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Elastin deficiency causes vascular stiffening, a leading risk for hypertension and chronic kidney disease (CKD). The mechanisms mediating hypertension and/or CKD pathogenesis due to elastin deficiency are poorly understood. Using the elastin heterozygous (Eln+/−) mouse model, we tested whether renal dysfunction due to elastin deficiency occurs independently of and precedes the development of hypertension. We assessed blood pressure and renal hemodynamics in 30-day and 12-week-old male and female mice. At P30, blood pressure of Eln+/−mice was similar to wild-type controls; however, renal blood flow was lower, whereas renal vascular resistance was augmented at baseline in Eln+/−mice. At 12 weeks, renal vascular resistance remained elevated while filtration fraction was higher in male Eln+/−relative to wild-type mice. Heterozygous mice showed isolated systolic hypertension that was evident only at nighttime. Acute salt loading with 6% dietary sodium increased daytime systolic blood pressure only in male Eln+/−mice, causing a rightward shift and blunted slope of the pressure-natriuresis curve. Renal interlobar artery basal tone and myogenic response to increasing intraluminal pressure at day 10 were similar, whereas they were augmented at day 30 and at 12 weeks old in Eln+/−mice, and normalized by the AT1R blocker, candesartan. Heterozygous mice also exhibited podocyte foot process damage that persisted even when blood pressure was normalized to wild-type levels with hydralazine. Thus, elastin insufficiency triggers structural defects and abnormal remodeling of renal vascular signaling involving AT1R-mediated vascular mechanotransduction and renal hyperfiltration with increased blood pressure sensitivity to dietary sodium contributing to systolic hypertension.

This article brings together recent scholarship on the re-memorializing of World War Two and fascism across Europe, particularly in the Italian context, and historical analysis of the British-Italian experience of the war and preceding growth of fascism. Building on Ugolini’s 2011 questioning of whether the Italian-Scottish community has been romanticized, it proposes a new line of inquiry into the ways in which the changing memories are articulated in cultural production, focusing on a comparative analysis of Italian-Welsh and Italian-Scottish writing in a sustained way for the first time. Drawing on Bakhtin’s (2002) concepts of polyphony and heteroglossia, the article analyses whether the voices which populate recent texts permit the emergence of a multiplicity of languages and ideologies, challenging the dominant narrative of the British-Italian experience of interwar fascistization and World War Two that has prevailed since 1945.

Recent interest has developed in understanding the health effects attributable to different components of particulate matter. This review evaluates the effects of black carbon (BC) on cardiovascular disease in individuals with pre-existing disease using evidence from epidemiologic and experimental studies.A systematic literature search was conducted to identify epidemiologic and experimental studies examining the relationship between BC and cardiovascular health effects in humans with pre-existing diseases. Nineteen epidemiologic and six experimental studies were included. Risk of bias was evaluated for each study.Evidence across studies suggested ambient BC is associated with changes in subclinical cardiovascular health effects in individuals with diabetes and coronary artery disease (CAD). Limited evidence demonstrated that chronic respiratory disease does not modify the effect of BC on cardiovascular health.Results in these studies consistently demonstrated that diabetes is a risk factor for BC-related cardiovascular effects, including increased interleukin-6 and ECG parameters. Cardiovascular effects were associated with BC in individuals with CAD, but few comparisons to individuals without CAD were provided in the literature.

This article aims to explore the agency of the migrant to speak in the destination culture through an examination of the way in which first-generation autobiographies are introduced. It will compare Italian American autobiographies produced at the beginning of the twentieth century with African Italian autobiographies penned in the early 1990s, arguing that striking similarities between the respective literary forms of the texts, and the political climates in which they were produced, prompt an exploration of whether factors such as class, gender and the act of literary collaboration with an established cultural figure hold shifting or static values in permitting the migrant's voice to be heard.

Relations between attachment and child emotional and behavioral regulation were studied longitudinally in a sample of 223 children from urban, low-income families. Attachment in the Strange Situation at 12 and 18 months was scored using the infant classification system and at 24 months was scored using a preschool classification system. Only modest stability was found in attachment whether within or across classification systems, with the percentage of insecure attachments consistently increasing over time. Results indicated both concurrent and predictive associations with indices of child regulation based on observer ratings or maternal report. However, only the 24-month classification predicted maternal report of externalizing and internalizing behavior problems at age 3.5 years, with additional variance accounted for by selected measures of child emotional and behavior regulation from the same assessment. Attachment security (B) and atypical attachment classifications (D, A/C, and AD) appear to provide the most consistently useful information about child functioning. Results are discussed in terms of continuity and change from the perspective of developmental psychopathology.

