Insulated electrocardiographic electrodes

An integrated system is disclosed including an insulated electrode and an impedance transformer which can be assembled in a small plastic housing and used for the acquisition of electrocardiographic data. The electrode may be employed without a paste electrolyte and may be attached to the body for extended usage without producing skin reaction. The electrode comprises a thin layer of suitable nontoxic dielectric material preferably deposited by radio frequency sputtering onto a conductive substrate. The impedance transformer preferably comprises an operational amplifier having an FET input stage connected in the unity gain configuration which provides a very low lower cut-off frequency, a high input impedance with a very small input bias current, a low output impedance, and a high signal-to-noise ratio

Jean Thomas\u27 American Folk Song Festival : British balladry in Eastern Kentucky.

Serious musicological research initiated in the first decades of the twentieth century in America uncovered vast riches of British folk music that had been transplanted to these shores by early pioneers. In the mountains of Appalachia, traditional British ballads remained miraculously unspoiled, and distinguished researchers from Britain and America published many volumes of such songs. Jean Thomas, a legal stenographer born in eastern Kentucky in 1881, became fascinated with this phenomenon. She came to believe that an annual festival of mountain music would help ensure the survival of this art and, in 1930, she founded the American Folk Song Festival. With some interruptions, the Festival was held in eastern Kentucky on the second Sunday of every June through 1972. The festival provided a forum for British ballads as well as native American music. While the entire corpus of Jean Thomas\u27 output is of mixed quality, an analysis of the British music she preserved reveals its value, dynamism and authenticity. In 1968, Jean Thomas presented many of her materials - tapes, letters, photographs, clippings, kinescopes and the like - to the University of Louisville. An exhaustive study of these treasures will yield rich fruit to the discriminating musicologist

A Multiorgan Trafficking Circuit Provides Purifying Selection of Listeria monocytogenes Virulence Genes.

Listeria monocytogenes can cause a life-threatening illness when the foodborne pathogen spreads beyond the intestinal tract to distant organs. Many aspects of the intestinal phase of L. monocytogenes pathogenesis remain unknown. Here, we present a foodborne infection model using C57BL/6 mice that have been pretreated with streptomycin. In this model, as few as 100 L. monocytogenes CFU were required to cause self-limiting enterocolitis, and systemic dissemination followed previously reported routes. Using this model, we report that listeriolysin O (LLO) and actin assembly-inducing protein (ActA), two critical virulence determinants, were necessary for intestinal pathology and systemic spread but were dispensable for intestinal growth. Sequence tag-based analysis of microbial populations (STAMP) was used to investigate the within-host population dynamics of wild-type and LLO-deficient strains. The wild-type bacterial population experienced severe bottlenecks over the course of infection, and by 5 days, the intestinal population was highly enriched for bacteria originating from the gallbladder. In contrast, LLO-deficient strains did not efficiently disseminate and gain access to the gallbladder, and the intestinal population remained diverse. These findings suggest that systemic spread and establishment of a bacterial reservoir in the gallbladder imparts an intraspecies advantage in intestinal occupancy. Since intestinal L. monocytogenes is ultimately released into the environment, within-host population bottlenecks may provide purifying selection of virulence genes.IMPORTANCE Listeria monocytogenes maintains capabilities for free-living growth in the environment and for intracellular replication in a wide range of hosts, including livestock and humans. Here, we characterized an enterocolitis model of foodborne L. monocytogenes infection. This work highlights a multiorgan trafficking circuit and reveals a fitness advantage for bacteria that successfully complete this cycle. Because virulence factors play critical roles in systemic dissemination and multiple bottlenecks occur as the bacterial population colonizes different tissue sites, this multiorgan trafficking circuit likely provides purifying selection of virulence genes. This study also serves as a foundation for future work using the L. monocytogenes-induced enterocolitis model to investigate the biology of L. monocytogenes in the intestinal environment

Torts - Charitable Immunity

The long-settled doctrine of charitable immunity for hospitals was abolished by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. Flagiello v. The Pennsylvania Hospital, ___Pa. ___ A.2d ___(1965)

Child externalising and internalising behaviour and parental wellbeing during the Covid-19 pandemic

