Nuclear medicine services after COVID-19 : gearing up back to normality

The COVID-19 pandemic is in transition. It may pass or may define a “new normal” over a variable period and might force us to turn our united and undivided attention as a global nuclear medicine community to address the global health of our specialty jointly. The severe acute respiratory syndromecoronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) and the disease it causes (coronavirus disease-2019 or COVID-19 for short) have been the topic of much discussion in the nuclear medicine and radiology literature. Since the first reports of the new virus emerged from China in late December 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared it a public health emergency of international concern on 30 January 2020. WHO declared COVID-19 as a pandemic on 11 March 2020 ; it has swept the globe, with no respect for national boundaries, causing widespread infections, mortality, human suffering, and upending lives in all socioeconomic groups. Governments around the world have rushed to implement measures aimed initially at containing the spread of the virus, but after that, mainly at slowing the COVID-19 spread and mitigating the impact of the virus on local healthcare systems and supply chains. Despite this, there is significant heterogeneity in the degree of success of the various measures, in keeping with differing political, sociological, and economic factors around the world.http://link.springer.com/journal/2592021-05-04pm2020Nuclear Medicin

Supporting Spartina: Interdisciplinary perspective shows Spartina as a distinct solid genus

In 2014 a DNA-based phylogenetic study confirming the paraphyly of the grass subtribe Sporobolinae proposed the creation of a large monophyletic genus Sporobolus, including (among others) species previously included in the genera Spartina, Calamovilfa, and Sporobolus. Spartina species have contributed substantially (and continue contributing) to our knowledge in multiple disciplines, including ecology, evolutionary biology, molecular biology, biogeography, experimental ecology, environmental management, restoration ecology, history, economics, and sociology. There is no rationale so compelling to subsume the name Spartina as a subgenus that could rival the striking, global iconic history and use of the name Spartina for over 200 years. We do not agree with the arguments underlying the proposal to change Spartina to Sporobolus. We understand the importance of taxonomy and of formalized nomenclature and hope that by opening this debate we will encourage positive feedback that will strengthen taxonomic decisions with an interdisciplinary perspective. We consider the strongly distinct, monophyletic clade Spartina should simply and efficiently be treated as the genus Spartina

All-sky search for long-duration gravitational wave transients with initial LIGO

We present the results of a search for long-duration gravitational wave transients in two sets of data collected by the LIGO Hanford and LIGO Livingston detectors between November 5, 2005 and September 30, 2007, and July 7, 2009 and October 20, 2010, with a total observational time of 283.0 days and 132.9 days, respectively. The search targets gravitational wave transients of duration 10-500 s in a frequency band of 40-1000 Hz, with minimal assumptions about the signal waveform, polarization, source direction, or time of occurrence. All candidate triggers were consistent with the expected background; as a result we set 90% confidence upper limits on the rate of long-duration gravitational wave transients for different types of gravitational wave signals. For signals from black hole accretion disk instabilities, we set upper limits on the source rate density between 3.4×10-5 and 9.4×10-4 Mpc-3 yr-1 at 90% confidence. These are the first results from an all-sky search for unmodeled long-duration transient gravitational waves. © 2016 American Physical Society

All-sky search for long-duration gravitational wave transients with initial LIGO

We present the results of a search for long-duration gravitational wave transients in two sets of data collected by the LIGO Hanford and LIGO Livingston detectors between November 5, 2005 and September 30, 2007, and July 7, 2009 and October 20, 2010, with a total observational time of 283.0 days and 132.9 days, respectively. The search targets gravitational wave transients of duration 10-500 s in a frequency band of 40-1000 Hz, with minimal assumptions about the signal waveform, polarization, source direction, or time of occurrence. All candidate triggers were consistent with the expected background; as a result we set 90% confidence upper limits on the rate of long-duration gravitational wave transients for different types of gravitational wave signals. For signals from black hole accretion disk instabilities, we set upper limits on the source rate density between 3.4×10-5 and 9.4×10-4 Mpc-3 yr-1 at 90% confidence. These are the first results from an all-sky search for unmodeled long-duration transient gravitational waves. © 2016 American Physical Society

Building implementation of photovoltaics with active control of temperature

Paper explores the building implementation of photovoltaics with active control of temperature

DNA delivery by microinjection for the generation of recombinant mammalian cell lines

Gene transfer methods for producing recombinant cell lines are often not very efficient. One reason is that the recombinant DNA is delivered into the cell cytoplasm and only a small fraction reaches the nucleus. This chapter describes a method for microinjecting DNA directly into the nucleus. Direct injection has several advantages including the ability to deliver a defined copy number into the nucleus, the avoidance of DNAses that are present in the cell cytoplasm, and the lack of a need for extensive subcloning to find the recombinant cells. The procedure is described for two cell lines, CHO DG44 and BHK-21, using green fluorescent protein as a reporter gene. However, this method could easily be adapted to other cells lines and using other recombinant genes