Public participation in environmental decisions has become commonplace. A favored model for public input is to use the tools of dispute resolution to seek consensus among members of a multi-party stakeholder group. The authors believe that a focus on dispute resolution and consensus building can pose impediments to the creation of insights for decisionmakers and lead to the adoption of inferior

Acute intermittent hypoxia (AIH) induces a form of spinal motor plasticity known as phrenic long-term facilitation (pLTF); pLTF is a prolonged increase in phrenic motor output after AIH has ended. In anesthetized rats, we demonstrate that pLTF requires activity of the novel PKC isoform, PKC, and that the relevant PKC is within phrenic motor neurons. Whereas spinal PKC inhibitors block pLTF, inhibitors targeting other PKC isoforms do not. PKC is highly expressed in phrenic motor neurons, and PKC knockdown with intrapleural siRNAs abolishes pLTF. Intrapleural siRNAs targeting PKC, an atypical PKC isoform expressed in phrenic motor neurons that underlies a distinct form of phrenic motor plasticity, does not affect pLTF. Thus, PKC plays a critical role in spinal AIH-induced respiratory motor plasticity, and the relevant PKC is localized within phrenic motor neurons. Intrapleural siRNA delivery has considerable potential as a therapeutic tool to selectively manipulate plasticity in vital respiratory motor neurons.

A large proportion of cerebral strokes disrupt descending commands from motor cortical areas to the spinal cord which can results in permanent motor de cits of the arm and hand1,2. However, below the lesion, the spinal circuits that control movement5 remain intact and could be targeted by neurotechnologies to restore movement6-9. Here we demonstrate that by engaging spinal circuits with targeted electrical stimulation we immediately improved voluntary motor control in two participants with chronic post-stroke hemiparesis. We implanted a pair of 8-contact percutaneous epidural leads on the lateral aspect of the cervical spinal cord to selectively target the dorsal roots that provide excitatory inputs to motoneurons controlling the arm and hand10,11. With this strategy, we obtained independent activation of shoulder, elbow and hand muscles. Continuous stimulation through selected contacts at speci c frequencies enabled participants to perform movements that they had been unable to perform for many years. Overall, stimulation improved strength, kinematics, and functional performance.Unexpectedly, both participants retained some of these improvements even without stimulation, suggesting that spinal cord stimulation could be a restorative as well as an assistive approach for upper limb recovery after stroke.

The anti-inflammatory drug, aspirin, was loaded into three zeolite HY hosts with silica to alumina ratios (SiO 2 /Al 2 O 3 ) of 5, 30, and 60. The aspirin loading in the zeolite HY samples as measured by thermogravimetric analysis decreased from 106, to 78, to 69 mg aspirin/g zeolite with increasing SiO 2 /Al 2 O 3 . The surface areas and pore volumes, measured using nitrogen adsorption−desorption experiments, indicated that the aspirin was loaded into the internal pore surface of these materials. The Fourier transform infrared and 27 Al and 13 C magic angle spinning nuclear magnetic resonance spectra of the aspirin-loaded materials provided molecular level information about aspirin− zeolite interactions. Quantum calculations at both Hartree−Fock and density functional theory levels of theory were conducted in order to understand the nature of intermolecular interactions between the zeolite host and the aspirin. The release of the aspirin from HY was dependent on the hydrophobicity of the zeolite host with more hydrophobic zeolites (higher SiO 2 /Al 2 O 3 ) releasing the aspirin less readily.