Rationale Mu opioid receptor (MOR) analgesics like morphine have high intrinsic MOR efficacy but produce side effects. Lower efficacy MOR agonists like buprenorphine can produce analgesia with improved safety. We recently described a series of novel phenylmorphan-based MOR agonists with graded MOR efficacies, including several with sub-buprenorphine efficacies, and we described their acute effectiveness in mice to produce (a)...

The immense biodiversity observed in tropical forests has inspired the study of evolution since its inception, and numerous hypotheses have been generated to explain this diversity. One major driver of tropical forest biodiversity has been the repeated climatic fluctuations due to the Pleistocene glacial cycles. The Afrotropics are one region that has seen a particularly rich debate about the origin of its avifauna. Lowland an...

Purpose Wheelchair users are at increased risk of low bone mineral density (BMD). While BMD varies by sport among Paralympic athletes, it remains unclear whether sports participation protects against low BMD in the impaired population. This study compared BMD at several skeletal sites between sports-active and non-sports-active wheelchair users. Methods This study presents cross-sectional analyses of adult (18–60 years) wheelc...

The inferior olive provides powerful inputs to the cerebellum hypothesized to support cerebellar learning and error detection. Given cerebellar involvement in verbal working memory and the close interplay with the inferior olive, the inferior olive is likely also involved in verbal working memory. In order to elucidate the inferior olive’s role in verbal working memory, we utilized an MRI-based Sternberg verbal working memory...

Rationale The opioid crisis persists despite availability of effective opioid agonist maintenance treatments (methadone and buprenorphine). Thus, there is a need to advance novel medications for the treatment of opioid use and relapse. Objectives We recently modeled maintenance treatment in rats and found that chronic delivery of buprenorphine and the mu opioid receptor (MOR) partial agonist TRV130 decreases relapse to oxycodo...

Novel multihost pathogens can threaten endangered wildlife species, as well as humans and domestic animals. The zoonotic protozoan parasite Toxoplasma gondii is transmitted by members of Felidae and can infect a large number of animal species, including humans. This parasite can have significant health consequences for infected intermediate hosts and could further endanger wild carnivore populations of Madagascar. Building on...

We incorporated climate adaptation into a forest management plan for Michigan Technological University’s Ford Forest, a 2,000-ha property in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula used for education, research, and timber revenues. Our process was an opportunity to test the existing climate adaptation literature, pulling from multiple sources to meet the diverse needs of the institution at the time the plan was created. We present outcomes...

While grouping/read-across is widely used to fill data gaps, chemical registration dossiers are often rejected due to weak category justifications based on structural similarity only. Metabolomics provides a route to robust chemical categories via evidence of shared molecular effects across source and target substances. To gain international acceptance, this approach must demonstrate high reliability, and best-practice guidanc...