Knocking out barriers to engineered cell activity.

CRISPR-Cas9 gene-edited T cells show safety and long-term engraftment in human

Carbohydrate Consumption and Fatigue: A Review

Fatigue is a condition that negatively impacts quality of life and occurs in about twenty four percent of adults worldwide. Many factors may contribute to fatigue. One factor is the macronutrient composition of a person’s diet, particularly, the amount of simple carbohydrates. This paper is a review of the current literature and examines the relationship of carbohydrate consumption and fatigue to determine if a diet low in simple carbohydrates results in an improvement in fatigue ratings. Results of studies regarding carbohydrate consumption and fatigue vary, the preponderance demonstrate a positive relationship between simple carbohydrate consumption and fatigue. Additionally, diets low in simple carbohydrates may improve cognition, mood and help reduce type 2 diabetes. To date, no study has been conducted to examine the long term effect of a diet low in simple carbohydrates therefore further research is needed in this area

The relations of metabolic syndrome to anxiety and depression symptoms in children and adults

Metabolic syndrome is a cluster of five factors (elevated systolic blood pressure, elevated blood glucose, elevated triglycerides, large waist circumference, and decreased HDL) that are related to a greater chance of heart disease, stroke, and diabetes. There is evidence that metabolic syndrome is correlated with depression, but the directionality and mechanism is unclear. There is also dispute in the literature as to whether there is a correlation with anxiety and metabolic syndrome. In this study, levels of depression and anxiety determined from questionnaires and interviews (Adult Self Report, Child Behavior Checklist, Kiddie Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia-Present and Lifetime, and the Composite International Diagnostic Interview) were compared with the five factors of metabolic syndrome in 100 three-person families. In children and adolescents, elevated triglycerides were predictive of elevated depressive behavior above the age of 12.68 (pppp \u3c .05 respectively). Additionally, a lower SES, older age, greater anxious behavior, and being male were all predictive of greater overall metabolic risk. Results implicate an age-moderated difference in how metabolic factors affect depression in children, possibly having a mechanism coinciding or affected by puberty. In adults, the directionality seems to reverse, with the anxious behavior having an effect on the metabolic syndrome factor, possibly related to stress and inflammation. Further research is needed to study these mechanisms and elucidate the connections between the disorders

Can Hiring Quotas Work? The Effect Of The Nitaqat Program On The Saudi Private Sector

This paper studies the effects of quota-based labor regulations on firms in the context of Saudi Arabia\u27s Nitaqat program, which imposed quotas for Saudi hiring at private firms. I use a comprehensive firm-level administrative dataset and exploit kinks in hiring incentives generated by the quotas to estimate the effects of this policy. I find that the program increased native employment at substantial cost to firms, as demonstrated by increasing exit rates and decreasing total employment at surviving firms. Firms without any Saudi employees at the onset of the program appear to bear most of these costs

Predicting the Future: Parental Progeny Investment in Response to Environmental Stress Cues

Environmental stressors can severely limit the ability of an organism to reproduce as lifespan is decreased and resources are shifted away from reproduction to survival. Although this is often detrimental to the organism’s reproductive fitness, certain other reproductive stress responses may mitigate this effect by increasing the likelihood of progeny survival in the F1 and subsequent generations. Here we review three means by which these progeny may be conferred a competitive edge as a result of stress encountered in the parental generation: heritable epigenetic modifications to nucleotides and histones, simple maternal investments of cytosolic components, and the partially overlapping phenomenon of terminal investment, which can entail extreme parental investment strategies in either cytosolic components or gamete production. We examine instances of these categories and their ability to subsequently impact offspring fitness and reproduction. Ultimately, without impacting nucleotide sequence, these more labile alterations may shape development, evolution, ecology and even human health, necessitating further understanding and research into the specific mechanisms by which environmental stressors are sensed and elicit a corresponding response in the parental germline