Food Habits of the Red Fox in Nebraska

Food habits of red foxes (Vulpes vulpes) in Nebraska were deter· mined by analysis of 234 fox stomachs obtained from fur dealers during October 1978 through February 1979. Mammals were found most frequently (84%) and constituted the majority (77.4%) of the volume of food items. Cottontails (Sylvilagus floridanus) and jack· rabbits (Lepus sp.) were the most important items consumed based on frequency of occurrence (45.8%) and volume (49.2%). Remains of birds were difficult to identify, but ring-necked pheasants (Phasianus colchicus) occurred in 6.9% of the stomachs and comprised 8.4% of the volume of items consumed. Male foxes had a higher volume of rabbits (55.6%) in their stomachs than did females (39.3%), whereas females had a higher volume (24.6%) of mice and voles than did males (14.6%). Remains of livestock and poultry in fox stomachs rarely were found (2.6%) and constituted only about 1% of the volume of the foxes\u27 diet. Game animals comprised 62.5% of the volume of the foxes\u27 diet

Athletes Who Train on Unstable Compared to Stable Surfaces Exhibit Unique Postural Control Strategies in Response to Balance Perturbations

Background Athletes have been shown to exhibit better balance compared to non-athletes (NON). However, few studies have investigated how the surface on which athletes train affects the strategies adopted to maintain balance. Two distinct athlete groups who experience different types of sport-specific balance training are stable surface athletes (SSA) such as basketball players and those who train on unstable surfaces (USA) such as surfers. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of training surface on dynamic balance in athletes compared to NON. Methods Eight NON, eight SSA, and eight USA performed five 20-s trials in each of five experimental conditions including a static condition and four dynamic conditions in which the support surface translated in the anteroposterior (AP) or mediolateral (ML) planes using positive or negative feedback paradigms. Approximate entropy (ApEn) and root mean square distance (RMS) of the center of pressure (CoP) were calculated for the AP and ML directions. Four 3 × 5 (group × condition) repeated measures ANOVAs were used to determine significant effects of group and condition on variables of interest. Results USA exhibited smaller ApEn values than SSA in the AP signals while no significant differences were observed in the ML CoP signals. Generally, the negative feedback conditions were associated with significantly greater RMS values than the positive feedback conditions. Conclusion USA exhibit unique postural strategies compared to SSA. These unique strategies seemingly exhibit a direction-specific attribute and may be associated with divergent motor control strategies

Delivering reform in English healthcare: an ideational perspective

A variety of perspectives has been put forward to understand reform across healthcare systems. Recently, some have called for these perspectives to give greater recognition to the role of ideational processes. The purpose of this article is to present an ideational approach to understanding the delivery of healthcare reform. It draws on a case of English healthcare reform – the Next Stage Review led by Lord Darzi – to show how the delivery of its reform proposals was associated with four ideational frames. These frames built on the idea of “progress” in responding to existing problems; the idea of “prevailing policy” in forming part of a bricolage of ideas within institutional contexts; the idea of “prescription” as top-down structural change at odds with local contexts; and the idea of “professional disputes” in challenging the notion of clinical engagement across professional groups. The article discusses the implications of these ideas in furthering our understanding of policy change, conflict and continuity across healthcare settings

A Summer Course in Invertebrate Developmental Biology at Iowa Lakeside Laboratory: A Unique Experience

The course, Developmental Biology of Selected Invertebrates\u27\u27, has been offered in alternate years at Iowa Lakeside Laboratory (Ill) on Lake West Okoboji, Dickinson County, Iowa, since the first summer session of 1983. This course has taken advantage of the great diversity of invertebrates found in the Ill area and has demonstrated to students and faculty alike the exciting phenomena and principles of developmental biology. The course is continuously evolving as new experiments and observations are discovered with each offering of the course

2020-05-08 DAILY UNM GLOBAL HEALTH COVID-19 BRIEFING

Executive Summary: UNM drug repurposing. NM cases. Doctors Without Borders. SNAP benefits online. NM 7th highest unemployment. Virtual LemonAid tonight. New N98 masks. Healthcare supply chain challenge. EMS lack resources. Infection risk in healthcare workers. COVID-19 on medical education. Human disinfectant chambers. Evidence of seroconversion. Dangers of considering herd immunity. Wastewater-based surveillance. More youths infected. Reconstructing ship spread. Pharmacoepidemiologic analysis. Clinicopathologic characteristics. Cancer treatment impact. Reduced voluntary psychiatric admission in Italy. Operating room management. Humidifiers reduce transmission. Phone contact tracing ethics. Call for patient database. Immunity certification program. Guidelines on tracheostomy, IBD, nose bleeding, pituitary tumors, and hematopoietic stem cells transplantation, benefits of low-PEEP, and of molecular diagnostics. FDA authorizes at-home test. Cephid Xpert test. MRSA nasal swabs. NIH remdesivir+barictinib RCT. Corticosteroid caution. Arbidol active in vitro. ACE/ARB systematic review. In silico phytochemical and virus protease candidates. Potential zinc benefit. 31 new clinical trials. Glycemic control benefit. Psychological effects meta-analysis and survey. Disease course model. Liver injury. Environmental and health perspectives. Olfactory and gustatory dysfunction. Vitamin D. Disease map

