A Preliminary Study of Mild Heat Stress on Inflammasome Activation in Murine Macrophages.

Inflammation and mitochondrial-dependent oxidative stress are interrelated processes implicated in multiple neuroinflammatory disorders, including Alzheimer's disease (AD) and depression. Exposure to elevated temperature (hyperthermia) is proposed as a non-pharmacological, anti-inflammatory treatment for these disorders; however, the underlying mechanisms are not fully understood. Here we asked if the inflammasome, a protein complex essential for orchestrating the inflammatory response and linked to mitochondrial stress, might be modulated by elevated temperatures. To test this, in preliminary studies, immortalized bone-marrow-derived murine macrophages (iBMM) were primed with inflammatory stimuli, exposed to a range of temperatures (37-41.5 °C), and examined for markers of inflammasome and mitochondrial activity. We found that exposure to mild heat stress (39 °C for 15 min) rapidly inhibited iBMM inflammasome activity. Furthermore, heat exposure led to decreased ASC speck formation and increased numbers of polarized mitochondria. These results suggest that mild hyperthermia inhibits inflammasome activity in the iBMM, limiting potentially harmful inflammation and mitigating mitochondrial stress. Our findings suggest an additional potential mechanism by which hyperthermia may exert its beneficial effects on inflammatory diseases.

Remote Labs 2.0 to the Rescue

[...]students use the ClaimEvidence-Reasoning (CN1 -https://media.proquest.com/media/hms/PFT/1/KTO2N?_a=ChgyMDIyMDUyNTE1Mjk0MTQ0MTozMDI1NjYSBTg4MjU5GgpPTkVfU0VBUkNIIg4xNTguMTExLjIzNi45NSoFNDA1OTAyCjI2Njg0NDU2MDc6DURvY3VtZW50SW1hZ2VCATBSBk9ubGluZVoCRlRiA1BGVGoKMjAyMS8wNy8wMXIKMjAyMS8wOC8zMXoAggEpUC0xMDA3MTYxLTI2NzI0LUNVU1RPTUVSLTEwMDAwMjU1LTQ3MzUzMzWSAQZPbmxpbmXKAXNNb3ppbGxhLzUuMCAoV2luZG93cyBOVCAxMC4wOyBXaW42NDsgeDY0KSBBcHBsZVdlYktpdC81MzcuMzYgKEtIVE1MLCBsaWtlIEdlY2tvKSBDaHJvbWUvMTAyLjAuNTAwNS42MSBTYWZhcmkvNTM3LjM20gESU2Nob2xhcmx5IEpvdXJuYWxzmgIHUHJlUGFpZKoCK09TOkVNUy1NZWRpYUxpbmtzU2VydmljZS1nZXRNZWRpYVVybEZvckl0ZW3KAgdGZWF0dXJl0gIBWfICAPoCAU6CAwNXZWKKAxxDSUQ6MjAyMjA1MjUxNTI5NDE0NDE6OTM2MTMy&_s=uwKOfXecGQ0Tn1NeSsbFbYUBWVY%3D ER) framework (McNeill and Krajcik 2011) to synthesize their findings in their lab reports. Multiple Inquiry Cycles: The Reaction Between Baking Soda and Vinegar as an Example The baking soda and vinegar experiment is a widely used chemical reaction that feeds into rich discussions about thermodynamics and chemical equilibrium, and it often takes not one, but multiple inquiry cycles with increasing depth and openendedness for students to fully explore and explain the phenomena. To set up the first inquiry cycle, "How do we know if a chemical reaction absorbs or releases energy?" the teacher fills two petri dishes with vinegar, mounts the smartphone and the IR camera the same way as described in the previous examples, and starts the livestream by asking students to predict how the temperature within the petri dish will change when baking soda is added to vinegar. When the teacher adds baking soda into one of the dishes, students will observe a drastic color change in the dish from yelloworange to blue-purple on the thermal image, indicating a decrease in temperature (Figure 5).

Remote Labs 2.0 to the Rescue: Doing Science in a Pandemic

Telelab, an implementation of remote labs 2.0, is open-source and freely available for non-commercial use. The platform consists of sensors that collect data, smartphone apps that transmit data and videos from anywhere, and a web app that provides a user interface to view, analyze, and control remote experiments. Based on this platform, any science teacher can broadcast their own experiments to any number of students, who will not only observe the experiments unfold over a livestream of images but also receive real-time sensor data for independent analyses. The platform also allows teachers to record experiments along with sensor data and upload them to a repository, so students who miss the live sessions can also catch up by working with these prerecorded experiments. As a video- and data-streaming platform, Telelab allows teachers to conduct experiments in the same way they would in a physical classroom under normal circumstances, which paves the way for a comfortable transition to remote labs. In this article, the authors demonstrate how Telelab can assist remote teaching with three common examples. For all the examples, a low-cost infrared (IR) thermal camera is used as a high-throughput sensor to collect large quantities of temperature data in real time.