In this study we surveyed families' experiences with parental depression, stress, relationship conflict and child behavioural issues during 6 months of the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic through the Covid-19: Global Social Trust and Mental Health Study. The current analyses used data collected from online surveys completed by adults in 66 countries from 17 April 2020 to 13 July 2020 (Wave I), followed by surveys 6 months later at Wave II (17 October 2020-31 January 2021). Analyses were limited to 175 adult parents who reported living with at least one child under 18 years old at Wave I. Parents reported on children's level of externalising and internalising behaviour at Wave I. At Wave II, parents completed self-reported measures of stress, depression and inter-partner conflict. Child externalising behaviour at Wave I significantly predicted higher levels of parental stress at Wave II, controlling for covariates. Child internalising behaviour at Wave I did not predict parental stress or depression, controlling for covariates. Neither child externalising nor internalising behaviour predicted parental relationship conflict. The overall findings demonstrate that child behaviour likely influenced parental stress during the Covid-19 pandemic. Findings suggest that mental health interventions for children and parents may improve the family system during times of disaster

Child Externalizing and Internalizing Behavior and Parental Well-Being During the COVID-19 Pandemic

In this study we surveyed families’ experiences with parental depression, stress, relationship conflict, and child behavioral issues during six months of the COVID-19 pandemic through the COVID-19: Global Social Trust and Mental Health Study. The current analyses used data collected from online surveys completed by adults in 66 countries from April 17, 2020-July 14, 2020 (Wave I), followed by surveys six months later at Wave II (October 17, 2020-January 31, 2021). Analyses were limited to 175 adult parents who reported living with at least one child under 18 years old at Wave I. Parents reported on children’s level of externalizing and internalizing behavior at Wave I. At Wave II, parents completed self-reported measures of stress, depression, and inter-partner conflict. Child externalizing behavior at Wave I significantly predicted higher levels of parental stress and marginally predicted parental depression at Wave II, controlling for covariates. Child internalizing behavior at Wave I did not predict parental stress or depression, controlling for covariates. Neither child externalizing nor internalizing behavior predicted parental relationship conflict. The overall findings demonstrate that child behavior likely influenced parental stress and depression during the COVID-19 pandemic. Findings suggest that mental health interventions for children and parents may improve the family system during times of disaster

Activation of the Listeria monocytogenes Virulence Program by a Reducing Environment.

Upon entry into the host cell cytosol, the facultative intracellular pathogen Listeria monocytogenes coordinates the expression of numerous essential virulence factors by allosteric binding of glutathione (GSH) to the Crp-Fnr family transcriptional regulator PrfA. Here, we report that robust virulence gene expression can be recapitulated by growing bacteria in a synthetic medium containing GSH or other chemical reducing agents. Bacteria grown under these conditions were 45-fold more virulent in an acute murine infection model and conferred greater immunity to a subsequent lethal challenge than bacteria grown in conventional media. During cultivation in vitro, PrfA activation was completely dependent on the intracellular levels of GSH, as a glutathione synthase mutant (ΔgshF) was activated by exogenous GSH but not reducing agents. PrfA activation was repressed in a synthetic medium supplemented with oligopeptides, but the repression was relieved by stimulation of the stringent response. These data suggest that cytosolic L. monocytogenes interprets a combination of metabolic and redox cues as a signal to initiate robust virulence gene expression in vivoIMPORTANCE Intracellular pathogens are responsible for much of the worldwide morbidity and mortality from infectious diseases. These pathogens have evolved various strategies to proliferate within individual cells of the host and avoid the host immune response. Through cellular invasion or the use of specialized secretion machinery, all intracellular pathogens must access the host cell cytosol to establish their replicative niches. Determining how these pathogens sense and respond to the intracellular compartment to establish a successful infection is critical to our basic understanding of the pathogenesis of each organism and for the rational design of therapeutic interventions. Listeria monocytogenes is a model intracellular pathogen with robust in vitro and in vivo infection models. Studies of the host-sensing and downstream signaling mechanisms evolved by L. monocytogenes often describe themes of pathogenesis that are broadly applicable to less tractable pathogens. Here, we describe how bacteria use external redox states as a cue to activate virulence

The cell biology of Listeria monocytogenes infection: the intersection of bacterial pathogenesis and cell-mediated immunity

Listeria monocytogenes has emerged as a remarkably tractable pathogen to dissect basic aspects of cell biology, intracellular pathogenesis, and innate and acquired immunity. In order to maintain its intracellular lifestyle, L. monocytogenes has evolved a number of mechanisms to exploit host processes to grow and spread cell to cell without damaging the host cell. The pore-forming protein listeriolysin O mediates escape from host vacuoles and utilizes multiple fail-safe mechanisms to avoid causing toxicity to infected cells. Once in the cytosol, the L. monocytogenes ActA protein recruits host cell Arp2/3 complexes and enabled/vasodilator-stimulated phosphoprotein family members to mediate efficient actin-based motility, thereby propelling the bacteria into neighboring cells. Alteration in any of these processes dramatically reduces the ability of the bacteria to establish a productive infection in vivo