Environmental philosophy: rivalry within

Environmental philosophy contains fractious elements, two of these being social ecology and deep ecology. This study highlights and elaborates upon the fact that social ecology and deep ecology actually have more in common than their respective proponents care to acknowledge, and identifies a major barrier between them which has been with environmental philosophy since its inception some 30 years ago and still persists to this day, namely the biocentric-anthropocentric divide

Review of \u3ci\u3eThe Nez Perces in the Indian Territory: Nimiipuu Survival.\u3c/i\u3e By J. Diane Pearson

The Nimiipuu are most associated with the Columbia Basin rather than the Great Plains. Yet some Nimiipuu groups and their western allies lived for a year or more in the Northern Plains during the early to mid-1800s. There they followed a bison-hunting life and linked the region to the Columbia River trading network. Nimiipuu were so much a part of the region that they were signatories to the United States\u27 1855 Treaty with the Blackfeet negotiated by Isaac I. Stevens. Nimiipuu knowledge of the northern Great Plains decided the escape route from their homelands that was the Nez Perce War of 1877, which is how readers will recognize them. Less well known are Chief Joseph\u27s and other leaders\u27 efforts to return to their homeland. Few people today know the story of the Nimiipuu\u27s 1877-85 sojourn through Hell-Eeikish Pah-in the Indian Territory and their return to the Northwest. Their deeply traumatic experience is little known even among today\u27s generation of Nimiipuu

Combining internal- and external-training-load measures in professional rugby league

Purpose: This study investigated the effect of training mode on the relationships between measures of training load in professional rugby league players. Methods: Five measures of training load (internal: individualized training impulse, session rating of perceived exertion; external—body load, high-speed distance, total impacts) were collected from 17 professional male rugby league players over the course of two 12-week pre-season periods. Training was categorized by mode (small-sided games, conditioning, skills, speed, strongman, and wrestle) and subsequently subjected to a principal component analysis. Extraction criteria were set at an eigenvalue of greater than one. Modes that extracted more than one principal component were subjected to a varimax rotation. Results: Small-sided games and conditioning extracted one principal component, explaining 68% and 52% of the variance, respectively. Skills, wrestle, strongman, and speed extracted two principal components explaining 68%, 71%, 72%, and 67% of the variance respectively. Conclusions: In certain training modes the inclusion of both internal and external training load measures explained a greater proportion of the variance than any one individual measure. This would suggest that in those training modes where two principal components were identified, the use of only a single internal or external training load measure could potentially lead to an underestimation of the training dose. Consequently, a combination of internal and external load measures is required during certain training modes

Experimental Studies of Liquid Crystal and Protein Interactions

The fundamental interactions between proteins and liquid crystals were studied using 4-Cyano-4\u27-pentylbiphenyl (5CB) and equine heart myoglobin in varying concentrations. Polarizing Light Microscopy was used to capture images of pure and mixed components, depicting a caging process of the 5CB by the myoglobin as it competes for interaction with water. Dielectric Relaxation Spectroscopy and Differential Scanning Calorimetry provided evidence of an inverse relationship between the hydrated-myoglobin/5CB ratio and charge carrier diffusion barrier energy and nematic-isotropic transition temperature respectively. A trend in the heat capacitance peak shift alludes to an additional process related to a possible optimum concentration, which correlates with the microscopy caging process analysis

Switching modalities in a sentence verification task: ERP evidence for embodied language processing

In an event related potential (ERP) experiment using written language materials only, we investigated a potential modulation of the N400 by the modality switch effect. The modality switch effect occurs when a first sentence, describing a fact grounded in one modality, is followed by a second sentence describing a second fact grounded in a different modality. For example, "A cellar is dark" (visual), was preceded by either another visual property "Ham is pink" or by a tactile property "A mitten is soft." We also investigated whether the modality switch effect occurs for false sentences ("A cellar is light"). We found that, for true sentences, the ERP at the critical word "dark" elicited a significantly greater frontal, early N400-like effect (270370 ms) when there was a modality mismatch than when there was a modality-match. This pattern was not found for the critical word "light" in false sentences. Results similar to the frontal negativity were obtained in a late time window (500700 ms). The obtained ERP effect is similar to one previously obtained for pictures. We conclude that in this paradigm we obtained fast access to conceptual properties for modality-matched pairs, which leads to embodiment effects similar to those previously obtained with pictorial stimuli

Systematic Control of Aged Skeletal Muscle Following High-Intensity Stretch-Shortening Contraction Exercise Training: Epigenomic Regulation and Signaling Factors Underpinning Adaptation