Leukotriene receptors (version 2020.3) in the IUPHAR/BPS Guide to Pharmacology Database

The leukotriene receptors (nomenclature as agreed by the NC-IUPHAR subcommittee on Leukotriene Receptors [34, 37]) are activated by the endogenous ligands leukotrienes (LT), synthesized from lipoxygenase metabolism of arachidonic acid. The human BLT1 receptor is the high affinity LTB4 receptor whereas the BLT2 receptor in addition to being a low-affinity LTB4 receptor also binds several other lipoxygenase-products, such as 12S-HETE, 12S-HPETE, 15S-HETE, and the thromboxane synthase product 12-hydroxyheptadecatrienoic acid. The BLT receptors mediate chemotaxis and immunomodulation in several leukocyte populations and are in addition expressed on non-myeloid cells, such as vascular smooth muscle and endothelial cells. In addition to BLT receptors, LTB4 has been reported to bind to the peroxisome proliferator activated receptor (PPAR) α [196] and the vanilloid TRPV1 ligand-gated nonselective cation channel [217]. The receptors for the cysteinyl-leukotrienes (i.e. LTC4, LTD4 and LTE4) are termed CysLT1 and CysLT2 and exhibit distinct expression patterns in human tissues, mediating for example smooth muscle cell contraction, regulation of vascular permeability, and leukocyte activation. There is also evidence in the literature for additional CysLT receptor subtypes, derived from functional in vitro studies, radioligand binding and in mice lacking both CysLT1 and CysLT2 receptors [37]. Cysteinyl-leukotrienes have also been suggested to signal through the P2Y12 receptor [96, 243, 272], GPR17 [57] and GPR99 [168]

Leukotriene receptors in GtoPdb v.2023.1

The leukotriene receptors (nomenclature as agreed by the NC-IUPHAR subcommittee on Leukotriene Receptors [35, 38]) are activated by the endogenous ligands leukotrienes (LT), synthesized from lipoxygenase metabolism of arachidonic acid. The human BLT1 receptor is the high affinity LTB4 receptor whereas the BLT2 receptor in addition to being a low-affinity LTB4 receptor also binds several other lipoxygenase-products, such as 12S-HETE, 12S-HPETE, 15S-HETE, and the thromboxane synthase product 12-hydroxyheptadecatrienoic acid. The BLT receptors mediate chemotaxis and immunomodulation in several leukocyte populations and are in addition expressed on non-myeloid cells, such as vascular smooth muscle and endothelial cells. In addition to BLT receptors, LTB4 has been reported to bind to the peroxisome proliferator activated receptor (PPAR) α [201] and the vanilloid TRPV1 ligand-gated nonselective cation channel [223]. The crystal structure of the BLT1 receptor was initially determined in complex with selective antagonists [141, 231] and has recently been extended to the cryo-electron microscopy structure of LTB4-bound human BLT1 receptor at 2.91 Å resolution [389]. The receptors for the cysteinyl-leukotrienes (i.e. LTC4, LTD4 and LTE4) are termed CysLT1 and CysLT2 and exhibit distinct expression patterns in human tissues, mediating for example smooth muscle cell contraction, regulation of vascular permeability, and leukocyte activation. Quite recently, the the crystal structures of both receptors have been solved, the CysLT1 in complex with zafirlukast and pranlukast [203] and the CysLT2 in complex with three dual CysLT1/CysLT2 antagonists [122]. There is also evidence in the literature for additional CysLT receptor subtypes, derived from functional in vitro studies, radioligand binding and in mice lacking both CysLT1 and CysLT2 receptors [38]. Cysteinyl-leukotrienes have also been suggested to signal through the P2Y12 receptor [99, 251, 280], GPR17 [60] and GPR99 [173]

Radial Columns in Cortical Architecture: It Is the Composition That Counts

The function of any brain structure depends on its neuronal composition and on the pattern of its extrinsic and intrinsic excitatory and inhibitory synaptic connectivity. In this issue of Cerebral Cortex, 3 related papers provide the most comprehensive analysis to date of the cellular and synaptic relationships of a standard cortical column in the somatosensory cortex of the Wistar rat. It is hoped that understanding normal composition of this archetypical cortical column may help to explain its functional operations, expose subtle pathological changes that could cause abnormal sensory and cognitive functions, and provide insight into evolution of the cerebral cortex

Cosmology From Random Multifield Potentials

We consider the statistical properties of vacua and inflationary trajectories associated with a random multifield potential. Our underlying motivation is the string landscape, but our calculations apply to general potentials. Using random matrix theory, we analyze the Hessian matrices associated with the extrema of this potential. These potentials generically have a vast number of extrema. If the cross-couplings (off-diagonal terms) are of the same order as the self-couplings (diagonal terms) we show that essentially all extrema are saddles, and the number of minima is effectively zero. Avoiding this requires the same separation of scales needed to ensure that Newton's constant is stable against radiative corrections in a string landscape. Using the central limit theorem we find that even if the number of extrema is enormous, the typical distance between extrema is still substantial -- with challenging implications for inflationary models that depend on the existence of a complicated path inside the landscape.Comment: revtex, 3 figures, 10 pages v2 refs adde