Imaging of vitreous cortex hyalocyte dynamics using non-confocal quadrant-detection adaptive optics scanning light ophthalmoscopy in human subjects

Vitreous cortex hyalocytes are resident macrophage cells that help maintain the transparency of the media, provide immunosurveillance, and respond to tissue injury and inflammation. In this study, we demonstrate the use of non-confocal quadrant-detection adaptive optics scanning light ophthalmoscopy (AOSLO) to non-invasively visualize the movement and morphological changes of the hyalocyte cell bodies and processes over 1-2 hour periods in the living human eye. The average velocity of the cells 0.52 ± 0.76 µm/min when sampled every 5 minutes and 0.23 ± 0.29 µm/min when sampled every 30 minutes, suggesting that the hyalocytes move in quick bursts. Understanding the behavior of these cells under normal physiological conditions may lead to their use as biomarkers or suitable targets for therapy in eye diseases such as diabetic retinopathy, preretinal fibrosis and glaucoma.     

Comparative evaluation of general, epidural and spinal anaesthesia for extracorporeal shockwave lithotripsy

The results of a prospective randomised evaluation of general anaesthesia (GA), epidural anaesthesia (EA) and spinal anaesthesia (SA) for extracorporeal shockwave lithotripsy are presented. GA provided speed and reliability but resulted in a high incidence of postoperative nausea, vomiting and sore throat. Both regional techniques conferred the advantages of an awake, cooperative patient, but EA required a longer preparation time than SA and more supplementary treatment with fentanyl or midazolam. A major drawback associated with the use of SA was a 42% incidence of postspinal headache. All three techniques were associated with hypotension on placement in the hoisl; bath immersion resulted in significant rises in blood pressure in the EA and SA groups and a more variable (overall non-significant) response in the GA group.     

Neighborhood effects on use of African-American Vernacular English

African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) is systematic, rooted in history, and important as an identity marker and expressive resource for its speakers. In these respects, it resembles other vernacular or nonstandard varieties, like Cockney or Appalachian English. But like them, AAVE can trigger discrimination in the workplace, housing market, and schools. Understanding what shapes the relative use of AAVE vs. Standard American English (SAE) is important for policy and scientific reasons. This work presents, to our knowledge, the first experimental estimates of the effects of moving into lower-poverty neighborhoods on AAVE use. We use data on non-Hispanic African-American youth (n = 629) from a large-scale, randomized residential mobility experiment called Moving to Opportunity (MTO), which enrolled a sample of mostly minority families originally living in distressed public housing. Audio recordings of the youth were transcribed and coded for the use of five grammatical and five phonological AAVE features to construct a measure of the proportion of possible instances, or tokens, in which speakers use AAVE rather than SAE speech features. Random assignment to receive a housing voucher to move into a lower-poverty area (the intention-to-treat effect) led youth to live in neighborhoods (census tracts) with an 11 percentage point lower poverty rate on average over the next 10–15 y and reduced the share of AAVE tokens by ∼3 percentage points compared with the MTO control group youth. The MTO effect on AAVE use equals approximately half of the difference in AAVE frequency observed between youth whose parents have a high school diploma and those whose parents do not.Language is in many respects a socially constructed behavior, jointly influenced by exposure, identity, and peer group influence (1). One’s speech patterns are shaped not only by one’s family, but also by one’s broader regional and social environment. For example, people who immigrate from non-English-speaking countries to the United States at an early age wind up speaking English with nearly the same proficiency as those who were born in the United States, even though their older siblings and parents do not (2, 3). Less clear is whether different local social environments within a city, state, or country exert causal effects on the use of dialects such as African-American Language (4) or African-American Vernacular English (AAVE), which is the most vernacular variety of African-American English and is used across the country (5–7).This work presents what, to our knowledge, is the first study of how much social environments—neighborhoods—exert a causal effect on the use of AAVE. Previous research in sociolinguistics has documented substantial variation in AAVE use by socioeconomic class, defined by using various combinations of occupational status, education, and income or residence quality (8, 9). There are theoretical reasons to believe any or all of these measures shape AAVE use by neighborhood (as discussed further below and in SI Appendix). However, this correlation may not reflect the causal effect of neighborhood environments on language and could instead be driven by the effects of unmeasured person- or family-level variables that jointly determine both residential location and speech patterns. Causal inference about the effects of neighborhoods on speech is more convincing if based on a study that uses a randomized experimental design to assign similar families to live in different types of neighborhood contexts.Evidence for neighborhood effects on AAVE use is relevant for understanding the degree to which future changes in neighborhood economic and racial segregation may affect the vitality and use of this dialect (10, 11). This is a topic of importance to sociolinguists, because vernaculars have benefits as in-group markers and expressive resources (12). Such evidence is also relevant for understanding how changes in segregation will affect disparities in other life outcomes because previous studies suggest that AAVE use could affect children''s school success—at least given the way schools currently operate—and that AAVE speakers are often victims of what Baugh calls “linguistic profiling” (13)—discrimination in the workplace, housing markets, and schools (7, 14–18). Of course, efforts to modify how social institutions interact with people using different dialects are independently important, regardless of any relationship between neighborhood segregation and AAVE use.Our study capitalizes on a unique opportunity to understand neighborhood effects on speech (AAVE use) by incorporating sociolinguistic measures of speech and language patterns into the long-term follow-up of participants in a large-scale government residential-mobility experiment called Moving to Opportunity (MTO). We believe this type of language measurement has never before been incorporated into a large, randomized social experiment. We provide estimates of the causal effect of changes in neighborhood environments on speech patterns by using MTO’s randomly assigned variation in opportunities for poor families to move to low-poverty areas.