Lentiviral transduction of epigenetically modified bovine adult stem cells

Bovine adipose-derived stem cells (ADS), a form of adult stem cells, are somatic cells that have similar characteristics of embryonic stem (ES) cells. Bovine ADS cells possess multipotent capabilities and have been found to express pluripotency genes associated with ES cells. The unique properties of ADS cells make them a desirable source for reprogramming experiments. The goal of reprogramming experiments is to transform somatic cells from a differentiated state to a pluripotent state. When somatic cells reprogram, there are certain epigenetic changes or modifications that must occur in order to successfully reprogram the nucleus. Epigenetic modifications will change the chromatin configuration without changing the DNA sequence. Somatic cells can be exposed to small molecules that may be able to reduce the chances of having incomplete chromatin modification. Two epigenetic modifying factors are a DNA methyltranferase inhibitor, zebularine (Zeb), and a histone deacetylase inhibitor, valproic acid (VPA). By inducing gene expression with the epigenetic modifiers, the cells may be stimulated to reprogram more efficiently than cells with lower gene expression. In the first experiment, three bovine ADS cell lines were treated with VPA or Zeb to observe the changes in expression levels of Oct4, Sox2, and Nanog (pluripotency-associated genes). The cells were treated for a period of 5, 7,10, or 14 days. VPA led to the highest increase of the pluripotency genes; however, both treatments may have produced a partial reprogramming. This partial reprogramming may result in the bovine ADS cells reaching complete pluripotency when combined with a reprogramming technique. In the second experiment, three bovine ADS cell lines were treated with VPA or Zeb for five days then followed with transduction using lentivirus. Oct4, Sox2, and Nanog were increased the highest when using epigenetic modifiers. Statistical differences for expression of the pluripotency-associated genes were found for cells treated with zebularine. While it was thought that viral transduction in combination with epigenetic modifiers would produce higher expression levels of the pluripotency-associated genes, this was not found to be true in this experiment

Cell proliferation and apoptosis in enamelin null mice

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/90220/1/j.1600-0722.2011.00860.x.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/90220/2/EOS_860_sm_FigsS1-S2-Supp.pd

Evaluation of individual and ensemble probabilistic forecasts of COVID-19 mortality in the United States

Short-term probabilistic forecasts of the trajectory of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States have served as a visible and important communication channel between the scientific modeling community and both the general public and decision-makers. Forecasting models provide specific, quantitative, and evaluable predictions that inform short-term decisions such as healthcare staffing needs, school closures, and allocation of medical supplies. Starting in April 2020, the US COVID-19 Forecast Hub (https://covid19forecasthub.org/) collected, disseminated, and synthesized tens of millions of specific predictions from more than 90 different academic, industry, and independent research groups. A multimodel ensemble forecast that combined predictions from dozens of groups every week provided the most consistently accurate probabilistic forecasts of incident deaths due to COVID-19 at the state and national level from April 2020 through October 2021. The performance of 27 individual models that submitted complete forecasts of COVID-19 deaths consistently throughout this year showed high variability in forecast skill across time, geospatial units, and forecast horizons. Two-thirds of the models evaluated showed better accuracy than a naïve baseline model. Forecast accuracy degraded as models made predictions further into the future, with probabilistic error at a 20-wk horizon three to five times larger than when predicting at a 1-wk horizon. This project underscores the role that collaboration and active coordination between governmental public-health agencies, academic modeling teams, and industry partners can play in developing modern modeling capabilities to support local, state, and federal response to outbreaks

The United States COVID-19 Forecast Hub dataset

Academic researchers, government agencies, industry groups, and individuals have produced forecasts at an unprecedented scale during the COVID-19 pandemic. To leverage these forecasts, the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) partnered with an academic research lab at the University of Massachusetts Amherst to create the US COVID-19 Forecast Hub. Launched in April 2020, the Forecast Hub is a dataset with point and probabilistic forecasts of incident cases, incident hospitalizations, incident deaths, and cumulative deaths due to COVID-19 at county, state, and national, levels in the United States. Included forecasts represent a variety of modeling approaches, data sources, and assumptions regarding the spread of COVID-19. The goal of this dataset is to establish a standardized and comparable set of short-term forecasts from modeling teams. These data can be used to develop ensemble models, communicate forecasts to the public, create visualizations, compare models, and inform policies regarding COVID-19 mitigation. These open-source data are available via download from GitHub, through an online API, and through R packages

Delivering Sustained, Coordinated, and Integrated Observations of the Southern Ocean for Global Impact

The Southern Ocean is disproportionately important in its effect on the Earth system, impacting climatic, biogeochemical and ecological systems, which makes recent observed changes to this system cause for global concern. The enhanced understanding and improvements in predictive skill needed for understanding and projecting future states of the Southern Ocean require sustained observations. Over the last decade, the Southern Ocean Observing System (SOOS) has established networks for enhancing regional coordination and research community groups to advance development of observing system capabilities. These networks support delivery of the SOOS 20-year vision, which is to develop a circumpolar system that ensures time series of key variables, and deliver the greatest impact from data to all key end-users. Although the Southern Ocean remains one of the least-observed ocean regions, enhanced international coordination and advances in autonomous platforms have resulted in progress towards addressing the need for sustained observations of this region. Since 2009, the Southern Ocean community has deployed over 5700 observational platforms south of 40°S. Large-scale, multi-year or sustained, multidisciplinary efforts have been supported and are now delivering observations of essential variables at space and time scales that enable assessment of changes being observed in Southern Ocean systems. The improved observational coverage, however, is predominantly for the open ocean, encompasses the summer, consists of primarily physical oceanographic variables and covers surface to 2000 m. Significant gaps remain in observations of the ice-impacted ocean, the sea ice, depths more than 2000 m, the air-sea-ice interface, biogeochemical and biological variables, and for seasons other than summer. Addressing these data gaps in a sustained way requires parallel advances in coordination networks, cyberinfrastructure and data management tools, observational platform and sensor technology, platform interrogation and data-transmission technologies, modeling frameworks, and internationally agreed sampling requirements of key variables. This paper presents a community statement on the major scientific and observational progress of the last decade, and importantly, an assessment of key priorities for the coming decade, towards achieving the SOOS vision and delivering essential data to all end users

Looking Through the Lens of Division I Student-Athletes in Logan, UT

The purpose of the panel is to provide the audience a perspective of our Division I student-athletes in Logan, UT. The Student lead discussion will navigate in the following areas: Compare and contrast from high school athletics to Division I athletics Academic college experience New hurdles that face student-athletes in the academic and athletic environment Adjusting to Cache Valley over the years Expectations of a Division I student-athlet