Road traffic offences: socially acceptable crimes?

Statistics on road fatalities, injury, and costs associated with road traffic accidents make grim reading and yet generally law-abiding people confess to breaking driving laws at one time or another. This paper examines the role media play in ‘normalising’ poor driving behaviours. Using media analysis, we examined the mixed messages in institutional (news reports, editorials), non-institutional (letters and texts to the editor) articles, and the Road Traffic Act (Queensland, Australia). We found there is ambivalence to this type of criminal behaviour and public safety messages. Police and road organisation warnings have little to no effect, and general community attitude to law breaking is attenuated by majority opinion

No.02: AN URBAN PERSPECTIVE ON FOOD SECURITY IN THE GLOBAL SOUTH

■ Food insecurity challenges in the Global South are changing as a result of rapid urbanization and the globalization of food supply chains. ■ Urban food insecurity is not distinct from rural food security challenges and policy seeking to address either should adopt a systems approach that strengthens their interdependence. There is an opportunity to increase the effectiveness of rural food security programming while concurrently addressing the growing food security needs of vulnerable urban populations. ■ This brief recommends that food security policy should prioritize intra-urban stages of informal food value chains and increase the efficiency and effectiveness of their supply to urban consumers. By supporting urban wholesale infrastructure development and providing technical assistance in intra-urban food transportation, programming can enhance the competitiveness of domestic food product distribution within cities while increasing rural farmers’ access to urban consumers

Prioritising criminal justice social work in India: a clarion call to action

This article explains why a clarion call to action is necessary in regards to prioritising criminal justice social work in India. Partially relying upon the existing crime and prison statistics, it appears clear that greater involvement of social workers in the criminal justice system can only bode well, not only for offenders but also victims of crime, as well as their respective families and communities. To that end, various issues pertaining to correctional social work, police social work, the intersections between social work and criminology, social work education and professional training, as well as the tension between legal/enforcement and welfare/development approaches are traversed here

Re-imagining ‘openness’ in Review of Education : Methodological standards, open science, and nurturing the next generation of researchers

Peer reviewe

Vaccination with NS1-Truncated H3N2 Swine Influenza Virus Primes T Cells and Confers Cross-Protection against an H1N1 Heterosubtypic Challenge in Pigs

The diversity of contemporary swine influenza virus (SIV) strains impedes effective immunization of swine herds. Mucosally delivered, attenuated virus vaccines are one approach with potential to provide broad cross-protection. Reverse genetics-derived H3N2 SIV virus with truncated NS1 (NS1Δ126 TX98) is attenuated and immunogenic when delivered intranasally in young pigs. We analyzed T-cell priming and cross-protective efficacy in weanling piglets after intranasal inoculation with NS1Δ126 TX98 versus wild type TX98. In vivo replication of the truncation mutant was minimal compared to the wild type virus. T-cell responses were greater in magnitude in pigs infected with the wild type virus in in vitro restimulation assays. According to the expression of activation marker CD25, peripheral T cell recall responses in NS1Δ126 TX98 infected pigs were minimal. However, intracellular IFN-γ data indicate that the attenuated virus induced virus-specific CD4+CD8–, CD4+CD8+, CD4–CD8+, and γδ T cells within 28 days. The IFN-γ response appeared to contract, as responses were reduced at later time points prior to challenge. CD4+CD8+ cells isolated 5 days after heterosubtypic H1N1 challenge (day 70 overall) showed an elevated CD25 response to virus restimulation. Pigs previously infected with wild type TX98 were protected from replication of the H1N1 challenge virus. Vaccination with NS1Δ126 TX98 was associated with significantly lower levels of Th1-associated cytokines in infected lungs but provided partial cross-protection against the H1N1 challenge. These results demonstrate that NS1Δ SIV vaccines can elicit cell-mediated cross-protection against antigenically divergent strains

HCP policy brief No. 2 : an urban perspective on food security in the Global South

By supporting urban wholesale infrastructure development, and providing technical assistance in intra-urban food transportation, national and regional planning and programming can enhance the competitiveness of domestic food distribution within cities while increasing farmers’ access to urban consumers. The policy brief addresses food insecurity challenges in the Global South that are changing due to rapid urbanization and the globalization of food supply chains. Four household food security surveys conducted by the Hungry Cities Partnership (HCP) were analyzed. The cities selected were Mexico City, Mexico; Kingston, Jamaica; Maputo, Mozambique; and Nairobi, Kenya.Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC

Simulations of the Alternating Access Mechanism of the Sodium Symporter Mhp1

AbstractSodium coupled cotransporters of the five-helix inverted repeat (5HIR) superfamily use an alternating access mechanism to transport a myriad of small molecules across the cell membrane. One of the primary steps in this mechanism is the conformational transition from a state poised to bind extracellular substrates to a state that is competent to deliver substrate to the cytoplasm. Here, we construct a coarse-grained model of the 5HIR benzylhydantoin transporter Mhp1 that incorporates experimental structures of the outward- and inward-open states to investigate the mechanism of this conformational change. Using the weighted ensemble path-sampling method, we rigorously sample the outward- to inward-facing transition path ensemble. The transition path ensemble reveals a heterogeneous set of pathways connecting the two states and identifies two modes of transport: one consistent with a strict alternating access mechanism and another where decoupling of the inner and outer gates causes the transient formation of a continuous permeation pathway through the transporter. We also show that the conformational switch between the outward- and inward-open states results from rigid body motions of the hash motif relative to the substrate bundle, supporting the rocking bundle hypothesis. Finally, our methodology provides the groundwork for more chemically detailed investigations of the alternating mechanism

Powder-Bot: A Modular Autonomous Multi-Robot Workflow for Powder X-Ray Diffraction

Powder X-ray diffraction (PXRD) is a key technique for the structural characterisation of solid-state materials, but compared with tasks such as liquid handling, its end-to-end automation is highly challenging. This is because coupling PXRD experiments with crystallisation comprises multiple solid handling steps that include sample recovery, sample preparation by grinding, sample mounting and, finally, collection of X-ray diffraction data. Each of these steps has individual technical challenges from an automation perspective, and hence no commercial instrument exists that can grow crystals, process them into a powder, mount them in a diffractometer, and collect PXRD data in an autonomous, closed-loop way. Here we present an automated robotic workflow to carry out autonomous PXRD experiments. The PXRD data collected for polymorphs of small organic compounds is comparable to that collected under the same conditions manually. Beyond accelerating PXRD experiments, this workflow involves 13 component steps and integrates three different types of robots, each from a separate supplier, illustrating the power of flexible, modular automation in complex, multitask laboratories.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figures plus Supporting Information (2 videos, 13 supporting figures and one table