Activation of PKR by Bunyamwera virus is independent of the viral interferon antagonist NSs

Double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) is a by-product of viral RNA polymerase activity, and its recognition is one mechanism by which the innate immune system is activated. Cellular responses to dsRNA include induction of alpha/beta interferon (IFN) synthesis and activation of the enzyme PKR, which exerts its antiviral effect by phosphorylating the eukaryotic initiation factor eIF-2 alpha, thereby inhibiting translation. We have recently identified the nonstructural protein NSs of Bunyamwera virus (BUNV), the prototype of the family Bunyaviridae, as a virulence factor that blocks the induction of IFN by dsRNA. Here, we investigated the potential of NSs to inhibit PKR. We show that wild-type (wt) BUNV that expresses NSs triggered PKR-dependent phosphorylation of eIF-2 alpha to levels similar to those of a recombinant virus that does not express NSs (BUNdelNSs virus). Furthermore, the sensitivity of viruses in cell culture to IFN was independent of PKR and was not determined by NSs. PKR knockout mice, however, succumbed to infection approximately 1 day earlier than wt mice or mice deficient in expression of RNase L, another dsRNA-activated antiviral enzyme. Our data indicate that (i) bunyaviruses activate PKR, but are only marginally sensitive to its antiviral effect, and (ii) NSs is different from other IFN antagonists, since it inhibits dsRNA-dependent IFN induction but has no effect on the dsRNA-activated PKR and RNase L systems

Mass Wasting in Planetary Environments: Implications for Seismicity

On Earth, mass wasting events such as rock falls and landslides are well known consequences of seismic activity. Here we investigate the regional effects of seismicity in planetary environments with the goal of determining whether such surface features on the Moon, Mars, and Mercury could be triggered by fault motion

Library Design for Children and Young Adults

Libraries are supposed to serve their communities, but often the design and structure do not meet the needs of children and young adults. The spaces designated for them do not provide opportunities to grow and learn where they feel comfortable. Young people need to be told that they matter and can make a difference, especially in a place where the goal is provide access to information and opportunities for the creation and formation of knowledge and understanding.Ope

Defining And Assessing Team Skills Of Business And Accountancy Students

The objectives of the project are (1) to define the skills necessary for students to work effectively with others to achieve common goals, and (2) to develop an assessment instrument to measure student progress toward achieving these skills.  The defined skill set will form a basis for common expectations related to team skills that will be shared with students and be used by faculty for setting goals, planning curriculum and pedagogy, and assessing student progress.  Assessment data will be incorporated into the Division of Business and Accountancy’s Continuous Improvement Plan and assessment cycle.  The significance of this project is to ensure and demonstrate student learning related to teamwork, which is one of the key elements of the Division’s newly adopted vision statement.  The ability to demonstrate continuous improvement related to the Division’s mission is vital to the re-accreditation of the business program.  This project incorporated input from the entire faculty of the Division, and the results will be used by the entire faculty and shared with students in order to communicate expectations.  This participative process will serve to enhance the culture of assessment in the Business Division among faculty and students.&nbsp

Choice, Circumstance, or Coercion: Prostitution Stigma's Effects on Mental Health Professionals' Perceptions of Sex Workers and Sex Work

Thesis advisor: Janet E. HelmsHistorically, psychological theory and mental health researchers have viewed sex work as inherently harmful to sex workers and capable of producing negative mental and physical health effects (Sprankle et al., 2018). Moreover, research focused on clinicians’ expectations for sex workers in therapy has not specifically examined clinicians’ attitudes toward sex workers or sex work as separate concepts (Benoit et al., 2015; Koken, 2011; Ma et al., 2017). In addition, mental health professionals may not view sex work as legitimate work because of the virtual lack of evidence-based theoretical frameworks for guiding therapy for sex workers, and, therefore, may use prostitution stigma as a substitute for theory (Krumrei-Mancuso, 2017; Williamson & Cluse-Tolar, 2002). The present study investigated the extent to which mental health professionals’ expectations of sex work and sex workers were related to prostitution stigma and their perceptions of sex workers’ overall mental health and evaluations of sex work as decent work. In particular, the study investigated the extent to which mental health professionals stigmatized the work of sex workers. Mental health professionals (N = 201) read a clinical vignette and completed an online survey containing a demographic information sheet, the Attitudes Toward Prostitutes and Prostitution Scale (Levin & Peled, 2011); (c) the Decent Work Scale (Duffy et al., 2017), (d) the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (Zigmond & Snaith, 1986), and (e) the PTSD-8 (Hansen et al., 2010). Results from multivariate multiple regression analyses supported that when mental health professionals held higher levels of stigma towards sex work and sex workers, they may diagnose the client with higher levels of PTSD symptoms. Further, the results supported that endorsement of a feminist orientation moderated the relationship between sex work stigma and diagnosis clients’ PTSD avoidance symptoms. The discussion included methodological limitations and implications for research and practice.Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2020.Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education.Discipline: Counseling, Developmental and Educational Psychology

Detecting short-term change and variation in health-related quality of life: within- and between-person factor structure of the SF-36 health survey.

