The trafficking of metal ion transporters of the Zrt‐ and Irt‐like protein family

Metal ion transporters of the Zrt‐ and Irt‐like protein (ZIP, or SLC39A) family transport zinc, iron, manganese and/ or cadmium across cellular membranes and into the cytosol. The 14 human ZIP family proteins are expressed in a wide variety of tissues and function in many different cellular processes. Many of these proteins (including ZIP1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6/10, 8, 9, 11, 12, 14) are situated, at least some of the time, on the plasma membrane, where they mediate metal ion uptake into cells. Their level on the cell surface can be controlled rapidly via protein trafficking in response to the ions they transport. For example, the cell surface level of many ZIPs (including ZIP1, 3, 4, 8, and 12) is mediated by the available concentration of zinc. Zinc depletion causes a decrease in endocytosis and degradation, resulting in more ZIP on the surface to take up the essential ion. ZIP levels on the cell surface are a balance between endocytosis, recycling and degradation. We review the trafficking mechanisms of human ZIP proteins, highlighting possible targeting motifs and suggesting a model of zinc‐mediated endocytic trafficking. We also provide two possible models for ZIP14 trafficking and degradation

Data and evidence challenges facing place-based policing

PURPOSE: The purpose of this paper is to use an evaluation of a micro-place-based hot-spot policing implementation to highlight the potential issues raised by data quality standards in the recording and measurement of crime data and police officer movements. DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH: The study focusses on an area of London (UK) which used a predictive algorithm to designate micro-place patrol zones for each police shift over a two-month period. Police officer movements are measured using GPS data from officer-worn radios. Descriptive statistics regarding the crime data commonly used to evaluate this type of implementation are presented, and simple analyses are presented to examine the effects of officer patrol duration (dosage) on crime in micro-place hot-spots. FINDINGS: The results suggest that patrols of 10-20 minutes in a given police shift have a significant impact on reducing crime; however, patrols of less than about 10 minutes and more than about 20 minutes are ineffective at deterring crime. RESEARCH LIMITATIONS/IMPLICATIONS: Due to the sparseness of officer GPS data, their paths have to be interpolated which could introduce error to the estimated patrol dosages. Similarly, errors and uncertainty in recorded crime data could have substantial impact on the designation of micro-place interventions and evaluations of their effectiveness. ORIGINALITY/VALUE: This study is one of the first to use officer GPS data to estimate patrol dosage and places particular emphasis on the issue of data quality when evaluating micro-place interventions

Optical and electronic properties of sub-surface conducting layers in diamond created by MeV B-implantation at elevated temperatures

Boron implantation with in-situ dynamic annealing is used to produce highly conductive sub-surface layers in type IIa (100) diamond plates for the search of a superconducting phase transition. Here we demonstrate that high-fluence MeV ion-implantation, at elevated temperatures avoids graphitization and can be used to achieve doping densities of 6 at.%. In order to quantify the diamond crystal damage associated with implantation Raman spectroscopy was performed, demonstrating high temperature annealing recovers the lattice. Additionally, low-temperature electronic transport measurements show evidence of charge carrier densities close to the metal-insulator-transition. After electronic characterization, secondary ion mass spectrometry was performed to map out the ion profile of the implanted plates. The analysis shows close agreement with the simulated ion-profile assuming scaling factors that take into account an average change in diamond density due to device fabrication. Finally, the data show that boron diffusion is negligible during the high temperature annealing process.Comment: 22 pages, 6 figures, submitted to JA

Project MARGIN: Conceptual report: defining the indicators defining demographic, socioeconomic and socio-geographic determinants of insecurity

In Deliverable 2.1 of the MARGIN project, a database was collated to enable a comparative analysis between police recorded crime data and crime victimisation surveys across five European countries. In the present report, we present such an analysis in order to identify a range of demographic, socioeconomic, and socio-geographic determinants of insecurity. The available data enable two dimensions of insecurity to be addressed. The first, victimisation, can be measured through two sources: police recorded crime data and responses to questions regarding victimisation in a crime victimisation survey. This dimension of insecurity is known in the MARGIN project as the objective dimension as it attempts to capture individuals’ actual experiences with crime. The second, perceived insecurity, relates to questions in the crime victimisation survey surrounding respondents’ thoughts about crime, safety, and how their perceptions about crime alter their habits. This aspect is known as the subjective dimension. It has been shown previously that, although related, perceived insecurity and victimisation capture different aspects of insecurity. Moreover, there are some instances where people who have a very small risk of experiencing victimisation in fact have very high levels of perceived insecurity (see Doran and Burgess (2012) for a review). In this report, we analyse consistencies in the MARGIN database with respect to a range of indicators of insecurity. It is important to determine indicators of insecurity in order to identify marginalised communities who tend to experience a disproportionate amount of victimisation and who also have high levels of perceived insecurity and fear of crime. Identification of such communities can enable directed policies to reduce levels of insecurity. The results of this analysis are intended to inform the development of the MARGIN victimisation survey being developed in Work Package 4. In what follows, we first conceptualise the objective dimension by examining victimisation rates across the different study areas, as obtained from both police recorded crime and victimisation survey data. Next, we consider the subjective dimension by considering questions relating to different aspects of perceived insecurity. After describing a number of problems that arise when attempting to directly compare questions across the different victimisation surveys, we turn to the identification of a range of demographic and socioeconomic indicators which we find to be associated with particular aspects of perceived insecurity. We present the results of a range of regression analyses performed with this data. Finally, we discuss a range of potential sociogeographic indicators of insecurity, focusing particularly on the example of street robbery in Barcelona. We also discuss a range of other points to be considered in the identification of marginalised communities

