalist comrades abandoned him because of his attack on Gales. The Federalists, therefore, failed in their attempt to control the public sphere because they could not imitate Jeffersonian propaganda without betraying their conceptions of disinterestedness, virtue, and reason

Dual sources of antimicrobial activity of Anemopsis californica : plant and endophytic fungi

Anemopsis californica is a plant native to the southwestern United States and northern Mexico that has been used by many Native American tribes to alleviate pain and inflammation and to treat infection. Limited research has examined the chemical composition of A. californica responsible for its purported therapeutic properties. Goal 1 of this study was to identify pathogenic bacteria against which the plant extract was active, and isolate the compounds responsible for this activity. Goal 2 was to identify bioactive compounds from endophytic fungi isolated from the plant. The A. californica root extract was tested against a panel of bacteria and exhibited the most activity against several Mycobacterium spp. Bioassay-guided fractionation was conducted on a sample of A. californica roots was undertaken to isolate the bioactive compounds. These compounds were identified as the furofuran lignans sesamin (1) and asarinin (2), which were shown to have minimum inhibitory concentrations (MICs) ranging from 23 to 395 µM against five different species of environmental nontuberculous mycobacteria. These findings are significant given that these bacteria can cause skin, pulmonary, and lymphatic infections. With the use of liquid chromatography - mass spectrometry (LC-MS), it was determined that sesamin and asarinin were extracted at relatively high levels from A. californica roots (1.7-3.1g/kg and 1.1-1.7 g/kg, respectively), but lower levels from leaves (0.13 g/kg for both compounds). Our findings suggest that the majority of activity of crude A. californica root extracts against nontuberculous mycobacteria can be attributed to the presence of sesamin and asarinin. This is the first reported isolation of these compounds from a member of the Saururaceae family, and the first description of their activity against nontuberculous mycobacteria. Goal 2 of this project was to identify bioactive compounds from the fungal endophytes of A. californica (fungi living asymptomatically within the plant tissues). The fungal endophytes were extracted from the plant and cultured on a solid media. Twelve different fungi were identified. Crude extracts of these fungi were prepared and partitioned with liquid-liquid chromatography. Several antimicrobial compounds were isolated or identified from these fungi, including a new antimicrobial compound chaetocuprum A from the fungus Chaetomium cupreum. An additional nineteen compounds were also identified, of which six have been shown in literature or with our investigations to possess antimicrobial activity. In addition, a crude extract of the A. californica root was prepared from the same batch of roots from which fungi were isolated, to ascertain whether any of these antimicrobial compounds were present in the plant. None of the antimicrobial compounds isolated from the endophytes were detected in the extract, but a series of other fungal compounds were present. Finally, at least eighteen ions were detected as being present in both the botanical and fungal extracts. The structures of these "overlapping compounds" have not yet been solved, but their presence does suggest a potential role for fungi in the chemical composition of botanical extracts

An investigation of the curricular and instructional leadership roles of elementary principals

The purpose of this study was to investigate the curricular and instructional leadership of elementary principals. The case study was based on a series of interviews held with five principals and one backreader, a former principal. The principals selected for this study were from a single urban school district in North Carolina. All principals/participants had undergone extensive in-service training for instructional supervision and/or were cited for being strong curricular and instructional leaders by their associate superintendent. The interview questions centered on five areas: (1) curricular and instructional leadership, (2) evolution in the principalship role, (3) conflict around the principalship role, (4) definition of the curriculum, and (5) power and influence. Five assumptions, drawn from related research, served as check points for the interview analysis. Assumption One: The principalship role continues to search for definition, now evolving into a greater implementation of a curricular and instructional leadership role. Assumption Two: Teachers are in conflict with the curricular and instructional leadership role of the principal; but, where they have a positive perception of their workplace, they are more productive. Assumption Three: Curriculum is what each person experiences in the learning setting and the principal is the leader of that interpretation

Group self motivation in handwriting

Secondary, college, and commercial teachers have expressed complaints concerning the quality of the handwriting of school children. Every year teachers hear criticism of the way penmanship is taught in the public schools. Parents and business men, and college professors voice disapproval of the poor quality of handwriting which they see generally. Much of the criticism is well founded. Students and adults often do exhibit a let-down in quality of handwriting after they leave the elementary grades. 1 If children are to attain success in school, it is necessary for them to master the fundamental skills of reading, writing, and arithmetic. Of these the second, writing, is one of the principal ways they have of giving expression to their thoughts. Legible handwriting is a necessity, and it is the responsibility of the elementary school to develop it. However, it is a common complaint among secondary teachers that the children coming from elementary to high school, cannot write satisfactorily. Lee and Lee bear out this statement when they point out that illegibility has been shown to increase from elementary to high school and to adulthood

James Fenimore Cooper's "bad" Indians : a study of Magua, Mahtoree and Wyandotte´

Whereas James Fenimore Cooper's Natty Bumppo and many of his "good" Indians have long received critical attention, comparatively little interest has been shown his so-called "bad" Indians. To date no critical essay or chapter of a book has been devoted to them, in spite of their prominent roles in his Indian novels. This study focuses on three of these characters: Magua of The Last of the Mohicans, Mahtoree of The Prairie, and Wyandotté, a leading character in the novel of that title. Generally critics have lumped Magua, Mahtoree and Wyandotté together as if they were all of a kind. Careful study shows, however, that they are three quite different Indians. Their creation reflects both Cooper's continuing effort to come to terms with what he thought about the moral worth of the Indian and his effort to decide upon the right solution to the problem of Indian-white relations. With the creation of Magua, Cooper condemns the intrusion of the white man and suggests that the wilderness should be left to the Indian. With the creation of Mahtoree, he insists that the Indian share in the responsibility for a workable relationship and accept some responsibility for his own evil

A study of fourth grade students' comprehension of basal reader workbooks

The purpose of this study was to assess fourth grade students' abilities to read and comprehend fourth grade basal reader workbooks at an independent reading level. A second purpose of the study was to analyze the types of reading errors they made in comprehending the workbook materials. The subjects were 330 randomly selected fourth grade students. The students completed two cloze tests which were made from the fourth grade workbook materials and were scored by the exact word method. All incorrect responses were categorized into six syntactic and semantic error types. The relationships between the two cloze instruments and the three reading levels (frustration, instructional, independent); between the two cloze instruments and the six error types; and between the reading levels and the error types were computed with the statistical procedures of Analysis of Variance and the Chi- Square Test of Independence