Environmental and Natural Resources Law Symposium: Assessing the August 2023 Amendments to the Waters of the United States Rule in the Wake of Sackett v. EPA

In 1982, the Army Corps of Engineers adopted the EPA definition of “waters of the United States.” This brought an end to a smoldering interagency conflict over the definitions under the Clean Water Act. This relationship was formalized with a 1989 Memorandum of Agreement between the EPA and the Corps; the Corps has largely ceded definitional decision making to the EPA, which develops guidance and supporting materials, while the Corps is responsible for most case-specific jurisdictional determinations under Section 404 of the Clean Water Act. In 2023, the agencies embarked on their latest round of rulemaking. In January, the Biden EPA and Corps published their 2023 Waters of the United States Rule; in May, the Supreme Court decided Sackett, throwing this rule into doubt; in August, the agencies attempted to restore clarity to “waters of the United States” with Amendments to the 2023 Rule. My comments will examine these August Amendments

Visualizing Election Results with ArcGIS

In 2018, Porter County, Indiana held its municipal elections concurrent with the national midterm elections. Using ArcGIS, the election results for the fourway race for the Duneland School Board at-large seat are mapped. These results are compared to other area election results, voter characteristics, and previous election results to try to visualize the correlation between factors affecting the race, including candidate ideology, geographic base, area demographics, turnout, and national electoral trends. This project serves as a demonstration of how GIS software can improve the understanding of what influences voters and election outcomes

Weather Courtyard: Reflections on Interactive STEM Learning Spaces

In this article, the author discusses his experiences in service-oriented engineering developing an interactive weather station for DCES students. Day details this process and the lessons learned over the course of the project development, as well as the project’s influence on his aspirations for a career in civil and environmental engineering. To provide substantive takeaways from the project, he concludes by reviewing the benefits of interactive STEM learning spaces in the instructional environment and links them to the impacts of the weather station project on the community

Granulocyte-Colony Stimulating Factor Reprograms the Bone Marrow Microenvironment to Suppress B Lymphopoiesis

The production of hematopoietic cells in the bone marrow is tightly and dynamically regulated in response to environmental stimuli. In response to infection, the bone marrow increases granulopoiesis at the expense of lymphopoiesis. The mechanisms mediating this shift are poorly understood. We show that treatment with granulocyte-colony stimulating factor (G-CSF), which is often induced during infection, results in marked decline of B lymphocytes at multiple stages of bone marrow B cell development. Transgenic mouse models show that G-CSF acts in a non-cell intrinsic fashion through cells of the monocyte-macrophage lineage to suppress B lymphopoiesis by downregulating important B trophic factors including CXCL12, KIT ligand, FLT3 ligand, interleukin-6, interleukin-7, IGF-1, and BAFF, resulting in B cell mobilization and apoptosis. G-CSF reprograms CXCL12-abundant reticular (CAR) cells, bipotent adipogenic-osteogenic stromal cells that are a key component of the B cell niche, increasing osteogenic potential and downregulating the production of CXCL12, interleukin-7, and KIT ligand. G-CSF also decreases osteoblast number, disrupting an additional B niche population and source of key B cell developmental cytokines. These data show that G-CSF reprograms bone marrow stromal cells to alter the bone marrow microenvironment to actively suppress B lymphopoiesis. To further explore the role of stromal cell-derived CXCL12 in B lymphopoiesis, we examined mice in which Cxcl12 was conditionally deleted in different stromal cell populations. Deletion of Cxcl12 using Dmp1-Cre (targeting osteolineage cells) does not disrupt bone marrow B lymphopoiesis. Deletion of Cxcl12 using OC-Cre (targeting osteolineage cells and vascular smooth muscle cells) results in an isolated loss of mature nave B cells in the bone marrow due to a homing defect following peripheral maturation. Deletion of Cxcl12 using Osx-Cre (targeting CAR cells) results in an early loss of bone marrow B cells beginning with pre-pro-B cells. Deletion of Cxcl12 using Prx1-Cre (targeting mesenchymal progenitors) results in severe suppression of B lymphopoiesis, including a loss of CLP, the upstream progenitor of B, T, and NK cells. These data suggest that CXCL12 from different stromal cell populations in the bone marrow regulates distinct stages of B lymphopoiesis

The forest for the trees: the "umwelt", the holobiont, and metaphor in Richard Powers’ "The Overstory" and Shakespeare’s "Macbeth"

