Environmental Education Exchange

• Used new modeled soil water dataset to define drought events in Southwest US. • Short droughts are frequent while long droughts are infrequent. • Short droughts result from slowed or delayed starts to rainy seasons. • Long droughts require precipitation anomalies in one or more consecutive seasons. • Seasonal precipitation distribution governs soil water drought development. The semi-arid climate of the Southwestern United States (‘Southwest’) presents unique challenges for quantifying drought conditions due to annual potential evapotranspiration being significantly greater than annual precipitation. Southwestern vegetation is adapted to seasonal soil water recharge for primary productivity, with recharge delays potentially resulting in drought impacts. Understanding how delays in seasonal precipitation timing and magnitude create soil water anomalies is key for characterizing drought dynamics in Southwestern soils; however, the lack of long-term, reliable soil water datasets have restricted this effort to a local scale. Here, we couple sophisticated soil water modeling, site-specific soil information, and spatially continuous, high resolution meteorological data to create a soil water dataset for the purpose of characterizing shallow drought onset and cessation patterns in Southwestern soils. Daily matric potential at 10 cm and 30 cm was simulated from 1979 to 2020 at 240 locations throughout 4 Major Land Resource Areas (MLRA). Historical matric potential anomaly time series were percent ranked from 0 to 100 %, with consecutive days below the 15th percentile quantified as drought events. Drought events were categorized by duration and analyzed by onset and cessation season. Results showed that short-term droughts (60 – 270 days) were frequent, and typically resulted from delayed or slowed starts to the MLRAs major modal precipitation season. Long-term droughts (>270 days) were infrequent and occurred only during specific years, requiring below average anomalies in one or more consecutive rainy seasons. Long-term droughts were more likely to occur in MLRAs with unimodal precipitation distributions, due to soil water anomalies likely remaining unresolved until the following rainy season. MLRAs with bimodal precipitation distributions made long-term drought development difficult as consecutive below average rainy seasons were needed. With expected changes in Southwestern climate over the coming decades, understanding how changing precipitation patterns will impact shallow soil drought development is key for future impact assessment and mitigation.

Abstract BackgroundNeuropsychiatric disorders including depression, insomnia, epilepsy, schizophrenia, and attention‐deficit and hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) have been associated with a neurodegenerative process and linked to increased risk for Alzheimer’s Disease (AD). Because of the shared biological mechanisms of AD and neuropsychiatric disorders, we hypothesized that pharmacologic treatment for neuropsychiatric disorders could impact the risk for AD. CNS drugs that are first‐line therapies for neuropsychiatric disorders (including antidepressants, sedatives, anticonvulsants, antipsychotics, and stimulants) were investigated for impact on AD incidence.MethodTo address this hypothesis, we conducted a retrospective medical informatics analysis of insurance claims of patients aged 60 years and older, with and without exposure to CNS drugs. To reduce health status and demographic bias, we utilized propensity score matching to adjust for age, gender, Charlson comorbidity index (CCI), and comorbidities. The propensity score matched population was surveyed for AD diagnosis following at least 1 year of exposure to CNS drugs.ResultExposure to CNS drugs was associated with a decreased risk for AD (RR [95%CI]: 0.50 [0.47–0.53]; P<.0001), and women (RR [95%CI]: 0.46 [0.42–0.50]; P<.0001) exhibited a slightly greater risk reduction compared to men (RR [95%CI]: 0.55 [0.50–0.61]; P<.0001). Drug stratification indicated that antidepressant, sedative, anticonvulsant, and stimulant treatment were associated with reduced AD risk, while antipsychotics were associated with increased risk for AD. Additional analysis indicated that the combination of two CNS drugs was associated with a greater reduction of AD risk compared to monotherapy for most drugs assessed. Age and sex emerged as modulators of rate of disease conversion, with females older than 70 years receiving the greatest benefit.ConclusionCollectively, these results indicate that antidepressants, sedatives, anticonvulsants, and stimulants are beneficial as risk modifiers for AD, while antipsychotics appear to increase the vulnerability of the brain to AD development. The potential use of combination therapy with antipsychotics could mitigate the risk conferred by these drugs. These findings have the potential to contribute to advancing neuropsychiatric treatment that could impact the risk of Alzheimer’s disease.

The calcar femorale, first identified by Merkel in 1874, plays a pivotal role in the weight-bearing capacity of the proximal femur, and its structural integrity is crucial for the efficient distribution of mechanical loads. Originating at the vertical ridge where the pubofemoral ligament anchors, this bony prominence extends laterally behind the neutral axis from the medial to lateral aspects. Its presence is not merely an anatomical curiosity but significantly influences the biomechanics of the hip joint by providing additional strength and support against compressive forces encountered during activities such as walking or jumping. Despite its clear description in orthopedic texts, misconceptions persist about its exact function and importance. This article delves into the nuanced anatomy and biomechanical properties of the calcar femorale, offering a detailed literature-based examination that demonstrates its relevance in clinical practice. The review highlights how the robustness of the calcar femorale contributes to the prevention of femoral neck fractures as well as the stabilization of hip prostheses. Furthermore, the indispensable role of the calcar femorale in surgical outcomes is discussed, especially in the context of fracture repair and joint replacement, thus illustrating its enduring significance in contemporary medical applications.

This column is a call to action for health care leaders to ensure that their governing boards make workforce an important part of their governance responsibility and oversight. Health care leaders need to take an active role in educating their governing board, identifying and monitoring appropriate workforce metrics, and engaging the board in developing and implementing a workforce plan. Workforce development is an important leadership competency and essential to today's health care organizations success.

