American Home Economics Association Benefits Graduates

Horne economics seniors are encouraged to become active members, according lo Zoe Wilso

A novel computerized test for detecting and monitoring visual attentional deficits and delirium in the ICU

Objectives: Delirium in the ICU is associated with poor outcomes but is under-detected. Here we evaluated performance of a novel, graded test for objectively detecting inattention in delirium, implemented on a custom-built computerized device (Edinburgh Delirium Test Box–ICU). Design: A pilot study was conducted, followed by a prospective case-control study. Setting: Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh General ICU. Patients: A pilot study was conducted in an opportunistic sample of 20 patients. This was followed by a validation study in 30 selected patients with and without delirium (median age, 63 yr; range, 23–84) who were assessed with the Edinburgh Delirium Test Box–ICU on up to 5 separate days. Presence of delirium was assessed using the Confusion Assessment Method for the ICU. Measurements and Main Results: The Edinburgh Delirium Test Box–ICU involves a behavioral assessment and a computerized test of attention, requiring patients to count slowly presented lights. Thirty patients were assessed a total of 79 times (n = 31, 23, 15, 8, and 2 for subsequent assessments; 38% delirious). Edinburgh Delirium Test Box–ICU scores (range, 0–11) were lower for patients with delirium than those without at the first (median, 0 vs 9.5), second (median, 3.5 vs 9), and third (median, 0 vs 10.5) assessments (all p < 0.001). An Edinburgh Delirium Test Box–ICU score less than or equal to 5 was 100% sensitive and 92% specific to delirium across assessments. Longitudinally, participants’ Edinburgh Delirium Test Box–ICU performance was associated with delirium status. Conclusions: These findings suggest that the Edinburgh Delirium Test Box–ICU has diagnostic utility in detecting ICU delirium in patients with Richmond Agitation and Sedation Scale Score greater than –3. The Edinburgh Delirium Test Box–ICU has potential additional value in longitudinally tracking attentional deficits because it provides a range of scores and is sensitive to change

A barley PHD finger transcription factor that confers male sterility by affecting tapetal development

Controlling pollen development is of major commercial importance in generating hybrid crops and selective breeding, but characterized genes for male sterility in crops are rare, with no current examples in barley. However, translation of knowledge from model species is now providing opportunities to understand and manipulate such processes in economically important crops. We have used information from regulatory networks in Arabidopsis to identify and functionally characterize a barley PHD transcription factor MALE STERTILITY1 (MS1), which expresses in the anther tapetum and plays a critical role during pollen development. Comparative analysis of Arabidopsis, rice and Brachypodium genomes was used to identify conserved regions in MS1 for primer design to amplify the barley MS1 gene; RACE-PCR was subsequently used to generate the full-length sequence. This gene shows anther-specific tapetal expression, between late tetrad stage and early microspore release. HvMS1 silencing and overexpression in barley resulted in male sterility. Additionally, HvMS1 cDNA, controlled by the native Arabidopsis MS1 promoter, successfully complemented the homozygous ms1 Arabidopsis mutant. These results confirm the conservation of MS1 function in higher plants and in particular in temperate cereals. This has provided the first example of a characterized male sterility gene in barley, which presents a valuable tool for the future control of male fertility in barley for hybrid development

I am Not Your Felon: Decoding the Trauma, Resilience, and Recovering Mothering of Formerly Incarcerated Black Women

Black women are increasingly targets of mass incarceration and reentry. Black feminist writers call attention to scholars’ need to intersectionalize analyses around how Black women interface with state systems and social institutions. This study foregrounds narratives from Black women to understand their plight while navigating reentry through a phenomenological approach. Through semi-structured interviews, narratives are analyzed using critical frameworks that authentically unearths the lived realities of participants. Themes reveal that for Black mothers, reentry can be just as criminalizing as engaging crime itself. These women face dire consequences around their mothering that induce them into tremendous bouts of trauma. Existing interlocking oppressions enflame newfound barriers due to their contact with the criminal legal system—yet they survive via divergent forms of resilience

FlowerNet: a gene expression correlation metwork for anther and pollen development

