A Place to Call Home: What Immigrants Say Now About Life in America

Examines immigrants' views on opportunities in the United States, discrimination against immigrants, ties to their countries of origin, U.S. citizenship, and immigration policy. Analyzes variations from 2002 and by country of origin, religion, and age

With Their Whole Lives Ahead of Them: Myths and Realities About Why So Many Students Fail to Finish College

Based on a survey, explores the barriers to graduation college students face, examines common assumptions about college dropouts and realities, and compares the views of those who graduate and those who do not on solutions to help raise graduation rates

BIOTRANSFORMATION AND MUTAGENICITY OF BENZIDINE

This study was undertaken to investigate whether the priority pollutant benzidine could be biotransformed by bacteria from natural environments and to determine what effect such biotransformation would have on the mutagenicity of the compound. Bacteria were collected from sites of toxic waste dumping and from estuarine, lake, and ocean locations. Sediment and water samples as well as bacterial isolates were incubated in media containing 100 (mu)g ml(\u27-1 14)C(U)-benzidine (specific activity 6.76 mCi/mmol) supplemented with ammonia, phosphate and ferrous iron in aged seawater (salinity 26(\u27o)/oo). Pure cultures were grown overnight in reduced-nutrient broth and washed prior to resuspending in the same volume of experimental media and incubating at ambient temperature (22-28(DEGREES)C) in darkness with shaking. Detection of metabolites by thin layer chromatography and subsequent autoradiography revealed that benzidine is biotransformed by unacclimated bacteria from polluted sites and from estuaries. Benzidine could not serve as a sole source of carbon and energy for growth. At a low concentration (1 (mu)g ml(\u27-1)) of benzidine all the substrate was transformed to one major product; at 100 (mu)g ml(\u27-1) two transformation products appeared but most of the benzidine remained unchanged. Benzidine was also transformed abiotically to mutagenic compounds but not the same ones seen after bacterial biotransformation. Upon extended incubation, bacteria transformed the metabolites back to benzidine indicating that the biotransformations were ring substitutions but not ring cleavage. Benzidine was mutagenic after microsomal activation in the Ames test, the fluctuation test using Ames tester strain TA98, and the inductest-(beta)-galactosidase assay. The transformation products were mutagenic without requiring prior microsomal activation. The inductest-(beta)-galactosidase assay (Elespuru and Yarmolinsky, 1979) was modified extensively to increase its sensitivity for detecting benzidine as a mutagen

Don't Count Us Out: How An Overreliance On Accountability Could Undermine The Public's Confidence In Schools, Business, Government, and More

This report from Public Agenda and the Kettering Foundation presents startling evidence that the public and leaders hold vastly different ideas about what it even means to be accountable. While many leaders believe that transparency and data help build public trust, this small-scale pilot study suggests that many typical Americans are deeply skeptical about the accuracy and importance of quantitative measures. Moreover, most believe that ethics and responsiveness matter as much as or more than rules and benchmarks. Many also argue that accountability is not the job of leaders alone; it is the public's responsibility as well, and that our institutions will not work well until leaders, individual employees, consumers, and voters all behave more responsibly and with more concern about what their actions and decisions mean for others.As the report points out, while accountability strategies may be effective management tools, "they fall short in addressing the public's most potent concerns. At best, they strike much of the public as complicated and perhaps marginally informative. At worst, they risk pushing the public and leaders even further apart." What can leaders do to address this possibly corrosive accountability gap and avoid harmful crosstalk? These findings have a real and pressing significance to both the public and leaders, including philanthropists, educators, government officials, and health professionals

Peripheral nerve regeneration through hydrogel enriched chitosan conduits containing engineered Schwann cells for drug delivery

Critical length nerve defects in the rat sciatic nerve model were reconstructed with chitosan nerve guides filled with Schwann cells (SCs) containing hydrogel. The transplanted SCs were naive or had been genetically modified to overexpress neurotrophic factors, thus providing a cellular neurotrophic factor delivery system. Prior to the assessment in vivo, in vitro studies evaluating the properties of engineered SCs overexpressing glial cell line-derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF) or fibroblast growth factor 2 (FGF-218kDa) demonstrated their neurite outgrowth inductive bioactivity for sympathetic PC-12 cells as well as for dissociated dorsal root ganglion cell drop cultures. SCs within NVR-hydrogel, which is mainly composed of hyaluronic acid and laminin, were delivered into the lumen of chitosan hollow conduits with a 5% degree of acetylation. The viability and neurotrophic factor production by engineered SCs within NVR-Gel inside the chitosan nerve guides was further demonstrated in vitro. In vivo we studied the outcome of peripheral nerve regeneration after reconstruction of 15-mm nerve gaps with either chitosan/NVR-Gel/SCs composite nerve guides or autologous nerve grafts (ANGs). While ANGs did guarantee for functional sensory and motor regeneration in 100% of the animals, delivery of NVR-Gel into the chitosan nerve guides obviously impaired sufficient axonal outgrowth. This obstacle was overcome to a remarkable extent when the NVR-Gel was enriched with FGF-218kDa overexpressing SCs

BIOHYBRID – Biohybrid templates for peripheral nerve regeneration

[Excerpt] Peripheral nerve injuries represent a major cause for morbidity and disability in affected patients and cause substantial costs for society in a global perspective. It has been estimated that peripheral nerve injuries affect 2.8% of trauma patients,many of whom acquire life-long disability (Noble et al., 1998). With respect to an incidence of nerve injuries of 13.9/100,000 inhabitants per year (Asplund et al., 2009) and the number of inhabitants in the EU (495,000,000 inhabitants in 2007), the number of peripheral nerve injuries requiring repair and reconstruction, excluding nerve injuries by amputations, may be 70,000 annually only in EU countries. Related to peripheral nerve injuries, the costs for society are substantial and consist of direct (costs for surgery, outpatient visits and rehabilitation) and indirect (lost production) costs. Individual median and ulnar nerve injuries in the forearm have total costs of EUR 51,000 and 31,000, respectively, where around 85% of the costs consist of loss of production (Rosberg et al., 2005), still excluding costs for adjusted quality of life ( Eriksson et al., 2011) . Thus, one may estimate that the annual costs only in the EU may be as high as EUR 2.2 billion, indicating that improved treatment strategies for peripheral nerve injuries may not only improve the situation for patients, but may also significantly reduce costs for society. [...](undefined