Subcommittee Report on Legislative Compensation

Currently, under Section 1-19-29.1 NMSA 1978 legislators may use campaign funds for expenditures \u2026 reasonably related to performing the duties of office held, including mail, telephone, and travel expenditures to serve constituents, but excluding personal and legislative session living expenses\u27. An unintended consequence of allowing campaign funds for performance of duties of the office may be that a legislator(s) may be dependent in some measures on funds given to them by third parties who have specific interests they are promoting or supporting. In addition to the perception that legislators may be receiving contributions for political consideration, there is an even greater issue of fairness to those who have chosen to serve the public in our \u27citizen legislatures\u27. This report presents three options for modifying rules governing legislative compensation and provides positives and negatives for each option.\u2

Estimation of changes in air pollution emissions, concentrations and exposure during the COVID-19 outbreak in the UK

The initial aim of the evidence review was to support a rapid expert assessment of available data sources and analyses that had been recently completed by the academic community and the air quality consulting and management sector. The call was structured around seven questions posed by Defra: 1. What sectors or areas of socioeconomic activity do you anticipate will show a decrease in air pollution emissions, and by how much? Are there any emissions sources or sectors which might be anticipated to lead to an increase in emissions in the next three months? 2. Can you provide estimates for how emissions and ambient concentrations of NOx, NO2, PM, O3, VOC, NH3 etc. may have changed since the COVID-19 outbreak? Where possible please provide data sets to support your response. 3. What changes do you anticipate in indoor air quality as a result of the COVID- 19 pandemic? 4. How might public exposure to air pollution have changed as a consequence of recent restrictions on movement? 5. How might altered emissions of air pollutants over the next three months affect UK summertime air quality? 6. Based on what is already known about air pollutants as respiratory irritants or inflammatory agents, can any insights be gained into the impact of air quality on viral infection? 7. Are there any insights that can be gained from aerosol science on possible viral transmission mechanisms? By close of the call on 30th April over 50 responses had been received from a range of organisations including research groups at universities and institutes, commercial organisations, industry bodies and Local Authorities. Annex 1 shows the contributing organisations. This has provided a body of information that is particularly useful for assessing emerging issues associated with changes in emissions, concentrations and exposure to air pollution since the UK lockdown was imposed during the COVID- 19 pandemic. This report has been prepared by AQEG with input from a number of ad hoc members and the Defra secretariat. Question 6 was passed to the secretariat and members of the Committee on the Medical Effects of Air Pollutants (COMEAP) and their response is included in this report along with details of the contributors. It is important to stress that this report predominantly evaluates air pollution data available up to 30th April 2020. It does not draw conclusions on air quality or emissions changes that may have arisen in the UK as a result of the government easing of lockdown restrictions in May 2020. Unusually for AQEG reports, this analysis is based predominantly on scientific and technical material that is not yet peer-reviewed, and indeed it often draws on observational data that has yet to receive final quality assurance ratification from the data providers. An expert judgement has therefore been made with regard to the weight given to different evidence sources and the associated uncertainties when drawing conclusions. In this rapidly evolving situation, it would be anticipated that a large body of peer-reviewed scientific literature will become available later in 2020, and beyond

Indoor Air Quality

This is a report from the Air Quality Expert Group to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs; Scottish Government; Welsh Government; and Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs in Northern Ireland, on indoor air quality in the UK. The information contained within this report represents a review of the understanding and evidence available at the time of writing

A Small-Molecule Inhibitor of T. gondii Motility Induces the Posttranslational Modification of Myosin Light Chain-1 and Inhibits Myosin Motor Activity

Toxoplasma gondii is an obligate intracellular parasite that enters cells by a process of active penetration. Host cell penetration and parasite motility are driven by a myosin motor complex consisting of four known proteins: TgMyoA, an unconventional Class XIV myosin; TgMLC1, a myosin light chain; and two membrane-associated proteins, TgGAP45 and TgGAP50. Little is known about how the activity of the myosin motor complex is regulated. Here, we show that treatment of parasites with a recently identified small-molecule inhibitor of invasion and motility results in a rapid and irreversible change in the electrophoretic mobility of TgMLC1. While the precise nature of the TgMLC1 modification has not yet been established, it was mapped to the peptide Val46-Arg59. To determine if the TgMLC1 modification is responsible for the motility defect observed in parasites after compound treatment, the activity of myosin motor complexes from control and compound-treated parasites was compared in an in vitro motility assay. TgMyoA motor complexes containing the modified TgMLC1 showed significantly decreased motor activity compared to control complexes. This change in motor activity likely accounts for the motility defects seen in the parasites after compound treatment and provides the first evidence, in any species, that the mechanical activity of Class XIV myosins can be modulated by posttranslational modifications to their associated light chains

