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Background: Postpartum (PP) preeclamptic (PE) women have an increased risk for developing hypertension (HTN), cerebrovascular diseases, and chronic kidney diseases later in life. The timing and mechanisms that contribute to a rise in blood pressure (BP), cerebrovascular and kidney dysfunction in PP PE women is unknown and the focus of this study. Previous studies in our lab (PMID: 34727994) indicate PP PE rats at 10 weeks have HTN, decreased antioxidant capacity (AC), and increased inflammation. Our current study examines BP, oxidative stress (OS), and inflammation in PP PE rats at an earlier time point, 6 weeks (PP6). Understanding changes in cerebral and renal OS and inflammation may reveal the pathophysiology of HTN, cerebrovascular, and renal disease development in PP PE women. We hypothesize that BP, renal and cerebral OS and inflammation will increase in PP6 PE rats. Methods: Pregnant Sprague Dawley rats were divided into 2 groups: control (CON) normal pregnant rats, and PE rats, derived from the surgically induced placental ischemic (reduced uterine perfusion pressure) model of PE. All rats gave birth and weaned for 3 weeks. At PP6, BP was measured via carotid catheterization; tissues were collected to measure OS (H2O2 and AC) and inflammation via BCAs and ELISAs. Results: BP was elevated in PP6 PE vs CON rats (128±6 vs 106±4mmHg, p This research was supported by the American Heart Association Early Career Development Award [AHA 18CDA34110264 (Cunningham)] This is the full abstract presented at the American Physiology Summit 2023 meeting and is only available in HTML format. There are no additional versions or additional content available for this abstract. Physiology was not involved in the peer review process.

In Twilight of the Idols, Nietzsche proposes eliminating the concepts of guilt and punishment from our social institutions and sanctions. I argue that doing so is a plausible project that entails no negative repercussions to our ethical and social lives, and is desirable from a moral standpoint. Nietzsche’s genealogy of moral guilt shows him to be exclusively concerned with the feeling of “pervasive guilt” produced by the Judeo-Christian tradition. Pervasive guilt as a moral-religious interpretation of human suffering and feelings of personal inadequacy provides a pretext to satisfy cruelty through self-punishment for moral wrongdoing. This feeling survives declining theistic belief and remains a feature of secular cultures and moralities. Pervasive guilt is not a moral emotion. It encourages self-cruelty as a means to feeling power and focusses attention on feelings of personal failure, rather than on the person wronged. Eliminating guilt from human psychology restores the conscience to the function of guiding ethical behavior through responsiveness to others, rather than self-punishment. Nietzsche’s genealogy reveals punishment’s roots in human cruelty and the desire to retaliate against the cause of injury. The concept of punishment emerges from primitive economic thinking that posits equivalences between injuries received and the injurer’s suffering as compensation provided to the injured party. As a community’s response to crime, punishment has had different expected results, but remains essentially a justification for inflicting suffering on the wrongdoer, becoming the unquestioned means for addressing crime. But punishment only anesthetizes the feeling of being wronged and replaces it with the pleasure of making suffer. Recognizing punishment as an interpretation allows a distinction between sanctions and punishment. Sanctions for crime can be reinterpreted as having the aim of protecting the community without punitive intent. Thus, eliminating punishment does not entail leaving crime unaddressed. Eliminating punishment aims at resisting the distorting demands of the victim’s ressentiment, it avoids anesthetizing moral protest through violent affect, and aims to direct the criminal’s attention away from their own suffering and towards recognition of the wrong done to the victim.

Our work brings preliminary data on the diversity of microorganisms in Dobšinská and Demänovská ice caves (Slovakia). The caves are located at about 80 km from each other. Demänovská Ice Cave is part of the Demänovské caves system, located in the Demänovská Valley in the Low Tatras National Park. Dobšinská Ice Cave (969m asl), is part of the Stratená Cave System, located on the south-western edge of the Slovak Paradise National Park in the Spiš-Gemer karst. Both caves have been opened for the public during the last decades of the 19th century and are presently intensively visited by tourists [in 2014 alone, Demänovská ice cave was visited by 70,769 tourists (Nudziková 2018)]. There are few reports on the biocenosis of these two caves, the available data referring mainly to the invertebrate fauna (Papáč et al. 2019). In what concerns the microorganisms, up to our investigation, in focus have been only the fungi. Thus, in Dobšinská Ice Cave was reported the presence of species such as Botrytis cinerea and Aspergillus fumigatus isolated from bat guano (Nováková 2006) and the abundance of fungi outside and inside the cave was compared while from Demänovská Ice Cave, based on ITS sequences, Ogórek et al. (2018) reports on the phenotypic and genotypic diversity of airborne fungal spores. Our work complements these two studies adding data on the bacterial diversity from different parts of the two caves and depending on the substrate types (ice blocks and/or sediments). Using Sanger sequencing of the 16S amplicons from DNA isolated from pure bacterial cultures obtained from ice and/or sediments of Demänovská and Dobšinská Ice Caves, we identified 7 and respectively 12 species of bacteria. Surprisingly, only two species where common to both caves. In both Demänovská Ice Cave and Dobšinská Ice Cave the bacterial communities were dominated by Acinetobacter and Bacillus. Beside the identification of the main bacterial groups present in the underground habitats, Illumina sequencing enabled us to build genus heatmaps for the caves, allowing for comparision between various segments of each cave in relation with the specific climate features. When compared, the different types of samples (water, sediment, ice) showed different abundance of bacteria, ice diversity being greater than sediment/water diversity in both Dobšinska and Demänovská ice caves. The chemical composition of the samples (ice and water) is also discussed. This work is the first to bring insights on the bacterial diversity of Demänovská and Dobšinská Ice Caves and we appreciate what it opens new directions of research not only on the evolution of the microbial communities in relation to the climate changes occurred in past times, but also on how intense visiting affects the structures of the microorganisms communities.

