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Patient-healthcare provider interactions on Cannabis for Therapeutic Purposes
Jivan Achar, Cara Struble, and Alan Budney
Background and Objectives: There is limited evidence guiding the efficacy and safety of cannabis for therapeutic purposes (CTP). Healthcare providers lack requisite knowledge to support patients. This study aimed to describe and compare aspects of an initial CTP interaction across different provider-types. We anticipated mental health providers would differ from other provider-types based on varied exposure to cannabis consumers.
Methods: Adult cannabis consumers (N=507) from the U.S. completed an anonymous online survey rating aspects of an initial CTP interaction, including risk mitigation behaviors and recommendations about use. Analyses examined CTP interactions among four provider groups (Mental health [MH], Family Medicine [FM], Medical Clinics [MC], and Other Specialty [OS]).
Results: Less than half of the sample reported discussion of cannabis risks (44.0%) or subsequent follow-ups (44.0-46.7%). Recommendations (where to obtain, consumption method, dose, and frequency) were uncommon (9.7%-19.5%). While the MH group reported the highest rates of risk mitigation discussion (62.0%-65.0%), models adjusted for sociodemographic and cannabis characteristics were largely non-significant. MC providers were more likely than the MH group to report recommendations (p’s<.05). Younger age and greater cannabis-related problems increased likelihood of risk mitigation and provider recommendations.
Discussion and Conclusions: Data suggest that CTP interactions focused on risk but generally lacked comprehensive recommendations for safe use. Data from provider perspectives could support the need for CTP dosing guidelines and training for healthcare providers to promote safe CTP practices.
Scientific Significance: For the first time, this study explored several aspects of CTP interactions and compared experiences across a variety of provider-types.
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Gastroenterology Environmental Impact Assessment: LCA in Endoscopy
Fatma Al Arbawi, Joao De Araujo Jr., Cate Pittman, Anya Ramrakhiani, Fatmata Sesay, and Adam Sobel
With this project we aimed to understand the current state of endoscopy carbon impact and ideate several possible solution sets to help our sponsor, gastroenterologist Dr. Heiko Pohl, know where to focus future engineering design and research. In the first term of research, we reviewed LCA frameworks and observed endoscopy procedures to understand where there were opportunities to improve on the carbon footprint of the procedure. Once identified, these improvement areas were the focus of our second term of work:
1. Hypothetical packaging, shipping, and material changes
2. Designing a reusable handle for polyp removal procedures
3. Designing a mechanism to keep bioloads out of the endoscope during procedures like a bile duct exploration
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Do common distractions help us attend? Effects of unconscious learning on attention
Audrey Y. Kim, Kevin Ortego, and Viola Störmer
This project seeks to investigate the mechanisms underlying our ability to select relevant and ignore irrelevant information. At any moment, we are confronted with an overwhelming amount of sensory information – far more than we can process at once. Selective attention is the cognitive function that allows us to prioritize processing relevant inputs and ignoring irrelevant or distracting inputs, making selective attention a core cognitive capacity that underlies and constraints information processing in the human brain. Traditionally, attention theory distinguishes between two types of selection: consciously deciding what to focus on (top-down, or endogenous attention), and attentional focus drawn to salient stimuli in the environment (bottom-up, or exogenous attention). More recently, another type of attention has been suggested in the literature, namely learned attention, where the attentional system operates based on statistical regularities in the environment, such that attention is incidentally biased toward information that has been relevant frequently in the past (Awh et al., 2012). To date, it is unclear how this learned attention operates and also how it compares to top-down attentional processes.
A previous study found that explicitly informing participants about an upcoming relevant target or irrelevant distractor feature using attention cues increased performance during a visual search task, but this effect was much stronger for targets than distractors (Addleman & Störmer, 2022). This may suggest that selecting targets and ignoring distractors rely on different cognitive resources. However, unconsciously learned target and distractor features seemed to increase performance at a similar rate, suggesting that they rely on shared selection mechanisms. To measure the neural processes involved in learned attention, I have been conducting research that assesses the changes in visual processing efficiency for learned targets and distractor features using human electroencephalography (EEG). Through this fellowship, I plan to complete the data collection on this project, analyze the behavioral and EEG data, and disseminate the results in the form of a research paper and/or at a conference. With ample time to collect data on the effects of learned feature-based selection and ignoring, I will examine whether previous selection bias for targets and previous suppression bias for distractors utilize the same cognitive resources. This research has the potential to explain visual processing biases that affect attention, changing the way the attentional framework is regarded, integrating not only physical salience and current goals of selection but also selection history.
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Beyond average: The active processing of information in ensemble perception
Sarah Parigela, Ria Parikh, Kevin Ortego, and Viola Stoermer
Ensembles can be found in daily life. Surveying faces in a crowd, generalizing states of objects (ex. clean vs. dirty tables in a restaurant)---they all require computing averages. Previous studies have shown that observers can quickly and automatically extract information about means of groups. Through a task of reporting orientations of sets of triangles, we hypothesized that participants should be more accurate when averaging large groups than remembering individual items.
