Endogenous IL-33 and Its Autoamplification of IL-33/ST2 Pathway Play an Important Role in Asthma.

IL-33 and its receptor ST2 are contributing factors to airway inflammation and asthma exacerbation. The IL-33/ST2 signaling pathway is involved in both the onset and the acute exacerbations of asthma. In this study, we address the role of endogenous IL-33 and its autoamplification of the IL-33/ST2 pathway in Ag-dependent and Ag-independent asthma-like models. Wild-type, IL-33 knockout, ST2 knockout mice were either intratracheally administrated with 500 ng of rIL-33 per day for four consecutive days or were sensitized and challenged with OVA over 21 d. In wild-type mice, IL-33 or OVA induced similar airway hyperresponsiveness and eosinophilic airway inflammation. IL-33 induced its own mRNA and ST2L mRNA expression in the lung. IL-33 autoamplified itself and ST2 protein expression in airway epithelial cells. OVA also induced IL-33 and ST2 protein expression. In IL-33 knockout mice, the IL-33- and OVA-induced airway hyperresponsiveness and eosinophilic airway inflammation were both significantly attenuated, whereas IL-33-induced ST2L mRNA expression was preserved, although no autoamplification of IL-33/ST2 pathway was observed. In ST2 knockout mice, IL-33 and OVA induced airway hyperresponsiveness and eosinophilic airway inflammation were both completely diminished, and no IL-33/ST2 autoamplification was observed. These results suggest that endogenous IL-33 and its autoamplification of IL-33/ST2 pathway play an important role in the induction of asthma-like phenotype. Thus an intact IL-33/ST2 pathway is necessary for both Ag-dependent and Ag-independent asthma-like mouse models

Panel: IS 2010 – Major Changes in The Information Systems Curriculum

IS 2010- Curriculum Guidelines for Undergraduate Degree Programs in Information Systems has been compiled under the auspices of the Association for Computing Machinery and the Association for Information Systems. As stated in its executive summary, “This curriculum revision represents an effort to re-evaluate the core principles of the discipline through a very careful specification of the degree learning outcomes.” Indeed, the curriculum has outlined a substantial redirection of the information systems degree. It focuses much more heavily on improving organizational processes and viewing information systems in an enterprise interpretation. Technical knowledge and skills are still present but receive far less emphasis. Other topics, such as enterprise architecture, are introduced for which no current text is available. Implementing the 2010 core course curriculum could well change the learning objectives of a school’s information systems degree. The panelists will briefly describe the 2010 curriculum and compare it to the 2002 curriculum. Core classes will be evaluated using Bloom’s taxonomy for levels of knowledge. The 2010 curriculum will be evaluated for how it supports the IS major, specializations within the major, and an IS minor. The second half of the panel will be devoted to questions and answers between the panelists and the audience

Development of an ASIC for CCD readout at the vertex detectors of the intrenational linear collider

The Linear Collider Flavour Identification Collaboration is developing sensors and readout electronics suitable for the International Linear Collider vertex detector. In order to achieve high data rates the proposed detector utilises column parallel CCDs, each read out by a custom designed ASIC. The prototype chip (CPR2) has 250 channels of electronics, each with a preamplifier, 5-bit flash ADC, data sparsification logic for identification of significant data clusters, and local memory for storage of data awaiting readout. CPR2 also has hierarchical 2-level data multiplexing and intermediate data memory, enabling readout of the sparsified data via the 5-bit data output bus

Editorial: Ecology and behaviour of free-ranging animals studied by advanced data-logging and tracking techniques

© The Author(s), 2020. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Wassmer, T., Jensen, F. H., Fahlman, A., & Murray, D. L. Editorial: Ecology and behaviour of free-ranging animals studied by advanced data-logging and tracking techniques. Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, 8, (2020): 113, doi:10.3389/fevo.2020.00113.Many details of the behavior, life history and eco-physiology of animals, even among intensively-studied species, remain unknown. Direct observation is a laborious process only amenable for accessible and non-cryptic species, whereas traditional radio telemetry does not directly provide information on the diversity and complexity of animal physiology and behavior. Further, both methods are laborious and/or expensive, and may lead to biased data when physiology and/or behaviors are altered by marking or tracking (Boyer-Ontl and Pruetz, 2014; Nowak et al., 2014; Welch et al., 2018; see also Le Grand et al.). Ultimately, these methods provide only a fragmentary overview of animal behavior patterns during periods when individuals can be readily detected and surveyed while leaving activities during other times obscured. However, the ongoing miniaturization, sensor development, and increased affordability of data logging and advanced telemetric devices offers the potential for continuous and intensive data collection, thereby potentially allowing researchers to more rigorously investigate both physiology and behavior of animals that are difficult to study using traditional observational methods. Owing to these new technologies, we are at the cusp of a truly revolutionary opportunity to address important and longstanding knowledge gaps in animal eco-physiology. To that end, the special section entitled Ecology and Behaviour of Free-Ranging Animals Studied by Advanced Data-Logging and Tracking Techniques includes 22 papers that report on and quantify otherwise hidden aspects of the biology of a variety of mammals, birds, and even invertebrates, across diverse environments including land, water, and air. The highlighted studies focus on fields ranging from basic animal behavior and ecology to eco-physiology; several papers adopt an integrative approach, providing a rather comprehensive understanding of individual time budgets and their implications. Ultimately and collectively, these contributions serve as testament to the drastic improvement in the level of ecological inference that can be derived from research studies involving the use of data-logging and tracking devices that are currently available