This work of ecocritical narrative scholarship weaves analysis of Richard Powers’ "The Overstory"—specifically its invocation of Shakespeare’s "Macbeth"—with a discussion of biosemiotics, metaphor, emergence, and the narrative of my own family’s pandemic-inspired move to a national park in the mountains outside of Madrid. The essay investigates the juncture between the human holobiont—the space in and around the human body that constitutes shared habitats for symbionts—, the holobiont of pine trees, and the human "umwelt". In other words, this piece focuses on the spaces in which bacteria, fungi, and the biological origins of semiosis and language converge. I seek to present a clearer perception of the natural world rooted in narratives of emergence that foreground connections—literary, natural, metaphorical, and material. The form of this paper—the latticework that emerges from the interweaving of literary analysis, biosemiotic and ecocritical theory, and personal narrative—is also part of its content. Through its focus on the intersection of narrative, biosemiotics and material ecocriticism, this work calls into question the very nature of literary metaphor and investigates how the material of literature literally ties us to our environment. Through an exploration of the phenomenological parallel between textual motion in literature, viral motion in nature, and the movement of people through natural and social environments, this document challenges the very idea of metaphor, proposing in its stead an insistence that story, consciousness, and organisms converge in the same material space creating patterns of resemblance that speak to the kinship of all biological systems.Este trabajo de narrativa ecocrítica y académica entrelaza el análisis de la obra "The Overstory" de Richard Powers—específicamente su invocación del "Macbeth" de Shakespeare—con una discusión sobre biosemiótica, metáfora, emergencia y la narrativa de la mudanza de mi propia familia, inspirada por la pandemia, a un parque nacional en las montañas de las afueras de Madrid. El ensayo investiga la coyuntura entre el holobionte humano—el espacio dentro y alrededor del cuerpo humano que constituye hábitats compartidos por simbiontes—, el holobionte de los pinos y el "umwelt" humano. En otras palabras, esta obra se centra en los espacios en los que convergen las bacterias, los hongos y los orígenes biológicos de la semiosis y el lenguaje. Trato de presentar una percepción más clara del mundo natural enraizada en las narrativas de la emergencia que ponen en primer plano las conexiones—literarias, naturales, metafóricas y materiales. La forma de este artículo—el entramado que surge del entrelazar el análisis literario, la teoría biosemiótica y ecocrítica y la narrativa personal—es también parte de su contenido. Al centrarse en la intersección de la narrativa, la biosemiótica y la ecocrítica material, este trabajo cuestiona la naturaleza misma de la metáfora literaria e investiga cómo el material de la literatura nos ata literalmente a nuestro entorno. A través de una exploración del paralelismo fenomenológico entre el movimiento textual en la literatura, el movimiento viral en la naturaleza y el movimiento de las personas a través de los entornos naturales y sociales, este documento desafía la idea misma de metáfora, proponiendo en su lugar una insistencia en que la historia, la conciencia y los organismos convergen en el mismo espacio material creando patrones de semejanza que hablan del parentesco de todos los sistemas biológicos

Using placebos in research involving terminal illnesses

Placebos are medical interventions that falsely lead patients to believe that they are receiving treatment and that their condition is being changed, when truly no specific treatment is being administered. Using placebos in research involving terminal illnesses has become debatable. While a placebo could potentially give way to new treatments, through testing alongside a specific drug in a clinical trial, the placebo itself may fail and the patient is not cured leading to possible fatality. It has been found that using placebos in research, like performing surgeries, can aid in medical or clinical research and could help our society financially by discouraging unnecessary operations. On the other hand, there are also risks involved, including the health risks that may result from the placebo-controlled trial, and most importantly the justification and ethics of using placebos on patients without their consent. While evaluating several studies involving placebo-induced treatments, we have discovered methods in which placebos can help society; although these helpful means can also raise issues regarding one’s ethics. Using placebos in treatments will not necessarily treat the illness itself, but they can be beneficial towards research in discovering new treatments for terminal illnesses

Selective inhibition of phosphodiesterases 4, 5 and 9 induces HSP20 phosphorylation and attenuates amyloid beta 1-42 mediated cytotoxicity

Phosphodiesterase (PDE) inhibitors are currently under evaluation as agents that may facilitate the improvement of cognitive impairment associated with Alzheimer's disease. Our aim was to determine whether inhibitors of PDEs 4,5 and 9 could alleviate the cytotoxic effects of amyloid beta 1–42 (Aβ1-42) via a mechanism involving the small heatshock protein HSP20. We show that inhibition of PDEs 4,5 and 9 but not 3 induces the phosphorylation of HSP20 which, in turn, increases the co-localisation between the chaperone and Aβ1-42 to significantly decrease the toxic effect of the peptide. We conclude that inhibition of PDE9 is most effective to combat Aβ1-42 cytotoxicity in our cell model

Still Too Fat to Fight

The problem of junk food sold in schools is not just a national health issue. It is a national security issue.Over the past 40 years, obesity rates have more than tripled for children and teens. About 1 in 4 young American adults is now too overweight to join the military. Being overweight or obese is the number one medical reason why young adults cannot enlist. When weight problems are combined with poor education, criminal backgrounds, and other disqualifiers, an estimated 75 percent of young Americans could not serve in the military if they wanted to