Changes in neuronal activity across the mouse ventromedial nucleus of the hypothalamus in response to low glucose: evaluation using an extracellular multi‐electrode array approach

The hypothalamic ventromedial nucleus (VMN) is involved in maintaining systemic glucose homeostasis. Neurophysiological studies in rodent brain slices have identified populations of VMN glucose‐sensing neurones: glucose‐excited (GE) neurones, cells which increased their firing rate in response to increases in glucose concentration, and glucose‐inhibited (GI) neurones, which show a reduced firing frequency in response to increasing glucose concentrations. To date, most slice electrophysiological studies characterising VMN glucose‐sensing neurones in rodents have utilised the patch clamp technique. Multi‐electrode arrays (MEAs) are a state‐of‐the‐art electrophysiological tool enabling the electrical activity of many cells to be recorded across multiple electrode sites (channels) simultaneously. We used a perforated MEA (pMEA) system to evaluate electrical activity changes across the dorsal‐ventral extent of the mouse VMN region in response to alterations in glucose concentration. Because intrinsic (ie, direct postsynaptic sensing) and extrinsic (ie, presynaptically modulated) glucosensation were not discriminated, we use the terminology ‘GE/presynaptically excited by an increase (PER)’ and ‘GI/presynaptically excited by a decrease (PED)’ in the present study to describe responsiveness to changes in extracellular glucose across the mouse VMN. We observed that 15%‐60% of channels were GE/PER, whereas 2%‐7% were GI/PED channels. Within the dorsomedial portion of the VMN (DM‐VMN), significantly more channels were GE/PER compared to the ventrolateral portion of the VMN (VL‐VMN). However, GE/PER channels within the VL‐VMN showed a significantly higher basal firing rate in 2.5 mmol l‐1 glucose than DM‐VMN GE/PER channels. No significant difference in the distribution of GI/PED channels was observed between the VMN subregions. The results of the present study demonstrate the utility of the pMEA approach for evaluating glucose responsivity across the mouse VMN. pMEA studies could be used to refine our understanding of other neuroendocrine systems by examining population level changes in electrical activity across brain nuclei, thus providing key functional neuroanatomical information to complement and inform the design of single‐cell neurophysiological studies

If we are going to elect our judges, we should use partisanballots

While at a federal level judges are appointed by the President, in 22 states they are elected. One characteristic of many of these judicial elections is that ballots are nonpartisan, an innovation that was introduced with the intention of forcing voters to evaluate candidates more closely. In new research which examines a court race in North Carolina, Craig M. Burnett and Lydia Tiede find that nonpartisan ballots only make decision making more difficult for voters. They also find that partisan voters prefer candidates to be labelled, so as to best match their preferences, but also that labelling candidates helps independent voters to decide who most closely matches their own policy interests as well

How work constrains leisure: New ideas and directions for interdisciplinary research

In this commentary, we note the lack of emphasis on work-related factors in the leisure constraints literature. We highlight three work-related factors that we think warrant investigation as leisure constraints: (1) labor practices related to work scheduling, (2) organizational norms, and (3) work supervisors. We discuss relevant organizational psychology literatures and note that future research focusing on work-related factors could broaden knowledge about leisure constraints and illuminate new paths forward for improving employees’ leisure experiences. We emphasize that addressing these work-related constraints likely requires moving beyond individual-directed strategies and focusing on contextual factors (e.g., organizational policies and practices) that could be targeted to improve employees’ leisure experiences

Needle in a Haystack: Finding Supermassive Black Hole-Related Flares in the Zwicky Transient Facility Public Survey

Transient accretion events onto supermassive black holes (SMBHs), such as tidal disruption events (TDEs), Bowen Fluorescence Flares (BFFs), and active galactic nuclei (AGNs), which are accompanied by sudden increases of activity, offer a new window onto the SMBH population, accretion physics, and stellar dynamics in galaxy centers. However, such transients are rare and finding them in wide-field transient surveys is challenging. Here we present the results of a systematic real-time search for SMBH-related transients in Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) public alerts, using various search queries. We examined 345 rising events coincident with a galaxy nucleus, with no history of previous activity, of which 223 were spectroscopically classified. Of those, five (2.2%) were TDEs, one (0.5%) was a BFF, and two (0.9%) were AGN flares. Limiting the search to blue events, the fraction of TDEs nearly doubles to 4.1%, and no TDEs are missed. Limiting the search further to candidate post-starburst galaxies increases the relative number of TDEs to 16.7%, but the absolute numbers in such a search are small. The main contamination source is supernovae (95.1% of classified events), of which the majority (82.2% of supernovae) are of Type Ia. In a comparison set of 39 events with limited photometric history, the AGN contamination increases to ~30%. Host galaxy offset is not a significant discriminant of TDEs in current ZTF data, but might be useful in higher-resolution data. Our results can be used to quantify the efficiency of various SMBH-related transient search strategies in optical surveys such as ZTF and the Legacy Survey of Space and Time.Comment: Accepted to Ap

Interview with Lydia Groves

An interview with Lydia Groves regarding her experiences in a one-room school house.https://scholars.fhsu.edu/ors/1063/thumbnail.jp

The Most Important Current Research Questions in Urban Ecosystem Services

We tend to take nature’s ecological systems – or ecosystems – for granted, but they provide critically valuable services to society and to urban areas. They create a sense of place and recreational opportunities, contributing to quality of life by enhancing human physical and psychological health. This is particularly true for cities, where economic productivity, fiscal soundness, community life, and governance are tied to natural surroundings in distinct, unique and generally under-appreciated ways. Because the urbanized world depends on ecosystem services – both inside and outside of city boundaries – investing in the provision of ecosystem services will often be more cost-effective than response actions, such as treatment, restoration, and disaster response. Given the importance of urban ecosystem benefits to surrounding populations, we might expect that ecosystem services would play a prominent role in the formulation of urban policies, plans, and laws. However, with rare exception, they do not. Many cities are experiencing declines of the ecosystems that sustain them. Metropolitan areas are losing open space, farmland, and environmentally sensitive lands. As America, and indeed the rest of the world, becomes increasingly urbanized, these issues are of the first importance in seeking to improve quality of life. The scholarship in the area, though, has been fragmented by discipline. Much remains to be done. First and foremost, we must identify the pressing research needs. This article brings together the collective insights of scholars and practitioners from a wide range of disciplines – lawyers and urban planners to ecologists and economists. Taking a comprehensive and wide-ranging view of the field, we identify the most important research questions that should shape the future of scholarship on urban ecosystem services. In doing so, we seek to help shape the trajectory of research across multiple disciplines in this growing and critical area