Tracking the international spread of SARS-CoV-2 lineages B.1.1.7 and B.1.351/501Y-V2

Publisher Copyright: © 2021 O'Toole Á et al.Late in 2020, two genetically-distinct clusters of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) with mutations of biological concern were reported, one in the United Kingdom and one in South Africa. Using a combination of data from routine surveillance, genomic sequencing and international travel we track the international dispersal of lineages B.1.1.7 and B.1.351 (variant 501Y-V2). We account for potential biases in genomic surveillance efforts by including passenger volumes from location of where the lineage was first reported, London and South Africa respectively. Using the software tool grinch (global report investigating novel coronavirus haplotypes), we track the international spread of lineages of concern with automated daily reports, Further, we have built a custom tracking website (cov-lineages.org/global_report.html) which hosts this daily report and will continue to include novel SARS-CoV-2 lineages of concern as they are detected.Peer reviewe

Technology-based self-service and its impact on service firm performance : a resource-based perspective

Improving productivity is crucial for service firms to be competitive. To have customers perform certain tasks normally undertaken by employees is an important means to achieving this objective. With the aid of technology, the scale and scope of self-service has significantly increased in recent years. Despite the size and importance of technology-based self-service (TBSS) investments in service firms, the absence of empirical studies on TBSS and its impact on company performance has resulted in a significant gap in knowledge. The aim of this thesis therefore was to increase our understanding of this important research area. Drawing from a resource-based view, this thesis proposed a framework that shows how firm resources and capabilities are leveraged via customer performing self-service to deliver superior value to employees, customers and/or business owners. To ground the research, three Swedish TBSS case studies (i.e., SAS self- check-in, Nordea Net Bank, and ICA self-scanning) were conducted. The findings of these case studies helped further refine the framework and a more elaborate model illustrating the impact of TBSS on firm performance was proposed. To test this model, a survey was conducted to understand self-scanning system and its impact on firm performance. Questionnaires were sent to managers and employees at ICA and Coop, the two biggest food chain stores in Sweden. The results of the survey show that employee training and dynamic capabilities of the service provider are crucial to the success of self- scanning implementation. TBSS promotion was found to have no relationship with customer usage and weak relationship with accuracy of customer performing self-service. Furthermore, improved service quality, rather than reduction of labor costs, was found to be the primary value of self- scanning in Swedish retail food stores. Finally, employees and customers are positively affected by using TBSS, although the impact on financial performance is hard to pin down.Godkänd; 2007; 20071126 (ysko

Additional file 10: Table S2. of Combining Shigella Tn-seq data with gold-standard E. coli gene deletion data suggests rare transitions between essential and non-essential gene functionality

List of chromosomal SNPs and indels observed in the Shigella strain used here that differ from the GenBank sequence NC004741. (TXT 4 kb

Additional file 12: Figure S8. of Combining Shigella Tn-seq data with gold-standard E. coli gene deletion data suggests rare transitions between essential and non-essential gene functionality

Inferred fragment lengths of perfectly mapped reads across several genomic regions suggest IS-mediated deletions. For each plot, the inferred fragment lengths are arranged by increasing length (ranked on the y-axis). Thus, very long fragments are present at the top of the y-axis. Most fragments have lengths between 100 bp and 400 bp; a small number have lengths over 1000 bp or more. It is very likely that these are not the true insert sizes, but appear that way because of large scale deletions in our Shigella clone compared to the clone present in the NCBI genome database; see Methods for more details. (A) A region of the chromosome in which a complicated series of rearrangements has occurred, leading to paired end reads perfectly matching to different locations in this region. 45 mapped read pairs span more than 1.5 Kbp, a size that is not concordant with the majority of insert sizes. (B) A genomic region where an approximately 10Kbp deletion occurred, removing a region containing the yeaKLMNOP operon. 92 mapped read pairs span more than 8.5Kbp. This region is flanked by two IS elements. (C) A region where an approximately 4Kbp deletion occurred, removing two genes with no E. coli K12 orthologues. 68 mapped read pairs span more than 4 Kbp, and again this region is flanked by two IS elements. (D) A genomic region where an approximately 2Kbp deletion occurred, removing yhdW. 244 mapped read pairs span more than 2Kbp, and the region is flanked by two IS elements. (E) A deletion in the region of the chromosome containing S4145 (yiaN). 232 mapped read pairs spanned more than 1.8 Kbp, and this region is also flanked by two IS elements. (F) A region of the chromosome containing the rfb operon. Most of the genes within this operon are uninterrupted by transposons. However, we find no evidence that this is due to a deletion of this region in our Shigella clone, as we find no reads mapping across the region; a small number of reads map within the region; and the closest IS elements are 15 Kb upstream of rfbJ and 20 Kb downstream of rfbA. The genes in this operon have no orthologues in E. coli K12. (PDF 219 kb

Autoresonant Excitation of Antiproton Plasmas

We demonstrate controllable excitation of the center-of-mass longitudinal motion of a thermal antiproton plasma using a swept-frequency autoresonant drive. When the plasma is cold, dense, and highly collective in nature, we observe that the entire system behaves as a single-particle nonlinear oscillator, as predicted by a recent theory. In contrast, only a fraction of the antiprotons in a warm plasma can be similarly excited. Antihydrogen was produced and trapped by using this technique to drive antiprotons into a positron plasma, thereby initiating atomic recombination

Antihydrogen detection in ALPHA

The ALPHA project is an international collaboration, based at CERN, with the experimental goal of performing precision spectroscopic measurements on antihydrogen. As part of this endeavor, the ALPHA experiment includes a silicon tracking detector. This detector consists of a three-layer array of silicon modules surrounding the antihydrogen trapping region of the ALPHA apparatus. Using thisdevice, the antihydrogen annihilation position can be determined with a spatial resolution of better than 5 mm. Knowledge of the annihilation distribution was a critical component in the recently successful antihydrogen trapping effort. This paper will describe the methods used to reconstruct annihilation events in the ALPHA detector. Particular attention will be given to the description of the background rejection criteria