The willingness of hospital-wide staff to respond to a RDD has not yet been assessed. One framework that has proved applicable in assessing root causes of willingness to respond to duty during emergencies has been Witte’s Extended Parallel Process Model. This framework allows for examining the interplay and influence of perceptions of “threat” and “efficacy” on adaptive or maladaptive behavior of healthcare workers in AZ 960 905586-69-8 deciding whether to report to duty in the face of risk. We have set out to assess the willingness of employees at a large, urban, tertiary-care medical center to respond during a RDD event. Accordingly, we aim to gauge whether a clinically significant proportion of the workforce may be unwilling to respond to duty during an RDD event, and whether specific personal characteristics and beliefs are independently associated with willingness to respond in this event. We further analyze the influences of perceived threat and perceived efficacy among hospital employees utilizing Witte’s EPPM and attempt to identify factors potentially influencing willingness and ability to respond. The use of a RDD or “dirty bomb” as a terrorist weapon is a concern, as reflected by its inclusion among the U.S. National Planning Scenarios. Psychological models suggest that risk perception is an interplay between affective and analytic processes. According to these models, peripheral factors independent of the actual risk have a major effect on the perceived dread of an event. Factors that render a perceived risk as more dreadful include events that are involuntary, manmade, exotic, catastrophic, and with potential to affect the next generation with little or no individual control. Virtually each and every one of these risk perception modifiers is present in a RDD scenario, rendering this event to be highly dreadful to some, well beyond the actual risks it bears. During critical events, healthcare workers are expected to work additional hours under significant stress, potentially at risk of personal safety. When faced with the need to respond to duty during a terrorist event, health professionals are subject to the psychological impact of dread and outrage, caused by the perception-modifying characteristics of a RDD event. This may explain, at least in part, why such a large proportion of hospital workers, almost 39%, report they would not be willing to report to duty if asked during a RDD event. When further probed if they would respond to a RDD event “regardless of severity”, almost half of surveyed staff indicated they are unlikely to do so. These outcomes are in accordance with the limited but expanding evidence-based literature on the perceptions of the hospital-based workforce toward their emergency response duties in a post-9/11 world. In two surveys performed in 2005 of NYC healthcare workers, and hospital employees in 5 states, workers were far more willing to respond to natural disasters than to a radiological event or an infectious disease outbreak.

Thus as still over one of every four employees from a large urban tertiary care hospital indicated they would not report for work even if required – at a time they would be most needed in their respective work roles. Of all attitudes and beliefs, the attitude statements most strongly associated with high WTR was willingness to work extra hours if required. Those able and willing to work extra hours were 20 times more likely to be willing to respond during this event, after controlling for demographic factors. These results may be interpreted in view of the strong association identified between lower ‘if asked’ WTR and having dependents at home – either elderly, children or even pets. Single parents with children had the lowest estimated likelihood to respond to this event. One reasonable explanation may be that some of the hesitance to report to duty among those unable to work long hours is associated with the need to continuously take care of dependents during such an event. Indeed, 88% of those unwilling to work extra hours had a family member or a pet dependent solely on them. Witte’s EPPM offers a framework for examining the interplay and influence of perceptions of “threat” and “efficacy” on adaptive or maladaptive behavior in the face of risk. It has shown its utility in previous work assessing WTR in pandemic influenza and other catastrophic event scenarios. Our study is the first to analyze hospital employees’ perceived threat, efficacy, and WTR during a RDD event through the lens of the EPPM. This model potentially allows us to see how hospital workers’ individual degrees of perceived threat and perceived efficacy influence their willingness to respond to this type of event. In accordance with EPPM theory, our survey results show that those who have a perception of high threat and high efficacy – i.e., those who fit a “concerned and confident” profile in the EPPM framework—had a high rate of declared self-reported willingness to respond to a dirty bomb event, which was about seven times higher than those fitting a “low threat/low efficacy” profile. In contrast with the classic EPPM theory, perception of threat had little impact on willingness to respond among hospital workers in our study. This could either imply that the perception of threat in motivating response behavior in hospital employees is not as important as the perception of one’s efficacy in response, or that our threat assessment questions assessed the ‘analytic’ aspect of RDD risk perception, and could not assess the ‘affective’ effect of the additional dread associated with this event, which is the effect that may impact WTR more significantly. One other potential explanation is that the level of dread from such a scenario is such that only minor variability exists between individuals, in a level that bears little impact on decision making. Our survey indicates that hospital employees are receptive to more training in response to a ONX-0914 960374-59-8 radiation disaster. In fact, 87% of respondents agreed that the hospital should provide pre-event preparation and training for dirty bomb emergencies.

