Substance Use as a Second Class Disability: A Survey of the ADA\u27s Disarmament of Individuals in Recovery

The Americans with Disabilities Act and Fair Housing Act are landmark statutes that afford essential protections to individuals with disabilities in the foundational areas of everyday life. Despite their recognition of substance use disorders as disabilities, these statutes deny protection to individuals who are either in active use or in the early stages of their recovery. This Article explores the dangers posed by the “current use exception” and surveys the case law to determine the extent of the harms done to individuals with disabilities who seek to vindicate the rights purportedly guaranteed to them by the Americans with Disabilities Act and Fair Housing Act. The sum total of these cases paints a grim picture of the present legal conception of substance use disorders not as diseases, but as moral failings. Further, it counsels in favor of changing the laws to more equitably address the realities of substance use disorders and recovery

Spatial and temporal patterns of Bald Eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) winter habitat use along the Upper Mississippi River corridor

From March 1999 through February 2006, satellite transmitters were placed on 13 wild-caught individuals of the Bald Eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) in southwestern Wisconsin. These individuals (6 males, 7 females, 11 adults, 2 immatures) were tracked along the Upper Mississippi River corridor during the winters of 1999 through 2006. The objectives of my study were to: 1) estimate winter home range size and to compare home range size between sexes, 2) characterize and quantify winter night roost habitat, and 3) identify spatial and temporal patterns of winter habitat use and behavior relative to temperature, wind speed, and ice-cover. Mean 95% fixed kernel estimate winter home range size was 6837 km2 (range 8 – 36 591) and was not significantly different between sexes. Upland habitat was used significantly more than floodplain habitat for winter night roosts for eight of the 13 individuals; whereas, floodplain was used in significantly greater abundance for two of the 13 individuals. Winter night roosts, sited in forest habitat, generally were located in areas dominated by cultivated crops; however, relative to the proportion of habitat availability within the home range of a particular individual, habitat types associated with the floodplain generally were used more frequently. Although these were the general trends, variation in winter night roost habitat use was evident among individuals and years. The results suggested proximity to water and isolation from human disturbance influenced winter night roost habitat selection. However, use of upland habitat suggested that other factors influence habitat selection. K-means cluster analysis identified three patterns of winter night roost habitat use: 1) use of areas dominated by cultivated crops with less deciduous forest (35.1% of locations), 2) use of deciduous forest with less cultivated crops (34.5% of locations), and 3) use of floodplain habitat (30.4% of locations). Likewise, K-means cluster analysis identified four behavioral patterns of winter night roost selection: 1) roost close to the river and to a lock and dam (67.5% of locations), 2) roost slightly south from a lock and dam but close to the river (23.5% of locations), 3) roost in an upland area relatively distant from the river, but no movement latitudinally (6.7% of locations), and 4) move south and roost in an upland area (2.3% of locations). The results of a discriminant function analysis using wind speed, temperature, and percent ice-cover as predictors of group membership detected no apparent patterns of winter night roost habitat use or behavioral patterns in response to wind speed, temperature, and ice-cover. Consequently, the high variability suggested that these factors alone or in combinations cannot account for the variation in macrohabitat use. Density-dependent competition for preferred food resources, dispersion because of other abiotic factors, or the level of habitat selection (e.g. microhabitat) might also be drivers of the variability in winter roosting behavior and habitat use. Further research into Bald Eagle winter night roosting behavior along the Upper Mississippi River corridor might help to elucidate possible patterns of habitat use that can guide future conservation efforts

Measuring the outcomes of medial meniscectomies with a femoral end medial collateral ligament release and reattachment in patients with a tight knee: a case series

