Virtual Proximity to Promote Expatriate Cultural Adjustment, Innovation, and the Reduction of Stress Levels

Given the dramatic increase in the number of expatriates living and working abroad, there is a need to advance the research into how to make sure these employees achieve success on their assignments. Often, these expatriates assume managerial roles and are intended to be the gatekeepers of information. Typically, this information is necessary for the success of their colleagues, in both their home country and their host country. The expatriate’s role is to facilitate the integration of organizational knowledge from both their home and host countries, as well as key sources in their host country’s local environment. However, historically, there has been an exceptionally high failure rate in expatriate engagements. There are various factors discussed in the literature related to this failure rate including the stress of cultural integration and isolation from family. This often interferes with the expatriate being able to perform of their key responsibilities, which is to innovate. This research will launch pilot studies to investigate the use of social media, and computer mediated communications, to develop virtual proximity, its effects on cultural integration, the maintenance of professional relationships on a global scale, and its effect on the reduction of stress and the innovation process

A circuit logic for sexually shared and dimorphic aggressive behaviors in Drosophila

Aggression involves both sexually monomorphic and dimorphic actions. How the brain implements these two types of actions is poorly understood. We have identified three cell types that regulate aggression in Drosophila: one type is sexually shared, and the other two are sex specific. Shared common aggression-promoting (CAP) neurons mediate aggressive approach in both sexes, whereas functionally downstream dimorphic but homologous cell types, called male-specific aggression-promoting (MAP) neurons in males and fpC1 in females, control dimorphic attack. These symmetric circuits underlie the divergence of male and female aggressive behaviors, from their monomorphic appetitive/motivational to their dimorphic consummatory phases. The strength of the monomorphic → dimorphic functional connection is increased by social isolation in both sexes, suggesting that it may be a locus for isolation-dependent enhancement of aggression. Together, these findings reveal a circuit logic for the neural control of behaviors that include both sexually monomorphic and dimorphic actions, which may generalize to other organisms

A way forward for seasonal climate services

The enthusiasm for engaging the challenges of Seasonal to Interannual Prediction, both within the disciplines of physical and social sciences and at their interface, was well demonstrated through the energetic engagement of all during the May to June 2005 NATO ASI course, upon which this book is based. Several panel sessions were held during the course, which permitted everyone to offer views within an informal setting; some, not reflected in the main body of the book, are incorporated in this chapter. Little stays stationary in such a fast-developing field, and so, to provide the most advanced position at publication, this summarising chapter has included some of the latest development to supplement the material drawn from the course presentations and the panel discussions. Additionally, a view to the future is offered so as to provide further stimulation to those interested in the fascinating field of Seasonal to Interannual Climat

Development of an on-disc isothermal in vitro amplification and detection of bacterial RNA

This document is the Accepted Manuscript version, made available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License CC BY NC-ND 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). The final, published version is available online at doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.snb.2016.08.018. Published by Elsevier B. V.We present a centrifugal microfluidic “Lab-on-a-Disc” (LoaD) system capable of implementing nucleic acid in vitro amplification using non-contact heating and fluorescence detection. The system functionality is verified by implementing a Nucleic Acid Sequence Based Amplification (NASBA) reaction, targeting the tmRNA transcript of Haemophilus influenzae. The NASBA assay incorporates fluorescent molecular beacon probes reporting target tmRNA amplification for endpoint detection. The system implements non-contact IR heating to heat the NASBA reaction to the required target temperatures during denaturation and amplification steps. The LoaD control system facilitates spin speed and chamber positioning for heating and fluorescence detection. The LoaD alignment system uses magnetic fields to locate and lock the chamber in the required position (heating or detection). The NASBA assay was implemented on the system using Haemophilus influenzae tmRNA over the range 102–104 cell equivalent (CE) units. For comparison, identical qNASBA assays were implemented on a Roche LightCycler 2.0 over this concentration range.Peer reviewe

Cosmology with a TeV mass GUT Higgs

The most natural way to break the GUT gauge symmetry is with a Higgs field whose vacuum expectation value is of order 10^{16}\,\mbox{GeV} but whose mass is of order $10^2$ to 10^3\,\mbox{GeV}. This can lead to a cosmological history radically different from what is usually assumed to have occurred between the standard inflationary and nucleosynthesis epochs, which may solve the gravitino and Polonyi/moduli problems in a natural way.Comment: 4 pages, revte

Observational constraints on an inflation model with a running mass

We explore a model of inflation where the inflaton mass-squared is generated at a high scale by gravity-mediated soft supersymmetry breaking, and runs at lower scales to the small value required for slow-roll inflation. The running is supposed to come from the coupling of the inflaton to a non-Abelian gauge field. In contrast with earlier work, we do not constrain the magnitude of the supersymmetry breaking scale, and we find that the model might work even if squark and slepton masses come from gauge-mediated supersymmetry breaking. With the inflaton and gaugino masses in the expected range, and $\alpha = g^2/4\pi$ in the range $10^{-2}$ to $10^{-3}$ (all at the high scale) the model can give the observed cosmic microwave anisotropy, and a spectral index in the observed range. The latter has significant variation with scale, which can confirm or rule out the model in the forseeable future.Comment: Latex, 19 pages, 14 figures, uses epsf.st

Diversity within the adenovirus fiber knob hypervariable loops influences primary receptor interactions

Adenovirus based vectors are of increasing importance for wide ranging therapeutic applications. As vaccines, vectors derived from human adenovirus species D serotypes 26 and 48 (HAdV-D26/48) are demonstrating promising efficacy as protective platforms against infectious diseases. Significant clinical progress has been made, yet definitive studies underpinning mechanisms of entry, infection, and receptor usage are currently lacking. Here, we perform structural and biological analysis of the receptor binding fiber-knob protein of HAdV-D26/48, reporting crystal structures, and modelling putative interactions with two previously suggested attachment receptors, CD46 and Coxsackie and Adenovirus Receptor (CAR). We provide evidence of a low affinity interaction with CAR, with modelling suggesting affinity is attenuated through extended, semi-flexible loop structures, providing steric hindrance. Conversely, in silico and in vitro experiments are unable to provide evidence of interaction between HAdV-D26/48 fiber-knob with CD46, or with Desmoglein 2. Our findings provide insight into the cell-virus interactions of HAdV-D26/48, with important implications for the design and engineering of optimised Ad-based therapeutics