Floral formation, in particular anther and pollen development, is a complex biological process with critical importance for seed set and for targeted plant breeding. Many key transcription factors regulating this process have been identified; however, their direct role remains largely unknown. Using publicly available gene expression data from Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana), focusing on those studies that analyze stamen-, pollen-, or flower-specific expression, we generated a network model of the global transcriptional interactions (FlowerNet). FlowerNet highlights clusters of genes that are transcriptionally coregulated and therefore likely to have interacting roles. Focusing on four clusters, and using a number of data sets not included in the generation of FlowerNet, we show that there is a close correlation in how the genes are expressed across a variety of conditions, including male-sterile mutants. This highlights the important role that FlowerNet can play in identifying new players in anther and pollen development. However, due to the use of general floral expression data in FlowerNet, it also has broad application in the characterization of genes associated with all aspects of floral development and reproduction. To aid the dissection of genes of interest, we have made FlowerNet available as a community resource (http://www.cpib.ac.uk/ anther). For this resource, we also have generated plots showing anther/flower expression from a variety of experiments: These are normalized together where possible to allow further dissection of the resource

Testing Candidate Cerebellar Presymptomatic Biomarkers for Autism Spectrum Disorder

Background: Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder diagnosed on the basis of social impairment, restricted interests, and repetitive behaviors. Contemporary theories posit that cerebellar-mediated error signaling impairments contribute to the causation of ASD. However, the relationship between infant cerebellar functional connectivity (fcMRI) and later ASD behaviors and outcomes has not been investigated. Such work is critical to establish early (presymptomatic) cerebellar correlates of ASD. Methods: Data from the Infant Brain Imaging Study (n=94, 68 male) were used to evaluate cerebellar fcMRI as a presymptomatic biomarker for ASD. Specifically, brain-behavior associations were analyzed for 6-month cerebellar connections in relation to later (12- and 24-month) ASD behaviors and outcomes using univariate tests of association, multivariate machine learning prediction, and fcMRI enrichment. Univariate and multivariate approaches focused on cerebellar-frontoparietal network (FPN is implicated in error-signaling) and cerebellar-default mode network (DMN is implicated in adult studies of ASD) connections, while enrichment afforded a data-driven test of whole-brain connectivity. Results: Univariate tests of cerebellar-FPN and cerebellar-DMN connections failed to implicate the cerebellum in ASD, despite \u3e 80% power to detect medium-sized effects. Multivariate tests in high-risk infants using cerebellar-FPN and cerebellar-DMN connections similarly failed to achieve above-chance classification accuracy for ASD diagnosis, despite replicating procedures that achieved \u3e 80% positive predictive value in whole-brain data. FcMRI enrichment identified correlates of ASD-associated behaviors in brain networks of a priori interest (FPN, DMN), as well as in cingulo-opercular (CO) and medial visual (mVis) networks. However, post-hoc tests did not support a unique role for cerebellar connectivity within these networks. Conclusions: Contrary to contemporary theories, we failed to observe a relationship between infant cerebellar fcMRI and ASD. Instead—in the first-known application of fcMRI enrichment to temporally lagged, early developmental brain-behavior associations—we identified infant control (FPN, CO), visual, and default mode correlates of later ASD behaviors. Future work may investigate whether connectivity involving these networks prospectively predicts ASD diagnosis, thereby expediting intervention and furthering etiologic understanding

Growth Rate Consequences of Coloniality in a Harmful Phytoplankter

Allometric studies have shown that individual growth rate is inversely related to body size across a broad spectrum of organisms that vary greatly in size. Fewer studies have documented such patterns within species. No data exist directly documenting the influence of colony size on growth rate for microscopic, colonial organisms.To determine if similar negative relationships between growth rate and size hold for colonial organisms, we developed a technique for measuring the growth of individual colonies of a bloom-forming, toxic cyanobacterium, Microcystis aeruginosa using microscopy and digital image analysis. For five out of six genotypes of M. aeruginosa isolated from lakes in Michigan and Alabama, we found significant negative relationships between colony size and growth rate. We found large intraspecific variation in both the slope of these relationships and in the growth rate of colonies at a standard size. In addition, growth rate estimates for individual colonies were generally consistent with population growth rates measured using standard batch culture.Given that colony size varies widely within populations, our results imply that natural populations of colonial phytoplankton exist as a mosaic of individuals with widely varying ecological attributes (since size strongly affects growth rate, grazing mortality, and migration speed). Quantifying the influence of colony size on growth rate will permit development of more accurate, predictive models of ecological interactions (e.g., competition, herbivory) and their role in the proliferation of harmful algal blooms, in addition to increasing our understanding about why these interactions vary in strength within and across environments