We Need to Talk: How a Con Con Can Secure Hawai‘i’s Post-COVID Future

If we want a brighter future for Hawai‘i after COVID-19, we need to change our political system. A Constitutional Convention can do this by providing a forum for a community-wide discussion of values and priorities

Transcriptional profiling of colicin-induced cell death of Escherichia coli MG1655 identifies potential mechanisms by which bacteriocins promote bacterial diversity

We report the transcriptional response of Escherichia coli MG1655 to damage induced by colicins E3 and E9, bacteriocins that kill cells through inactivation of the ribosome and degradation of chromosomal DNA, respectively. Colicin E9 strongly induced the LexA-regulated SOS response, while colicin E3 elicited a broad response that included the induction of cold shock genes, symptomatic of translational arrest. Colicin E3 also increased the transcription of cryptic prophage genes and other laterally acquired mobile elements. The transcriptional responses to both these toxins suggest mechanisms that may promote genetic diversity in E. coli populations, pointing to a more general role for colicins in adaptive bacterial physiology than has hitherto been realized

The Roles of Extrinsic and Intrinsic Factors in the Freshwater Life-History Dynamics of a Migratory Salmonid

Key life-cycle transitions, such as metamorphosis or migration, can be altered by a variety of external factors, such as climate variation, strong species interactions, and management intervention, or modulated by density dependence. Given that these life-history transitions can influence population dynamics, understanding the simultaneous effects of intrinsic and extrinsic controls on life-history expression is particularly relevant for species of management or conservation importance. Here, we examined how life histories of steelhead (Oncorhynchus mykiss) are affected by weather, pink salmon abundance (Oncorhynchus gorbuscha), experimental nutrient addition, and density-dependent processes. We tested for impacts on the size of steelhead smolts (juveniles migrating to the sea), as well as their age and abundance across four decades in the Keogh River, British Columbia, Canada. Larger steelhead smolts were associated with warmer years and artificial nutrient addition. In addition, higher pink salmon abundance and artificial nutrient addition correlated with juvenile steelhead migrating at younger ages. While density dependence appeared to be the primary factor regulating the abundance of steelhead smolts, nutrient addition and temperature were positively and negatively associated with smolt production, respectively, prior to 1991, and pink salmon spawning abundance was positively associated with smolt production after 1990. Thus, this study provides evidence that the temporal dynamics of one species of salmon is linked to the juvenile life history of co-occurring steelhead. A complex interplay of species interactions, nutrient subsidies, density dependence, and climatic variation can control the life-history expression of species with complex life cycles

Substructures in Cold Dark Matter Haloes

We analyse the properties of substructures within dark matter halos (subhalos) using a set of high-resolution numerical simulations of the formation of structure in a Lambda-CDM Universe. Our simulation set includes 11 high-resolution simulations of massive clusters as well as a region of mean density, allowing us to study the spatial and mass distribution of substructures down to a mass resolution limit of 10^9 h^(-1)Mo. We also investigate how the properties of substructures vary as a function of the mass of the `parent' halo in which they are located. We find that the substructure mass function depends at most weakly on the mass of the parent halo and is well described by a power-law. The radial number density profiles of substructures are steeper in low mass halos than in high mass halos. More massive substructures tend to avoid the centres of halos and are preferentially located in the external regions of their parent halos. We also study the mass accretion and merging histories of substructures, which we find to be largely independent of environment. We find that a significant fraction of the substructures residing in clusters at the present day were accreted at redshifts z < 1. This implies that a significant fraction of present-day `passive' cluster galaxies should have been still outside the cluster progenitor and more active at z~1.Comment: 13 pages, 15 figure. Accepted to MNRA

Temporal trends and forecasting of COVID-19 hospitalisations and deaths in Scotland using a national real-time patient-level data platform: a statistical modelling study

