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Preoperative Statin Therapy In Cardiac Surgery Is More Effective In Patients Who Display Preoperative Activation Of The Inflammatory System, José Martínez-Comendador, José Rubio Alvarez, Juan Sierra, Elvis Teijeira, Belén Adrio

The Texas Heart Institute Journal

We sought to determine whether preoperative statin treatment is more effective in reducing, after cardiac surgery with cardiopulmonary bypass, systemic inflammatory response and myocardial damage markers in patients who have elevated preoperative interleukin-6 levels than in patients who have normal preoperative interleukin-6 levels.

The study involved a prospective cohort of 164 patients who underwent coronary and valvular surgery with cardiopulmonary bypass. There were 2 study groups: group A (n = 60), patients with elevated preoperative interleukin-6 levels; and group B (n = 104), patients with normal preoperative interleukin-6 levels. Each group was subdivided according to whether patients were (group 1) …

Components Of The Complete Blood Count As Risk Predictors For Coronary Heart Disease: In-Depth Review And Update, Mohammad Madjid, Omid Fatemi

The Texas Heart Institute Journal

Atherosclerosis is an inflammatory disease, and several inflammatory biomarkers, such as C-reactive protein, have been used to predict the risk of coronary heart disease. High white blood cell count is a strong and independent predictor of coronary risk in patients of both sexes, with and without coronary heart disease. A high number of white blood cells and their subtypes (for example, neutrophils, monocytes, lymphocytes, and eosinophils) are associated with the presence of coronary heart disease, peripheral arterial disease, and stroke. The coronary heart disease risk ratios associated with a high white blood cell count are comparable to those of other …

Coronary Artery Diameter Related To Calcium Scores And Coronary Risk Factors As Measured With Multidetector Computed Tomography: A Substudy Of The Accuracy Trial, Yasmin S Hamirani, Khurram Nasir, Emil Avanes, Jigar Kadakia, Matthew J Budoff

The Texas Heart Institute Journal

Arterial remodeling, an early change of atherosclerosis, can cause dilated arterial diameter. We measured coronary artery diameter with use of noncontrast 64-slice multidetector computed tomography (MDCT), and studied its association with coronary artery calcium levels and traditional coronary risk factors.

We included 140 patients from the ACCURACY trial whose noncontrast MDCT images showed measurable coronary arteries. Using 3 measurements of left main coronary artery (LMCA) and right coronary artery (RCA) diameters within 3 mm of the ostium, we associated the results with traditional coronary risk factors and calcium scores.

The prevalence of LMCA and RCA calcium was 22% and 51%, …

Mitochondrial Cardiomyopathy: Pathophysiology, Diagnosis, And Management, Deborah E Meyers, Haseeb Ilias Basha, Mary Kay Koenig

The Texas Heart Institute Journal

Mitochondrial disease is a heterogeneous group of multisystemic diseases that develop consequent to mutations in nuclear or mitochondrial DNA. The prevalence of inherited mitochondrial disease has been estimated to be greater than 1 in 5,000 births; however, the diagnosis and treatment of this disease are not taught in most adult-cardiology curricula. Because mitochondrial diseases often occur as a syndrome with resultant multiorgan dysfunction, they might not immediately appear to be specific to the cardiovascular system. Mitochondrial cardiomyopathy can be described as a myocardial condition characterized by abnormal heart-muscle structure, function, or both, secondary to genetic defects involving the mitochondrial respiratory …

Perventricular Device Closure Of Residual Muscular Ventricular Septal Defects After Repair Of Complex Congenital Heart Defects In Pediatric Patients, Da Zhu, Kaiyu Tao, Qi An, Shuhua Luo, Changping Gan, Ke Lin

The Texas Heart Institute Journal

Residual muscular ventricular septal defects are surgical challenges, especially after the repair of complex congenital heart defects. We investigated perventricular device closure as a salvage technique in pediatric patients who had postoperative residual muscular ventricular septal defects.

From February 2009 through June 2011, 14 pediatric patients at our hospital had residual muscular ventricular septal defects after undergoing surgical repair of complex congenital heart defects. Ten patients met our criteria for perventricular device closure of the residual defects: significant left-to-right shunting (Qp/Qs >1.5) or substantial hemodynamic instability (a defect ≥2 mm in size). The patients' mean age was 20.4 ± 13.5 …

Early Hemodynamic And Biochemical Changes In Overloaded Swine Ventricleearly Hemodynamic And Biochemical Changes In Overloaded Swine Ventricle, Sandro Gelsomino, Fabiana Lucà, Chiara Nediani, Sandra Zecchi Orlandini, Daniele Bani, Antonio S Rubino, Attilio Renzulli, Roberto Lorusso, Andrea Consolo, Antonino Lo Cascio, Jos Maessen, Gian Franco Gensini

