Changes in Vision as a Result of Hypnotic Age Regression

Hypnotic suggestion that the subject was celebrating her seventh birthday resulted in certain changes in vision to be shown in the table below. The subject is the wife of the junior author of this article, Mrs. Duane Black. She is a healthy, intelligent young woman, seventeen years of age, married about two years and the mother of one child. She completed two years of high school. As a child she was considered precocious. Her eyesight was defective from early childhood, but she began wearing glasses only in her twelfth year. She was then in the eighth grade. Her unaided vision for distance is now extremely poor, as the table shows. The table also shows that strong glasses have more than compensated for the defect. Mr. and Mrs. Black have carried on informal experiments in hypnosis for some time. Mr. Black has been particularly successful in inducing age regression. In a recent experiment he noted that when the subject had regressed to childhood, she found that her glasses not only diminished what vision she had but were annoying and even painful. This led to an investigation of changes in vision. Crude experiments at home indicated an improvement in vision that became more marked as the subject regressed to earlier and earlier age levels. Mr. Black was unable to produce any such improvement by direct suggestion which did not involve the regression

The Induction of Tolerance to Heavy Metals in Natural and Laboratory Populations of Fish

Aquatic toxicity studies were performed on two natural populations of fathead minnows. One group of organisms was taken from a metal-contaminated flyash pond associated with a coal-fired power plant and the other group was collected from relatively uncontaminated hatchery ponds. Acute tests indicated that flyash pond fish were significantly more tolerant to cadmium and copper than were hatchery fish. At an exposure concentration of 6.0 mg Cd/L in moderately hard water, the median period of survival for flyash pond fish was 50.0 hr compared to 6.8 hr for hatchery fish. Both groups of organisms were about equally sensitive to zinc. The metal-induced tolerance observed with animals from the flyash pond was not a sustained response. Additional studies were undertaken to observe the responses of laboratory populations of fathead minnows to acutely toxic cadmium concentrations following acclimation to sublethal exposures of this metal. Based on 96-hr LC50 values, those animals which had received 35-days prior exposure to 10 and 50 μg Cd/L were 63 to 68% more tolerant to cadmium than were previously unexposed organisms. As with the natural population, tolerance to cadmium in the laboratory fish was not retained. After organisms which had been acclimated to 10 μg Cd/L were transferred to clean water, tolerance to cadmium decreased by three and one-half fold after only 7 days. Developing embryos of the fathead minnow and rainbow trout also acquired tolerance to cadmium. After eggs of the trout had been exposed to 0, 5, and 50 μg Cd/L for 24 days, subsequent acute toxicity tests conducted on the newly hatched larvae gave 7-day LC50 values of 0.70, 1.59, and 2.02 μg Cd/L, respectively

Comparison and Contrast of Genes and Biological Pathways Responding to Marek’s Disease Virus Infection Using Allele-Specific Expression and Differential Expression in Broiler and Layer Chickens.

Background Marek’s disease (MD) is a commercially important neoplastic disease of chickens caused by the Marek’s disease virus (MDV), a naturally occurring oncogenic alphaherpesvirus. Enhancing MD genetic resistance is desirable to augment current vaccines and other MD control measures. High throughput sequencing was used to profile splenic transcriptomes from individual F1 progeny infected with MDV at 4 days of age from both outbred broilers (meat-type) and inbred layer (egg-type) chicken lines that differed in MD genetic resistance. The resulting information was used to identify SNPs, genes, and biological pathways exhibiting allele-specific expression (ASE) in response to MDV infection in each type of chicken. In addition, we compared and contrasted the results of pathway analyses (ASE and differential expression (DE)) between chicken types to help inform on the biological response to MDV infection. Results With 7 individuals per line and treatment group providing high power, we identified 6,132 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in 4,768 genes and 4,528 SNPs in 3,718 genes in broilers and layers, respectively, that exhibited ASE in response to MDV infection. Furthermore, 548 and 434 genes in broilers and layers, respectively, were found to show DE following MDV infection. Comparing the datasets, only 72 SNPs and 850 genes for ASE and 20 genes for DE were common between the two bird types. Although the chicken types used in this study were genetically different, at the pathway level, both TLR receptor and JAK/STAT signaling pathways were enriched as well as exhibiting a high proportion of ASE genes, especially at the beginning of both above mentioned regulatory pathways. Conclusions RNA sequencing with adequate biological replicates is a powerful approach to identify high confidence SNPs, genes, and pathways that are associated with transcriptional response to MDV infection. In addition, the SNPs exhibiting ASE in response to MDV infection provide a strong foundation for determining the extent to which variation in expression influences MD incidence plus yield genetic markers for genomic selection. However, given the paucity of overlap among ASE SNP sets (broilers vs. layers), it is likely that separate screens need to be incorporated for each population. Finally, comparison of gene lists obtained between these two diverse chicken types indicate the TLR and JAK/STAT signaling are conserved when responding to MDV infection and may be altered by selection of genes exhibiting ASE found at the start of each pathway

