Dancing to the top: How collective action revitalized arts education in Boston

In 2009, a group of local foundations, the school district, arts organizations, and the Mayor's Office launched the Boston Public Schools Arts Education Initiative (BPS-AE)—a multiyear, citywide, public–private initiative aimed at increasing BPS students' access to in-school arts education. Managed by a strong local intermediary with deep experience in education, this initiative used several complementary, overlaid strategies: direct service, system building, and community engagement—all of which were supported by a philanthropic collaborative of local and national funders. Today, 17,000 more BPS students receive arts education; nearly 130 additional full-time certified arts teachers have been hired; and district spending on arts has risen to $26 million annually, compared to $15 million in 2009. There is also growing demand from the larger community for more and better arts education. In 2015, BPS-AE produced a case study that provides a more detailed explication of the multitiered strategy it used to achieve these results. The study offers recommendations as to how other cities can involve diverse key constituencies to advance this kind of initiative, create leadership structures that support effective citywide collaboration, engage community stakeholders in participatory planning processes, leverage private philanthropy to boost public funding, and develop a centralized support system for school principals and arts teachers.     

Increased extreme drought events in south–central China since the last century：Evidence from oxygen isotope signatures preserved in tree ring cellulose

Tree-ring cellulose oxygen isotope ratios (δ¹⁸O) is a well-established proxy for hydroclimatic conditions in monsoon Asia. We reconstructed June–October relative humidity (RH_J–O) variations from 1808 to 2017, based on tree-ring cellulose δ¹⁸O data, which explain 46.2% of the actual RH variance in the Nanyue region, south–central China. Extreme wet events occurred frequently prior to the 1900s, but there have been more extreme dry events since the 1900s, apart from the late 1930s and early 1950s. Periodicity analysis revealed that the reconstructed RH_J–O records show obvious 15–30 years cycles from the 1830–1970s. The multi-decadal signals may reflect the effect of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) on hydroclimate. In the positive PDO phase, there is drying in south–central China, which is related to a weaker East Asian summer monsoon (EASM) via the Pacific–Japan teleconnection. The decadal signal has weakened since the 1970s. In addition, the reconstructed RH_J–O record shows strong interannual variations, which may be related to the Central Pacific El Niño–Southern Oscillation (CP ENSO). During extreme CP El Niño events, there is a weaker EASM due to the Pacific–Japan teleconnection, and the study site experienced drought. Our reconstructed moisture record is characterized by a decreasing influence from the PDO and increasing influence from the CP ENSO in recent decades. Moreover, the frequency of CP ENSO events is projected to increase under anthropogenic warming. Consequently, more extreme droughts which are related to CP ENSO events may increase in the south–central China in near future.     

Addressing high excitation conditions in time-resolved X-ray diffraction experiments and issues of biological relevance

One of the most important fundamental questions connecting chemistry to biology is how chemistry scales in complexity up to biological systems where there are innumerable possible pathways and competing processes. With the development of ultrabright electron and x-ray sources, it has been possible to literally light up atomic motions to directly observe the reduction in dimensionality in the barrier crossing region to a few key reaction modes. How do these chemical processes further couple to the surrounding protein or macromolecular assembly to drive biological functions? Optical methods to trigger photoactive biological processes are needed to probe this issue on the relevant timescales. However, the excitation conditions have been in the highly nonlinear regime, which questions the biological relevance of the observed structural dynamics.     

Reexamination of the recognition preference of the specificity pocket of the Abl SH3 domain

Src homology-3 (SH3) domains mediate important protein-protein interactions in a variety of normal and pathological cellular processes, thus providing an attractive target for the selective interference of SH3-dependent signaling events that govern these processes. Most SH3 domains recognize proline-rich peptides with low affinity and poor selectivity, and the goal to design potent and specific ligands for various SH3 domains remains elusive. Better understanding of the molecular basis for SH3 domain recognition is needed in order to design such ligands with potency and specificity. In this report, we seek to define a clear recognition preference of the specificity pocket of the Abl SH3 domain using targeted synthetic peptide libraries. High-resolution affinity panning coupled with mass spectrometric readout allows for quick identification of Trp as the preferred fourth residue in the decapeptide ligand APTWSPPPPP, which binds to Abl SH3 four times stronger than does the decapeptide containing Tyr or Phe in the fourth position. This finding is in contrast to several reports that Tyr is the only residue selected from phage displayed peptide libraries that interacts with the specificity pocket of Abl SH3. This simple, unbiased approach can fine-tune the affinity and selectivity of both natural and unnatural SH3 ligands whose consensus binding sequence has been pre-defined by combinatorial library methods.     

