Toxicant Exposure During Pregnancy Increases Protective Proteins in the Dam and a Sexually Dimorphic Response in the Fetus

Endocrine disrupting compounds (EDCs) are ubiquitous environmental pollutants that alter endocrine system function. EDCs induce birth defects and a myriad of other negative health outcomes. Although the mechanism of toxicity of many EDCs have been studied in detail, little work has focused on understanding the mechanisms through which pregnant dams and fetuses protect themselves from EDCs or if those protective mechanisms are sexually dimorphic in fetuses. In this study, we examined proteomic alterations in the livers of mouse dams and their male and female fetuses induced by vinclozolin, a model antiandrogenic EDC. Dam livers upregulated nine phase I and phase II detoxification pathways and pathway analysis revealed that more pathways are significantly enriched in dam livers than in fetal livers. Phase I and II detoxification proteins are also involved in steroid and steroid hormone biosynthesis and vinclozolin likely alters steroid levels in both the dam and the fetus. The response of the fetal liver proteome to vinclozolin exposure is sexually dimorphic. Female fetal livers upregulated proteins in xenobiotic metabolism pathways, whereas male fetal livers upregulated proteins in oxidative phosphorylation pathways. These results suggest that female fetuses increase protective mechanisms, whereas male fetuses increase ATP production and upregulate several disease pathways that are indicative of oxidative damage. Females fetuses upregulate proteins and protective pathways that were more similar to the dams whereas males did not. If this sexually dimorphic pattern is typical, then males might generally be more sensitive to EDCs

Grant Application: Homeless Needs Assessment Project

IPEC Mini-grant application for funding of UNE student project Homeless Needs Assessment. The Homeless Needs Assessment Project was designed to assess the greatest needs for people experiencing homelessness in Portland, Maine. UNE Students from several healthcare professions partnered together to provide a holistic approach to the community needs with hopes of developing and implementing intervention strategies. Goal was to conduct surveys of at least 100 homeless individuals.https://dune.une.edu/minigrant_homeless/1000/thumbnail.jp

Grant Application: Homeless Needs Assessment Project

IPEC Mini-grant application for funding of UNE student project Homeless Needs Assessment. The Homeless Needs Assessment Project was designed to assess the greatest needs for people experiencing homelessness in Portland, Maine. UNE Students from several healthcare professions partnered together to provide a holistic approach to the community needs with hopes of developing and implementing intervention strategies. Goal was to conduct surveys of at least 100 homeless individuals.https://dune.une.edu/minigrant_homeless/1000/thumbnail.jp

Giving The Homeless Population A Chance To Become Healthier: An Initial Needs Assessment Of The Homeless Population Of Portland, Maine

Research poster stemming from IPEC mini-grant student project Homeless Needs Assessment. The project was designed to assess the greatest needs for people experiencing homelessness in Portland, Maine. UNE Students from several healthcare professions partnered together to provide a holistic approach to the community needs with hopes of developing and implementing intervention strategies. Goal was to conduct surveys of at least 100 homeless individuals.https://dune.une.edu/minigrant_homeless/1001/thumbnail.jp

The Substrate-Bound Crystal Structure of a Baeyer–Villiger Monooxygenase Exhibits a Criegee-like Conformation

The Baeyer\u2013Villiger monooxygenases (BVMOs) are a family of bacterial flavoproteins that catalyze the synthetically useful Baeyer\u2013Villiger oxidation reaction. This involves the conversion of ketones into esters or cyclic ketones into lactones by introducing an oxygen atom adjacent to the carbonyl group. The BVMOs offer exquisite regio- and enantiospecificity while acting on a wide range of substrates. They use only NADPH and oxygen as cosubstrates, and produce only NADP+ and water as byproducts, making them environmentally attractive for industrial purposes. Here, we report the first crystal structure of a BVMO, cyclohexanone monooxygenase (CHMO) from Rhodococcus sp. HI-31 in complex with its substrate, cyclohexanone, as well as NADP+ and FAD, to 2.4 \uc5 resolution. This structure shows a drastic rotation of the NADP+ cofactor in comparison to previously reported NADP+-bound structures, as the nicotinamide moiety is no longer positioned above the flavin ring. Instead, the substrate, cyclohexanone, is found at this location, in an appropriate position for the formation of the Criegee intermediate. The rotation of NADP+ permits the substrate to gain access to the reactive flavin peroxyanion intermediate while preventing it from diffusing out of the active site. The structure thus reveals the conformation of the enzyme during the key catalytic step. CHMO is proposed to undergo a series of conformational changes to gradually move the substrate from the solvent, via binding in a solvent excluded pocket that dictates the enzyme\u2019s chemospecificity, to a location above the flavin\u2013peroxide adduct where catalysis occurs.Peer reviewed: YesNRC publication: Ye