Photodissociation of Conformer-Selected Ubiquitin Ions Reveals Site-Specific Cis/Trans Isomerization of Proline Peptide Bonds

Ultraviolet photodissociation (UVPD) of gas-phase proteins has attracted increased attention in recent years. This growing interest is largely based on the fact that, in contrast to slow heating techniques such as collision induced dissociation (CID), the cleavage propensity after absorption of UV light is distributed over the entire protein sequence, which can lead to a very high sequence coverage as required in typical top-down proteomics applications. However, in the gas phase, proteins can adopt a multitude of distinct and sometimes coexisting conformations, and it is not clear how this three-dimensional structure affects the UVPD fragmentation behavior. Using ion mobility–UVPD–mass spectrometry in conjunction with molecular dynamics simulations, we provide the first experimental evidence that UVPD is sensitive to the higher order structure of gas-phase proteins. Distinct UVPD spectra were obtained for different extended conformations of 11+ ubiquitin ions. Assignment of the fragments showed that the majority of differences arise from cis/trans isomerization of one particular proline peptide bond. Seen from a broader perspective, these data highlight the potential of UVPD to be used for the structural analysis of proteins in the gas phas

Project MARGIN: Factors affecting insecurity

The research undertaken in Work Package 3 has identified a number of indicators of insecurity following the analysis of victimisation surveys and police recorded crime data from each study region of the MARGIN project. From this analysis, it is clear that insecurity is a multi-faceted concept, with different factors acting at the individual, neighbourhood and even country levels. Despite this complexity, the analysis has identified several robust correlates of insecurity that should be focused on in the subsequent research of the MARGIN project. In this report, we discuss these factors with the intention of guiding future research. Work package 3 was designed to undertake analysis of the MARGIN database. Resulting from this analysis, a taxonomy to enable the selection of two neighbourhoods in each of the five cities of the MARGIN project—in which future research will be conducted—was defined. More detailed descriptions of these findings can be found in Deliverables 3.1 – 3.3. In this report, we give an overview of our findings and comment on how they largely conform to concepts and trends found in the existing research literature (which overwhelmingly focusses on trends within rather than between countries). We also discuss the limitations of our findings. Many of these limitations are familiar problems associated with cross-national comparisons of administrative surveys with little consistency in survey design. A further factor limiting any survey based research is that there will inevitably be questions that could have been asked but were not. In the final part of this report, we consider whether there are any areas of enquiry that could usefully be included in the MARGIN survey, which would help us to further understand the emergence of insecurity within marginalised communities

Gating Alleys to Reduce Crime: A Meta-Analysis and Realist Synthesis

Alley gates are designed to limit access to alleys and the crime opportunities they afford. Informed by the acronym EMMIE we sought to: (1) systematically review the evidence on whether alley gates are Effective at reducing crime, (2) identify the causal Mechanisms through which alley gates are expected to work and the conditions that Moderate effectiveness, and (3) collate information on the Implementation and Economic costs of alley gating. The results of our meta-analysis suggest that alley gating is associated with modest but significant reductions in burglary, with little evidence of spatial displacement. We also identified six mechanisms through which alley gates might plausibly reduce crime, and the conditions in which such mechanisms are most likely to be activated

A new algorithm for anisotropic solutions

We establish a new algorithm that generates a new solution to the Einstein field equations, with an anisotropic matter distribution, from a seed isotropic solution. The new solution is expressed in terms of integrals of an isotropic gravitational potential; and the integration can be completed exactly for particular isotropic seed metrics. A good feature of our approach is that the anisotropic solutions necessarily have an isotropic limit. We find two examples of anisotropic solutions which generalise the isothermal sphere and the Schwarzschild interior sphere. Both examples are expressed in closed form involving elementary functions only.Comment: 16 pages, to appear in Pramana - J. Phy

Anisotropic static solutions in modelling highly compact bodies

Einstein field equations for anisotropic spheres are solved and exact interior solutions obtained. This paper extends earlier treatments to include anisotropic models which accommodate a wider variety of physically viable energy densities. Two classes of solutions are possible. The first class contains the limiting case $\mu\propto r^{-2}$ for the energy density which arises in many astrophysical applications. In the second class the singularity at the center of the star is not present in the energy density. The models presented in this paper allow for increasing and decreasing profiles in the behavior of the energy density.Comment: 9 pages, to appear in Pramana - J. Phy