Filtering by
- All Subjects: Adaptation
- All Subjects: COVID-19 (Disease)
- Creators: Hyatt, JP
Disclaimer: Due to the COVID-19 global pandemic, the final outcomes of this project were impacted and limited. Therefore, the rough draft practice podcast session has been uploaded to accompany the written thesis portion as final recordings could not be recorded at this time.
DISCLAIMER: Due to the unexpected COVID-19 pandemic, the attached podcast is a draft recording in lieu of the final recording
Cellular hypertrophy is an anaerobically-based, adaptive process that mammalian skeletal muscle undergoes in response to damage resulting from unaccustomed force generation by the muscle. Hypertrophy allows for the muscle tissue to recover from the immediate injury and also to be rebuilt more capable of withstanding producing the same amount of force without injury, should it happen again. This means the end result of an adapted muscle is an overall more efficient tissue. The ability to regenerate after damage to the structure and function of the muscle tissue is a highly orchestrated event involving multiple steps and key events to occur. Most briefly, a mechanical load is attempted to be lifted but due to demanding a high amount of contractile force to lift, it causes microdamage to the structural and contractile elements of muscle fiber’s sarcomeres. In addition to an inflammatory response, satellite cells, as a part of a myogenic response, are activated to invade the fiber and then permanently reside inside to produce new proteins that will replace the damaged and necrotized proteins. This addition of cellular content, repeated over multiple times, results in the increased diameter of the fibers and manifests in the visual appearance of skeletal muscle hypertrophy. These steps have been listed off devoid of the contexts in which it takes for these to occur and will be addressed within this thesis.
Disclaimer: The initial goal of this project was to present this information as a podcast episode as a part of a series aimed at teaching the general public about human physiological adaptations. Due to the circumstances with COVID-19 we were unable to meet to make a final recording of the podcast episode. A recording of a practice session recorded earlier in the year has been uploaded instead and is therefore only a rough draft.
Attitudes and habits are extremely resistant to change, but a disruption of the magnitude of the COVID-19 pandemic has the potential to bring long-term, massive societal changes. During the pandemic, people are being compelled to experience new ways of interacting, working, learning, shopping, traveling, and eating meals. Going forward, a critical question is whether these experiences will result in changed behaviors and preferences in the long term. This paper presents initial findings on the likelihood of long-term changes in telework, daily travel, restaurant patronage, and air travel based on survey data collected from adults in the United States in Spring 2020. These data suggest that a sizable fraction of the increase in telework and decreases in both business air travel and restaurant patronage are likely here to stay. As for daily travel modes, public transit may not fully recover its pre-pandemic ridership levels, but many of our respondents are planning to bike and walk more than they used to. These data reflect the responses of a sample that is higher income and more highly educated than the US population. The response of these particular groups to the COVID-19 pandemic is perhaps especially important to understand, however, because their consumption patterns give them a large influence on many sectors of the economy.