Crossing the Line: Navigating a polluted transboundary watershed

Montana’s Lake Koocanusa sits at the end of a river system that drains Canada’s most productive coal country. Today, the waters of the massive lake contain a mineral called selenium, a poorly understood byproduct of mine waste. This summer, the U.S. federal government will be in a position to declare that the selenium in the lake puts Canada in violation of its international treaty with the U.S. The Montana government, however, is preparing to argue otherwise through its own water analysis. The disagreement has U.S. ecologists frustrated with the state’s position, saying they won’t practice science that is slave to a preordained policy outcome. A 2016 report from the British Columbia Auditor General called out provincial mine regulators for failing to comply with environmental regulations over the past decade, supporting scientists’ assertion that the watershed north of Koocanusa is severely in peril. The issue highlights the ways in which scientists and governments succeed or fail to find common ground in creating science-based policy, and raises the question of how to protect the health of a watershed that flows through two countries

The Influence Of Parent-Child Conflict And Stressful Experiences On The Health Of Youth With Asthma

Attaining a clear picture of everyday family interactions is essential for understanding how family stress and conflict adversely affects children\u27s health, especially in the context of chronic illness. Using a naturalistic observation sampling method called the Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR), we sought to investigate the effects of daily interpersonal conflicts and parental stress on pediatric asthma outcomes. We collected data from 81 children, aged 10 to 17 (M age = 12.88), and their primary caregiver as part of a larger study. Each child completed a pulmonary function test and self-report questionnaires of asthma symptoms. Asthma-related medical information was abstracted from their medical records. The Adult and Parent UCLA Life Stress Interview (LSI) assessed acute stress as the number of acutely stressful events in the past 6 months. Of these 81 participants, 45 children wore the EAR for 4 days. Trained research assistants coded the EAR files using the Everyday Child Home Observations (ECHO) Coding System for instances of interpersonal conflict (e.g., arguing, fighting, yelling) and asthma symptoms (e.g., coughing, wheezing). EAR-observed parent-child conflict (r = .36, p \u3c .05) and EAR-observed family environment conflict (r = .32, p \u3c .05) was positively associated with youth reported asthma symptoms. Further, EAR-observed wheezing coded was positively associated with EAR-observed family environment conflict (r = .34, p \u3c .05), conflict with fathers (r = .43, p \u3c .01), and general conflict in the youth\u27s life (r = .35, p \u3c .05). Additionally, we found positive associations between recently experienced stressful events in the lives of parents and multiple measures of asthma morbidity, including Emergency Department use for asthma related symptoms (r = 0.28, p \u3c 0.05), youth-BMI (r = 0.24, p \u3c 0.05), youth-reported asthma symptoms (r = 0.36, p = 0.02) and asthma severity (r = 0.27, p \u3c 0.05). We also found parental stress to negatively associated with pulmonary functioning (r = -0.29; p = 0.02) and with asthma clinic visits (r = -0.36; p \u3c 0.01). These findings show that greater conflict in everyday life within the family and broad measures of stress in parent\u27s lives are associated with multiple markers of asthma morbidity. This research has important implications for asthma interventions tailored to the individual and their family system

Alien Registration- Stadig, Susie T. (Saint Francis, Aroostook County)

https://digitalmaine.com/alien_docs/23430/thumbnail.jp

An evolutionary perspective on the kinome of malaria parasites

Malaria parasites belong to an ancient lineage that diverged very early from the main branch of eukaryotes. The approximately 90-member plasmodial kinome includes a majority of eukaryotic protein kinases that clearly cluster within the AGC, CMGC, TKL, CaMK and CK1 groups found in yeast, plants and mammals, testifying to the ancient ancestry of these families. However, several hundred millions years of independent evolution, and the specific pressures brought about by first a photosynthetic and then a parasitic lifestyle, led to the emergence of unique features in the plasmodial kinome. These include taxon-restricted kinase families, and unique peculiarities of individual enzymes even when they have homologues in other eukaryotes. Here, we merge essential aspects of all three malaria-related communications that were presented at the Evolution of Protein Phosphorylation meeting, and propose an integrated discussion of the specific features of the parasite's kinome and phosphoproteome