The effects of stroke and delirium on postdischarge cognition and patient-centered health outcomes after surgical aortic valve replacement (SAVR) are not well characterized. Here, we assess the impact of postoperative stroke and delirium on these health outcomes in SAVR patients at 90 days.Patients (N = 383) undergoing SAVR (41% received concomitant coronary artery bypass graft) enrolled in a randomized trial of embolic protection devices underwent serial neurologic and delirium evaluations at postoperative days 1, 3, and 7 and magnetic resonance imaging at day 7. Outcomes included 90-day functional status, neurocognitive decline from presurgical baseline, and quality of life.By postoperative day 7, 25 (6.6%) patients experienced clinical stroke and 103 (28.5%) manifested delirium. During index hospitalization, time to discharge was longer in patients experiencing stroke (hazard ratio, 0.62; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.42-0.94; P = .02) and patients experiencing delirium (hazard ratio, 0.68; 95% CI, 0.54-0.86; P = .001). At day 90, patients experiencing stroke were more likely to have a modified Rankin score2 (odds ratio [OR], 5.9; 95% CI, 1.7-20.1; P = .01), depression (OR, 5.3; 95% CI, 1.6-17.3; P = .006), a lower 12-Item Short Form Survey physical health score (adjusted mean difference -3.3 ± 1.9; P = .08), and neurocognitive decline (OR, 7.8; 95% CI, 2.3-26.4; P = .001). Delirium was associated with depression (OR, 2.2; 95% CI, 0.9-5.3; P = .08), lower 12-Item Short Form Survey physical health (adjusted mean difference -2.3 ± 1.1; P = .03), and neurocognitive decline (OR, 2.2; 95% CI, 1.2-4.0; P = .01).Stroke and delirium occur more frequently after SAVR than is commonly recognized, and these events are associated with disability, depression, cognitive decline, and poorer quality of life at 90 days postoperatively. These findings support the need for new interventions to reduce these events and improve patient-centered outcomes.

In the previous chapter, we completed steps 1–4 of our game design and learned how to draw the background and trees onto the screen. In this chapter, we will learn how to draw and move Captain Johnson’s B-58 Hustler plane.

In the last chapter, we set up the game environment and initialized the variables (including the animals dictionary variable which stores data about each of Snapper’s animals). We also displayed the screen background.

Our Forest Bomber game is almost finished. The gameplay elements are all in place, and so all that is required is a scoreboard and some feedback to the user at the end of each level or when it is game over.

In this final part of Alien Invasion, we will write the code to shoot the UFOs and complete the game

We have built most of the mechanics for our Golf game. Now we just need to add the last parts of our code to finish it off. The remaining steps are

In the last chapter, we completed the setup and displayed the flag in a random position. In this chapter, we will complete the following steps

Snapper is a simple first-person shooting game where the aim is to target forest animals. However, as we don’t actually want to kill any of our furry friends, we will be using a camera instead of a gun.

Alien Invasion is a space arcade game, where the goal is to prevent earth being invaded by alien Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs). The player controls a moving base and has 20 missiles to shoot down as many UFOs as possible.

In the last chapter, we learned how to make the plane fly across the screen. Next, we will learn how to write the code which will drop a bomb, and then we will develop the end of level and game over code.

So far, our game has animals appearing and then hiding, and we can control the location of the camera by moving the mouse. In order for Snapper to become a game, we need to be able to take photographs.

Career Pathways: A systemic framework for connecting a series of academic credits, credentials, and work experience across the learner continuum for each student persona.Career pathways is the coll...

A synthesis of the R,R-tartrate salt of the popular anti-Parkinson’s drug R-rasagiline (Azilect) was adapted to introduce the organic laboratory student to a medically relevant synthesis. It makes use of concepts found in the undergraduate organic chemistry curriculum, appropriately fits into three approximately 4 h lab periods, and utilizes readily available equipment and inexpensive commercially available chemicals.

