How to Choose a Good Trail Horse

Trail riding has long been a popular use for the recreational horse, providing outdoor enjoyment for riders of all abilities. Good trail horses come in all shapes, sizes, breeds, and ages making it hard to make a final choice on which horse will carry you safely through your upcoming outdoor adventures. This information is meant as a recommendation to a potential buyer and the buyer must keep in mind their riding and handling capabilities as well as what they’re expecting of the equine

Experience, but Not Age, is Associated With Volumetric Mushroom Body Expansion in Solitary Alkali Bees

In social insects, changes in behavior are often accompanied by structural changes in the brain. This neuroplasticity may come with experience (experience-dependent) or age (experience-expectant). Yet, the evolutionary relationship between neuroplasticity and sociality is unclear, because we know little about neuroplasticity in the solitary relatives of social species. We used confocal microscopy to measure brain changes in response to age and experience in a solitary halictid bee (Nomia melanderi). First, we compared the volume of individual brain regions among newly emerged females, laboratory females deprived of reproductive and foraging experience, and free-flying, nesting females. Experience, but not age, led to significant expansion of the mushroom bodies – higher-order processing centers associated with learning and memory. Next, we investigated how social experience influences neuroplasticity by comparing the brains of females kept in the laboratory either alone or paired with another female. Paired females had significantly larger olfactory regions of the mushroom bodies. Together, these experimental results indicate that experience-dependent neuroplasticity is common to both solitary and social taxa, whereas experience-expectant neuroplasticity may be an adaptation to life in a social colony. Further, neuroplasticity in response to social chemical signals may have facilitated the evolution of sociality

TRPV4 antagonists ameliorate ventriculomegaly in a rat model of hydrocephalus

Hydrocephalus is a serious condition that impacts patients of all ages. The standards of care are surgical options to divert, or inhibit production of, cerebrospinal fluid; to date, there are no effective pharmaceutical treatments, to our knowledge. The causes vary widely, but one commonality of this condition is aberrations in salt and fluid balance. We have used a genetic model of hydrocephalus to show that ventriculomegaly can be alleviated by inhibition of the transient receptor potential vanilloid 4, a channel that is activated by changes in osmotic balance, temperature, pressure and inflammatory mediators. The TRPV4 antagonists do not appear to have adverse effects on the overall health of the WT or hydrocephalic animals

The Preliminary Developmental Toxicity of Methylene Blue and Orange G to Grass Shrimp Embryos

This experiment was formed to determine the effects of Methylene Blue and Orange G on the eggs of Palaemontes pugio (Grass Shrimp). We extracted the eggs from already gravid female shrimps we acquired in the marshlands from Dauphin Island and submerged the eggs into varying levels of concentrations of Methylene Blue and Orange G. Three experiments were conducted where the eggs were separated into well plates (24 wells per plate) with each plate containing a concentration of dye. We observed the eggs hatch, the coloration of the hatchlings, and mortality rates within the span of a week per experiment. The hypothesis anticipated the higher concentrations of Orange G and Methylene Blue would be more or less toxic to the hatchlings. Our results showed that Methylene Blue was more toxic than Orange G in their respective mL concentrations. These results show the utility of using the Grass Shrimp embryos for assessing the toxicity of chemicals such as Methylene Blue and Orange G.https://digitalcommons.jsu.edu/ce_jsustudentsymp_2022/1030/thumbnail.jp

Adherence to reporting guidelines and trial registration in infectious disease journals: A preliminary study

