Urban West Revisited: Governing Cities in Uncertain Times

Urban West Revisited offers a colorful primer on challenges faced by elected officials in midsized western cities. Featuring ten bellwether cities—Boise, Eugene, Modesto, Pueblo, Reno, Salem, Salt Lake, Spokane, Tacoma, and Tempe—the exploration finds common problems and hard-fought solutions in difficult times.https://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/fac_books/1365/thumbnail.jp

Making the Connection: Using Mobile Devices and PollEverywhere for Experiential Learning for Adult Students

Technology integration has significantly influenced the way students access and retain knowledge gained in the classroom (Ahmed, 2016). This is particularly relevant in classrooms for adult learners who engage in continuing education. This paper used a descriptive case study (Yin, 2014) to share how an instructor utilized mobile learning with a web-based polling tool, PollEverywhere, to gamify experiential learning for adult students in various roles within a southeastern state’s court administration—prosecutors, defense lawyers, magistrates, and jail administrators—and improve students’ engagement in the course and connection to course material

155?Sex-related differences in muscle co-activation in individuals with knee osteoarthritis

Background: Sex-related differences in muscle function have been well established in healthy individuals. In individuals with knee osteoarthritis (KOA), impairments in muscle function such as muscle weakness and high muscle co-activation have also been demonstrated. Muscle dysfunction has been shown to be a strong contributor to poor physical function and low health-related quality of life in patients with KOA. The purpose of this study was, therefore, to analyse sex and osteoarthritis-related differences in muscle function, to establish to what extent both sex and disease status contribute to muscle dysfunction.Methods: Muscle co-activation was assessed in 77 symptomatic KOA participants (62.5±8.1yrs; 48/29 women/men) and 18 age-matched asymptomatic controls (62.5±10.4yrs; 9/9 women/men), using electromyography (EMG) during a series of walking, stair ascent and descent and sit-to-walk activities. EMG was recorded from 7 sites medial/lateral gastrocnemius, biceps femoris, semitendinosus, vastus lateralis/medialis and normalised to maximal voluntary contraction. Normalised EMG was used to calculate hamstrings-quadriceps and medial-lateral muscle co-activation as (antagonist/agonist) *(antagonist+agonist). The stance phase of walking was split into pre-stance (150ms prior to initial contact), loading (0-15% of stance), early-stance (15-40%), mid-stance (40-60%), late-stance (60-100%) and overall-stance (0-100%). Stairs negotiation was also split into transition (stance phase on the floor) and continuous (stance phase on the second step of the staircase). All participants provided written informed consent and the study was approved by Research Ethics committees (HLS12/86, 13/ws/0146). Independent samples T-tests were performed to assess the differences between KOA and controls. Linear regressions were performed to investigate the relationship between muscle function, sex and disease status, and Bonferroni corrected for multiple comparisons.Results: Individuals with KOA were weaker than controls (P < 0.007). Overall there were very few differences in muscle co-activation between KOA and controls. Women were weaker than men (P ⩽ 0.002) and had higher hamstrings-quadriceps and medial-lateral muscle co-activation across all activities of daily living. In multiple regression analyses sex and muscle weakness, but not age or disease status, predicted high muscle co-activation.Conclusion: High muscle co-activation was associated with female sex and muscle weakness regardless of disease status and age. It has previously been suggested that muscle co-activation acts as a compensatory mechanism for muscle weakness, accommodating for the diminished force generating capabilities to maintain a certain level of function and movement activation patterns. This suggests that muscle weakness may be the main contributing factor for high muscle co-activation which is thought to increase joint loads with detrimental effects on cartilage and joint integrity. This may explain high muscle co-activation in women with muscle weakness and increased risk of incidence and progression of KOA in women

An Evaluation of the Early Pharmacodynamic Response After Simultaneous Initiation of Warfarin and Amiodarone

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/97172/1/0091270009351885.pd

Decentralized Control for Optimizing Communication with Infeasible Regions

In this paper we present a decentralized gradient-based controller that optimizes communication between mobile aerial vehicles and stationary ground sensor vehicles in an environment with infeasible regions. The formulation of our problem as a MIQP is easily implementable, and we show that the addition of a scaling matrix can improve the range of attainable converged solutions by influencing trajectories to move around infeasible regions. We demonstrate the robustness of the controller in 3D simulation with agent failure, and in 10 trials of a multi-agent hardware experiment with quadrotors and ground sensors in an indoor environment. Lastly, we provide analytical guarantees that our controller strictly minimizes a nonconvex cost along agent trajectories, a desirable property for general multi-agent coordination tasks.United States. Army Research Office (Grant W911NF-08-2-0004

Kv2.1 channels play opposing roles in regulating membrane potential, Ca2+ channel function, and myogenic tone in arterial smooth muscle.