Genuine Correlations of Like-Sign Particles in Hadronic Z0 Decays

Correlations among hadrons with the same electric charge produced in Z0 decays are studied using the high statistics data collected from 1991 through 1995 with the OPAL detector at LEP. Normalized factorial cumulants up to fourth order are used to measure genuine particle correlations as a function of the size of phase space domains in rapidity, azimuthal angle and transverse momentum. Both all-charge and like-sign particle combinations show strong positive genuine correlations. One-dimensional cumulants initially increase rapidly with decreasing size of the phase space cells but saturate quickly. In contrast, cumulants in two- and three-dimensional domains continue to increase. The strong rise of the cumulants for all-charge multiplets is increasingly driven by that of like-sign multiplets. This points to the likely influence of Bose-Einstein correlations. Some of the recently proposed algorithms to simulate Bose-Einstein effects, implemented in the Monte Carlo model PYTHIA, are found to reproduce reasonably well the measured second- and higher-order correlations between particles with the same charge as well as those in all-charge particle multiplets.Comment: 26 pages, 6 figures, Submitted to Phys. Lett.

Case Reports1. A Late Presentation of Loeys-Dietz Syndrome: Beware of TGFβ Receptor Mutations in Benign Joint Hypermobility

Background: Thoracic aortic aneurysms (TAA) and dissections are not uncommon causes of sudden death in young adults. Loeys-Dietz syndrome (LDS) is a rare, recently described, autosomal dominant, connective tissue disease characterized by aggressive arterial aneurysms, resulting from mutations in the transforming growth factor beta (TGFβ) receptor genes TGFBR1 and TGFBR2. Mean age at death is 26.1 years, most often due to aortic dissection. We report an unusually late presentation of LDS, diagnosed following elective surgery in a female with a long history of joint hypermobility. Methods: A 51-year-old Caucasian lady complained of chest pain and headache following a dural leak from spinal anaesthesia for an elective ankle arthroscopy. CT scan and echocardiography demonstrated a dilated aortic root and significant aortic regurgitation. MRA demonstrated aortic tortuosity, an infrarenal aortic aneurysm and aneurysms in the left renal and right internal mammary arteries. She underwent aortic root repair and aortic valve replacement. She had a background of long-standing joint pains secondary to hypermobility, easy bruising, unusual fracture susceptibility and mild bronchiectasis. She had one healthy child age 32, after which she suffered a uterine prolapse. Examination revealed mild Marfanoid features. Uvula, skin and ophthalmological examination was normal. Results: Fibrillin-1 testing for Marfan syndrome (MFS) was negative. Detection of a c.1270G > C (p.Gly424Arg) TGFBR2 mutation confirmed the diagnosis of LDS. Losartan was started for vascular protection. Conclusions: LDS is a severe inherited vasculopathy that usually presents in childhood. It is characterized by aortic root dilatation and ascending aneurysms. There is a higher risk of aortic dissection compared with MFS. Clinical features overlap with MFS and Ehlers Danlos syndrome Type IV, but differentiating dysmorphogenic features include ocular hypertelorism, bifid uvula and cleft palate. Echocardiography and MRA or CT scanning from head to pelvis is recommended to establish the extent of vascular involvement. Management involves early surgical intervention, including early valve-sparing aortic root replacement, genetic counselling and close monitoring in pregnancy. Despite being caused by loss of function mutations in either TGFβ receptor, paradoxical activation of TGFβ signalling is seen, suggesting that TGFβ antagonism may confer disease modifying effects similar to those observed in MFS. TGFβ antagonism can be achieved with angiotensin antagonists, such as Losartan, which is able to delay aortic aneurysm development in preclinical models and in patients with MFS. Our case emphasizes the importance of timely recognition of vasculopathy syndromes in patients with hypermobility and the need for early surgical intervention. It also highlights their heterogeneity and the potential for late presentation. Disclosures: The authors have declared no conflicts of interes

The Science Performance of JWST as Characterized in Commissioning

This paper characterizes the actual science performance of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), as determined from the six month commissioning period. We summarize the performance of the spacecraft, telescope, science instruments, and ground system, with an emphasis on differences from pre-launch expectations. Commissioning has made clear that JWST is fully capable of achieving the discoveries for which it was built. Moreover, almost across the board, the science performance of JWST is better than expected; in most cases, JWST will go deeper faster than expected. The telescope and instrument suite have demonstrated the sensitivity, stability, image quality, and spectral range that are necessary to transform our understanding of the cosmos through observations spanning from near-earth asteroids to the most distant galaxies.Comment: 5th version as accepted to PASP; 31 pages, 18 figures; https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1538-3873/acb29