Sarcopenia, the age-related decline in skeletal muscle mass, results in a loss of strength and functional capacity, which subsequently increases the risk of disease, disability, frailty, and all-cause mortality. Exercise is known to be an efficacious paradigm for improving health and attenuating or preventing many chronic diseases. For the previous two decades, our laboratory has established an in vivo rodent dynamometer model to explore the effects of various skeletal muscle training paradigms following stretch-shortening contractions (SSCs).The responses tohigh-intensity resistance-type exercise training (RTET) using this physiological model ranges from adaptation, characterized by enhanced skeletal muscle performance along with increased muscle mass, to maladaptation, defined as an absence or diminishment of skeletal muscle performance and no improvements in muscle mass. Utilizing a non-injurious SSC protocol, training-induced adaptation occurs in young rodents; this response is altered with age in which old rodents undergo maladaptation when exposed to this same chronic loading protocol. Additionally, with respect to chronologically advancing age, our previous work indicates an altered adaptive phenotype following SSC RTET occurs prior to complete biological development of the rodent – six months of age in the adult rat, which we believe may indicate the onset of a loss in homeostatic control leading to an age-specific biological departure from the adaptive response. However, recently we have shown that modifying the frequency of RTET from three to two days per week in older rodents (e.g. 30-31 months of age) attenuates age-dependent maladaptation and restores muscle quality to a younger phenotype. Despite the therapeutic potential of RTET, a fundamental basis for evidence-based exercise prescription is still largely undetermined because the molecular, cellular and integrated physiological pathways involved in exercise-induced muscle adaptation are not fully understood. Aging in-and-of-itself is a biological process associated with an altered phenotype, and emerging evidence suggests these changes are possibly linked to epigenomic processes. Excitingly, recent research has shown that exercise can influence changes in DNA methylation in skeletal muscle. However, it is currently unknown how exactly DNA methylation may be influencing the adaptation of skeletal muscle to high-intensity SSC RTET, which could be an important mechanism underlying the responsivity of the muscle to training in the context of aging. Traditionally, the term muscle memory has been defined as describing the capability of skeletal muscle to respond more quickly to an applied stimulus that has been encountered previously in spite of periods of inactivity. Recently, emerging evidence has pointed to the existence of a cellular foundation of skeletal muscle memory. Because environmental stimuli and stressors lead to modifications in gene expression, epigenetics/epigenomics are highly likely to form the underlying basis for this cellular memory. However, despite this collective knowledge, to date no studies have determined whether or not changes via DNA methylation that occur as a result of exposure to an adaptive exercise stimulus has a lasting influence on the adaptability of skeletal muscle upon reintroduction to the same stimulus at a later life. In order to examine these unresolved issues, the purpose of this dissertation followed three specific aims: 1) To determine the effects of aging and a reduced training frequency on the activation of molecular signaling pathways associated with the adaptation of skeletal muscle following one month of high-intensity SSC RTET in old rats; 2) to investigate whether DNA methylation influences the molecular signaling activity and adaptability of skeletal muscle following one month of high-intensity SSC RTET, and whether reducing the training frequency modifies the methylation profile of skeletal muscle in response to the training stimulus; 3) to examine if introducing high-intensity SSC RTET at an earlier relative age promotes changes in molecular signaling and DNA methylation that positively influences the ability of skeletal muscle to adapt upon re-exposure to the same paradigm at a later agepreviously shown to have the inability to go through the full adaptive response . The hypotheses for this research were that the ability of aged muscle to adapt to high-intensity SSC RTET would be compromised when exposed to an inappropriate stimulus (i.e., maladaptive) as a consequence of a dysregulated molecular signaling response which would be observable in distinct pathways crucial in muscle homeostasis and remodeling; furthermore, these potential age-related dysregulated events in gene activity would occur as a consequence to altered DNA methylation. Moreover, older animals exposed to a reduced frequency of high-intensity SSC RTET would respond favorably to the training stimulus and in an appropriate manner (i.e., adaptation) and would have a resemblance more like young rats in terms of the molecular signaling pathway and DNA methylation responses compared to age-matched counterparts exposed to a higher frequency that induces maladaptation. Additionally, training rodents at a younger relative age compared to where age-dependent maladaptation occurs would attenuate DNA methylation and therefore positively augment the adaptability of muscle to respond favorably to chronic SSC RTET at a later age following detraining. The results from this study could be vital in understanding the underlying performance, physiological, molecular, and environmental factors influencing the capability of aged skeletal muscle to undergo adaptation in response to RTET; and, thus have important ramifications in the attenuation and/or reversal of sarcopenia. Additionally, we sought to determine the therapeutic efficacy of a training-retraining paradigm using our in vivo high-intensity RTET paradigm by investigating whether or not training at an earlier age is able to prevent functional and physiological decrements of skeletal muscle during the later stages of life

Warming temperatures and smaller body sizes : synchronous changes in growth of North Sea fishes

Funded by Marine Scotland SciencePeer reviewedPostprin

Information Security Research within the Information Systems Discipline: Analyzing, Categorizing, and Classifying the Historical Underpinnings and Theoretical Assumptions

Academics examine and improve organizational systems, but oftentimes lag in techniques and theories because time is necessary to thoroughly study solutions. This research explores Information Security (InfoSec) concepts and theories within the Information Systems (IS) discipline to determine historical approaches, theoretical assumptions, and suggest where to strengthen InfoSec research areas. In our paper, we present our basic methodology; illustrate our approach by applying it to one of the “Basket of Eight” Association for Information Systems journals, the European Journal of Information Systems; and report our initial results. In subsequent research we will then use our proposed methodology for the remaining seven journals and beyond. By analyzing how researchers have historically examined information security, we can focus future InfoSec studies in necessary critical directions and maintain a closer pace with new techniques and theories to secure organizational information systems