The Texas Heart Institute Journal

The present study was undertaken to investigate, in an animal model, the relationship between sarcoplasmic reticulum Ca2+-ATPase (SERCA2a) activity, phospholamban phosphorylation, acylphosphatase activity, and hemodynamic changes that occur in the early phase of pressure overload. In 54 study-group pigs, weighing 40±5 kg each, an aortic stenosis was created with a band of umbilical tape tied around the aorta; 18 sham-operated pigs formed our control group. Eight animals (6 study and 2 control) were randomly assigned to each experimental time (0.5, 3, 6, 12, 24, 48, 72, 96, and 168 hr). All indices of left ventricular function declined significantly, with a …

Feasibility Of Temporary Biventricular Pacing After Off-Pump Coronary Artery Bypass Grafting In Patients With Reduced Left Ventricular Function, Daniel Y Wang, Lauren A Kelly, Marc E Richmond, T Alexander Quinn, Bin Cheng, Michelle D Spotnitz, Santos E Cabreriza, Yoshifumi Naka, Allan S Stewart, Craig R Smith, Henry M Spotnitz

The Texas Heart Institute Journal

In selected patients undergoing cardiac surgery, our research group previously showed that optimized temporary biventricular pacing can increase cardiac output one hour after weaning from cardiopulmonary bypass. Whether pacing is effective after beating-heart surgery is unknown. Accordingly, in this study we examined the feasibility of temporary biventricular pacing after off-pump coronary artery bypass grafting.

The effects of optimized pacing on cardiac output were measured with an electromagnetic aortic flow probe at the conclusion of surgery in 5 patients with a preoperative mean left ventricular ejection fraction of 0.26 (range, 0.15–0.35). Atrioventricular (7) and interventricular (9) delay settings were optimized in …

Fragmented Regulation Of Multiple Stressors: A Cautionary Tale For Takings Law, Brian E. Gray

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Assessing Microbial Stability And Quality Of Green Beans Using Various Home Canning Methods, Jenny Kuchynski

Food Safety

Today many consumers follow processing methods recommended either from family members or the internet, which they interpret as being safe. Processing temperature profiles, survival of B. stearothermophilus spores, texture, and color of green beans processed under four home canning methods were assessed. The products were processed using pressure, boiling water bath, steam, or oven canning methods. Pressure canning produced the greatest microbial reductions but this method resulted in the lowest bean quality. The boiling water bath, steam, and oven canning were found to be less safe because the product temperature never achieved 100°C and the resulting microbial counts, >1.7 log …

Alluvial Fans In The Mcmurdo Dry Valleys: A Proxy For Melting Along Terrestrial Margins Of The East Antarctic Ice Sheet, Felix Zamora

Environmental and Conservation Sciences

Surface melting along Antarctic ice sheet margins is the most poorly understood input in models of future sea level rise. Alluvial fans in the McMurdo Dry Valleys originate from meltwater produced from high-elevation glaciers and snowbanks along these margins but many show no evidence for recent melting. These fans could serve as a record of past melting along terrestrial ice sheet margins, which would help quantify inputs to sea-level rise.To describe how melting has taken place in the past, five representative fans were examined. Fans are composed of thin, planar-bedded gravelly sands deposited by sheetflooding. Geospatial analsysis suggests the distance …

Multi-Element Fingerprinting Of Wetland Soil For Rapid Assessment, Alex Hach Yellick

Environmental and Conservation Sciences

Wetland functions and conditions are determined by hydrologic, soil physiochemical, and biotic states. Information obtained from soil analysis can convey wetland history due to hydrologic regime, soil chemical changes, past physical disturbance, and past and current nutrient and pollutant levels. In this research, multi-element fingerprinting was used to characterize the element composition of hydric soil. Specifically, fingerprints were used to characterize wetland characteristics across disturbance and hydrological gradients in the Prairie Pothole Region. This research has demonstrated that fingerprinting not only has the power to convey information regarding disturbance, but can be used to predict wetland water source (groundwater discharge, …

Synthesis And Antioxidant, Anticancer, And Antimicrobial Activities Of Palmityl Ester Derivative Of Carnosic Acid, Asharani Prasad

Food Safety

Carnosic acid (CA) along with carnosol (CAR) is the strongest phenolic diterpene antioxidants (PDAs) present in rosemary plant. However, CA has low antioxidant activity in emulsion-type food system due to its polar nature. The identification and characterization of the anticancer and antimicrobial properties of natural products and their semisynthetic derivative such as that of CA and CAR have received significant interest over the years. The goals of this research were to synthesize lipophilic palmityl derivative (PE) of CA and study its antioxidant activity in bulk and emulsified corn oil. Anticancer properties against CCRF-CEM, K-562 and P388D1 leukemia cell lines and …