Background: Study results published in academic medical journals inform and influence healthcare decision making. Sufficient reporting of studies is primarily charged to those performing the research. However, academic medical journals can promote more complete reporting of their published studies. Recommending or requiring the use of reporting guidelines and prospective trial registration may be methods to ensure published studies adhere to rigorous reporting standards.Objective: The main objective of this study is to evaluate the ‘instructions to authors’ pages of infectious disease journals to establish the rate of recommendation or implementation of reporting guidelines for common study designs used in the medical literature. In addition, we aim to assess the recommendation or enforcement of the registration of clinical trials and systematic reviews by these same journals.Methods: We conducted a systematic review to evaluate the top 100 infectious disease medical journals according to the Scopus CiteScore tool. Editorial staff members of each journal were contacted via email once per week for three successive weeks to determine accepted study types by their journal. A pilot-tested google form was used to extract journal data, including reporting guideline requirements, from ‘instruction to authors’ pages in a masked, triplicate fashion.Results: Results of the 100 infectious disease journals that were examined showed that 65 were published in Europe. The ICMJE was mentioned in 83 of these journals. Of the examined reporting guidelines, CONSORT was mentioned the most, with 52% of journals recommending this guideline. The only other reporting guidelines mentioned in over half of the journals were PRISMA (53%) and ARRIVE (62%). The MOOSE and QUOROM guidelines were the least mentioned as both were in less than 10% of the journals. Clinical trial registry statements were mentioned in over 70% of the journals, however only 62% required this.Conclusions: This study found that CONSORT, PRISMA, and STROBE were the most often reported guidelines amongst infectious disease journals. Many reporting guidelines were not mentioned by journals, such as MOOSE and QUORUM. The requirement of reporting guidelines by infectious disease journals would aid in standardizing reporting data and increasing both transparency and reproducibility of studies.Additionally, guidelines for authors were often difficult to find, with multiple links to follow at times. It may prove beneficial for journals to construct author instructions in ways in which prospective authors are able to know exactly what guidelines to use when attempting to publish their work

Inhibition of serum- and glucocorticoid-induced kinase 1 ameliorates hydrocephalus in preclinical models

Abstract Background Hydrocephalus is a pathological accumulation of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), leading to ventriculomegaly. Hydrocephalus may be primary or secondary to traumatic brain injury, infection, or intracranial hemorrhage. Regardless of cause, current treatment involves surgery to drain the excess CSF. Importantly, there are no long-term, effective pharmaceutical treatments and this represents a clinically unmet need. Many forms of hydrocephalus involve dysregulation in water and electrolyte homeostasis, making this an attractive, druggable target. Methods In vitro, a combination of electrophysiological and fluid flux assays was used to elucidate secretory transepithelial electrolyte and fluid flux in a human cell culture model of the choroid plexus epithelium and to determine the involvement of serum-, glucocorticoid-induced kinase 1 (SGK1). In vivo, MRI studies were performed in a genetic rat model of hydrocephalus to determine effects of inhibition of SGK1 with a novel inhibitor, SI113. Results In the cultured cell line, SI113 reduced secretory transepithelial electrolyte and fluid flux. In vivo, SI113 blocks the development of hydrocephalus with no effect on ventricular size of wild-type animals and no overt toxic effects. Mechanistically, the development of hydrocephalus in the rat model involves an increase in activated, phosphorylated SGK1 with no change in the total amount of SGK1. SI113 inhibits phosphorylation with no changes in total SGK1 levels in the choroid plexus epithelium. Conclusion These data provide a strong preclinical basis for the use of SGK1 inhibitors in the treatment of hydrocephalus

SCUBE1 Controls BMPR2-Relevant Pulmonary Endothelial Function: Implications for Diagnostic Marker Development in Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension.

Utilizing publicly available ribonucleic acid sequencing data, we identified SCUBE1 as a BMPR2-related gene differentially expressed between induced pluripotent stem cell-endothelial cells derived from pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) patients carrying pathogenic BMPR2 mutations and control patients without mutations. Endothelial SCUBE1 expression was decreased by known triggers of PAH, and its down-regulation recapitulated known BMPR2-associated endothelial pathophenotypes in vitro. Meanwhile, SCUBE1 concentrations were reduced in plasma obtained from PAH rodent models and patients with PAH, whereas plasma concentrations were tightly correlated with hemodynamic markers of disease severity. Taken together, these data implicate SCUBE1 as a novel contributor to PAH pathogenesis with potential therapeutic, diagnostic, and prognostic applications