Shock Incarceration Programs Creative Problem Solving

Abstract of Project Shock Incarceration Programs Creative Problem Solving Many women who are incarcerated inside correctional boot camp prisons might have substantial low self-esteem that could worsen due to the stress of the prison environment, confinement, and being far away from their children and family members. Shock Incarceration or “boot camp” male correctional programs are degrading for female inmates: They do not meet the special needs and problems of women. Programs are based on control theory, which implies that an individual’s behavior assimilates to that which is expected by society. Female inmates are taught discipline and responsibility by “breaking down and building up” to make certain they will become law abiding citizens. Boot camp prison programs were developed to address the lawlessness of men. This paper seeks to discuss the need to implement feminist programs and creativity for creative problem solving. Feminist theory advances social change for women in overcoming dominant cultural and societal norms. Creativity, a deliberate process that opens the door to change, will be effective to enable women to build their high self-esteem. The Creative Problem-Solving Workbook: For Building Women’s Self-Esteem will be introduced. It was created to develop deliberate thinking processes for self-esteem while incarcerated

5' heterogeneity of glucocorticoid receptor mRNA: associations with tissue-specific, constitutive and auto-regulation

Glucocorticoids are steroid hormones that exert profound effects on virtually all tissues. The principal determinant of cellular sensitivity to glucocorticoids is the level of glucocorticoid receptor (GR). Despite near-ubiquitous expression, GR levels vary widely between tissues. A complete lack of GR is lethal at birth and even mild dysregulation has significant pathophysiological consequences. The rat GR gene includes a complex 5' promoter region encoding at least eleven untranslated alternate exons 1, eight of which lie in a ~3kb CpG island region close to exon 2. The subject for this investigation has been the association between the alternate exons 1 of the GR promoter and the tissue-specific, constitutive and auto-regulation of GR.Cell-specific alternate exon 1 expression was analysed by RT-PCR in various rodent cell lines. All 'CpG island' exons 1 examined (I4, I5, 16, I7, 110 andln) were expressed in all cell lines tested, while expression of exon 11, which lies outside the CpG island region, ~30.2kb upstream of exon 2, was restricted to cells of the immune system. Promoter activity was analysed by transient transfection in B103 (rat neural), C6 (rat glioma) and H4IIE (rat liver) cell lines, using constructs forming both a 3' and 5' deletion series of the CpG island region fused to a luciferase reporter gene. 'P2' contains the entire promoter and was the most active construct in all cell lines tested. Transfections using the 3' deletion series, which assesses individual exon 1-associated promoter activity, demonstrated that only 'PI7' showed high tissue-specific activity restricted to the neural cell lines B103 and C6. Further transfections with constructs based on Pl7 identified a 134bp region required for high promoter activity in neural cells, which was orientation-specific and did not show properties associated with a classical enhancer. This directionality was mirrored in DNasel protection studies in which a footprint was identified on only one strand of the 134bp fragment. While gel mobility shift assays showed evidence of Spl binding over the region, the physiological significance of this remains unclear. It may be the case that this fragment represents a region at which directional transcription is initiated. Transfections in B103 cells using the 5' deletion series identified two regions important for high promoter activity. Further analysis showed that the activity of these regions was position-dependent within the context of the whole promoter. It appears, therefore, that alternate GR exons 1 are not associated with individual promoters that are selectively regulated in different cell types. Rather, tissue-specific levels of GR arise through a complex arrangement of interacting regulatory elements over the whole promoter region.The role of individual exon 1 splice donor sites was investigated by site-directed mutagenesis of splice donor sites at exons U, lio and In within P2. Following transient transfection in B103 cells, none of the mutant constructs showed a loss in promoter activity relative to intact P2. RT-PCR identified longer transcripts associated with the mutant exons, reflecting the use of downstream 'cryptic' splice donor sites. There appears to be redundancy between alternate exons 1, which can therefore be seen to form a robust promoter mechanism that ensures constitutive GR expression. DNasel hypersensitive site mapping in H4IIE cells showed that a ~3kb fragment, encompassing the entire CpG island region, is bounded by hypersensitive sites and shows general sensitivity to nuclease digestion, consistent with an extended region of transcriptionally active chromatin.The role of individual exons 1 in the autoregulation of GR was investigated by transient transfection of the 3' and 5' deletion series of the GR promoter into B103 cells treated with the synthetic glucocorticoid, dexamethasone. Results showed that the mechanism of autoregulation does not operate selectively on individual exons 1, but instead down-regulates the transcriptional activity of the whole GR CpG island region.Results were therefore consistent with a model of GR transcriptional regulation in which exons 1 are not associated with individual promoters that are selectively regulated by tissue-specific or auto-regulatory signals; rather, regulation occurs through position-dependent interactions of elements arranged over the whole CpG island promoter 'region'. However, while selection of alternate exon 1 transcription initiation sites may not be of primary importance to the tissue-specific or auto¬ regulation of GR, the multiple exon 1 structure does ensure that promoter activity is especially robust to mutations and thus ensures the constitutive expression of this vital housekeeping gene