The accepted role of the protein Kv2.1 in arterial smooth muscle cells is to form K+ channels in the sarcolemma. Opening of Kv2.1 channels causes membrane hyperpolarization, which decreases the activity of L-type CaV1.2 channels, lowering intracellular Ca2+ ([Ca2+]i) and causing smooth muscle relaxation. A limitation of this model is that it is based exclusively on data from male arterial myocytes. Here, we used a combination of electrophysiology as well as imaging approaches to investigate the role of Kv2.1 channels in male and female arterial myocytes. We confirmed that Kv2.1 plays a canonical conductive role but found it also has a structural role in arterial myocytes to enhance clustering of CaV1.2 channels. Less than 1% of Kv2.1 channels are conductive and induce membrane hyperpolarization. Paradoxically, by enhancing the structural clustering and probability of CaV1.2-CaV1.2 interactions within these clusters, Kv2.1 increases Ca2+ influx. These functional impacts of Kv2.1 depend on its level of expression, which varies with sex. In female myocytes, where expression of Kv2.1 protein is higher than in male myocytes, Kv2.1 has conductive and structural roles. Female myocytes have larger CaV1.2 clusters, larger [Ca2+]i, and larger myogenic tone than male myocytes. In contrast, in male myocytes, Kv2.1 channels regulate membrane potential but not CaV1.2 channel clustering. We propose a model in which Kv2.1 function varies with sex: in males, Kv2.1 channels control membrane potential but, in female myocytes, Kv2.1 plays dual electrical and CaV1.2 clustering roles. This contributes to sex-specific regulation of excitability, [Ca2+]i, and myogenic tone in arterial myocytes

Early respiratory viral infections in infants with cystic fibrosis

This article is made available for unrestricted research re-use and secondary analysis in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for the duration of the World Health Organization (WHO) declaration of COVID-19 as a global pandemic.Background Viral infections contribute to morbidity in cystic fibrosis (CF), but the impact of respiratory viruses on the development of airway disease is poorly understood. Methods Infants with CF identified by newborn screening were enrolled prior to 4 months of age to participate in a prospective observational study at 4 centers. Clinical data were collected at clinic visits and weekly phone calls. Multiplex PCR assays were performed on nasopharyngeal swabs to detect respiratory viruses during routine visits and when symptomatic. Participants underwent bronchoscopy with bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) and a subset underwent pulmonary function testing. We present findings through 8.5 months of life. Results Seventy infants were enrolled, mean age 3.1 ± 0.8 months. Rhinovirus was the most prevalent virus (66%), followed by parainfluenza (19%), and coronavirus (16%). Participants had a median of 1.5 viral positive swabs (range 0–10). Past viral infection was associated with elevated neutrophil concentrations and bacterial isolates in BAL fluid, including recovery of classic CF bacterial pathogens. When antibiotics were prescribed for respiratory-related indications, viruses were identified in 52% of those instances. Conclusions Early viral infections were associated with greater neutrophilic inflammation and bacterial pathogens. Early viral infections appear to contribute to initiation of lower airway inflammation in infants with CF. Antibiotics were commonly prescribed in the setting of a viral infection. Future investigations examining longitudinal relationships between viral infections, airway microbiome, and antibiotic use will allow us to elucidate the interplay between these factors in young children with CF

Degradation and forgone removals increase the carbon impact of intact forest loss by 626%

Intact tropical forests, free from substantial anthropogenic influence, store and sequester large amounts of atmospheric carbon but are currently neglected in international climate policy. We show that between 2000 and 2013, direct clearance of intact tropical forest areas accounted for 3.2% of gross carbon emissions from all deforestation across the pantropics. However, full carbon accounting requires the consideration of forgone carbon sequestration, selective logging, edge effects, and defaunation. When these factors were considered, the net carbon impact resulting from intact tropical forest loss between 2000 and 2013 increased by a factor of 6 (626%), from 0.34 (0.37 to 0.21) to 2.12 (2.85 to 1.00) petagrams of carbon (equivalent to approximately 2 years of global land use change emissions). The climate mitigation value of conserving the 549 million ha of tropical forest that remains intact is therefore significant but will soon dwindle if their rate of loss continues to accelerate