Song’s Site at Los Angeles Eco-Village Redevelopment

The Los Angeles Eco-Village (LAEV) is a co-op housing community, located in Koreatown, focused on building sustainable and economically cooperative living in an urban environment. The purpose of this project is to transform a property recently acquired by the LAEV, called Song’s, into a multipurpose community hub. The project design goals established with LAEV founder and community members, include cultivating new highly sustainable and resilient ideas on urban living and incorporating educational elements that inspire the community and visitors to live more sustainably. This project proposes three design elements to improve the community use of the newly acquired Song’s at LAEV site. The design elements are a Learning Garden equipped with a garden education center, a rainwater collection, storage, and use system, and an improved aquaponics system. The report discusses the design of all three elements and their inclusion within the overall site. A California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) report and a cost analysis were completed to determine the environmental impacts and total project cost for the design

The Black Box Spring 2025

The Black Box is a creative publication dedicated to displaying the talented work of the Embry-Riddle Prescott community. Creativity and ingenuity flow throughout ERAU and we want to put it on display

Variants within the immunoregulatory CBLB gene are associated with multiple sclerosis

A genome wide association scan of ~6.6 million genotyped or imputed variants in 882 Sardinian Multiple Sclerosis (MS) cases and 872 controls suggested association of CBLB gene variants with disease, which was confirmed in 1,775 cases and 2,005 controls (overall P =1.60 × 10-10). CBLB encodes a negative regulator of adaptive immune responses and mice lacking the orthologue are prone to experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis, the animal model of MS

<i>Hericium erinaceus</i> Improves Mood and Sleep Disorders in Patients Affected by Overweight or Obesity: Could Circulating Pro-BDNF and BDNF Be Potential Biomarkers?

Epidemiological data indicate that subjects affected by obesity have an increased risk of developing mood disorders. The relationship between obesity and mood disorders is bidirectional. We assessed whether a Hericium erinaceus treatment improved depression, anxiety, sleep, and binge eating disorders after 8 weeks of supplementation in subjects affected by overweight or obesity under a low calorie diet regimen. Looking for a possible clinical biomarker, we assessed the serum balance between brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and its precursor pro-BDNF before and after H. erinaceus supplementation. Seventy-seven volunteers affected by overweight or obesity were recruited at the offices of the Department of Preventive Medicine, Luigi Devoto Clinic of Work, Obesity Centre, at the IRCCS Foundation Policlinico Hospital of Milan (Italy). Patients were recruited only if they had a mood and/or sleep disorder and/or were binge eating as evaluated through self-assessment questionnaires. We used two different enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays kits to discriminate circulating levels of pro-BDNF and BDNF. Eight weeks of oral H. erinaceus supplementation decreased depression, anxiety, and sleep disorders. H. erinaceus supplementation improved mood disorders of a depressive-anxious nature and the quality of the nocturnal rest. H. erinaceus increased circulating pro-BDNF levels without any significant change in BDNF circulating levels.</jats:p

Variation within the CLEC16A gene shows consistent disease association with both multiple sclerosis and type 1 diabetes in Sardinia

Variation within intron 19 of the CLEC16A (KIAA0350) gene region was recently found to be unequivocally associated with type 1 diabetes (T1D) in genome-wide association (GWA) studies in Northern European populations. A variant in intron 22 that is nearly independent of the intron 19 variant showed suggestive evidence of association with multiple sclerosis (MS). Here, we genotyped the rs725613 polymorphism, representative of the earlier reported associations with T1D within CLEC16A, in 1037 T1D cases, 1498 MS cases and 1706 matched controls, all from the founder, autoimmunity-prone Sardinian population. In these Sardinian samples, allele A of rs725613 is positively associated not only with T1D (odds ratio=1.15, P one-tail=5.1 × 10−3) but also, and with a comparable effect size, with MS (odds ratio=1.21, P one-tail 6.7 × 10−5). Taken together these data provide evidence of joint disease association in T1D and MS within CLEC16A and underline a shared disease pathway

Variants within the CBLB gene are associated with multiple sclerosis

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a multi-factorial neuroinflammatory and autoimmune disorder. A primary cause of disability in young adults, it results from interactions between unknown environmental factors and alleles of many susceptibility loci across the genome. Recent investigations of the genetics of MS have resulted in important advances, driven largely by completion of the first genome-wide association scans (GWAS). To detect additional loci, we performed a GWAS in 882 Sardinian Multiple Sclerosis (MS) cases and 872 controls genotyped with the Affymetrix 6.0 chip, using 575,678 SNPs that passed quality checks. We then successfully imputed 6,031,588 SNPs using haplotypes available from HapMap II, HapMap III and 1000 Genomes projects, and tested for association ~6.6 million variants. The strongest signal (OR=2.05, p=1.45x10-20) was observed at a SNP tag for the HLADRB1* 0301-DQB1*0201 allele. We then selected 9 SNPs outside of the HLA locus for validation and follow-up, based on their level of significance, proximity to functional candidate genes, and quality of imputation. Of those, SNP rs9657904 on chr3q13 was successfully confirmed in the GWAS samples and replicated in an independent set of 1,775 MS cases and 2,005 controls (p=9.4x10-6). Notably, this variant is absent from the HapMap II reference panel, and we were able to fully assess it only after imputation with HapMap III and 1000 Genomes haplotypes. Combining all available genotypes, the observed pvalue was 1.6x10-10 (OR=1.40). The most associated variants at this locus fall in the promoter of a gene, CBLB, which encodes a negative regulator of adaptive immune responses. In support of its involvement in MS, mice lacking the ortholog are prone to experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis, the animal model of multiple sclerosis. The strongest associated variant was also replicated in 1,441 cases and 1,465 controls from central-northern Italy with a similar effect size, hence confirming the role of this marker in increased risk for multiple sclerosis in another southern European population. Finally, we sequenced by the Sanger method the coding regions and promoter of the gene in 96 patients, observing novel variants that are potentially causative, and will now be assessed with focused biological studies

Variants within the immunoregulatory <i>CBLB</i> gene are associated with multiple sclerosis

A genome-wide association scan of ~6.6 million genotyped or imputed variants in 882 Sardinian individuals with multiple sclerosis (cases) and 872 controls suggested association of CBLB gene variants with disease, which was confirmed in 1,775 cases and 2,005 controls (rs9657904, overall P = 1.60 × 10−10, OR = 1.40). CBLB encodes a negative regulator of adaptive immune responses, and mice lacking the ortholog are prone to experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis, the animal model of multiple sclerosis