Helminths in the hygiene hypothesis:Sooner or later?

There is increasing recognition that exposures to infectious agents evoke fundamental effects on the development and behaviour of the immune system. Moreover, where infections (especially parasitic infections) have declined, immune responses appear to be increasingly prone to hyperactivity. For example, epidemiological studies of parasite-endemic areas indicate that prenatal or early-life experience of infections can imprint an individual's immunological reactivity. However, the ability of helminths to dampen pathology in established inflammatory diseases implies that they can have therapeutic effects even if the immune system has developed in a low-infection setting. With recent investigations of how parasites are able to modulate host immune pathology at the level of individual parasite molecules and host cell populations, we are now able to dissect the nature of the host–parasite interaction at both the initiation and recall phases of the immune response. Thus the question remains – is the influence of parasites on immunity one that acts primarily in early life, and at initiation of the immune response, or in adulthood and when recall responses occur? In short, parasite immunosuppression – sooner or later

Hubble Space Telescope Ultraviolet Imaging and High-Resolution Spectroscopy of Water Photodissociation Products in Comet Hyakutake (C/1996 B2)

Comet Hyakutake (C/1996 B2) provided a target of opportunity for performing a systematic study of water photodissociation products in which we obtained data from three instruments on the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). The HST Goddard High Resolution Spectrograph (GHRS) was used to measure the line profile of hydrogen Lyα (H Lyα) at six locations around the coma of the comet, ranging from the nucleus to a displacement of 100,000 km, and covering different directions compared with the comet-sun line. GHRS yielded line profiles with a spectral resolution (FWHM ~4 km s^(-1)) that was a factor of 2-3 better than any previous H Lyα or Hα ground-based measurements. The Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) and the Woods filter were used to obtain H Lyα images of the inner coma. The faint object spectrograph (FOS) was used to determine the OH production rate and monitor its variation throughout the HST observing sequence. The GHRS H Lyα line profiles show the behavior of a line profile that is optically thick in the core for positions near the nucleus (<5000 km) and gradually becoming more optically thin at larger displacements and lower column abundances. A composite H Lyα image constructed from four separate WFPC2 exposures is consistent with the relative fluxes seen in GHRS observations and clearly shows the dayside enhancement of a solar illuminated optically thick coma. These data were analyzed self-consistently to test our understanding of the detailed physics and chemistry of the expanding coma and our ability to obtain accurate water production rates from remote observations of gaseous hydrogen (H) and hydroxyl (OH), the major water dissociation products. Our hybrid kinetic/hydrodynamic model of the coma combined with a spherical radiative transfer calculation is able to account for (1) the velocity distribution of H atoms, (2) the spatial distribution of the H Lyα emission in the inner coma, and (3) the absolute intensities of H and OH emissions, giving a water production rate of (2.6 ± 0.4) × 10^(29) s^(-1) on 1996 April 4

Stratified shear flow instabilities at large Richardson numbers

Numerical simulations of stratified shear flow instabilities are performed in two dimensions in the Boussinesq limit. The density variation length scale is chosen to be four times smaller than the velocity variation length scale so that Holmboe or Kelvin-Helmholtz unstable modes are present depending on the choice of the global Richardson number Ri. Three different values of Ri were examined Ri =0.2, 2, 20. The flows for the three examined values are all unstable due to different modes namely: the Kelvin-Helmholtz mode for Ri=0.2, the first Holmboe mode for Ri=2, and the second Holmboe mode for Ri=20 that has been discovered recently and it is the first time that it is examined in the non-linear stage. It is found that the amplitude of the velocity perturbation of the second Holmboe mode at the non-linear stage is smaller but comparable to first Holmboe mode. The increase of the potential energy however due to the second Holmboe modes is greater than that of the first mode. The Kelvin-Helmholtz mode is larger by two orders of magnitude in kinetic energy than the Holmboe modes and about ten times larger in potential energy than the Holmboe modes. The results in this paper suggest that although mixing is suppressed at large Richardson numbers it is not negligible, and turbulent mixing processes in strongly stratified environments can not be excluded.Comment: Submitted to Physics of Fluid

Changes in quality and bioactivity of native food during storage

Australian native foods have long been consumed by the Indigenous people of Australia. There is growing interest in the application of these foods in the functional food and complementary health care industries. Recent studies have provided information on the health properties of native foods but systematic study of changes in flavour and health components during processing and storage has not been done. It is well known that processing technologies such as packaging, drying and freezing can significantly alter the levels of health and flavour compounds. However, losses in compounds responsible for quality and bioactivity can be minimised by improving production practices. This report outlines research developed to provide the native food industry with reliable information on the retention of bioactive compounds during processing and storage to enable the development of product standards which in turn will provide the industry with scientific evidence to expand and explore new market opportunities globally