Mapping of transcription termination within the S segment of SFTS phlebovirus facilitated the generation of NSs-deletant viruses

SFTS phlebovirus (severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome virus; SFTSV) is an emerging tick-borne bunyavirus that was first reported in China in 2009. Here we report the generation of a recombinant SFTSV (rHB29NSsKO) that cannot express the viral non-structural protein (NSs) upon infection of cells in culture. We show that rHB29NSsKO replication kinetics are greater in interferon (IFN)-incompetent cells and that the virus is unable to suppress IFN induced in response to viral replication. The data confirm for the first time in the context of virus infection that NSs acts as a virally encoded IFN antagonist and that NSs is dispensable for virus replication. Using 3’ RACE we mapped the 3’ -end of the N and NSs mRNAs, showing that the mRNAs terminate within the coding region of the opposite open reading frame. We show that the 3’ end of the N mRNA terminates upstream of a 5’ -GCCAGCC-3’ motif present in the viral genomic RNA. With this knowledge, and using virus-like particles, we could demonstrate that the last 36 nt of the NSs ORF were needed to ensure the efficient termination of the N mRNA and were required for recombinant virus rescue. We demonstrate it is possible to recover viruses lacking NSs, expressing just a 12 amino acid NSs peptide or viruses encoding eGFP or a NSs-eGFP fusion protein in the NSs locus. This opens the possibility for further studies of NSs and potentially the design of attenuated viruses for vaccination studies

Ferromagnetism of the Hubbard Model at Strong Coupling in the Hartree-Fock Approximation

As a contribution to the study of Hartree-Fock theory we prove rigorously that the Hartree-Fock approximation to the ground state of the d-dimensional Hubbard model leads to saturated ferromagnetism when the particle density (more precisely, the chemical potential mu) is small and the coupling constant U is large, but finite. This ferromagnetism contradicts the known fact that there is no magnetization at low density, for any U, and thus shows that HF theory is wrong in this case. As in the usual Hartree-Fock theory we restrict attention to Slater determinants that are eigenvectors of the z-component of the total spin, {S}_z = sum_x n_{x,\uparrow} - n_{x,\downarrow}, and we find that the choice 2{S}_z = N = particle number gives the lowest energy at fixed 0 < mu < 4d.Comment: v2: Published version. 30 pages latex. Changes in title, abstract, introductio

An Analysis and Validation of an Online Photographic Identity Exposure Evaluation System

The rapid growth in volume over the last decade of personal photos placed online due to the advent of social media has made users highly susceptible to malicious forms of attack. A system was proposed and constructed using Open Source technologies capable of acquiring the necessary data to conduct a measurement of online photographic exposure to aid in assessing a user\u27s digital privacy. The system\u27s effectiveness at providing feedback on the level of exposure was tested by using a controlled set of three subjects. Each subject provided three training photos each that simulated what would be easily ascertainable from social media profiles, online professional portfolios, or public photography. The system was able to successfully biometrically identify 23 images out of ~14,000 that related to one of the respective candidates. This validates the system as an automated threat and vetting tool for online photographic privacy. VeriLook 5.4 one-to-many matching grossly underperformed on the images gathered with a mere 21% at best true acceptance rate. The scoring algorithm used herein to evaluate each candidate\u27s online photographic exposure was proven to be effective. The system developed was able to show that a candidate\u27s assumption of their digital footprint size is not always correct. Additional testing of the scoring algorithm is recommended before a conclusion can be made with about its universal accuracy

Alien Registration- Elliott, Alta V. (Brunswick, Cumberland County)

https://digitalmaine.com/alien_docs/31461/thumbnail.jp

Alien Registration- Elliott, Mary V. (Baldwin, Cumberland County)

https://digitalmaine.com/alien_docs/32921/thumbnail.jp