Cardiometabolic Core (Core B) Summary The Cardiometabolic Core (Core B) will allow for the careful planning and coordination of research designs, disease models, and data collection among the four Research Projects. The Core will be utilized for the induction, maintenance, and analysis of cardiometabolic diseases in rats and mice. Core B will be a newly established facility housing the equipment and personnel for standardized measures in the proposed Research Projects. The specific functions of Core B are organized into three Aims. Aim 1 will employ standardized animal diets and specimen collection across all four projects. It will ensure that feeding, monitoring, and tissue collection are consistent across projects and will establish a tissue bank available to Tulane and extramural researchers. Aim 2 will employ standardized metabolic measurements across all four projects to provide the same metabolic conditions and measurements. Aim 3 will employ standardized cardiovascular measurements across all four projects to ensure that cardiovascular disease is implemented equally in rats and mice. This coordination among the projects will improve the scope of the research by allowing inferences between studies that could not be made if each project introduced new variables. In addition, Core B will maintain standardized protocols and procedures to allow comparison of data across studies and thereby will improve rigor and reproducibility.