Listening to the Mattole: lessons in bioregionalism, cannabis, and capitalism from a Northern California community

In the United States, from the 1960s through the 1970s, nearly a million Americans left urban areas to establish themselves in rural environments; this exodus is now known as the back-to-the-land movement. Nestled in the mountains of Northern California, along a capricious river, and surrounded by natural beauty, the Mattole Valley became home to many of these back-to-the-land immigrants. Seasoned in the social and cultural movements of Berkeley and San Francisco during the 1960s, the “new settlers” transformed the social and environmental landscape of southern Humboldt County as they integrated into rural communities. The Mattole Valley offers a unique look at the ongoing negotiation between people and place by revealing the intersections between bioregional philosophy, cannabis agriculture, and modern capitalism. Using constructivist grounded theory, my research investigates the experiences of the new settlers and the forces that motivated and affected their lives. I complement this theoretical approach with a phenomenological lens to explore the lived experiences of the participants in this movement and to inform my epistemological foundation. This study incorporates a mixed-method approach by interweaving oral history, semi-structured interviews, participant observation, document analysis, and archival research. Through my research, I have found a strong presence of bioregional philosophy in the initial motivations for this settlement and in the persistence of the community. My results identify foundational elements of bioregionalism, as well as the implications of capitalism by way of cannabis agriculture. Based on the community efforts to bridge ideological differences and negotiate the tenets of bioregionalism and capitalism, I argue that the Mattole serves as a guide for communities around the globe. In the process of compiling the stories and lived experiences of the residents, I unfold a story that carries lessons from the back-to-the-land movement into the future

Tree morphisms and bisimulations

A category of (action labelled) trees is defined that can be used to model unfolding of labelled transition systems and to study behavioural relations over them. In this paper we study five different equivalences based on bisimulation for our model. One, that we called resource bisimulation, amounts essentially to three isomorphism. Another, its weak counterpart, permits abstracting from silent actions while preserving the tree structure. The other three are the well known strong, branching and weak bisimulation equivalence. For all bisimulations, but weak, canonical representatives are constructed and it is shown that they can be obtained via enriched functors over our categories of trees, with and without silent actions. Weak equivalence is more problematic; a canonical minimal representative for it cannot be denned by quotienting our trees. The common framework helps in understanding the relationships between the various equivalences and the results provide support to the claim that branching bisimulation is the natural generalization of strong bisimulation to systems with silent moves and that resource and weak resource have an interest of their own

Secondary school students’ perception of the online teaching experience during COVID-19: The impact on mental wellbeing and specific learning difficulties

Background Student engagement and concentration is critical for successful learning. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a dramatic increase in the use of online learning which may affect engagement and concentration, particularly for those students with specific learning difficulties. Aims Students would show lower scores on all the measures of student experience when judging these during online learning versus learning within the classroom. This negative impact of online learning on concentration, engagement, perceived learning, and self-worth compared to classroom education would be more significant for those with specific learning difficulties. The drop in student experience scores due to online learning would be associated with poorer mental well-being. Sample Four hundred seven pupils aged 11–18 years at a secondary education school in Wales. Methods A retrospective online survey comparing pupils’ normal classroom experience to learning online during the first national lockdown in the United Kingdom (March–July 2020). Results Pupils’ learning experiences (concentration, engagement, ability to learn, and self-worth from learning) were significantly lower for online learning compared to the classroom learning. These differences were more marked in students with specific learning difficulties. Perceived ability to learn and engage during classroom and online learning were also associated with mental well-being. Conclusions The move to online learning appears to have affected students’ ability to concentrate and engage in their schoolwork and appears to have reduced their ability to learn and get self-worth from their work. These decreases are associated with a decrease in mental well-being. The effects appear to be exacerbated in some students with specific learning difficulties

Application of a novel tool for diagnosing bile acid diarrhoea

Bile acid diarrhoea (BAD) is a common disease that requires expensive imaging to diagnose. We have tested the efficacy of a new method to identify BAD, based on the detection of differences in volatile organic compounds (VOC) in urine headspace of BAD vs. ulcerative colitis and healthy controls. A total of 110 patients were recruited; 23 with BAD, 42 with ulcerative colitis (UC) and 45 controls. Patients with BAD also received standard imaging (Se75HCAT) for confirmation. Urine samples were collected and the headspace analysed using an AlphaMOS Fox 4000 electronic nose in combination with an Owlstone Lonestar Field Asymmetric Ion Mobility Spectrometer (FAIMS). A subset was also tested by gas chromatography, mass spectrometry (GCMS). Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA) was used to explore both the electronic nose and FAIMS data. LDA showed statistical differences between the groups, with reclassification success rates (using an n-1 approach) at typically 83%. GCMS experiments confirmed these results and showed that patients with BAD had two chemical compounds, 2-propanol and acetamide, that were either not present or were in much reduced quantities in the ulcerative colitis and control samples. We believe that this work may lead to a new tool to diagnose BAD, which is cheaper, quicker and easier that current methods

Basic science research opportunities in thrombosis and hemostasis : Communication from the SSC of the ISTH

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We thank Drs. Hari Hara Sudhan Lakshmanan and Sven Olson for illustrative assistance and design.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Vilanterol and fluticasone furoate for chronic asthma in adults and children