In contrast to the normal condition, p5cs expression is hyperactive during cold acclimation, whereas ProDH expression is inhibited, resulting in the accumulation of more and more free proline in plant cells. In Arabidopsis and other plants, proline levels are mainly determined by balance of biosynthetic and catabolic pathways, controlled by P5CS and ProDH genes, respectively. Nanjo et al. found that proline degradation was inhibited in Arabidopsis transformed with AtProDH, suggesting that free proline levels increased in leaves. Secondary metabolism and its products are also involved in the response to various stresses in plants, representing a process that formed over a long evolutionary period. There is some evidence that secondary metabolic products and environmental factors are closely linked, as in the case of alkaloids, which play an important role in resisting insects and herbivores via chemical defense mechanism. In addition to ‘arginine and proline metabolism’, the DETs were significantly enriched in ‘quinoline alkaloid biosynthesis’ pathway during cold acclimation, based on KEGG pathway analysis. Early in the cold stress period, 40% of transcripts related to quinoline alkaloid metabolism were up-regulated more than 2-fold compared to the 0 h time point, including contig_65006 and contig_65485. This suggests that the up-regulation of transcripts in response to low temperatures may play a crucial role in plant stress tolerance. However, when the duration of cold stress exceeded 6 h, the expression levels of these up-regulated transcripts decreased gradually, dropping to their initial levels by 24 h. This suggests that there may be a relationship between quinoline alkaloid biosynthesis and abiotic factors, although this relationship may not be as simple and direct as the relationship between the biological environment and chemical defense. Further research is needed to TWS119 explore this relationship in depth. Many researchers believe that plants produce secondary metabolites such as alkaloids at the cost of slower growth. However, when biotic and abiotic stresses become severe enough to affect their survival, the plants have no choice but to produce some secondary metabolites for protection against such rigorous stress conditions. Although the expression of peroxidases such as CAT and SOD increased significantly as the duration of cold exposure increased, these enzymes were still unable to completely clear the increased levels of H2O2, resulting in a significant increase in the amount of H2O2 during cold acclimation. In this study, we found that some genes that are known to be involved in the response to other stresses in other plants are also involved in cold acclimation, which could support the hypothesis that the same gene have different functions in different plants. The GO term ‘translational initiation’ was enriched in response to cold acclimation. A total of 254 transcripts were annotated under in this term, and 89 exhibited a greater than two-fold change in expression during the low temperature treatment. Translation initiation in eukaryotes depends on many eukaryotic initiation factors that stimulate both the recruitment of the initiator tRNA.

