UNDERSTANDING THE ANTIOXIDANT MECHANISM OF INORGANIC SELENIUM, OXO- SULFUR, AND POLYPHENOL COMPOUNDS, AND THE BIOLOGICAL IMPLICATIONS OF FUNCTIONALIZED NANOPARTICLES

Inorganic selenium, oxo-sulfur, and polyphenol compounds are found in foods and dietary supplements, and are recognized for their nutritional benefits and their potential to treat or prevent diseases caused by oxidative stress. In our experiments to determine the effects of inorganic selenium compounds on iron-mediated DNA damage, Na2SeO33 and SeO2 exhibit antioxidant and pro-oxidant activities depending on concentrations of both the compound and hydrogen peroxide. Additional experiments demonstrate that iron coordination is a novel mechanism responsible for the observed activities. In similar experiments, oxo-sulfur compounds prevent Cu+/ H2O2-mediated DNA damage significantly more than DNA damage from Fe2+/H2O2. UV-vis and gel electrophoresis experiments also confirm that copper coordination is primarily responsible for the DNA damage inhibition, a novel mechanism that extends to all tested sulfur and selenium antioxidants. Electrospray ionization mass spectroscopy indicates that these sulfur and selenium compounds generally bind Cu + in a 1:1 ratio. Combinations of bioactive components in foods can affect activity of antioxidants. For example, adding one equivalent of caffeine to polyphenols has no effect on DNA damage prevention by epigallocatechin gallate, but significantly decreases the antioxidant ability of quercetin. In addition, DNA damage prevention studies on peach extracts indicate that genetically-modified peach cultivars prevent more DNA damage than unmodified cultivars. In contrast, tetraphenyl-porphyrin-doped conjugated polymer dot nanoparticles cause DNA backbone and base damage upon irradiation, suggesting that these nanoparticles may be efficient photosensitizers for photodynamic therapy (PDT). Our studies also show H2O2 formation by and iron association with polyethylene glycol (PEG) and PEG-functionalized beads at biologically-relevant concentrations. Since Fe2+ and H2O2 react to form damaging hydroxyl radical, use of PEG-functionalized nanoparticles in medical applications may cause oxidative stress. Overall, this work has elucidated of antioxidant and pro-oxidant mechanisms of inorganic selenium, oxo-sulfur, and polyphenol compounds, as well as the potential toxicity of functionalized nanomaterials used for PDT and other medical applications

The Effects of Insurances, Pensions and Mutual Funds on Economic Growth

Earlier studies on the impact of the insurance sectors activities on economic growth have largely failed. To examine the financial development market interaction of pensions and mutual funds linkages, through which insurance assets affects economic growth. This study re-examines the impact of life insurance premium volume, non-life insurance premium volume, insurance company assets, pension fund assets and mutual fund assets on economic growth. Using panel data of 33 countries over the period 2000-2016. The study applied the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model in panel setting using the PMG (Pooled Mean Group) and MG (Mean Group) estimators in this analysis. The study findings indicate that cointegration exists among all series and that insurances and mutual funds stimulate economic growth in both the short and long run

Latency of Concatenating Unlicensed LPWAN with Cellular IoT: An Experimental QoE Study

Developing low-power wide-area network (LPWAN) solutions that are efficient to adopt, deploy and maintain are vital for smart cities. The poor quality-of-service of unlicensed LPWAN, and the high service cost of LTE-M/NB-IoT are key disadvantages of these technologies. Concatenating unlicensed with licensed LPWANs can overcome these limitations and harness their benefits. However, a concatenated LPWAN architecture will inevitably result in excess latency which may impact users’ quality-of-experience (QoE). To evaluate the real-life feasibility of this system, we first propose a concatenated LPWAN architecture and experimentally measure the statistics of end-to-end (E2E) latencies. The concatenated delay margin is determined by benchmarking the latencies with different LPWAN architecture schemes, namely with unlicensed IoT (standalone LoRa), cellular IoT (standalone LTE-M), and concatenated IoT (LoRa interfaced with LTE-M). Through extensive experimental measurement campaigns of 30,000 data points of E2E latencies, we show that the excess delay due to LPWAN interfacing introduces on average less than 300 milliseconds. With a users’ QoE satisfaction of 95%, we also found that concatenated LPWAN outperforms unlicensed IoT by roughly 1.5 s. Overall, the result suggests that a concatenated LPWAN is technically feasible and offers an affordable alternative for real-world smart city deployment

