Sleep deprivation, sleep fragmentation, and social jet lag increase temperature preference in Drosophila

Despite the fact that sleep deprivation substantially affects the way animals regulate their body temperature, the specific mechanisms behind this phenomenon are not well understood. In both mammals and flies, neural circuits regulating sleep and thermoregulation overlap, suggesting an interdependence that may be relevant for sleep function. To investigate this relationship further, we exposed flies to 12 h of sleep deprivation, or 48 h of sleep fragmentation and evaluated temperature preference in a thermal gradient. Flies exposed to 12 h of sleep deprivation chose warmer temperatures after sleep deprivation. Importantly, sleep fragmentation, which prevents flies from entering deeper stages of sleep, but does not activate sleep homeostatic mechanisms nor induce impairments in short-term memory also resulted in flies choosing warmer temperatures. To identify the underlying neuronal circuits, we used RNAi to knock down the receptor fo

p5RHH nanoparticle-mediated delivery of AXL siRNA inhibits metastasis of ovarian and uterine cancer cells in mouse xenografts

Abstract Ovarian and uterine serous cancers are extremely lethal diseases that often present at an advanced stage. The late-stage diagnosis of these patients results in the metastasis of their cancers throughout the peritoneal cavity leading to death. Improving survival for these patients will require identifying therapeutic targets, strategies to target them, and means to deliver therapies to the tumors. One therapeutic target is the protein AXL, which has been shown to be involved in metastasis in both ovarian and uterine cancer. An effective way to target AXL is to silence its expression with small interfering RNA (siRNA). We investigate the ability of the novel siRNA delivery platform, p5RHH, to deliver anti-AXL siRNA (siAXL) to tumor cells both in vitro and in vivo as well as examine the phenotypic effects of this siRNA interference. First, we present in vitro assays showing p5RHH-siAXL treatment reduces invasion and migration ability of ovarian and uterine cancer cells. Second, we show p5RHH nanoparticles target to tumor cells in vivo. Finally, we demonstrate p5RHH-siAXL treatment reduces metastasis in a uterine cancer mouse xenograft model, without causing an obvious toxicity. Collectively, these findings suggest that this novel therapy shows promise in the treatment of ovarian and uterine cancer patients

Life-course theory and romance

Idealistic heteronormative notions of love, romance, and relationships dominate movie narratives. Boy meets girl. Boy and girl fall in love. Boy and girl live happily ever after. While this may appear harmless, these films have the potential to deliver powerful rhetoric messages that lead viewers to adopt unhealthy and unrealistic ideas of love and romance. Films depicting love between a sweet, naïve, and innocent heroine and the mysterious, deviant bad boy have been labelled particularly harmful. These movies follow a reverse Cinderella narrative in which the quintessential, criminally inclined bad boy transforms into a law-abiding citizen after he falls in love with the heroine. Since hetereo-romantic love is the principal storyline in many of these movies, it is often cited as the reason for the fate bad boy's transformation. While these movies may cultivate and reinforce toxic ideas about love and relationships, this may not be due to a film's misrepresentation, but rather a lack of consideration regarding life-course criminology and desistance

A rapid genetic assay for the identification of the most common Pocillopora damicornis genetic lineages on the Great Barrier Reef

Pocillopora damicornis (Linnaeus, 1758; Scleractinia, Pocilloporidae) has recently been found to comprise at least five distinct genetic lineages in Eastern Australia, some of which likely represent cryptic species. Due to similar and plastic gross morphology of these lineages, field identification is often difficult. Here we present a quick, cost effective genetic assay as well as three novel microsatellite markers that distinguish the two most common lineages found on the Great Barrier Reef. The assay is based on PCR amplification of two regions within the mitochondrial putative control region, which show consistent and easily identifiable fragment size differences for the two genetic lineages after Alu1 restriction enzyme digestion of the amplicons