Growth Kinetics of Microbacterium lacticum and Nitrate-Dependent Degradation of Ethylbenzene under Anaerobic Conditions

A pure strain of Microbacterium lacticum DJ-1 capable of anaer-obic biodegradation of ethylbenzene was isolated from soil contaminated with gasoline. Growth of the strain and biodegradation of ethylbenzene in batch cultures led to stoichiometric reduction of nitrate. M. lacticum DJ-1 could degrade 100 mg L^?1 of ethylbenzene completely, with a maximum degradation rate of 15.02 ± 1.14 mg L^?1 day^?1. Increasing the initial concentration of ethy-lbenzene resulted in decreased degradative ability. The cell-specific growth rates on ethylbenzene conformed to the Haldane–Andrew model in the substrate level range of 10–150 mg L^?1. Kinetic parameters were determined by nonlinear regression on specific growth rates and various initial substrate concentrat-ions, and the values of the maximum specific growth rate, half saturation constant, and inhibition constant were 0.71 day^?1, 34.3 mg L^?1, and 183.5 mg L^?1, respectively. This is the first report of ethylbenzene biodegradation by a bacterium of Microbacterium lacticum under nitrate-reducing conditions.     

Simultaneous quantification of alprazolam, 4- and alpha-hydroxyalprazolam in plasma samples using liquid chromatography mass spectrometry

A sensitive and specific method was developed for quantification of alprazolam and its two metabolites 4-hydroxyalprazolam and alpha-hydroxyalprazolam in plasma. The work up procedure was solid phase extraction. Liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) was used for separation, detection and quantification of the analytes. The limit of quantitation (LOQ) was 0.05 ng/mL for alprazolam and the two metabolites. The extraction recovery was more than 82% for alprazolam and its metabolites. The within- and between-assay coefficients of variation were in the range of 1.9-17.9%. The method was used for determination of the pharmacokinetics parameters of alprazolam and its two metabolites in healthy Caucasian subjects who ingested 1mg of alprazolam.     

Rhh: an R extension for estimating multilocus heterozygosity and heterozygosity-heterozygosity correlation

Individual multilocus heterozygosity estimates based on a limited number of loci are expected to correlate only weakly with the inbreeding level of an individual. Before using multilocus heterozygosity estimates in studies of inbreeding, their ability to capture information on inbreeding in the given setting should be tested. A convenient method for this is to compute the heterozygosity-heterozygosity correlation, i.e. the mean correlation between multilocus heterozygosity estimates calculated from random samples of loci, which should be positive if multilocus heterozygosity carries a signature of inbreeding. Rhh is an extension package for the statistical software r that estimates this correlation and calculates three measures of individual multilocus heterozygosity: homozygosity by loci, internal relatedness and standardized heterozygosity. The extension package is available through the CRAN (http://cran.r-project.org) and has a homepage at http://www.helsinki.fi/biosci/egru/research/software.     

Metabolic and functional diversity of saponins,biosynthetic intermediates and semi-synthetic derivatives

Abstract

Saponins are widely distributed plant natural products with vast structural and functional diversity. They are typically composed of a hydrophobic aglycone, which is extensively decorated with functional groups prior to the addition of hydrophilic sugar moieties, to result in surface-active amphipathic compounds. The saponins are broadly classified as triterpenoids, steroids or steroidal glycoalkaloids, based on the aglycone structure from which they are derived. The saponins and their biosynthetic intermediates display a variety of biological activities of interest to the pharmaceutical, cosmetic and food sectors. Although their relevance in industrial applications has long been recognized, their role in plants is underexplored. Recent research on modulating native pathway flux in saponin biosynthesis has demonstrated the roles of saponins and their biosynthetic intermediates in plant growth and development. Here, we review the literature on the effects of these molecules on plant physiology, which collectively implicate them in plant primary processes. The industrial uses and potential of saponins are discussed with respect to structure and activity, highlighting the undoubted value of these molecules as therapeutics.     

Analysis of potassium iodate reduction in tissue homogenates using high performance liquid chromatography–inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry

Potassium iodate (KIO₃) and potassium iodide (KI) are the major salt iodization agents used worldwide. Unlike iodide (I⁻), iodate (IO₃⁻) should be reduced to I⁻ before it can be effectively used by the thyroid. In this study, we developed a new method for analyzing IO₃⁻ and I⁻ in tissue homogenates using high performance liquid chromatography coupled to inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (HPLC–ICP-MS). We further applied the method to demonstrate the KIO₃ reduction process by tissues in vitro. The effects of KIO₃ on the total antioxidative activity (TAA) and reduced nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate (NADPH) were also investigated here. Finally, we found that IO₃⁻ can be reduced to I⁻ by tissue homogenates and IO₃⁻ irreversibly decreases the antioxidant capability of tissues. Our studies suggest that KIO₃ might have a big effect on the redox balance of tissue and would further result in oxidative stress of organisms.