Management of Research Infrastructures: A South African Funding Perspective

This open access book provides an overview of the building blocks necessary for managing, steering and guiding the establishment of a research infrastructure (RI). It offers valuable insights into RI investment, access and management at the academic, grants management, agency and policy level, and serves as a useful guide for the research community, students, and those in the private sector wishing to understand the approaches and opportunities involved in the establishment, maintenance and management of research infrastructure platforms. Presenting a holistic view of RI investment and granting cycles from a South African perspective, the book’s target audience includes those working in science diplomacy, policymaking and science grants councils (especially in Africa) as well as funders and donors

Exploring Special Guardianship. Experiences of School Belonging from the Perspective of the Young People, Guardians and Designated Teachers: A Bioecological Perspective

Located within social and education policy, the central aim of this research is to explore the concept of school belonging of young people who live under the legal status of a special guardianship order (SGO) in the United Kingdom. Literature highlights that a high proportion of young people with a SGO have experienced early neglect and developmental trauma. There is a dearth of research gathering the views of these young people about their school experiences. The Children and Social Work Act (2017) has placed more emphasis on the role of the designated teacher in schools towards this group of young people. This study comprised seven cases and a cross-case analysis. Each case included a young person, their guardian/s and their school’s designated teacher, resulting in twenty-one semi-structured interviews. Adult interviews followed a hierarchical structured interview approach and the young person interviews involved personal construct psychology techniques. Thematic analysis was used to analyse data within each case. In-depth analysis of young peoples’, guardians’ and designated teachers’ experiences of school belonging was undertaken using Bronfenbrenner’s Process-Person-Context-Time framework (PPCT; 1999) as a conceptual aid throughout analysis. This offered the potential for insight into the complexity of the theory of school belonging. The cross-case analysis examined all of the themes generated from the individual cases to identify similarities and variances between them. The overarching themes identified included: Identity, diagnosis, individuality and association, fitting in, connection to others, protection and autonomy, support and intervention, systems as obstacles to support, school processes, school features, and organisational change. The findings emphasise the importance of establishing a broad focus when considering the concept of school belonging, to include the individual’s peer and staff relationships, along with school processes and the interactions between the school, home and the wider community. This study provides original, enlightened and new understanding with implications for education and social care policy and school practice

Working with the Community: Reflections from an Instructional Design Service-Learning Project

As part of an instructional design course, EDCI 572 (Learning Systems Design), we completed a service project developing a face-to-face training for volunteer coordinators for United Way of Greater Lafayette. United Way promotes activities to encourage civic engagement and make a positive change in the community. A network of community members and organizations facilitate a larger community impact in collaboration with United Way. One part of this partnership is the United Way training for volunteer coordinators of different nonprofit organizations. Under the supervision of Dr. Seçil Caskurlu, we applied instructional design models to design and develop face-to-face training modules in consultation with a subject matter expert. This face-to-face training covered four topics: skill-based volunteering, recruitment, retention, and recognition. Students gained several skills from this service project, including experience in developing and creating learning solutions that drive measurable impact to the organization and align to organization’s and learner’s needs; experience in developing face-to-face learning experiences; experience applying instructional design models; communication, teamwork, and problem-solving skills; and strong organizational and time management skills. Thus, this authentic learning experience helped us develop instructional design skills by building practical knowledge and hands-on experience. Additionally, we received funding from the Community Service/Service-Learning Student Grant Program, which was used to support a showcase event where we presented this service project and shared our experiences. This event had the objectives of increasing awareness of course-based service projects, potentially creating new partnerships within the community, and allowing students to practice public speaking skills. In this service project, not only were concepts and theories taught, but they were applied to a real-world context and went beyond the conventional hypothetical classroom scenarios. The challenge to work for a real client, that helps communities grow, added an extra motivation to do our best

Case Report Subdural Empyema Complicating Bacterial Meningitis: A Challenging Diagnosis in a Patient with Polysubstance Abuse

Subdural empyema (SDE) and cerebrovascular accident (CVA) are uncommon life-threatening complications of bacterial meningitis, which require urgent neurosurgical intervention to prevent adverse outcomes. Clinicians must be vigilant of the onset of focal neurologic deficits or seizure activity to establish the diagnosis of SDE. Streptococcus pneumoniae accounts for <1% of pyogenic brain abscesses. This case describes a presentation of community acquired pneumococcal pneumonia in which the diagnosis of SDE with vasculitis induced CVA was confounded by concomitant substance abuse and sedation