First Flowering Date Trends In Clay County, Minnesota And Pollination And Life History Characteristics Of Hoary Puccoon (Lithospermum Canescens), Elise Marie Maxson

Environmental and Conservation Sciences

Plant species in Clay County, Minnesota have been changing their first flowering dates (FFDs) in response to climate changes. To document those shifts, in 2011 and 2012 I recorded phenological data for Clay County, Minnesota. I added that data to data which had been collected since 1910 for two locations in Minnesota and found that, on average, plants flowered 1 day later than their historical averages in 2011 and 16.1 days earlier in 2012. I also performed experiments upon Lithospermum canescens, a native prairie forb which has shifted its first flowering date (FFD) significantly earlier than in the past century …

Use Of Biopolymer Entrapped Sulfate Reducing Bacteria And Metal Nanoparticles For Effective Aqueous Sulfate Removal, Seydou Cisse

Environmental and Conservation Sciences

Sulfate reducing bacteria (SRB) isolated from activated sludge were used to investigate sulfate removal from aqueous solution using calcium alginate entrapped SRB in batch studies with ethanol and lactose as the carbon sources. The interferences of pH, temperature, Al3+, Cu2+, and Zn2+ on sulfate removal were also investigated. Further, sulfate removal experiments were conducted with co-entrapped SRB and nanoscale zero-valent iron (NZVI) and separately entrapped SRB and NZVI. Results indicate that EntSRB can effectively remove sulfate from aqueous solution. 88-95% sulfate removal was achieved. Both ethanol and lactose worked well as carbon sources for entrapped bacteria. Interference studies indicated low …

Interactions Between Ultraviolet Light And Soybean Aphid, Aphis Glycines Matsumura (Hemiptera: Aphididae), Steven Curtis Burdick

Environmental and Conservation Sciences

Global increases in ultraviolet (UV) radiation have led to greater interest in its current and potential effects on organisms, including insects and plants. Here we report the short-term effects of UV on soybean aphids (Aphis glycines Matsumura), a common phytophagous pest of soybeans. We examined how modified amounts of UV radiation affect soybean aphids by focusing on changes in 1) soybean aphid densities and 2) within plant distribution. In a laboratory experiment artificially adding UV decreased soybean densities compared to a low UV control. In a field experiment blocking UV had minimal effects on soybean aphid densities. Further observations suggest …

Evaluation Of A Nitrate-Assimilating Bacterium For Potential Use In Nitrate Bioremediation, Deidra Angeline Lies

Environmental and Conservation Sciences

Increasing levels of nitrate (NO3-N) in water resources have brought about the need to find ever more versatile forms of NO3-N removal from contaminated water. The ability of several microorganisms to transform NO3-N has been embraced as an economical form of bioremediation. Free cell and immobilized forms of Methylobacterium fujisawaense ATCC® No. 35065 (M. fujisawaense) were used in this study for NO3-N removal in batch settings. NO3-N removal results were as high as 100% for freely suspended cells after 96 hours and 95% for immobilized cells also after 96 hours. Statistical analyses found no significant difference in overall NO3-N removal …

Development And Genetic Regulation Of The Novel Abdominal Appendages In The Male Sepsid Fly, Themira Biloba, Bodini Jeevanthika Herath

Environmental and Conservation Sciences

Evolutionary novel structures are structures with no known homology. Novel structures often provide a novel function to the organism. Some species of sepsid flies (family Sepsidae) have evolved novel abdominal appendages on the fourth segment in males and are thought to be used during mating to stimulate the female abdomen. However, the necessity of these appendages for the sepsid flies has not been determined, and a little is known about the genetic basis of these structures. Controlled laboratory experiments were conducted to identify the necessity of these appendages in sepsid Themira biloba. Surgical manipulation of the bristle length of the …

From Bray-Curtis Ordination To Markov Chain Monte Carlo Simulation: Assessing Anthropogenically-Induced Andor Climatically-Induced Changes In Arboreal Ecosystems, Buddhika D. Madurapperuma

Environmental and Conservation Sciences

Mapping forest resources is useful for identifying threat patterns and monitoring changes associated with landscapes. Remote Sensing and Geographic Information Science techniques are effective tools used to identify and forecast forest resource threats such as exotic plant invasion, vulnerability to climate change, and land-use/cover change. This research focused on mapping abundance and distribution of Russian-olive using soil and land-use/cover data, evaluating historic land-use/cover change using mappable water-related indices addressing the primary loss of riparian arboreal ecosystems, and detecting year-to-year land-cover changes on forest conversion processes. Digital image processing techniques were used to detect the changes of arboreal ecosystems using ArcGIS …

