Neuroanatomy Resources

This column will highlight several freely available online resources in neuroanatomy.The featured websites use images,video, animation, and more to create interactive aids for teaching and learning. Because neuroanatomy is a challenging component of all programs of study in medicine and in many allied fields,these resources will be useful for supplementation and self-study in a variety of settings

The FEV Frontend: A Terrain and Water Simulation Client

The FEV (Flood Emergency Visualizer) Frontend is a Java and OpenGL-based 3D vi- sualizer of flood simulation results in real-time. Simulations can be recomputed based on user-defined terrain edits made directly on the rendering surface. The frontend is the client software of the FEV system that includes a backend for solving water flow equations using CUDA. To render large datasets, level-of-detail and other optimizations are needed to render terrain and water surfaces with interactive frame rates

The Siege of Washington: The Untold Story of the Twelve Days That Shook the Union

Fresh Introspective into the First Days of the War John and Charles Lockwood present a meticulous treatment of the precarious fate of the nation’s capital during the critical twelve days in April of 1861 following the firing at Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor and the arrival of Norther...

Library Marketing on a Small Liberal Arts Campus: Assessing Communication Preferences

As part of a newly created library marketing plan, librarians at the College of Wooster undertook a study of the communication preferences of students, faculty, and staff in early 2015. The results of the survey helped to develop a comprehensive picture of what library resources and services these constituencies are interested in learning about, as well as when, where, and how they prefer to learn about them. This article describes the development, distribution, results, and analysis of the survey, and highlights the importance of campus-specific library marketing practices

Expression of interleukin 2 receptors on activated human B cells.

Using anti-Tac, a monoclonal anti-interleukin 2 (IL-2) receptor antibody, we have explored the possibility that certain activated B cells display receptors for IL-2. Resting normal B cells and unselected B cell lines established from normal individuals were Tac antigen negative. In contrast, the cell surface Tac antigen expression was demonstrable on 6 of 10 B cell lines from patients with Burkitt's lymphoma, 5 of 6 B cell lines derived from patients with HTLV-I-associated adult T cell leukemia (including all four that had integrated HTLV-I into their genome), and on certain normal B cells activated with pokeweed mitogen. Furthermore, cloned Epstein-Barr virus-transformed B cell lines derived from Tac-positive normal B cells continued to express the Tac antigen in long-term cultures and manifested high affinity IL-2 receptors identified in binding studies with purified radiolabeled IL-2. The line 5B4 developed in the present study could be induced with purified JURKAT-derived or recombinant IL-2 to express a larger number of IL-2 receptors. Furthermore, the addition of IL-2 to the 5B4 B cell line augmented IgM synthesis, which could be blocked by the addition of anti-Tac. The size of the IL-2 receptors expressed on the cloned normal B cell lines was similar (53,000-57,000 daltons) to that of receptors on phytohemagglutinin-stimulated T cell lymphoblasts. Thus, certain malignant and activated normal B cells display the Tac antigen and manifest high affinity receptors for IL-2. These data suggest that IL-2 may play a role in the differentiation of activated B cells into immunoglobulin-synthesizing and -secreting cells

Tolerance of thymocytes to allogeneic i region determinants encountered prethymically. Evidence for expression of anti-Ia receptors by T cell precursors before their entry into the thymus

The present study has assessed whether precursor T cells express receptors specific for the recognition of allogeneic I region-encoded determinants before their entry into the thymus. Because the ability of thymocytes to proliferate in response to allogeneic stimulator cells was shown to primarily result from the recognition of allogeneic I region determinants, thymocytes must already express anti-Ia receptors. In contrast, the expression of anti- Ia receptors by functionally immature thymocyte precursors could not be directly assessed by mixed lymphocyte reaction reactivity. However, expression of anti-Ia receptors by thymocyte precursors could be assessed by their ability to be specifically tolerized by the allogeneic Ia determinants that they encountered during their differentiation. To determine whether T cell precursors could specifically recognize and be tolerized to allogeneic Ia determinants expressed prethymically, thymus- engrafted radiation bone marrow chimeras were constructed [A {arrow} A x B (Tx + A Thy)] such that strain A T cells would be differentiating within a syngeneic strain A thymus but would have been previously exposed to the allogeneic strain B Ia determinants of the irradiated A x B host. The strain A thymocytes from these experimental animals were indeed tolerant to the extrathymic allogeneic strain B Ia determinants expressed by the irradiated host. Such tolerance was not mediated by detectable suppression and was not explained by the presence intrathymically of extrathymic allogeneic Ia determinants. Thus, these results suggest that T cell precursors can be specifically tolerized entry into the thymus. In addition, the failure to detect the generation of thymocytes with specificity for the allogeneic Ia determinants of the irradiated host, which were not deleted prethymically, argues that novel anti-allo Ia receptor specificities are not generated intrathymically