National security: A propositional study to develop resilience indicators as an aid to personnel vetting

Within the National Security domain there is a convergence of security responsibility across the national security agencies, law enforcement and private security sectors. The sensitivity of this environment requires individuals operating in the domain to be honest, trustworthy and loyal. Personnel vetting is a formal process used to determine an individual’s suitability for access to this domain. Notwithstanding this process, significant breaches of trust, security, and corruption still occur. In psychology, resilience is a well researched phenomenon that is considered a multidimensional construct where individual attributes, family aspects and social environment interact in aiding individuals to deal with vulnerability. There are many understandings and definitions of resilience based on theorists’ different perspectives; however, most agree that resilience is represented by a minimum of two aspects. The first is adversity and second, how the individual deals with adversity that demonstrates situational adaptation in a positive manner. The study is a work in progress and proposes the use of a recently developed Lifespan Resilience Scale. This scale will use resilience markers as an aid to National Security by providing vetting agencies with an additional tool for proactive intervention. The Lifespan Resilience Scale is currently undergoing reliability and validity testing within a student population. Once validated within this population, the scale will be adjusted and tested within the vetting environment using cross validated cohorts and expert opinion. Such a tool will assist National Security through better personnel risk management

The Best Decision by Design: Professional Services Selection

Working with a design professional will give you the advantage of his or her expertise and innovative approaches to your project to provide more successful project outcomes: durable and sustainable facilities, lower construction costs, shorter construction schedules, and lower life-cycle costs. Join us to gain a critical perspective on why owners choose to hire design professionals based on a negotiated procurement process instead of bidding

Capability of the Gas Analysis and Testing Laboratory at the NASA Johnson Space Center

The Gas Analysis and Testing Laboratory is an integral part of the testing performed at the NASA Johnson Space Center. The Gas Analysis and Testing Laboratory is a high performance laboratory providing real time analytical instruments to support manned and unmanned testing. The lab utilizes precision gas chromatographs, gas analyzers and spectrophotometers to support the technology development programs within the NASA community. The Gas Analysis and Testing Laboratory works with a wide variety of customers and provides engineering support for user-specified applications in compressed gas, chemical analysis, general and research laborator

Use of Ion Exchange Membranes for Selective Recovery of Aspergillus awamori Glucoamylase and Phage T4 Lysozyme

Our research examined whether enhanced separation and purification of mutant enzymes could be obtained on ion-exchange membranes. Solutions of three mutants of Aspergillus awamori glucoamylase were passed through an anionic exchange membrane, as well as one mutant of T4 lysozyme through a cationic exchange membrane. The mutant enzymes were modified by adding charged fusions\u27\u27, polypeptides of either aspartic acid residues to increase the overall negative charge of the enzyme or arginine residues to increase the overall positive charge. The effect of the mutations on the purification of glucoamylase from a modified fermentation broth were examined at two different elution pHs, 4.5 and 6.0. The use of the charged fusions provided significantly improved purification capabilities over control versions. Both the small scale glucoamylase runs and the scaled up experiments had overall purification factors of around two, with a peak purification factor of near 7 for GA\u27CDlO. Elution of glucoamylase at pH 4.5 did not lead to an increase in separability as compared to that obtained at pH 6.0. Initial trials using a purified lysozyme mutant showed significant binding capabilities. Further experiments with this protein need to be done to determine scale up potential

Stress-sensitive neurosignalling in depression : an integrated network biology approach to candidate gene selection for genetic association analysis

Genetic risk for depressive disorders is poorly understood despite consistent suggestions of a high heritable component. Most genetic studies have focused on risk associated with single variants, a strategy which has so far only yielded small (often non-replicable) risks for depressive disorders. In this paper we argue that more substantial risks are likely to emerge from genetic variants acting in synergy within and across larger neurobiological systems (polygenic risk factors). We show how knowledge of major integrated neurobiological systems provides a robust basis for defining and testing theoretically defensible polygenic risk factors. We do this by describing the architecture of the overall stress response. Maladaptation via impaired stress responsiveness is central to the aetiology of depression and anxiety and provides a framework for a systems biology approach to candidate gene selection. We propose principles for identifying genes and gene networks within the neurosystems involved in the stress response and for defining polygenic risk factors based on the neurobiology of stress-related behaviour. We conclude that knowledge of the neurobiology of the stress response system is likely to play a central role in future efforts to improve genetic prediction of depression and related disorders