Dictyostelium discoideum as a model for the evaluation of teratogenic compounds

Before new chemicals can be put on the market, they must be evaluated for toxicological safety. Evaluating the safety of new chemicals, for either medical, cosmetic or environmental application, is tightly regulated by worldwide legislation. A critical aspect of toxicity evaluation is developmental and reproductive toxicity (DART) testing. Traditionally, DART testing has been conducted in vivo in mammalian model systems. In fact, current EU DART testing guidelines accounts for the majority of animals used and the financial costs of new compound compliance testing. Therefore, because of the need to reduce the financial and animal costs associated with DART testing, there is a growing demand for new alternative model systems for toxicity evaluation. Dictyostelium discoideum is a eukaryotic amoeba which due to its unique developmental cycle has the potential to serve as a non-animal alternative model in DART testing. However, for a new alternative model to be proven effective it must allow for high-throughput screening, whilst maintaining biological complexity; allowing developmental toxicity results to be predictive of mammalian systems. To address these concerns, we developed new high-throughput D. discoideum growth and developmental toxicity assays. We use the assays to characterise toxicity across a broad range of test compounds, thereby revealing a significant relationship between D. discoideum and mammalian toxicity values. Our data demonstrates that D. discoideum has the biological complexity necessary to be predictive of mammalian toxicity. We further assess whether D. discoideum could be used to genetically characterise developmentally toxic compounds. Using next generation functional genomic screens, we show how the developmentally toxicity compounds, lithium and VPA can be globally genetically phenotyped. Using this genetic phenotyping approach, we were also able to identify the biological targets and processes that mediate lithium and VPA toxicity. Together, these studies illustrate the potential of D. discoideum to be developed as a new alternative model in DART testing

Infodemic now: how do we know when the news is fake?

The COVID-19 crisis is exacerbated by the infodemic that ensued – false information about the virus is spreading rapidly worldwide. But how do we know when the news is fake, ask Darrin Baines (Bournemouth University) and Rob Elliott (Birmingham Business School)

The Interrelation of Literature, Art and Religion: The Adventures of the Archegos

The collection of goldsmith's works directed towards a statement of the Archegos offers a multiplicity of options in the building of emblematic and votive artefacts. As a philological preamble the term archegos projects a Judaeo-Christian vision of pioneering and leadership as expressed in Hellenic Antiquity. The Septuagint posits a military sense in its Biblical usage but within the origins of the Greek language the root for leader (archegos) is a beginning (arche) or principle. This context can be paralleled to Prince (Latin: princeps) or principal person, but both Latin and Greek show the more abstract idea of a 'principle' extending authority or power

The Intervention of Red

Red is available for the visual artist to investigate, to position and to rework. Within a series of objects/artefacts the writer as a goldsmith has sought a spiritual representation of red. Not confined to its colour, the historic use of red has been applied to convey the Christ figure. A recent group of works, The Entropy of Red,'3 pursued a personal subject in the form of a table, a crown and a trumpet. A primary condition of this is that it is Christological. This exegesis on the condition and spiritual metaphor of red was materialised predominantly in red coloured silver. These quite large objects were complex and included very fine structures

BPC/MRS enquiry into election polling 2015: Ipsos MORI response and perspective

This Forum article considers the unsatisfactory results of pre-election opinion polling in the 2015 British general election and the BPC/MRS enquiry report into polling by Sturgis et al., providing a response from Ipsos MORI and associated researchers at King’s College London and Cranfield Universities Whilst Sturgis et al. (2016) consider how to perfect opinion poll forecasting, why the 2015 prediction was inaccurate when the same methodology returned satisfactory results in 2005 and 2010 at Ipsos MORI is considered here instead We agree with Sturgis et al. that the inaccurate results were not due to late swing or the ‘shy Tory’ problem and with Taylor (2016) that the underlying problem is a response rate bias However, Sturgis et al. critique pollsters in their report for systematically under-representing Conservative voters but the Ipsos MORI final poll had too many Conservatives, too many Labour voters and not enough nonvoters The Sturgis et al. conclusion is convincing that the politically disengaged were under-represented due to quotas and weighting mechanisms designed to correct for response bias Nevertheless, for Ipsos MORI, this explanation does not account for why the polling methodology was inaccurate in 2015 when it had performed accurately in 2005 and 2010 For Ipsos MORI, a more likely explanation is that Labour voters in 2015 became more prone to exaggerate their voting likelihood We offer various postulations on why this might have been so, concluding that to account for the inaccuracy requires a two-fold response, to improve: (i) sample representativeness and (ii) the projection of voting behaviour from the data Unfortunately, the BPC/MRS report offers no blueprint for how to solve the problem of sampling the politically disengaged Whilst Ipsos MORI have redesigned their quotas to take account of education levels, to represent those better with no formal educational qualifications and reduce overrepresentation of graduates, polling in the referendum on EU membership suggests that the problem of drawing a representative sample has been solved but difficulties in how best to allow for turnout persist

Assessing the Potential of Stratospheric Balloons for Planetary Science

Recent developments in high altitude balloon platform capabilities, specifically long duration flights in excess of 50 days at over 100,000 ft and precision pointing with performance at the arc sec level or better have raised the question whether this platform can be utilized for high-value planetary science observations. In January of 2012 a workshop was held at NASA Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio to explore what planetary science can be achieved utilizing such a platform. Over 40 science concepts were identified by the scientists and engineers attending the workshop. Those ideas were captured and then posted to a public website for all interested planetary scientists to review and give their comments. The results of the workshop, and subsequent community review, have demonstrated that this platform appears to have potential for high-value science at very competitive costs. Given these positive results, the assessment process was extended to include 1) examining, in more detail, the requirements for the gondola platform and the mission scenarios 2) identifying technical challenges and 3) developing one or more platform concepts in enough fidelity to enable accurate estimating of development and mission costs. This paper provides a review of the assessment, a summary of the achievable science and the challenges to make that science a reality with this platform