ABSTRACTCoronary artery disease (CAD) is one of the major causes of mortality worldwide. Recent genome-wide association studies have started to unravel the genetic architecture of the disease. Such efforts have identified Calcitonin receptor-like (CALCRL), an important mediator of the endothelial fluid shear stress response, associated with CAD risk variants. In this study we functionally characterized the non-coding regulatory elements carrying CAD risks SNPs and studied their role in the regulation ofCALCRLexpression in endothelial cells. We demonstrate that rs880890-harboring regulatory element exhibits high enhancer activity and significant allelic bias with A allele showing 40% more activity than G allele. We also observed that the A allele of rs880890 is favored over the G allele under shear stress. CRISPR deletion of rs880890-enhancer resulted in downregulation ofCALCRLexpression. EMSA further showed that heat shock factors are binding to the enhancer with a preference for A allele over the G allele. In line with this, HSF1 knockdown resulted in a significant decrease inCALCRLexpression.CALCRLknockdown as well as variant perturbation experiments confirmed the role of CALCRL in the regulation of eNOS, apelin, angiopoietin, prostaglandins and endothelin-1 signaling pathways while demonstrating a significant decrease in cell proliferation and tube formation. Overall, our results demonstrate the existence of an endothelial-specific heat shock factor regulated transcriptional enhancer carrying a CAD risk SNP rs880890 that regulatesCALCRLexpression. Better understanding ofCALCRLgene regulation and the role of SNPs in modulation ofCALCRLexpression could provide important steps towards understanding genetic regulation of shear stress signaling responses.

As tecnologias digitais trouxeram novas possibilidades para as construções narrativas, que têm nos recursos multimodais e convergências de mídias uma ampliação nas formas de expressão e comunicação dos sujeitos em seus processos (auto)formativos. A essas dá-se o nome de narrativas digitais, que se configuram como outros modos de contar histórias que utilizam e combinam as tecnologias digitais nas construções realizadas. Na formação de professores, podem ser um recurso de voz e de desenvolvimento de competências e profissionalidade docente. Este texto tem como objetivo identificar estudos nacionais e internacionais sobre o tema narrativas digitais na formação de professores, aclarando os objetivos buscados pelos pesquisadores e as metodologias adotadas, por meio de uma revisão sistemática de literatura, com recorte temporal entre os anos de 2009 e 2020. As pesquisas encontradas indicam que a formação de professor foi pesquisada por meio das ou com as narrativas digitais. Os usos e as apropriações das ferramentas digitais no trabalho com as narrativas modificam a realidade dos sujeitos em formação, através de suas inventividades, da construção de si e do ser professor.

The protection of rare amphibians depends upon accurate information about their distributions, yet cryptic, low-density populations are easily missed during field surveys. We used sites with known populations of the U.S. federally threatened species Rana chiricahuensis (n = 34) and its congener Rana yavapaiensis (n =11) in Arizona, USA to test whether a conspecific call stimulus can improve detectability of species. We show that the use of the evoked vocal responses technique improves the detectability of initially silent anuran populations of R. chiricahuensis and R. yavapaiensis by 45% and 71%, respectively. Evoked vocal responses, however, were not strictly species specific: 19% of R. chiricahuensis and 45% of R. yavapaiensis populations also increased their vocal activity in response to heterospecific stimuli. The low costs of the material (<50 USD per set) and the short time (1 min) to play a stimulus suggest that the additional costs associated with this technique will be minor relative to existing survey protocols. This technique offers the potential to improve the detection of other frog species, particularly in sites that are difficult to search visually, provided it is carried out by surveyors who can identify species by their calls.

The Picture Rocks Sun Dagger is a spiral petroglyph on a hillside northwest of Tucson that shows sun dagger events at both the summer solstice and the equinoxes. On each of these dates, a wedge-shaped sunbeam with opening angles 20°- 30° touches the center of the spiral, with both of these being confidently intentionally constructed by peoples of the Hohokam culture ca. AD 800 -1300. More generally for claimed sun daggers throughout the American Southwest, the critical question is whether the ancient indigenous peoples <italic>intentionally</italic> placed the petroglyph so as to create a solar marker. The confident starting point for proving the intentionality of sun daggers in general is a histogram prepared by the Prestons showing highly significant peaks for indicated declinations within 2° of -23.4°, 0.0°, and +23.4°, with this being not by chance. In a review of solsticial and equinoctal sun daggers, we find that they all have beams of light shaped like a long-thin triangle with an apex opening angle of &lt;40° that touches the center of the petroglyph symbol. While the majority of the sun daggers use a spiral petroglyph, circles and other symbols also are used. We find that from one-to-five light wedges appear on flat rock panels over a one hour interval of searching on just one side of a small hill, so false alarms must be common, and it is easy to find a place for a petroglyph so as to create an intentional sun dagger. Further, where a spiral or circular petroglyph has a coincidental light/shadow display, the false alarm rate is measured to be 20%-33%. Sun daggers that have indicated declinations other than ±23.4° or 0.0° are false alarms, including claims for alignments to cross-quarter days and lunar standstills, which are certainly wrong. Intentional sun daggers are not related to any form of calendric regulation, astronomical tools, or public ceremony. Rather, abundant ethnographic evidence shows that sun daggers are a part of sites, called Sun Shrines, where a local Sun-watcher would have lone vigils, with offerings and prayers to the gods on the solstices and equinoxes.