The Effects of Hippocampal Lesions on Neurotrophins in the Rodent Neocortex

Environmental enrichment (EE) upregulates neurotrophin (NT) expression in both the hippocampus (HPC) and neocortex. We expected this effect to be reduced in the NC by hippocampal lesions. To test this, middle-aged female rats with unilateral, bilateral or sham lesions of the HPC, lived in enriched or social housing. After three months, rats freely explored a novel environment for 5 minutes, were immediately perfused and brains processed for brain derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and neurotrophin-3 (NT-3) protein. Hippocampal lesions had no effect on BDNF in neocortex. Right, but not left, hippocampal lesions had a significant negative impact on behavioral exploration of social rats; and this effect was not present in the enriched group. Enriched rats showed significantly reduced BDNF expression in deep cortex with a similar trend in superficial layers regardless of lesion condition. The role of the HPC in neocortical plasticity processes remains variable and unclear.AIHS Polaris Awar

Zombie journals: designing a technological infrastructure for a precarious graduate student journal

Open access article. Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial License (CC-BY-NC) applies.Background: The Meeting of the Minds graduate student journal is edited primarily by students from our Masters programme. This means that our editorial board is subject to high annual turnover and that our technological infrastructure and workflow needed to be easy to train for, accommodate differing levels of technological skill and editorial interest, and provide archiving that did not require a continuing interest in the journal by future generations of students. Analysis: This article provides a detailed and comparative account of the "off-the-shelf" systems and software used in developing the journal with an explanation of the rationale behind our choices. Conclusion and implications: The choices we made can be adopted by other journals interested in a low-cost, "future-proof" approach to developing a publishing infrastructure.Ye

"Let's start a journal!": the multidisciplinary graduate student journal as educational opportunity

Sherpa Romeo green journal. Open access article. Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0) applies.The University of Lethbridge is a medium-sized, primarily undergraduate, comprehensive research university on the Canadian Prairies in Alberta. It has a small but growing graduate school, within which most students are studying at the masters level. For many years, the graduate student elected representative body, the Graduate Students Association (GSA), has sponsored an annual refereed conference, Meeting of the Minds. In 2015 the GSA decided to supplement this conference with an accompanying journal, also called Meeting of the Minds. This article discusses the lessons learned in establishing this journal and overseeing its first two years of operations (and first year of publication). The article concentrates on two sets of problems: 1) philosophical, economic, and sociological issues that arose at the conceptual level while establishing a multidisciplinary, institution-focused graduate journal; and 2) technical, bibliographic, organizational, and economic issues encountered in attempting to address these conceptual concerns and ensure the long-term viability of the research accepted and published. Although the journal was not able to solve all the problems that arose during the first two years of operation, several solutions on the organizational, technological, economic, and bibliographic levels were developed that might be used by others establishing similar scholar- or student-led journals.Ye