BackgroundA major goal of much aging-related research and geriatric medicine is to identify early changes in health and functioning before serious limitations develop. To this end, regular collection of patient-reported outcome measure (PROMs) in a clinical setting may be useful to identify and monitor these changes. However, existing PROMs were not designed for repeated administration and are more commonly used as one-time screening tools; as such, their ability to detect variation and measurement properties when administered repeatedly remain unknown. In this study we evaluated the potential of the RAND SF-36 Health Survey as a repeated-use PROM by examining its measurement properties when modified for administration over multiple occasions.MethodsTo distinguish between-person (i.e., average) from within-person (i.e., occasion) levels, the SF-36 Health Survey was completed by a sample of older adults (N = 122, M age  = 66.28 years) daily for seven consecutive days. Multilevel confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was employed to investigate the factor structure at both levels for two- and eight-factor solutions.ResultsMultilevel CFA models revealed that the correlated eight-factor solution provided better model fit than the two-factor solution at both the between-person and within-person levels. Overall model fit for the SF-36 Health Survey administered daily was not substantially different from standard survey administration, though both were below optimal levels as reported in the literature. However, individual subscales did demonstrate good reliability.ConclusionsMany of the subscales of the modified SF-36 for repeated daily assessment were found to be sufficiently reliable for use in repeated measurement designs incorporating PROMs, though the overall scale may not be optimal. We encourage future work to investigate the utility of the subscales in specific contexts, as well as the measurement properties of other existing PROMs when administered in a repeated measures design. The development and integration of new measures for this purpose may ultimately be necessary

Climate change impact of food distribution: The case of reverse logistics for bread in Sweden

Efficient and purposeful transport of food, from primary production to waste management, is essential to drive the necessary transition towards sustainable production and consumption of food within planetary boundaries. This is particularly the case for bread, one of the most frequently wasted food items in Europe. In Sweden, bread is often sold under a take-back agreement where bakeries are responsible for transportation up to the supermarket shelf and for the collection of unsold products. This provides an opportunity for reverse logistics, but creates a risk of inefficient transport that could reduce the environmental benefits of prevention and valorization of surplus bread. This study assessed the climate change impact of bread transport in Sweden and evaluated the impact of alternative food transport pathways. Life cycle assessment revealed the climate change impact of conventional bread transport, from bakery gate to waste management, to be on average 49.0 g CO2e per kg bread with 68 % deriving from long-distance transport, 26 % from short-distance delivery, and 6 % from waste transport. Evalua-tion of alternative bread transport pathways showed the highest climate savings with a collaborative transport approach that also reduced the need for small vehicles and decreased transport distances. The overall contribu-tion of waste transport to the total climate impact of food transport was low for all scenario routes analyzed, sug-gesting that food waste management facilitating high-value recovery and valorization could be prioritized without increasing the climate impact due to longer transport. It has been claimed that conventional take-back agreements are responsible for most of the climate change impact related to bread transport, but we identified long distances between bakeries and retailers as the main contributor to transport climate impacts.(c) 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of Institution of Chemical Engineers. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

Medical students’ personal experiences, religion, and spirituality explain their (dis)comfort with a patient’s religious needs

Background: Physicians often avoid discussing patients’ religious and spiritual concerns, even though most patients (i.e., 50-94%) want integrated care.  To address this gap, medical students interviewed a Standardized Patient (SP) who was upset because the daughter did not confront her fiancée about converting to Orthodox Judaism.  Students reflected on how their own religion and spirituality affected engaging with their patient. Methods: With a 97% response rate, 231 first-year medical students responded to open-ended questions about their patient encounter.  For this quantitative content analysis, we used inductive reasoning, identifying three themes:  (1) impact of students’ own religion on their comfort, (2) change in comfort, and (3) their learning. We used deductive reasoning to compare qualitative results from half of the students who began the curriculum with a questionnaire about their own spirituality with the other students completing afterwards. Results: Most students said being religious positively influenced their comfort, whether they were also Orthodox Jewish or from a different religion. Among uncomfortable students (6.5%), some attributed this to not being religious. Some students (4.8%) grew more comfortable discussing the religious issue, and 18.2% became uncomfortable due to lacking knowledge of Orthodox Judaism and the awkwardness of the topic.  Students who had completed the questionnaire beforehand gave more comments about connecting with their patients than students who completed the questionnaire afterwards (X2=11.047, p<.001). Conclusions: Students’ own religion influenced their comfort with discussing religious concerns, with some feeling more connected and others becoming uncomfortable. This finding helps inform medical educators about teaching mind-body-spirit care

Chromosome-Level Genome Assembly for the Angiosperm Silene conica.

The angiosperm genus Silene has been the subject of extensive study in the field of ecology and evolution, but the availability of high-quality reference genome sequences has been limited for this group. Here, we report a chromosome-level assembly for the genome of Silene conica based on Pacific Bioscience HiFi, Hi-C, and Bionano technologies. The assembly produced 10 scaffolds (1 per chromosome) with a total length of 862 Mb and only ∼1% gap content. These results confirm previous observations that S. conica and its relatives have a reduced base chromosome number relative to the genus\u27s ancestral state of 12. Silene conica has an exceptionally large mitochondrial genome (\u3e11 Mb), predominantly consisting of sequence of unknown origins. Analysis of shared sequence content suggests that it is unlikely that transfer of nuclear DNA is the primary driver of this mitochondrial genome expansion. More generally, this assembly should provide a valuable resource for future genomic studies in Silene, including comparative analyses with related species that recently evolved sex chromosomes