A New Species of Flamella (Amoebozoa, Variosea, Gracilipodida) Isolated from a Freshwater Pool in Southern Mississippi, USA

We isolated and identified a freshwater amoebozoan species that belongs to the genus Flamella Schaeffer, 1926 by single cell isolation and light microscopy. Our specific strain was isolated from a water sample obtained on the cover of a swimming pool in Petal, Mississippi, USA collected during the winter of 2015. Morphologically, our isolate is a fan-shaped amoeba with a large, frontal hyaloplasm and distinctive granuloplasm. It is capable of encystment and trophozoites occasionally have two nuclei. The isolate (GFP151sc) is phylogenetically sister to but unique from the freshwater environmental flamellid clone from Borok, Yaroslavl region, Russia originally published in 2006. Here we describe and place this isolate into a new species, Flamella piscinae n. sp

Health service provision and the use of pressure-redistributing devices: mixed methods study of community dwelling individuals with pressure injuries

© 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. Background: Health care within the home setting is a vital and growing component of pressure injury (PI) prevention and management. Objectives: To describe the use of health services and pressure-redistributing devices in community dwelling patients with PI’s. Design: Mixed-methods collective case study of a defined, diverse geographic postcode area in the United Kingdom. Methods: Quantitative retrospective analysis of electronic and paper medical records of adult PI patients from 2015 district nursing reports. Qualitative semi-structured interviews of community dwelling adult patients receiving, or received, treatment for PI in 2016. Results: Mandatory reports (n = 103) revealed that 90 patients were supplied with a variety of pressure-redistributing devices but only one-third of patients used the equipment as recommended. Qualitative interviews (n = 12), reported to COREQ guidelines, revealed that patients felt reliant on community health services, and were concerned about the consistency of their care. Conclusions: Authentic patient involvement is required to provide care and interventions that are acceptable to PI patients and can be incorporated into self-care strategies and effectively monitored

Pain associated with pressure injury: A qualitative study of community-based, home-dwelling individuals

© 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Aims: The aim of this study was to provide deep insights into the pain associated with pressure injuries in home-dwelling individuals using narrative accounts. Background: Pressure injuries or pressure ulcers are burdensome and costly. Prevalence data, surveys and systematic reviews demonstrate that pain associated with pressure injury is widespread, but voices of home-dwelling patients have remained largely unheard. Design: Concurrent mixed methods case study of a UK community of approximately 50,000 adults. Methods: Qualitative interviews, conducted in 2016, of 12 home-dwelling adult participants with a current pressure injury (n = 10), or a recently healed pressure injury (n = 2). Findings: Pain had an adverse impact on activities of daily living, mobility and sleep. Participants described days that were clouded in pain; a pain they felt was poorly understood and often out of control. Thematic content analysis revealed two major themes; these are: Poorly controlled pain: “I just want the pain to go away”; and, Uncertainty for the future: “it almost seems insurmountable.”. Conclusion: Findings of our study support the need to develop an appropriate assessment tool for pressure injury patients in the community to enable healthcare professionals and patients to recognize and manage pressure injury-related pain effectively

Quantitative Characterization of the Filiform Mechanosensory Hair Array on the Cricket Cercus

Crickets and other orthopteran insects sense air currents with a pair of abdominal appendages resembling antennae, called cerci. Each cercus in the common house cricket Acheta domesticus is approximately 1 cm long, and is covered with 500 to 750 filiform mechanosensory hairs. The distribution of the hairs on the cerci, as well as the global patterns of their movement vectors, have been characterized semi-quantitatively in studies over the last 40 years, and have been shown to be very stereotypical across different animals in this species. Although the cercal sensory system has been the focus of many studies in the areas of neuroethology, development, biomechanics, sensory function and neural coding, there has not yet been a quantitative study of the functional morphology of the receptor array of this important model system.We present a quantitative characterization of the structural characteristics and functional morphology of the cercal filiform hair array. We demonstrate that the excitatory direction along each hair's movement plane can be identified by features of its socket that are visible at the light-microscopic level, and that the length of the hair associated with each socket can also be estimated accurately from a structural parameter of the socket. We characterize the length and directionality of all hairs on the basal half of a sample of three cerci, and present statistical analyses of the distributions.The inter-animal variation of several global organizational features is low, consistent with constraints imposed by functional effectiveness and/or developmental processes. Contrary to previous reports, however, we show that the filiform hairs are not re-identifiable in the strict sense

Combinatorial Polymer Electrospun Matrices Promote Physiologically-Relevant Cardiomyogenic Stem Cell Differentiation

Myocardial infarction results in extensive cardiomyocyte death which can lead to fatal arrhythmias or congestive heart failure. Delivery of stem cells to repopulate damaged cardiac tissue may be an attractive and innovative solution for repairing the damaged heart. Instructive polymer scaffolds with a wide range of properties have been used extensively to direct the differentiation of stem cells. In this study, we have optimized the chemical and mechanical properties of an electrospun polymer mesh for directed differentiation of embryonic stem cells (ESCs) towards a cardiomyogenic lineage. A combinatorial polymer library was prepared by copolymerizing three distinct subunits at varying molar ratios to tune the physicochemical properties of the resulting polymer: hydrophilic polyethylene glycol (PEG), hydrophobic poly(ε-caprolactone) (PCL), and negatively-charged, carboxylated PCL (CPCL). Murine ESCs were cultured on electrospun polymeric scaffolds and their differentiation to cardiomyocytes was assessed through measurements of viability, intracellular reactive oxygen species (ROS), α-myosin heavy chain expression (α-MHC), and intracellular Ca2+ signaling dynamics. Interestingly, ESCs on the most compliant substrate, 4%PEG-86%PCL-10%CPCL, exhibited the highest α-MHC expression as well as the most mature Ca2+ signaling dynamics. To investigate the role of scaffold modulus in ESC differentiation, the scaffold fiber density was reduced by altering the electrospinning parameters. The reduced modulus was found to enhance α-MHC gene expression, and promote maturation of myocyte Ca2+ handling. These data indicate that ESC-derived cardiomyocyte differentiation and maturation can be promoted by tuning the mechanical and chemical properties of polymer scaffold via copolymerization and electrospinning techniques

Internet of Things for Environmental Sustainability and Climate Change

Our world is vulnerable to climate change risks such as glacier retreat, rising temperatures, more variable and intense weather events (e.g., floods, droughts, and frosts), deteriorating mountain ecosystems, soil degradation, and increasing water scarcity. However, there are big gaps in our understanding of changes in regional climate and how these changes will impact human and natural systems, making it difficult to anticipate, plan, and adapt to the coming changes. The IoT paradigm in this area can enhance our understanding of regional climate by using technology solutions, while providing the dynamic climate elements based on integrated environmental sensing and communications that is necessary to support climate change impacts assessments in each of the related areas (e.g., environmental quality and monitoring, sustainable energy, agricultural systems, cultural preservation, and sustainable mining). In the IoT in Environmental Sustainability and Climate Change chapter, a framework for informed creation, interpretation and use of climate change projections and for continued innovations in climate and environmental science driven by key societal and economic stakeholders is presented. In addition, the IoT cyberinfrastructure to support the development of continued innovations in climate and environmental science is discussed

Climate Change and Agriculture in the United States: Effects and Adaptation

This is a report by the USDA as climate change relates to its affect on livestock and agriculture