Satellite microglia: marker of traumatic brain injury and regulator of neuronal excitability.

Traumatic brain injury is a leading cause of chronic neurologic disability and a risk factor for development of neurodegenerative disease. However, little is known regarding the pathophysiology of human traumatic brain injury, especially in the window after acute injury and the later life development of progressive neurodegenerative disease. Given the proposed mechanisms of toxic protein production and neuroinflammation as possible initiators or contributors to progressive pathology, we examined phosphorylated tau accumulation, microgliosis and astrogliosis using immunostaining in the orbitofrontal cortex, a region often vulnerable across traumatic brain injury exposures, in an age and sex-matched cohort of community traumatic brain injury including both mild and severe cases in midlife.

Comparing levoglucosan and mannosan ratios in sediments and corresponding aerosols from recent Australian fires.

The monosaccharide anhydrides levoglucosan, mannosan, and galactosan are known as 'fire sugars' as they are powerful proxies used to trace fire events. Despite their increasing use, their application is not completely understood, especially in the context of tracing past fire events using sediment samples. There are many uncertainties about fire sugar formation, partitioning, transport, complexation, and stability along all stages of the source-to-sink pathway.

Evidence of mutant huntingtin and tau-related pathology within neuronal grafts in Huntington's disease cases.

A number of post-mortem studies conducted in transplanted Huntington's disease (HD) patients from various trials have reported the presence of pathological and misfolded proteins, in particular mutant huntingtin (mHtt) and phosphorylated tau neuropil threads, in the healthy grafted tissue. Here, we extended these observations with histological analysis of post-mortem tissue from three additional HD patients who had received similar striatal allografts from the fetal tissue transplantation trial conducted in Los Angeles in 1998. Immunohistochemical staining was performed using anti-mHtt antibodies, EM48 and MW7, as well as anti-hyperphosphorylated tau antibodies, AT8 and CP13.

Accelerator mass spectrometry measurements of U in groundwater, soil and vegetation at a legacy radioactive waste site.

Low-level radioactive wastes were disposed at the Little Forest Legacy Site (LFLS) near Sydney, Australia between 1960 and 1968. According to the disposal records, U contributes a significant portion of the inventory of actinide activity buried in the LFLS trenches. Although the presence of U in environmental samples from LFLS has been previously inferred from alpha-spectrometry measurements, it has been difficult to quantify because the U and U α-peaks are superimposed.