MicroRNA applications for prostate, ovarian and breast cancer in the era of precision medicine.

The high degree of conservation in microRNA from Caenorhabditiselegans to humans has enabled relatively rapid implementation of findings in model systems to the clinic. The convergence of the capacity for genomic screening being implemented in the prevailing precision medicine initiative and the capabilities of microRNA to address these changes holds significant promise. However, prostate, ovarian and breast cancers are heterogeneous and face issues of evolving therapeutic resistance. The transforming growth factor-beta (TGFβ) signaling axis plays an important role in the progression of these cancers by regulating microRNAs. Reciprocally, microRNAs regulate TGFβ actions during cancer progression. One must consider the expression of miRNA in the tumor microenvironment a source of biomarkers of disease progression and a viable target for therapeutic targeting. The differential expression pattern of microRNAs in health and disease, therapeutic response and resistance has resulted in its application as robust biomarkers. With two microRNA mimetics in ongoing restorative clinical trials, the paradigm for future clinical studies rests on the current observational trials to validate microRNA markers of disease progression. Some of today's biomarkers can be translated to the next generation of microRNA-based therapies

Infertility clinics and acupuncture:a qualitative web-based study

The increasing demand for fertility treatments has led to the rise of private clinics offering complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) treatments. The most frequently offered CAM infertility treatment is acupuncture. However, there is no good evidence to support the effectiveness of acupuncture in treating infertility. This study evaluates the scope of information provided by CAM fertility clinics in the UK. A content analysis was conducted on 200 websites of CAM fertility clinics in the UK that offer acupuncture as a treatment for infertility. Of the 48 clinics that met the eligibility criteria, the majority of the websites did not provide sufficient information on the efficacy, risks and success rates of acupuncture for infertility. This has the potential to infringe on patient autonomy, provide false hope and reduce the chances of pregnancy ever being achieved as fertility declines during the time course of ineffective acupuncture treatment

A Pharmacist’s Role in the Prevention and Management of Perioperative Atrial Fibrillation and Flutter

This home-study CPE has been developed to educate pharmacists about recently published guidelines for perioperative atrial fibrillation and flutter management and prevention, and discuss the role a pharmacist can have in the care of these patients

Professor burnout: satisfaction with salary and perception of student competence

This study examined the relationship between professor burnout and satisfaction with salary and satisfaction with their students. Twenty-seven undergraduate professors at a small, liberal arts university in the southeast responded to the Maslach Burnout Inventory- Educators Survey and three items measuring satisfaction with salary and perception of competence and dedication of their students. Salary was found to be negatively related to emotional exhaustion. Ratings of student competence and dedication were negatively related to depersonalization and positively related to personal accomplishment

Turning Off the Lights: Automating SkySat Mission Operations

A common goal for satellite operations is to achieve a level of automation that minimizes human interaction, especially as constellation sizes increase. Planet’s SkySat fleet is a constellation of high resolution Earth imaging smallsats that has grown from three to fifteen satellites in three years. This rapid expansion, along with Planet’s goal of improving operational reliability, has necessitated automating operations to reduce manual effort to maintain the health and safety fleet. To address the growing amount of work required for anomaly triage, systems were created for automated anomaly response. These systems have removed the need to actively monitor satellite health and safety. Instead, operators rely on interrupt-driven alerts to inform them of an anomaly. With the goal of further decoupling fleet size from operator effort, the mission operations team is working to automate routine maintenance tasks. As a result, the number of person-hours needed to actively operate the fleet has seen a three-fold reduction per week while enabling a five-fold increase in on-orbit assets. The systems developed have enabled an operational posture that removes the need for 24/7 staffing at a dedicated operations center

Anemia and the Role of the Pharmacist

This home-study CPE has been developed to educate pharmacists and pharmacy technicians about the various types of anemia and their treatments

Individual differences in pain sensitivity are associated with cognitive network functional connectivity following one night of experimental sleep disruption.

Previous work suggests that sleep disruption can contribute to poor pain modulation. Here, we used experimental sleep disruption to examine the relationship between sleep disruption-induced pain sensitivity and functional connectivity (FC) of cognitive networks contributing to pain modulation. Nineteen healthy individuals underwent two counterbalanced experimental sleep conditions for one night each: uninterrupted sleep versus sleep disruption. Following each condition, participants completed functional MRI including a simple motor task and a noxious thermal stimulation task. Pain ratings and stimulus temperatures from the latter task were combined to calculate a pain sensitivity change score following sleep disruption. This change score was used as a predictor of simple motor task FC changes using bilateral executive control networks (RECN, LECN) and the default mode network (DMN) masks as seed regions of interest (ROIs). Increased pain sensitivity after sleep disruption was positively associated with increased RECN FC to ROIs within the DMN and LECN (F(4,14) = 25.28, pFDR = 0.05). However, this pain sensitivity change score did not predict FC changes using LECN and DMN masks as seeds (pFDR > 0.05). Given that only RECN FC was associated with sleep loss-induced hyperalgesia, findings suggest that cognitive networks only partially contribute to the sleep-pain dyad

Interview with Amanda Yabes and Bethany Smith

Amanda Yabes and Bethany Smith discuss coming out while at Kenyon College, the gay community at school, in Mount Vernon, and in Columbus, and sexuality. They touch on their relationships, living together, and religion.https://digital.kenyon.edu/lt_interviews/1039/thumbnail.jp

Mussels can both outweigh and interact with the effects of terrestrial to freshwater resource subsidies on littoral benthic communities.

Litterfall is an important resource subsidy for lake ecosystems that primarily accumulates in littoral zones. Bivalves are abundant within littoral zones and may modify the effects of terrestrial resource subsidies through trophic interactions and engineering their surrounding habitat. Leaf inputs to lakes and freshwater mussel abundances are changing throughout the boreal ecoregion so we set out to investigate how the co-occurring benthic community might respond. We set up an in situ mesocosm experiment in Ramsey Lake, Sudbury, ON, Canada. Mesocosms contained sediments of either 5% or 35% terrestrial organic matter (tOM), into which we placed mussels (Elliptio complanata) at differing densities (0, 0.4 and 2musselsm-2, with a sham mussel treatment at 0.4musselsm-2). Over one month we recorded the sediment chemistry (dissolved organic carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus), littoral organisms (benthic algae and zooplankton) and mussel growth. At high mussel densities we recorded a 90%, 80%, 45% and 40% reduction in phosphorus, dissolved organic carbon, nitrogen and benthic diatoms, respectively, whereas at low mussel densities we observed a 3-fold increase in zooplankton. We discuss that these results were caused by a combination of bioturbation and trophic interactions. Benthic diatom concentrations were also reduced by 20% in sediments of 35% tOM, likely due to shading and competition with bacteria. Mussel growth increased at high mussel densities but was offset at high tOM, likely due to the organic matter interfering with filter feeding. Our results suggest that mussels can alter the geochemical composition of sediments and abundances of associated littoral organisms, in some cases regardless of tOM quantity. Therefore, the dominant top-down control exerted by freshwater mussels may outweigh bottom-up effects of tOM additions. Generally, our study reveals the importance of considering dominant species when studying the effects of cross-ecosystem resource fluxes