City of Hitchcock Comprehensive Plan 2020-2040

Hitchcock is a small town located in Galveston County (Figure 1.1), nestled up on the Texas Gulf Coast. It lies about 40 miles south-east of Houston. The boundaries of the city encloses an area of land of 60.46 sq. miles, an area of water of 31.64 sq. miles at an elevation just 16 feet above sea level. Hitchcock has more undeveloped land (~90% of total area) than the county combined. Its strategic location gives it a driving force of opportunities in the Houston-Galveston Region.The guiding principles for this planning process were Hitchcock’s vision statement and its corresponding goals, which were crafted by the task force. The goals focus on factors of growth and development including public participation, development considerations, transportation, community facilities, economic development, parks, and housing and social vulnerabilityTexas Target Communitie

Contextualizing Narrative Identity

Personality has been assessed in relation to situational changes primarily using a trait approach; this has offered great insight into the contextualized factors regarding these aspects of personality. Little work, however, has explored personality utilizing narrative identity in relation to contextualized changes. Therefore; the present dissertation, in three studies, explored the impact and relations between situations and personality byway of narrative identity. In Study 1 I investigated the impact of assessment context on autobiographical narratives across four experimental conditions. I found that the expression of individuals’ narrative identity is impacted by the way in which their narrative is elicited within a research setting. In Study 2 I explored the narrative differences between Adult Children of Alcoholics (ACOAs) and Adult Children of non-Alcoholics (non-ACOAs). All participants shared three narratives regarding anything from their lives and three narratives specifically including parents. Results indicated that ACOAs tended to depict less control in their narratives compared to non-ACOAs. They also tended to have less positivity when discussing narratives which included parents than non-ACOAs. In Study 3 I considered the social context of narratives by investigating the similarity between participant and informant reported narratives; this similarity was referred to as Narrative Interpersonal Congruency (NIC). I also assessed the relations between NIC and participants’ well-being variables and relationship closeness among participants and informants. I found that the NIC rating between participants and informants was relatively high, however, NIC was only trending in significance to well-being and no associations were found between NIC and relationship closeness. Each of these studies depicts the highly contextualized nature of narrative identity

Patterns of diuretic use in the intensive care unit.

PurposeTo inform future outcomes research on diuretics, we sought to describe modern patterns of diuretic use in the intensive care unit (ICU), including diuretic type, combination, and dosing. We also investigated two possible quality improvement targets: furosemide dosing in renal impairment and inclusion of an initial bolus with continuous furosemide infusions.Materials and methodsIn this descriptive study, we retrospectively studied 46,037 adult ICU admissions from a publicly available database of patients in an urban, academic medical center.ResultsDiuretics were employed in nearly half (49%, 22,569/46,037) of ICU admissions. Mechanical ventilation, a history of heart failure, and admission to the post-cardiac surgery unit were associated with a higher frequency of diuretic use. Combination use of different diuretic classes was uncommon. Patients with severely impaired kidney function were less likely to receive diuretics. Furosemide was by far the most common diuretic given and the initial intravenous dose was only 20 mg in more than half of ICU admissions. Among patients treated with a continuous infusion, 30% did not receive a bolus on the day of infusion initiation.ConclusionsPatterns of diuretic use varied by patient-specific factors and by ICU type. Diuretic dosing strategies may be suboptimal