The Axion Resonant InterAction Detection Experiment (ARIADNE) is a collaborative effort to search for the QCD axion using techniques based on nuclear magnetic resonance (Arvanitaki and Geraci, Phys Rev Lett 113:161801, 2014). In the experiment, axions or axion-like particles would mediate short-range spin-dependent interactions between a laser-polarized3He gas and a rotating (unpolarized) tungsten source mass, acting as a tiny, fictitious magnetic field. The experiment has the potential to probe deep within the theoretically interesting regime for the QCD axion in the mass range of 0.1–10 meV, independently of cosmological assumptions. The experiment relies on a stable rotary mechanism and superconducting magnetic shielding, required to screen the 3He sample from ordinary magnetic noise. Progress on testing the stability of the rotary mechanism is reported, and the design for the superconducting shielding is discussed.

Preeclampsia (PE), new onset hypertension during pregnancy, is associated with a proinflammatory profile compared to normal pregnancy (NP). We hypothesize that CD4 + T cells play an important role to cause much of the pathophysiology associated with PE. To determine if CD4 + T cells isolated from PE patients cause PE symptoms during pregnancy compared to those collected from NP women, CD4 + T cells were isolated from placentas of both PE and NP women using magnetic separation with anti-CD4 antibodies, cultured in TexMACS medium with IL-2 at 37°C in 5% CO 2 , and injected intraperitoneally into pregnant, nude-athymic rats on day 12 of gestation. On day 18, carotid catheters were implanted and on day 19 MAP was measured and blood and tissues were collected. MAP was 125±3 mmHg in rats with NP T cells but increased to 140±9 mmHg in rats with PE T cells. Significant differences in circulating cytokines TNF-α, IL-6, IL-17 and sFlt-1 were found with PE vs NP CD4 + T cells (TNF-α- PE=142.4 pg/mL, NP=79.4 pg/mL; IL-6 - PE=311.6 pg/mL, NP=277.8 pg/mL; IL-17-PE= 7.054 pg/mL, NP=3.185 pg/mL; sFlt-1-PE=90.7 pg/mL, NP=58.2 pg/mL. However, there was no difference in Isoprostane levels or IL-2 between the two groups (Isoprostane-PE=3628 pg/mL, NP=3061 pg/mL; IL-2-PE=125 pg/mL, NP=125 pg/mL). ROS in tissues was measured using chemiluminescence and no difference was found in placenta while renal ROS showed an increased with PE CD4 + T cells vs NP CD4 + T cells (ROS-PE=5528 RLU/min/mg protein, NP=3372 RLU/min/mg protein). In addition, no difference in ET-1 mRNA was found in the placenta of nude rats receiving PE CD4+T cells, however, renal cortical ET-1 mRNA expression was increased 4.5 fold in rats with PE CD4+ T cells compared to those receiving to NP CD4+ T cells. These data indicate an important role for placental PE CD4 + T cells to cause inflammation and stimulate renal vasoactive pathways that may contribute to hypertension during pregnancy. This research is funded by R01HD067541-06

Numerous methods for classifying gene activity states based on gene expression data have been proposed for use in downstream applications, such as incorporating transcriptomics data into metabolic models in order to improve resulting flux predictions. These methods often attempt to classify gene activity for each gene in each experimental condition as belonging to one of two states: active (the gene product is part of an active cellular mechanism) or inactive (the cellular mechanism is not active). These existing methods of classifying gene activity states suffer from multiple limitations, including enforcing unrealistic constraints on the overall proportions of active and inactive genes, failing to leverage a priori knowledge of gene co-regulation, failing to account for differences between genes, and failing to provide statistically meaningful confidence estimates. We propose a flexible Bayesian approach to classifying gene activity states based on a Gaussian mixture model. The model integrates genome-wide transcriptomics data from multiple conditions and information about gene co-regulation to provide activity state confidence estimates for each gene in each condition. We compare the performance of our novel method to existing methods on both simulated data and real data from 907 E. coli gene expression arrays, as well as a comparison with experimentally measured flux values in 29 conditions, demonstrating that our method provides more consistent and accurate results than existing methods across a variety of metrics.

We present our progress towards using an optically levitated and cooled dielectric nanosphere in vacuum as a precision sensor. Such a system is well decoupled from the external environment and can have sub-attoNewton force sensitivity.

Optically trapped nanospheres in high-vaccum experience little friction and hence are promising for ultra-sensitive force detection. Here we demonstrate measurement times exceeding $10^5$ seconds and zeptonewton force sensitivity with laser-cooled silica nanospheres trapped in an optical lattice. The sensitivity achieved exceeds that of conventional room-temperature solid-state force sensors, and enables a variety of applications including electric field sensing, inertial sensing, and gravimetry. The optical potential allows the particle to be confined in a number of possible trapping sites, with precise localization at the anti-nodes of the optical standing wave. By studying the motion of a particle which has been moved to an adjacent trapping site, the known spacing of the lattice anti-nodes can be used to calibrate the displacement spectrum of the particle. Finally, we study the dependence of the trap stability and lifetime on the laser intensity and gas pressure, and examine the heating rate of the particle in high vacuum in the absence of optical feedback cooling., Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, minor changes, typos corrected, references added