Protein kinases associated with the yeast phosphoproteome

BACKGROUND: Protein phosphorylation is an extremely important mechanism of cellular regulation. A large-scale study of phosphoproteins in a whole-cell lysate of Saccharomyces cerevisiae has previously identified 383 phosphorylation sites in 216 peptide sequences. However, the protein kinases responsible for the phosphorylation of the identified proteins have not previously been assigned. RESULTS: We used Predikin in combination with other bioinformatic tools, to predict which of 116 unique protein kinases in yeast phosphorylates each experimentally determined site in the phosphoproteome. The prediction was based on the match between the phosphorylated 7-residue sequence and the predicted substrate specificity of each kinase, with the highest weight applied to the residues or positions that contribute most to the substrate specificity. We estimated the reliability of the predictions by performing a parallel prediction on phosphopeptides for which the kinase has been experimentally determined. CONCLUSION: The results reveal that the functions of the protein kinases and their predicted phosphoprotein substrates are often correlated, for example in endocytosis, cytokinesis, transcription, replication, carbohydrate metabolism and stress response. The predictions link phosphoproteins of unknown function with protein kinases with known functions and vice versa, suggesting functions for the uncharacterized proteins. The study indicates that the phosphoproteins and the associated protein kinases represented in our dataset have housekeeping cellular roles; certain kinases are not represented because they may only be activated during specific cellular responses. Our results demonstrate the utility of our previously reported protein kinase substrate prediction approach (Predikin) as a tool for establishing links between kinases and phosphoproteins that can subsequently be tested experimentally

Modulation of Tumor Tolerance in Primary Central Nervous System Malignancies

Central nervous system tumors take advantage of the unique immunology of the CNS and develop exquisitely complex stromal networks that promote growth despite the presence of antigen-presenting cells and tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes. It is precisely this immunological paradox that is essential to the survival of the tumor. We review the evidence for functional CNS immune privilege and the impact it has on tumor tolerance. In this paper, we place an emphasis on the role of tumor-infiltrating myeloid cells in maintaining stromal and vascular quiescence, and we underscore the importance of indoleamine 2,3-dioxygenase activity as a myeloid-driven tumor tolerance mechanism. Much remains to be discovered regarding the tolerogenic mechanisms by which CNS tumors avoid immune clearance. Thus, it is an open question whether tumor tolerance in the brain is fundamentally different from that of peripheral sites of tumorigenesis or whether it simply stands as a particularly strong example of such tolerance

Writing and publishing for early career academics

This panel will describe strategies to help early career academics prepare a first publication and develop a research agenda. This interactive session provides graduate students and early career scholars with an overview of the types of papers frequently found in academic journals, and shares approaches to writing for both peer-reviewed and non-peer-reviewed sections. The panel includes engaging participants in discussion around current research topics, drafting a manuscript, and building and executing a research agenda. The strategies and insights we share will be particularly useful to those wanting to understand the academic publishing process more thoroughly

Issues concerning Landowner Management Plan Adoption Decisions: A Recursive Bivariate Probit Approach

Despite the likely benefits of having a written forest management plan, a small number of landowners in the United States have the one. A recursive bivariate probit model was used to identify the possible relationship between landowners’ decision to obtain a management plan and their interest in future timber harvesting. Our study results based on recursive bivariate model suggest that landowners having larger land ownerships, longer forest ownership tenure, and higher education were more likely to have a forest management plan and future timber harvesting interest. While the landowners having interest for wildlife management were also interested to have a written management plan, they did not prefer to harvest in future. Study results indicate that written management plan means more than a timber harvesting strategy to landowners in general. Many elderly landowners with a low level of income and less formal education and those having small or medium sized tracts of forestland are less likely to own a written management plan. Therefore, this group requires special attention in various government sponsored forest management related extension activities. Future research on understanding landowner perception behind written management plan is recommended

Brorfelde Schmidt CCD Catalog (BSCC)

The Brorfelde Schmidt CCD Catalog (BSCC) contains about 13.7 million stars, north of +49 deg Declination with precise positions and V, R photometry. The catalog has been constructed from the reductions of 18,667 CCD frames observed with the Brorfelde Schmidt Telescope between 2000 and 2007. The Tycho-2 catalog was used for astrometric and photometric reference stars. Errors of individual positions are about 20 to 200 mas for stars in the R = 10 to 18 mag range. External comparisons with 2MASS and SDSS reveal possible small systematic errors in the BSCC of up to about 30 mas. The catalog is supplemented with J, H, and K_s magnitudes from the 2MASS catalog. The catalog data file (about 550 MB ASCII, compressed) will be made available at the Strasbourg Data Center (CDS).Comment: 16 pages, 22 figures, 2 tables, accepted by A

Las17p–Vrp1p but not Las17p–Arp2/3 interaction is important for actin patch polarization in yeast

AbstractThe actin cytoskeleton plays a central role in many important cellular processes such as cell polarization, cell division and endocytosis. The dynamic changes to the actin cytoskeleton that accompany these processes are regulated by actin-associated proteins Wiskott–Aldrich Syndrome Protein (WASP) (known as Las17p in yeast) and WASP-Interacting Protein (WIP) (known as Vrp1p in yeast). Both yeast and human WASP bind to and stimulate the Arp2/3 complex which in turn nucleates assembly of actin monomers into filaments at polarized sites at the cortex. WASP–WIP interaction in yeast and humans are important for Arp2/3 complex stimulation in vitro. It has been proposed that these interactions are also important for polarized actin assembly in vivo. However, the redundancy of actin-associated proteins has made it difficult to test this hypothesis. We have identified two point mutations (L80T and H94L) in yeast WASP that in combination abolish WASP–WIP interaction in yeast. We also identify an N-terminal fragment of Las17p (N-Las17p1–368) able to interact with Vrp1p but not Arp2/3. Using these mutant and truncated forms of yeast WASP we provide novel evidence that WASP interaction with WIP is more important than interaction with Arp2/3 for polarized actin assembly and endocytosis in yeast

Regular obstructed categories and TQFT

A proposal of the concept of $n$-regular obstructed categories is given. The corresponding regularity conditions for mappings, morphisms and related structures in categories are considered. An n-regular TQFT is introduced. It is shown the connection of time reversibility with the regularity.Comment: 22 pages in Latex. To be published in J. Math. Phy