Non-market Valuation Biases Due to Aboriginal Cultural Characteristics in Northern Saskatchewan: The Values Structures Component

Current non-market valuation techniques have been developed based on assumptions about values held within the Eurocentred culture. Contentions between cultures over natural resources are hypothesized to occur because of differences in held values resulting in different values being assigned to the resources in question. This study measured the held values of an Aboriginal band in Northern Saskatchewan as the first dimension of a non-market valuation study of natural resources. These held value structures are presented noting differences by age and gender and in comparison with the local Non-Aboriginal community and another Aboriginal group in northern Alberta.Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

ANALYSIS OF THE AERIAL AND LANDING PHASES OF THE GRAND JETE

The purpose of this study was to quantify the ground reaction forces, moments of forces and moment powers during the landing from the ballet jump called the grand jete. In addition, the flight phase was examined to determine whether the illusion of linear motion occurred. Laws (2002) has stated that it is possible for dancers to give the illusion of "floating" or traveling linearly rather than parabolically during the flight phase of a grand jete by raising the arms and/or the legs at an appropriate speed

A Bayesian approach to inferring chemical signal timing and amplitude in a temporal logic gate using the cell population distributional response

Stochastic gene expression poses an important challenge for engineering robust behaviors in a heterogeneous cell population. Cells address this challenge by operating on distributions of cellular responses generated by noisy processes. Similarly, a previously published temporal logic gate considers the distribution of responses across a cell population under chemical inducer pulsing events. The design uses a system of two integrases to engineer an E. coli strain with four DNA states that records the temporal order of two chemical signal events. The heterogeneous cell population response was used to infer the timing and duration of the two chemical signals for a small set of events. Here we use the temporal logic gate system to address the problem of extracting information about chemical signal events. We use the heterogeneous cell population response to infer whether any event has occurred or not and also to infer its properties such as timing and amplitude. Bayesian inference provides a natural framework to answer our questions about chemical signal occurrence, timing, and amplitude. We develop a probabilistic model that incorporates uncertainty in the how well our model captures the cell population and in how well a sample of measured cells represents the entire population. Using our probabilistic model and cell population measurements taken every five minutes on generated data, we ask how likely it was to observe the data for parameter values that describe square-shaped inducer pulses. We compare the likelihood functions associated with the probabilistic models for the event with the chemical signal pulses turned on versus turned off. Hence, we can determine whether an event of chemical induction of integrase expression has occurred or not. Using Markov Chain Monte Carlo, we sample the posterior distribution of chemical pulse parameters to identify likely pulses that produce the data measurements. We implement this method and obtain accurate results for detecting chemical inducer pulse timing, length, and amplitude. We can detect and identify chemical inducer pulses as short as half an hour, as well as all pulse amplitudes that fall under biologically relevant conditions

A toolbox of nanobodies developed and validated for use as intrabodies and nanoscale immunolabels in mammalian brain neurons.

Nanobodies (nAbs) are small, minimal antibodies that have distinct attributes that make them uniquely suited for certain biomedical research, diagnostic and therapeutic applications. Prominent uses include as intracellular antibodies or intrabodies to bind and deliver cargo to specific proteins and/or subcellular sites within cells, and as nanoscale immunolabels for enhanced tissue penetration and improved spatial imaging resolution. Here, we report the generation and validation of nAbs against a set of proteins prominently expressed at specific subcellular sites in mammalian brain neurons. We describe a novel hierarchical validation pipeline to systematically evaluate nAbs isolated by phage display for effective and specific use as intrabodies and immunolabels in mammalian cells including brain neurons. These nAbs form part of a robust toolbox for targeting proteins with distinct and highly spatially-restricted subcellular localization in mammalian brain neurons, allowing for visualization and/or modulation of structure and function at those sites