Partial meniscectomies are the most commonly performed arthroscopic knee procedures, however, are complicated by the presence of a tear in the posterior medial compartment (PMC) in tandem with a “tight knee”. This inhibits adequate spacing for instrumentation access, increasing the chances of causing iatrogenic cartilage damage which can progress to early onset osteoarthritis. We present a unique method for increasing the joint space, in such cases, and avoiding cartilage damage, by performing a femoral end medial collateral ligament release and reattachment (MCLR). Patient outcomes were evaluated in two parts. The first part compared the fourteen patients who underwent a MCLR pre- and post-operatively via the Lysholm and Tegner score, VAS pain scale and knee flexion angle. Finally, the MCLR patients were compared via 1:1 propensity score-matching to patients who underwent a valgus maneuver only for a PMC tear. The patients receiving an MCLR showed a statistically significant improvement (p<0.001) within each of the pre- and post-operative measured variables. When compared with 1:1 propensity score matched and unmatched patients, no statistically significant difference was seen between the Lysholm, Tegner and Flexion angle while VAS pain scale did show a difference. For patients requiring a PMM with a “tight knee”, performing an MCLR provides a clinical and functional improvement in symptoms and showed no statistically significant difference when compared with valgus maneuver only patients. Therefore, it is an effective procedure for increasing the joint space in a patient with a tight knee that requires a partial medial meniscectomy (PMM)

Regulation of mating in the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae by the zinc cluster proteins Sut1 and Sut2

This article is made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund. Copyright @ The Authors. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.The zinc cluster proteins Sut1 and Sut2 play a role in sterol uptake and filamentous growth in the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. In this study, we show that they are also involved in mating. Cells that lack both SUT1 and SUT2 were defective in mating. The expression of the genes NCE102 and PRR2 was increased in the sut1 sut2 double deletion mutant suggesting that Sut1 and Sut2 both repress the expression of NCE102 and PRR2. Consistent with these data, overexpression of either SUT1 or SUT2 led to lower expression of NCE102 and PRR2. Furthermore, expression levels of NCE102, PRR2 and RHO5, another target gene of Sut1 and Sut2, decreased in response to pheromone. Prr2 has been identified as a mating inhibitor before. Here we show that overexpression of NCE102 and RHO5 also reduced mating. Our results suggest that Sut1 and Sut2 positively regulate mating by repressing the expression of the mating inhibitors NCE102, PRR2 and RHO5 in response to pheromone.Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaf

Apoptosis of Dedifferentiated Hepatoma Cells is Independent of NF-jB Activation in Response to LPS

Dedifferentiated hepatoma cells, in contrast to most other cell types including hepatoma cells, undergo apoptosis when treated with lipopolysaccharide (LPS) plus the protein synthesis inhibitor cycloheximide (CHx). We recently reported that the dedifferentiated hepatoma cells also exhibit a strong and prolonged NF-jB induction phenotype upon exposure to LPS, suggesting that NF-jB signaling may play a pro-survival role, as reported in several other cell systems. To test the role of NF-jB in preventing LPS-mediated apoptosis, we examined the dedifferentiated cell line M38. Results show that antioxidants strongly inhibited LPS + CHx-mediated cell death in the M38 cells, yet only modestly inhibited NF-jB induction. In addition, inhibition of NF-jB translocation by infection of the M38 cells with an adenoviral vector expressing an IjBa super-repressor did not result in LPS-mediated cell death. These results suggest that unlike TNFa induction, the cell survival pathway activated in response to LPS is independent of NF-jB translocation in the dedifferentiated cells. Addition of inhibitors of JNK, p38 and ERK pathways also failed to elicit LPS-mediated apoptosis similar to that observed when protein synthesis is prevented. Thus, cell survival pathways other than those involving NF-jB inducible gene expression or other well-known pathways appear to be involved in protecting the dedifferentiated hepatoma variant cells from LPS-mediated apoptosis. Importantly, this pro-apoptotic function of LPS appears to be a function of loss of hepatic gene expression, as the parental hepatoma cells resist LPSmediated apoptosis in the presence of protein synthesis inhibitors

Active Control for Object Perception and Exploration with a Robotic Hand

We present an investigation on active control for intelligent object exploration using touch with a robotic hand. First, uncertainty from the exploration is reduced by a probabilistic method based on the accumulation of evidence through the interaction with an object of interest. Second, an intrinsic motivation approach allows the robot hand to perform intelligent active control of movements to explore interesting locations of the object. Passive and active perception and exploration were implemented in simulated and real environments to compare their benefits in accuracy and reaction time. The validation of the proposed method were performed with an object recognition task, using a robotic platform composed by a three-fingered robotic hand and a robot table. The results demonstrate that our method permits the robotic hand to achieve high accuracy for object recognition with low impact on the reaction time required to perform the task. These benefits make our method suitable for perception and exploration in autonomous robotics

