Environmental justice research and action: a case study in political economy and community-academic collaboration

Community-university partnerships increasingly are being created to study and address environmental injustices. This article describes a case study of one such effort and its contributions to a decade-long community struggle to curb the growth of industrial hog operations and their adverse health effects in the United States' rural south. Worldwide transformation of livestock production from family farms to large-scale industrial agricultural complexes has resulted in the degradation of local environments, with negative impacts on public health. In the rural south, the concentration of industrial livestock operations has been most pronounced in low income African-American communities. Using political economy and community-based participatory research (CBPR) as a conceptual framework, this article explores the partnership between a strong community-based organization, Concerned Citizens of Tillery, and researchers at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, School of Public Health to study and address this problem. The political, economic, and historical context of the partnership is examined, as are the challenges faced, and the partnership's contributions to maintaining grassroots community organizing and activism and affecting local policy change. Implications for other CBPR partnerships are discussed.     

Alcohol consumption for simulated driving performance: A systematic review

Purpose: Alcohol consumption can lead to risky driving and increase the frequency of traffic accidents, injuries and mortalities. The main purpose of our study was to compare simulated driving performance between two groups of drivers, one consumed alcohol and the other not consumed, using a systematic review. Methods: In this systematic review, electronic resources and databases including Medline via Ovid SP, EMBASE via Ovid SP, PsycINFO via Ovid SP, PubMed, Scopus, Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINHAL) via EBSCOhost were comprehensively and systematically searched. The randomized controlled clinical trials that compared simulated driving performance between two groups of drivers, one consumed alcohol and the other not consumed, were included. Lane position standard deviation (LPSD), mean of lane position deviation (MLPD), speed, mean of speed deviation (MSD), standard deviation of speed deviation (SDSD), number of accidents (NA) and line crossing (LC) were considered as the main parameters evaluating outcomes. After title and abstract screening, the articles were enrolled for data extraction and they were evaluated for risk of biases. Results: Thirteen papers were included in our qualitative synthesis. All included papers were classified as high risk of biases. Alcohol consumption mostly deteriorated the following performance outcomes in descending order: SDSD, LPSD, speed, MLPD, LC and NA. Our systematic review had troublesome heterogeneity. Conclusion: Alcohol consumption may decrease simulated driving performance in alcohol consumed people compared with non-alcohol consumed people via changes in SDSD, LPSD, speed, MLPD, LC and NA. More well-designed randomized controlled clinical trials are recommended.     

Conductance of GABAA Channels Activated by Pentobarbitone in Hippocampal Neurons from Newborn Rats

Neurons were obtained from the CA1 region of the hippocampus of newborn rats and maintained in culture. Channels were activated by pentobarbitone in cell-attached, inside-out or outside-out patches, normally by applying pentobarbitone in flowing bath solution. Currents were outwardly rectifying and blocked by bicuculline, properties of GABA_A channels in these cells. Maximum channel conductance increased as pentobarbitone concentration was increased to 500 μ m but conductance then decreased as pentobarbitone concentration was raised further. The best fit of a Hill-type equation to the relationship between maximum channel conductance and pentobarbitone concentration (up to 500 μ m ) gave an EC₅₀ of 41 μ m , a maximum conductance of 36 pS and a Hill coefficient of 1.6. Bicuculline decreased the maximum conductance of the channels activated by pentobarbitone, with an IC₅₀ of 224 μ m . Diazepam increased channel conductance, with a maximum effect being obtained with 1 μ M diazepam. Diazepam (1 μ M ) decreased the EC₅₀ of the pentobarbitone effect on channel conductance from 41 μ M to 7.2 μ M and increased maximum conductance to 72 pS. We conclude that GABA_A channel conductance is related to the concentration of the allosteric agonist pentobarbitone.     

Late anti‐apoptotic effect of KATP channel opening in skeletal muscle

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