VTA greatly enriches the proportion of DA neurons that can be isolated from each of these midbrain regions for culture and transplant studies. With further FACS analysis, DA neurons from each of these regions can be purified to near homogeneity. Thus, the hTH-GFP reporter rat should be a valuable tool for Parkinson disease research. The results of this study indicate the hTH-GFP reporter rat should serve as an important new model, adding to our arsenal of tools used to study and treat PD. Employing the hTH-GFP reporter construct used previously to create both a transgenic reporter mouse and reporter human embryonic stem cells, we demonstrate here that the hTH-GFP rat, particularly line 12141, exhibits high level specific GFP fluorescence in DA brain structures with minimal ectopic expression elsewhere in the brain. The pattern of GFP expression driven by the hTH-promoter matches/ overlaps the expression pattern of endogenous TH. These hTH-GFP rats provide several major benefits over their wild type counterparts. First, they allow for the microdissection of the embryonic mesencephalon in a fluorescence microscope, making it possible to segregate PDsusceptible DA neurons of the SNpc from PD-resistant DA neurons of the VTA for studies of disease pathogenesis in culture. The importance of this advantage cannot be over-emphasized as currently midbrain cultures contain a mixture of DA neurons, predominantly LEE011 comprised of VTA DA neurons which greatly outnumber DA neurons of the SNpc, significantly confounding data analysis. Our studies using the DA-specific toxins MPP+ further indicate that it will be possible to accurately model PD-like neurodegeneration in culture and further dissect the role of environmental modifiers of disease. A second and related benefit of the hTH-GFP reporter rat is the ability to further purify GFP+ DA neurons by FACS sorting, dramatically enriching their yield in culture from 1-5% seen after dissection of wild type rats versus approximately 90% after microdissection and FACS. By isolating homogeneous rat SNpc or VTA DA neurons, it will be possible to develop high throughput screens to test potential new PD drugs and to automate GFP fluorescence as a quantifiable readout. Thirdly, our developmental studies indicate that hTH-GFP rat midbrain neurons develop as predicted from murine studies, arising from a population of Foxa2+ floor plate cells and ultimately giving rise to TH+GFP+ DA neurons. Importantly, because GFP expression is more easily detected than TH immunostaining at early developmental stages, the reporter rat may be particularly useful for early embryonic studies. Furthermore, the ability to isolate developing SNpc and/or VTA DA neurons also made possible their study in the brain following transplantation into wild type rats. As further proof that hTHGFP+ DA neurons develop normally, transplanted GFP+ midbrain cells coexpressed Foxa2 and TH and produced functional motor recovery in the lesioned rat. Finally, the hTH-GFP reporter rat will facilitate studies on the most widely used in vivo model of PD, the 6-OHDA rat. The large size of the rat versus mouse brain makes stereotaxic procedures easier.

The patient records was anonymized and de-identified prior to analysis. In this study, we found a higher expression of miR-21 in cancer tissues compared with normal prostatic tissue. The expression was highest in tumor stromal areas. High tumor stromal expression of miR-21 was an independent prognostic factor for biochemical failure in patients with Gleason grade 6 but not clinical failure, probably due to few events in the latter group. To our knowledge, this is the first study reporting tumor stromal expression of miR-21 as a prognostic marker for BF after radical prostatectomy. Moreover, we also found a high stromal expression to be an independent marker for PSM in RP specimens. Recent studies have shown that miRNAs are significantly altered in prostate cancer, suggesting that miRNAs act as key regulators of prostate carcinogenesis. Several studies have been conducted to identify the PC-specific miRNA signature, but n consensus has been reached with respect to miRNAs role in development and progression of PC. In a study by Violinia et al., total RNA was extracted from 363 solid cancers, including prostate cancer, and 177 normal tissues.

They found a general up-regulation of 39 miRNAs, including miR-21, whereas 6 miRNAs were down-regulated. These results were in partial agreement with a study by Ambs et al. in which total RNA extracted from 60 micro-dissected PC and 16 surrounding nontumor tissues were analyzed. MiR-21 is generally considered an oncogene, but so far its role in PC is unclear and the reports have been conflicting. miR-21 has been found to be elevated in PC3 and DU145 androgen-independent cell lines. Moreover, miR-21 was identified as an androgen receptorregulated miRNA whose level was elevated in PC compared with adjacent normal tissue. Inhibitions of miR-21 diminish androgen-induced PC cell proliferation, whereas elevated expression of miR-21 promotes enhanced tumor growth and castration resistance in vivo. Others have also found miR-21 upregulated in patients with NVP-BEZ235 hormone- and chemoresistant PC. We found that a high tumor stromal expression of miR-21 in tumors with Gleason score 6 predicted BF.

This is in line with previous reports. Stromal miR-21 expression analysis may be a potential tool to predict which highly differentiated tumors that is most likely to progress. Recent studies have provided valuable insights in clarifying the involment of miR-21 in tumor microenvironment: Bullock et al. demonstrated that upregulated miR21 expression occurs in cancer-associated stromal cells but not in colo-rectal cancer cells. Moreover, they found that ectopic miR-21 expression in fibroblasts modulated the cytotoxic impact of Oxaliplatin which resulted in cancer progression. Bronisz et al. demonstrated that downregulation of mir-320 in mammary stromal fibroblasts reprograms the tumor microenvironment by activating a pro-oncogenic secretome, and interestingly, Yao et al. reported that myofibroblast transdifferentiation from progenitor fibroblasts in response to TGF-b could be prevented using specific antisense inhibitors of miR-21.