Science on a Shoestring: Building Nursing Knowledge With Limited Funding

Building the science for nursing practice has never been more important. However, shrunken federal and state research budgets mean that investigators must find alternative sources of financial support and develop projects that are less costly to carry out. New investigators often build beginning programs of research with limited funding. This article provides an overview of some cost-effective research approaches and gives suggestions for finding other sources of funding. Examples of more cost-effective research approaches include adding complementary questions to existing funded research projects; conducting primary analysis of electronic patient records and social media content; conducting secondary analysis of data from completed studies; reviewing and synthesizing previously completed research; implementing community-based participatory research; participating in collaborative research efforts such as inter-campus team research, practice-based research networks (PBRNs), and involving undergraduate and doctoral students in research efforts. Instead of relying on funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and other government agencies, nurse researchers may be able to find support for research from local sources such as businesses, organizations, or clinical agencies. Investigators will increasingly have to rely on these and other creative approaches to fund and implement their research programs if granting agency budgets do not significantly expand

Light Curves and Period Changes of Type II Cepheids in the Globular Clusters M3 and M5

Light curves in the B, V, and I_c passbands have been obtained for the type II Cepheids V154 in M3 and V42 and V84 in M5. Alternating cycle behavior, similar to that seen among RV Tauri variables, is confirmed for V84. Old and new observations, spanning more than a century, show that V154 has increased in period while V42 has decreased in period. V84, on the other hand, has shown large, erratic changes in period that do not appear to reflect the long term evolution of V84 through the HR diagram.Comment: 28 pages, 12 figure

Glutamic Acid Decarboxylase-Derived Epitopes with Specific Domains Expand CD4+CD25+ Regulatory T Cells

BACKGROUND:CD4(+)CD25(+) regulatory T cell (Treg)-based immunotherapy is considered a promising regimen for controlling the progression of autoimmune diabetes. In this study, we tested the hypothesis that the therapeutic effects of Tregs in response to the antigenic epitope stimulation depend on the structural properties of the epitopes used. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS:Splenic lymphocytes from nonobese diabetic (NOD) mice were stimulated with different glutamic acid decarboxylase (GAD)-derived epitopes for 7-10 days and the frequency and function of Tregs was analyzed. We found that, although all expanded Tregs showed suppressive functions in vitro, only p524 (GAD524-538)-expanded CD4(+)CD25(+) T cells inhibited diabetes development in the co-transfer models, while p509 (GAD509-528)- or p530 (GAD530-543)-expanded CD4(+)CD25(+) T cells had no such effects. Using computer-guided molecular modeling and docking methods, the differences in structural characteristics of these epitopes and the interaction mode (including binding energy and identified domains in the epitopes) between the above-mentioned epitopes and MHC class II I-A(g7) were analyzed. The theoretical results showed that the epitope p524, which induced protective Tregs, possessed negative surface-electrostatic potential and bound two chains of MHC class II I-A(g7), while the epitopes p509 and p530 which had no such ability exhibited positive surface-electrostatic potential and bound one chain of I-A(g7). Furthermore, p524 bound to I-A(g7) more stably than p509 and p530. Of importance, we hypothesized and subsequently confirmed experimentally that the epitope (GAD570-585, p570), which displayed similar characteristics to p524, was a protective epitope by showing that p570-expanded CD4(+)CD25(+) T cells suppressed the onset of diabetes in NOD mice. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE:These data suggest that molecular modeling-based structural analysis of epitopes may be an instrumental tool for prediction of protective epitopes to expand functional Tregs

Twin and family studies reveal strong environmental and weaker genetic cues explaining heritability of eosinophilic esophagitis

Eosinophilic esophagitis (EoE) is a chronic antigen-driven allergic inflammatory disease, likely involving the interplay of genetic and environmental factors, yet their respective contributions to heritability are unknown

Do High Stakes and Competition Undermine Fairness? Evidence from Russia

This paper reports the results of a series of competitive labour market experiments in which subjects have the possibility to reciprocate favours. In the high stake condition subjects earned between two and three times their monthly income during the experiment. In the normal stake condition the stake level was reduced by a factor of ten. We observe that both in the high and the normal stake condition fairness concerns are strong enough to outweigh competitive forces and give rise to non-competitive wages. There is also no evidence that effort behaviour becomes generally more selfish at higher stake levels. Therefore, our results suggest that, contrary to common beliefs, fairness concerns may play an important role even at relatively high stake levels

Fairness in the Labour Market - A Survey of Experimental Results

In this chapter we provide a selective survey of experiments to investigate the potential of social motivations in explaining labour market phenomena. We argue that laboratory experiments are a useful instrument to explore issues in labour market theory and personnel economics. Our starting point is the observation that employment relations are frequently governed by incomplete contracts. We show that the norm of reciprocity that leads to gift exchanges is an effective contract enforcement device under conditions of contractual incompleteness. We then present evidence that gift exchange can explain various labour market phenomena that are puzzles from the viewpoint of standard economic theory. Further issues in the related field of personnel economics that have by now been subjected to an experimental scrutiny concern characteristics of the employment relation and the issues of motivation and incentives systems

Optimization of linear disorder predictors yields tight association between crystallographic disorder and hydrophobicity

X-ray crystallographic protein structures often contain disordered regions that are observed as missing electron density. Diffraction data may give little or no direct evidence as to the specific nature of disordered regions. We have developed a weighted window-based disorder predictor optimized using crystallographic data. Performance of a predictor is strongly influenced by chain termini. Optimized score adjustment values for amino- and carboxy-terminal positions demonstrate a simple, monotonic relationship between disorder and residue distance from termini. This optimized disorder predictor performs similarly to DISOPRED2 on crystallographically disordered regions. Data-optimized residue disorder propensities show strong linear correlation with experimentally determined amino acid transfer energies between water and hydrogen-bonding organic solvents, which primarily reflect residue hydrophobicity (exemplified by the Nozaki-Tanford hydrophobicity scale). Disorder propensities do not correlate as well with transfer energies between water and apolar solvents, which primarily reflect a different hydropathic property: residue hydrophilicity (also reflected by the Kyte-Doolittle hydropathy scale). Our results suggest that while hydrophobic side-chain interactions are primarily involved in determining stability of the folded conformation, hydrogen bonding, and similar polar interactions are primarily involved in conformational and interaction specificity