Neutrinos

229 pages229 pages229 pagesThe Proceedings of the 2011 workshop on Fundamental Physics at the Intensity Frontier. Science opportunities at the intensity frontier are identified and described in the areas of heavy quarks, charged leptons, neutrinos, proton decay, new light weakly-coupled particles, and nucleons, nuclei, and atoms

Parallel evolution in the emergence of highly pathogenic avian influenza A viruses

Abstract: Parallel molecular evolution and adaptation are important phenomena commonly observed in viruses. Here, we exploit parallel molecular evolution to understand virulence evolution in avian influenza viruses (AIV). Highly-pathogenic AIVs evolve independently from low-pathogenic ancestors via acquisition of polybasic cleavage sites. Why some AIV lineages but not others evolve in this way is unknown. We hypothesise that the parallel emergence of highly-pathogenic AIV may be facilitated by permissive or compensatory mutations occurring across the viral genome. We combine phylogenetic, statistical and structural approaches to discover parallel mutations in AIV genomes associated with the highly-pathogenic phenotype. Parallel mutations were screened using a statistical test of mutation-phenotype association and further evaluated in the contexts of positive selection and protein structure. Our resulting mutational panel may help to reveal new links between virulence evolution and other traits, and raises the possibility of predicting aspects of AIV evolution

The Tourist Area Life Cycle (TALC) and Its Effect on the Quality-of-Life (QOL) of Destination Community

This chapter examines the connection between tourism area life cycle (TALC) and its effects on the quality-of-life (QOL) of destination communities. We posit that as destinations go through structural changes over time, the extent to which the dynamics of change affect the QOL of the resident community varies with the stages of the life cycle. The chapter consists of four major sections. After a brief introduction, the first section presents the concept of TALC and describes the development phases and the indicators that help understand tourism area development. The second section provides a brief discussion on the impact of tourism on the community in relation to TALC, which is then followed by the third section which focuses on the adjustment to change and maintaining the QOL of the community. Section four reviews related literature to support the relation between TALC and QOL of communities. The chapter ends with delineating critical issues for future research, outlining some of the difficulties moving forward, and formulating relevant policy implications that may help the researchers and destination management organizations to further examine the issues that may surround TALC and QOL connections