This study is part of the EAVE II project. EAVE II is funded by the MRC (MR/R008345/1) with the support of BREATHE—The Health Data Research Hub for Respiratory Health (MC_PC_19004), which is funded through the UK Research and Innovation Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund and delivered through Health Data Research UK. Additional support has been provided through Public Health Scotland and Scottish Government Director General Health and Social Care. The original EAVE project was funded by the NIHR Health Technology Assessment programme (11/46/23).Background   As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, national-level surveillance platforms with real-time individual person-level data are required to monitor and predict the epidemiological and clinical profile of COVID-19 and inform public health policy. We aimed to create a national dataset of patient-level data in Scotland to identify temporal trends and COVID-19 risk factors, and to develop a novel statistical prediction model to forecast COVID-19-related deaths and hospitalisations during the second wave.  Methods   We established a surveillance platform to monitor COVID-19 temporal trends using person-level primary care data (including age, sex, socioeconomic status, urban or rural residence, care home residence, and clinical risk factors) linked to data on SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR tests, hospitalisations, and deaths for all individuals resident in Scotland who were registered with a general practice on Feb 23, 2020. A Cox proportional hazards model was used to estimate the association between clinical risk groups and time to hospitalisation and death. A survival prediction model derived from data from March 1 to June 23, 2020, was created to forecast hospital admissions and deaths from October to December, 2020. We fitted a generalised additive spline model to daily SARS-CoV-2 cases over the previous 10 weeks and used this to create a 28-day forecast of the number of daily cases. The age and risk group pattern of cases in the previous 3 weeks was then used to select a stratified sample of individuals from our cohort who had not previously tested positive, with future cases in each group sampled from a multinomial distribution. We then used their patient characteristics (including age, sex, comorbidities, and socioeconomic status) to predict their probability of hospitalisation or death.  Findings   Our cohort included 5 384 819 people, representing 98·6% of the entire estimated population residing in Scotland during 2020. Hospitalisation and death among those testing positive for SARS-CoV-2 between March 1 and June 23, 2020, were associated with several patient characteristics, including male sex (hospitalisation hazard ratio [HR] 1·47, 95% CI 1·38–1·57; death HR 1·62, 1·49–1·76) and various comorbidities, with the highest hospitalisation HR found for transplantation (4·53, 1·87–10·98) and the highest death HR for myoneural disease (2·33, 1·46–3·71). For those testing positive, there were decreasing temporal trends in hospitalisation and death rates. The proportion of positive tests among older age groups (>40 years) and those with at-risk comorbidities increased during October, 2020. On Nov 10, 2020, the projected number of hospitalisations for Dec 8, 2020 (28 days later) was 90 per day (95% prediction interval 55–125) and the projected number of deaths was 21 per day (12–29). Interpretation The estimated incidence of SARS-CoV-2 infection based on positive tests recorded in this unique data resource has provided forecasts of hospitalisation and death rates for the whole of Scotland. These findings were used by the Scottish Government to inform their response to reduce COVID-19-related morbidity and mortality.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Predicted COVID-19 positive cases, hospitalisations, and deaths associated with the Delta variant of concern, June-July, 2021

Funding: EAVE II is funded by the Medical Research Council (MR/R008345/1) with the support of BREATHE - The Health Data Research Hub for Respiratory Health [MC_PC_19004], which is funded through the UK Research and Innovation Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund and delivered through Health Data Research UK. Additional support has been provided through Public Health Scotland and Scottish Government DG Health and Social Care and the Data and Connectivity National Core Study, led by Health Data Research UK in partnership with the Office for National Statistics and funded by UK Research and Innovation. SVK is funded by a NHS Research Scotland Senior Clinical Fellowship (SCAF/15/02), the Medical Research Council (MC_UU_00022/2), and the Scottish Government Chief Scientist Office (SPHSU17).Publisher PDFNon peer reviewe

Adaptive Tutorial Dialogue Systems Using Deep NLP Techniques

We present tutorial dialogue systems in two different domains that demonstrate the use of dialogue management and deep natural language processing techniques. Generation techniques are used to produce natural sounding feedback adapted to student performance and the dialogue history, and context is used to interpret tentative answers phrased as questions

The Beetle and BeeDiff Tutoring Systems

We describe two tutorial dialogue systems that adapt techniques from task-oriented dialogue systems to tutorial dialogue. Both systems employ the same reusable deep natural language understanding and generation components to interpret students ' written utterances and to automatically generate adaptive tutorial responses, with separate domain reasoners to provide the necessary knowledge about the correctness of student answers and hinting strategies. We focus on integrating the domain-independent language processing components with domain-specific reasoning and tutorial components in order to improve the dialogue interaction, and present a preliminary analysis of BeeDiff's evaluation

Topological Surface States Protected From Backscattering by Chiral Spin Texture

Topological insulators are a new class of insulators in which a bulk gap for electronic excitations is generated by strong spin orbit coupling. These novel materials are distinguished from ordinary insulators by the presence of gapless metallic boundary states, akin to the chiral edge modes in quantum Hall systems, but with unconventional spin textures. Recently, experiments and theoretical efforts have provided strong evidence for both two- and three-dimensional topological insulators and their novel edge and surface states in semiconductor quantum well structures and several Bi-based compounds. A key characteristic of these spin-textured boundary states is their insensitivity to spin-independent scattering, which protects them from backscattering and localization. These chiral states are potentially useful for spin-based electronics, in which long spin coherence is critical, and also for quantum computing applications, where topological protection can enable fault-tolerant information processing. Here we use a scanning tunneling microscope (STM) to visualize the gapless surface states of the three-dimensional topological insulator BiSb and to examine their scattering behavior from disorder caused by random alloying in this compound. Combining STM and angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy, we show that despite strong atomic scale disorder, backscattering between states of opposite momentum and opposite spin is absent. Our observation of spin-selective scattering demonstrates that the chiral nature of these states protects the spin of the carriers; they therefore have the potential to be used for coherent spin transport in spintronic devices.Comment: to be appear in Nature on August 9, 200

The detection of sub-solar mass dark matter halos

Dark matter halos of sub-solar mass are the first bound objects to form in cold dark matter theories. In this article, I discuss the present understanding of "microhalos'', their role in structure formation, and the implications of their potential presence, in the interpretation of dark matter experiments.Comment: 18 pages, 7 figures. Invited contribution to NJP Focus Issue on "Dark Matter and Particle Physics