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In Pursuit of Understanding the Physiological Mechanism of the Tumor Suppressor LactB
Julia Patterson, Sukrut Kamerkar, and Henry Higgs
In this poster, I summarize my work exploring the dynamics and cellular function of the novel protein LactB. LactB is a bacterial penicillin-binding protein homolog and mitochondrial serine protease whose function is not fully understood. LactB localizes to the intermembrane space (IMS) of the mitochondria and forms filaments. However, it is unclear where LactB functions within the IMS, or whether it interacts with the mitochondrial membranes. Furthermore, LactB acts as a tumor suppressor in colorectal cancer, hepatocellular carcinoma, glioma, melanoma, gastric cancer, lung cancer, and ovarian cancer. The mechanism for LactB’s tumor suppressor function is debated, though a number of pathways have been proposed.
My research focuses on two subjects: 1) the dynamics of LactB within the IMS via fluorescence recovery after photobleaching and 2) the effects of LactB knockout and knockdown on cellular function by examining lipid droplets and apoptosis. Although I found the LactB-GFP construct I used to have an immobile fraction in the mitochondria, my work with FRAP was discontinued after the publication of LactB’s CryoEM structure revealed structural complications with this construct. Instead, I focused on siRNA knockdown and CRISPR-Cas9 knockout exploring the impact on lipid droplets, spherical organelles important in lipid metabolism and tumorigenesis. I found significant changes in lipid droplet size and number in two melanoma cell lines. I also explored the effects of decreased LactB expression on apoptosis, finding a decrease in apoptosis in one cell lines. My studies raise the important question of the mechanism by which LactB contributes to apoptosis.
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The role of endocytosis in Toll protein function
Nina Devi Prakash, Colleen Moore, and Patrick Dolph
The goal of the project is to determine the role of the Toll protein in retinal degeneration. The Toll protein is a pro-cell death molecule that is also known to be involved in dorsal-ventral patterning during development and innate immunity. This project focuses on the internalization process of Toll, by which it is brought into the cell to mediate cellular functions. Four specific motifs on Toll that are known to be involved in internalization or sorting will be knocked out via CRISPR technology. After screening a population of potential mutant Drosophila flies with a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) to determine lines that have a successful knockout, the effect of these knockouts on cellular processes will be observed. Toll processes are generally conserved across all species which either have the Toll protein or Toll-like receptors (TLRs). Therefore, the results of this project could provide more information on how the TLRs contribute to rhodopsin-related diseases in humans, such as retinitis pigmentosa and give insight into causes of neuronal degeneration.
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Regulation of Lipid Composition of the Golgi during Tissue Formation: Where Does PI 4-Kinase Stand?
Elise Tong and Bing He
Four Wheel Drive (Fwd), the Drosophila homologue of PI 4-kinase IIIβ, is a conserved phosphatidylinositol 4-kinase (PI4K) that localizes to the Golgi apparatus and functions in protein trafficking from the Golgi to the plasma membrane. The goal of this project was to determine how the localization of Fwd to the Golgi is regulated during early embryogenesis in Drosophila. Our initial observations suggested that Fwd was only localized to a subset of Golgi apparatus, raising the question of whether distinct types of Golgi apparatus exist in early Drosophila embryos. By optimizing imaging conditions, we found that many Golgi compartments initially identified as Fwd-negative showed weak Fwd-GFP signals, arguing against the existence of a sub-population of Golgi that completely lack Fwd. In addition, we found that phosphatidylinositol 4-phosphate (PI4P), the lipid product of PI4Ks, were both strongly enriched on the plasma membrane and weakly associated with intracellular puncta-like structures. These intracellular signals appear to overlap with Fwd-GFP, suggesting that Fwd colocalizes with its lipid product on the Golgi apparatuses. Together, our findings demonstrate that Golgi apparatuses differ in their capacity to recruit Fwd, which may impact their rate of PI4P production. These observations raise the question of how the activity of individual Golgi apparatuses are regulated in developing tissues.
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Microscopic Analysis of Ancient Food Residues
Marit UyHam, Jiajing Wang, and Yiyi Tang
During the Longshan period of Neolithic China (c. 3000-2000 BCE), settlements took root and flourished in the Yellow River Valley. Kangjia is an example of such a settlement, with its craft specialization and hierarchical social structure. Furthermore, agriculture and animal husbandry contributed to a relatively varied diet, particularly among those of higher social status.
The primary objective of this experiment was to characterize the diet of Kangjia society. This was accomplished by analyzing plant microfossils sampled from pottery sherds excavated from an archaeological site in Kangjia. Phytoliths, silica plant cell skeletons, have distinct structures which differ between plant species. Similarly, starch granules have characteristic morphological differences between crop species. Because both phytoliths and starch granules are persistent over time, they are ideal diagnostic tools.
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Racial/Ethnic Differences in Psychotic-Like Experiences Among Cannabis Consumers: Exploring Relationships with Cannabis and Mental Health Characteristics
Jean C. Yuan, Cara Struble, and Alan Budney
Compare psychotic-like experiences (PLEs) among Non-Hispanic White, Non-Hispanic Racial Minority, and Hispanic cannabis consumers (2) Examine associations between PLEs with cannabis and mental health characteristics
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