Background Vilanterol (VI) is a long-acting beta2-agonist (LABA) that binds to the beta2-adrenoceptor on the airway smooth muscle, producing bronchodilation. LABA therapy, which is well established in adults as part of the British Thoracic Society (BTS) Guidelines for the Management of Asthma, leads to improvement in symptoms and lung function and reduction in exacerbations. At present, the commonly used LABAs licensed for use in asthma management (formoterol and salmeterol) require twice-daily administration, whereas VI is a once-daily therapy. Fluticasone furoate (FF) is an inhaled corticosteroid (ICS), and ICS therapy is recommended by the BTS asthma guidelines. ICSs, the mainstay of asthma treatment, lead to a reduction in both airway inflammation and airway hyper-responsiveness. Regular use leads to improvement in symptoms and lung function. ICSs are currently recommended as 'preventer' therapy for patients who use a 'reliever' medication (e.g. short-acting beta2 agonist (SABA), salbutamol) three or more times per week. Most of the commonly used ICS treatments are twice-daily medications, although two once-daily products are currently licensed (ciclesonide and mometasone). At the present time, only one once-daily ICS/LABA combination (FF/VI) is available, and several other combination inhalers are recommended for twice-daily administration

Patterns of item nonresponse behaviour to survey questionnaires are systematic and associated with genetic loci

Peer reviewe

Ryanodine receptor regulation by intramolecular interaction between cytoplasmic and transmembrane domains

Ryanodine receptors (RyR) function as Ca2+ channels that regulate Ca2+ release from intracellular stores to control a diverse array of cellular processes. The massive cytoplasmic domain of RyR is believed to be responsible for regulating channel function. We investigated interaction between the transmembrane Ca2+-releasing pore and a panel of cytoplasmic domains of the human cardiac RyR in living cells. Expression of eGFP-tagged RyR constructs encoding distinct transmembrane topological models profoundly altered intracellular Ca2+ handling and was refractory to modulation by ryanodine, FKBP12.6 and caffeine. The impact of coexpressing dsRed-tagged cytoplasmic domains of RyR2 on intracellular Ca2+ phenotype was assessed using confocal microscopy coupled with parallel determination of in situ protein: protein interaction using fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET). Dynamic interactions between RyR cytoplasmic and transmembrane domains were mediated by amino acids 3722-4610 (Interacting or "I"-domain) which critically modulated intracellular Ca2+ handling and restored RyR sensitivity to caffeine activation. These results provide compelling evidence that specific interaction between cytoplasmic and transmembrane domains is an important mechanism in the intrinsic modulation of RyR Ca2+ release channels

Highly conserved gene order and numerous novel repetitive elements in genomic regions linked to wing pattern variation in Heliconius butterflies

Background: With over 20 parapatric races differing in their warningly colored wing patterns, the butterfly Heliconius erato provides a fascinating example of an adaptive radiation. Together with matching races of its co-mimic Heliconius melpomene, H. erato also represents a textbook case of Müllerian mimicry, a phenomenon where common warning signals are shared amongst noxious organisms. It is of great interest to identify the specific genes that control the mimetic wing patterns of H. erato and H. melpomene. To this end we have undertaken comparative mapping and targeted genomic sequencing in both species. This paper reports on a comparative analysis of genomic sequences linked to color pattern mimicry genes in Heliconius. Results: Scoring AFLP polymorphisms in H. erato broods allowed us to survey loci at approximately 362 kb intervals across the genome. With this strategy we were able to identify markers tightly linked to two color pattern genes: D and Cr, which were then used to screen H. erato BAC libraries in order to identify clones for sequencing. Gene density across 600 kb of BAC sequences appeared relatively low, although the number of predicted open reading frames was typical for an insect. We focused analyses on the D- and Cr-linked H. erato BAC sequences and on the Yb-linked H. melpomene BAC sequence. A comparative analysis between homologous regions of H. erato (Cr-linked BAC) and H. melpomene (Yb-linked BAC) revealed high levels of sequence conservation and microsynteny between the two species. We found that repeated elements constitute 26% and 20% of BAC sequences from H. erato and H. melpomene respectively. The majority of these repetitive sequences appear to be novel, as they showed no significant similarity to any other available insect sequences. We also observed signs of fine scale conservation of gene order between Heliconius and the moth Bombyx mori, suggesting that lepidopteran genome architecture may be conserved over very long evolutionary time scales. Conclusion: Here we have demonstrated the tractability of progressing from a genetic linkage map to genomic sequence data in Heliconius butterflies. We have also shown that fine-scale gene order is highly conserved between distantly related Heliconius species, and also between Heliconius and B. mori. Together, these findings suggest that genome structure in macrolepidoptera might be very conserved, and show that mapping and positional cloning efforts in different lepidopteran species can be reciprocally informative

Ryanodine receptor regulation by intramolecular interaction between cytoplasmic and transmembrane domains

Ryanodine receptors (RyR) function as Ca2+ channels that regulate Ca2+ release from intracellular stores to control a diverse array of cellular processes. The massive cytoplasmic domain of RyR is believed to be responsible for regulating channel function. We investigated interaction between the transmembrane Ca2+-releasing pore and a panel of cytoplasmic domains of the human cardiac RyR in living cells. Expression of eGFP-tagged RyR constructs encoding distinct transmembrane topological models profoundly altered intracellular Ca2+ handling and was refractory to modulation by ryanodine, FKBP12.6 and caffeine. The impact of coexpressing dsRed-tagged cytoplasmic domains of RyR2 on intracellular Ca2+ phenotype was assessed using confocal microscopy coupled with parallel determination of in situ protein: protein interaction using fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET). Dynamic interactions between RyR cytoplasmic and transmembrane domains were mediated by amino acids 3722-4610 (Interacting or "I"-domain) which critically modulated intracellular Ca2+ handling and restored RyR sensitivity to caffeine activation. These results provide compelling evidence that specific interaction between cytoplasmic and transmembrane domains is an important mechanism in the intrinsic modulation of RyR Ca2+ release channels