The aim of this investigation was to examine the role of social relationships in the home as predictors of social functioning in the first years of school. Longitudinal data gathered on 156 children from urban, low-income families were used to examine the unique contributions of mother-child attachment classification at ages 1 and 2 years, the child's relationship with another adult caregiver, the child's closeness to a sibling, and the child's status in the family relative to siblings between ages 3 and 4 years, to teacher reports of their own relationship to the child and the child's social skills in the classroom and peer relations. The role of family-based relationships as possible protective factors for children at social or demographic risk for problems in school was also tested. Results indicate that quality of different family relationships provides relatively independent and complementary information about early social functioning in school, with more limited evidence for compensatory or protective processes at work.

Factors associated with school behavioral competence at 72 months were investigated in a sample of at-risk boys followed longitudinally from 18 months. Boys were at risk for developing behavior problems due to early exposure to sociodemographic and family-environmental stressors associated with low-income urban living. Research findings: Of child protective factors investigated, main effects were found for intelligence, mother-reported emotionality and sociability, and observed likability in relation to teacher-reported behavior problems, and results were generally consistent across type of risk. In only one instance did the effect of a protective factor depend on the level of risk. Furthermore, a cumulative measure of protective factors was strongly predictive of child behavior problems and was a better predictor than cumulative risk measures. Observed infant emotionality, child physical attractiveness, and children's self-perceptions of being pro-social or aggressive and fearless were essentially unrelated to behavioral outcome. Mother-reported child emotionality mediated both the relation between mother-reported infant emotionality and teacher-reported internalizing problems, and the relation between observed likability and teacher-reported externalizing problems. Practice/Policy: Clinical implications concern improved identification accuracy of at-risk children who should be targeted for intervention, and forms that intervention should take.

Relations between infant irritability and maternal responsiveness at 12 and18 months were investigated in low-income mother-infant dyads. Emphasis was placed on whether results varied according to measurement strategies, infant gender, or level of maternal social support and satisfaction with that support. Irritability was measured separately through observation and maternal report, responsiveness was measured observationally, and maternal social support and satisfaction were self-reported via questionnaire. Concurrent relations between irritability and responsiveness were, in general, negative and were larger when irritability was measured observationally rather than by maternal report. Correlations were similar across gender. No longitudinal relations were found between irritability and responsiveness. Amount of maternal social support was weakly related to responsiveness and to responses to infant irritability, and the nature of these relations was unexpected. Irritability-responsiveness relations varied as a function of measurement strategies, which may in part explain mixed findings in the empirical literature.

This article describes how the Wichita (Kansas) Water Utility kept up its valve maintenance program despite budget cuts and down-sizing. Re-assignment of work crews, program goals and work flow, and program successes and challenges are discussed, along with future program enchancements.

Several letters to the editor are presented in response to articles in previous issues including "Little Black Dress," by Susan Khalje in the February/March 2008 issue, "Up Close," in the March 2008 issue and "Quit to Make" in the January 2008 issue.

Zea mays L. (maize) hybrids producing the Cry1F protein from Bacillus thuringiensis were first commercialized in the United States in 2003. These products demonstrated varying levels of moderate control, but not immunity to Striacosta albicosta (Smith) (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae) (western bean cutworm). Susceptibility of western bean cutworm to Cry1F protein was assessed in field populations collected in the mid- and western United States in 2003, 2004, 2013, and 2014 using diet bioassay. A meta-analysis of 32 western bean cutworm field collections assessed for susceptibility to Cry1F was conducted to investigate changes in susceptibility over time. Based on meta-analysis results, these data suggest a 5.2-fold increase in median lethal concentration (LC50) response to Cry1F in the 2013–2014 populations compared with collections that were assessed 10 yr earlier. Widespread use of Cry1F-producing maize hybrids over the past 10 yr may have contributed to favoring western bean cutworm populations with tolerance to the Cry1F protein.

Field observations of Hoplocampa testudinea Klug, a pest of developing apple fruit, indicated that the adults were attracted to apple blossoms where they fed on pollen and where females oviposited. Spectrophotometric analysis of apple blossom parts showed a negligible amount of reflection in the UV (300–400 nm) but a large amount in the remainder of the insect visible spectrum (400–650 nm). In field tests, non-UV-reflecting white sticky-coated rectangles captured more adults than any other surfaces tested including: yellow, red, orange, black, green, and blue enamels; various day-light fluorescent hues; various UV-reflecting white pigments; aluminum foil; and clear Plexiglas®. We conclude that the most preferred white rectangle could be utilized effectively to trap and monitor adults in apple orchards.