Effect Of Larval Diet On Endogenous Carbon Reproductive Resources Of Fifth Instars And Adult Females Of The Moth, Heliothis Virescens, Smita Dutta Suman

Entomology

Mostly adult Lepidoptera feed on plant nectar. That is, adults can only contribute to carbon, and not nitrogen, acquisition. The moth Heliothis virescens were used to explore the hypothesis that larval nutrition influences various adult carbon pools and that these, in turn, may affect pheromone production quantitatively. H. virescens larvae were reared on diets differing in carbohydrate, fat or protein content and resulting 5 th instars and adults were analyzed for carbon pools, hemolymph trehalose concentration (HTC) and lipid content. Across all the diet treatments, changes in carbohydrate content affected carbon pool the most. In particular, for insects reared on …

The Wheat-Hessian Fly Interaction: Co-Evolution And Ecology In An Economically Important Plant-Insect System, Kirk Mitchel Anderson

Entomology

The study of wheat’s H-gene mediated resistance to Hessian flies examined the cost of the constitutively expressed H-gene which functions in the plant’s surveillance system and the cost of the downstream induced response. For the constitutively-expressed H-gene, some measures indicated costs, but a greater number indicated benefits. For the induced resistance, plants showed benefits of being attacked. It is expected that fitness costs play a role in determining the rate at which plant defense evolves, and it is important for agriculture as plant breeders decide whether to pyramid resistance genes into a single cultivar to prevent the evolution of pest …

“It’S Not About Health; It’S About Sex, Pumpkin”: Reproductive Autonomy, Medicalization, And Contraceptive Rhetoric In The Wake Of The War On Women, Alyson Lise Guthrie

English

The purpose of this study is to better understand the ways in which contemporary women describe their contraceptive needs in the wake of the war on women, primarily in the context of the Sandra Fluke and Rush Limbaugh controversy. After surveying contemporary American women, this study aligns with previous research in finding that the majority of participants describe their contraceptive needs in a variety of ways, but primarily as a means for planning, preventing, or delaying pregnancy. However, women who were not in committed relationships were much more likely to cite medical reasons for their contraceptive use, and much less …

Balancing Motherhood Experiences And Academic Science: What Makes Some Women Persist In Their Professions?, Nurjahan Perveen

English

Women both enter and leave science fields in numbers disproportionate to men (Long, Valian). Although many researchers have studied the reasons women leave the workplace in general, and STEM professions specifically, particularly after motherhood (Mason, Williams), there has been little work completed on why women stay in academic science once they become mothers. This paper employs two methods of interpreting published essays written by mothers who are also successful academic scientists. This research spotlights women who both wish to pursue motherhood and opted to stay in successful careers in academic science, despite what is the well-documented discrimination mothers face in …

Paved With Good Intentions: Sentencing Alternatives From Neuroscience And The Policy Of Problem-Solving Courts, Emily R. Murphy

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Hierarchies Of Discrimination In Baby Making? A Response To Professor Carroll, Radhika Rao

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Law's Violence: Derrick Bell's Next Article Challenging Authority: A Symposium Honoring Derrick Bell, Richard Delgado

Articles

No abstract provided.

Preface, John Shuford

Journal of Hate Studies

This volume and Volume 12 focus primarily on presenting peerreviewed scholarly articles developed from the selected proceedings f the Third International Conference on Hate Studies. Themed “The Pursuit of Justice: Understanding Hatred, Confronting Intolerance, Eliminating Inequality,” the conference was co-organized and hosted by the Gonzaga Institute for Hate Studies, the Gonzaga School of Law, and the Washington State Task Force on Race and the Criminal Justice System. Presenters and attendees from two dozen countries worldwide came to Spokane, Washington for four days in April 2013 in order to concentrate on how fear and ignorance of the “other” manifest in hatred, …

How Affordances Associated With A Distractor Object Affect Compatibility Effects: A Study With The Computational Model Tropicals., Daniele Caligiore, Anna M. Borghi, Domenico Parisi, Rob Ellis, Angelo Cangelosi, Gianluca Baldassarre

School of Psychology

Seeing an object activates both visual and action codes in the brain. Crucial evidence supporting this view is the observation of object to response compatibility effects: perception of an object can facilitate or interfere with the execution of an action (e.g., grasping) even when the viewer has no intention of interacting with the object. TRoPICALS is a computational model that proposes some general principles about the brain mechanisms underlying compatibility effects, in particular the idea that top-down bias from prefrontal cortex, and whether it conflicts or not with the actions afforded by an object, plays a key role in such …

Introduction: Men, Masculinities, And Law, Ann C. Mcginley

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Identities Cubed: Perspectives On Multidimensional Masculinities Theory, Ann C. Mcginley, Frank Rudy Cooper

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Sperm, Testosterone, Masculinities And Fatherhood, Nancy E. Dowd

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.