Conductive Self-Assembled Monolayers of Paramagnetic {CoIICo4III} and {Co4IICo2III} Coordination Clusters on Gold Surfaces

Two polynuclear cobalt(II,III) complexes, [Co5(N3)4(N-n-bda)4(bza·SMe)2] (1) and [Co6(N3)4(N-n-bda)2(bza·SMe)5(MeOH)4]Cl (2), where Hbza·SMe = 4-(methylthio)benzoic acid and N-n-H2bda = N-n-butyldiethanolamine, were synthesized and fully characterized by various techniques. Compound 1 exhibits an unusual, approximately C2-symmetric {CoII Co4II } core of two isosceles Co3 triangles with perpendicularly oriented planes, sharing a central, high-spin CoII ion residing in a distorted tetrahedral coordination environment. This central CoII ion is connected to four outer, octahedrally coordinated low-spin CoIII ions via oxo bridges. Compound 2 comprises a semi-circular {Co4IICo2III } motif of four non-interacting high-spin CoII and two low-spin CoIII centers in octahedral coordination environments. Self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) of 1 and 2 were physisorbed on template-stripped gold surfaces contacted by an eutectic gallium-indium (EGaIn) tip. The acquired current density-voltage (I-V) data revealed that the cobalt-based SAMs are more electrically robust than those of the previously reported dinuclear {CuIILnIII} complexes with Ln = Gd, Tb, Dy, or Y (Schmitz et al., 2018a). In addition, between 170 and 220°C, the neutral, mixed-valence compound 1 undergoes a redox modification, yielding a {Co5}-based coordination cluster (1-A) with five non-interacting, high-spin octahedral CoII centers as indicated by SQUID magnetometry analysis in combination with X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and infrared spectroscopy. Solvothermal treatment of 1 results in a high-nuclearity coordination cluster, [Co10(N3)2(N-n-bda)6(bza·SMe)6] (3), containing 10 virtually non-interacting high-spin CoII centers. © Copyright © 2019 Schmitz, Qiu, Glöß, van Leusen, Izarova, Nadeem, Griebel, Chiechi, Kögerler and Monakhov

The zinc cluster protein Sut1 contributes to filamentation in Saccharomyces cerevisiae

Copyright © 2013, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights ReservedSut1 is a transcriptional regulator of the Zn(II)(2)Cys(6) family in the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. The only function that has been attributed to Sut1 is sterol uptake under anaerobic conditions. Here, we show that Sut1 is also expressed in the presence of oxygen, and we identify a novel function for Sut1. SUT1 overexpression blocks filamentous growth, a response to nutrient limitation, in both haploid and diploid cells. This inhibition by Sut1 is independent of its function in sterol uptake. Sut1 downregulates the expression of GAT2, HAP4, MGA1, MSN4, NCE102, PRR2, RHO3, and RHO5. Several of these Sut1 targets (GAT2, HAP4, MGA1, RHO3, and RHO5) are essential for filamentation in haploids and/or diploids. Furthermore, the expression of the Sut1 target genes, with the exception of MGA1, is induced during filamentous growth. We also show that SUT1 expression is autoregulated and inhibited by Ste12, a key transcriptional regulator of filamentation. We propose that Sut1 partially represses the expression of GAT2, HAP4, MGA1, MSN4, NCE102, PRR2, RHO3, and RHO5 when nutrients are plentiful. Filamentation-inducing conditions relieve this repression by Sut1, and the increased expression of Sut1 targets triggers filamentous growth.The project was supported by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft grant HO 2098/

Quantum walk on distinguishable non-interacting many-particles and indistinguishable two-particle

We present an investigation of many-particle quantum walks in systems of non-interacting distinguishable particles. Along with a redistribution of the many-particle density profile we show that the collective evolution of the many-particle system resembles the single-particle quantum walk evolution when the number of steps is greater than the number of particles in the system. For non-uniform initial states we show that the quantum walks can be effectively used to separate the basis states of the particle in position space and grouping like state together. We also discuss a two-particle quantum walk on a two- dimensional lattice and demonstrate an evolution leading to the localization of both particles at the center of the lattice. Finally we discuss the outcome of a quantum walk of two indistinguishable particles interacting at some point during the evolution.Comment: 8 pages, 7 figures, To appear in special issue: "quantum walks" to be published in Quantum Information Processin