Arctic Energy Technology Development Laboratory

The Arctic Energy Technology Development Laboratory was created by the University of Alaska Fairbanks in response to a congressionally mandated funding opportunity through the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), specifically to encourage research partnerships between the university, the Alaskan energy industry, and the DOE. The enabling legislation permitted research in a broad variety of topics particularly of interest to Alaska, including providing more efficient and economical electrical power generation in rural villages, as well as research in coal, oil, and gas. The contract was managed as a cooperative research agreement, with active project monitoring and management from the DOE. In the eight years of this partnership, approximately 30 projects were funded and completed. These projects, which were selected using an industry panel of Alaskan energy industry engineers and managers, cover a wide range of topics, such as diesel engine efficiency, fuel cells, coal combustion, methane gas hydrates, heavy oil recovery, and water issues associated with ice road construction in the oil fields of the North Slope. Each project was managed as a separate DOE contract, and the final technical report for each completed project is included with this final report. The intent of this process was to address the energy research needs of Alaska and to develop research capability at the university. As such, the intent from the beginning of this process was to encourage development of partnerships and skills that would permit a transition to direct competitive funding opportunities managed from funding sources. This project has succeeded at both the individual project level and at the institutional development level, as many of the researchers at the university are currently submitting proposals to funding agencies, with some success

Hospital Pharmacy Technician

For my project, I will share a normal day of my job as a hospital Pharmacy Technician at Mountain Lakes Medical Center. I will show the steps and precautions I have to take in preparing IV\u27s and packaging oral medications into unit dose packages. These IV\u27s and other medications are being given to patients in the hospital, so we have to be careful in how we prepare them so that they are not contaminated. My microbiology class helps me understand how important it is to sterilize and use the correct tools and machines to do my job properly

UL31 of Herpes Simplex Virus 1 Is Necessary for Optimal NF-κB Activation and Expression of Viral Gene Products ▿

Previous results suggested that the UL31 gene of herpes simplex virus 1 (HSV-1) is required for envelopment of nucleocapsids at the inner nuclear membrane and optimal viral DNA synthesis and DNA packaging. In the current study, viral gene expression and NF-κB and c-Jun N-terminal kinase (JNK) activation of a herpes simplex virus mutant lacking the UL31 gene, designated ΔUL31, and its genetic repair construct, designated ΔUL31-R, were studied in various cell lines. In Hep2 and Vero cells infected with ΔUL31, expression of the immediate-early protein ICP4, early protein ICP8, and late protein glycoprotein C (gC) were delayed significantly. In Hep2 cells, expression of these proteins failed to reach levels seen in cells infected with ΔUL31-R or wild-type HSV-1(F) even after 18 h. The defect in protein accumulation correlated with poor or no activation of NF-κB and JNK upon infection with ΔUL31 compared to wild-type virus infection. The protein expression defects of the UL31 deletion mutant were not explainable by a failure to enter nonpermissive cells and were not complemented in an ICP27-expressing cell line. These data suggest that pUL31 facilitates initiation of infection and/or accelerates the onset of viral gene expression in a manner that correlates with NF-κB activation and is independent of the transactivator ICP27. The effects on very early events in expression are surprising in light of the fact that UL31 is designated a late gene and pUL31 is not a virion component. We show herein that while most pUL31 is expressed late in infection, low levels of pUL31 are detectable as early as 2 h postinfection, consistent with an early role in HSV-1 infection