Skin Scan Digital Dermoscopy Skin Cancer Training Software

Computational Infrastructure and Informatics Poster SessionSkin Scan digital dermoscopy skin cancer detection software, developed by Rolla's S&A in collaboration with Missouri S&T, can now detect critical features of early melanoma. There is also a need for diagnostic help for the other 95+% of skin cancers. The need for diagnostic improvement in screening for skin cancers may be greatest for those nurse practitioners who now see the majority of elderly patients in some underserved areas. Underserved clinical arenas with a greater than average incidence of skin cancer and a significant number of nurse practitioners include both civilian and military clinics in the rural Midwest, where S&A is located. This innovative software is a timely development designed to solve problems every healthcare consumer has encountered: too long a wait to get specialty care, uncertainty about the diagnosis when one does get the care, and too much overall expenditure in providing the care. Our ongoing research includes a completed Phase II project in melanoma detection and a Phase I study for basal cell carcinoma, submitted December, 2009. The BASAL features for basal cell carcinoma (Blue-gray ovoids, Arborizing telangiectasia, Semitranslucency, Atraumatic ulceration, and Leaf-like structures/dirt trails), described by Stoecker and Stolz, Archives Dermatology 2008, will be programmed during Phase I of the new proposal and incorporated in our early detection system. Additional work during Phase I will allow acquisition of more clinical and dermoscopy images, will allow training of the first nurse practitioner, and will allow development of a hierarchical neural network for diagnosis of basal cell carcinoma

Tributes to Kent Greenawalt

There are some tasks that present themselves as, at the same time, an opportunity and a challenge. Crafting a brief tribute to Kent Greenawalt is just such a task. It is first – and I should say foremost – an opportunity to express in a public forum one’s high regard for an esteemed colleague and valued friend, and, then, it is a challenge to do justice to his extraordinary accomplishments, to the man, and to his work. In dedicating this issue to Kent, the Columbia Law Review honors one of its own, whose association with Columbia Law School and the Review goes back over half a century – a most appropriate reciprocation of the honor that Kent himself, by his devotion to the highest academic standards of teaching and scholarship, has brought to both of these institutions

Mapping a Quantitative Trait Locus (QTL) conferring pyrethroid resistance in the African malaria vector Anopheles funestus

BACKGROUND: Pyrethroid resistance in Anopheles funestus populations has led to an increase in malaria transmission in southern Africa. Resistance has been attributed to elevated activities of cytochrome P450s but the molecular basis underlying this metabolic resistance is unknown. Microsatellite and SNP markers were used to construct a linkage map and to detect a quantitative trait locus (QTL) associated with pyrethroid resistance in the FUMOZ-R strain of An. funestus from Mozambique. RESULTS: By genotyping 349 F(2 )individuals from 11 independent families, a single major QTL, rp1, at the telomeric end of chromosome 2R was identified. The rp1 QTL appears to present a major effect since it accounts for more than 60% of the variance in susceptibility to permethrin. This QTL has a strong additive genetic effect with respect to susceptibility. Candidate genes associated with pyrethroid resistance in other species were physically mapped to An. funestus polytene chromosomes. This showed that rp1 is genetically linked to a cluster of CYP6 cytochrome P450 genes located on division 9 of chromosome 2R and confirmed earlier reports that pyrethroid resistance in this strain is not associated with target site mutations (knockdown resistance). CONCLUSION: We hypothesize that one or more of these CYP6 P450s clustered on chromosome 2R confers pyrethroid resistance in the FUMOZ-R strain of An. funestus