Adoptive T-cell immunotherapy for ganciclovir-resistant CMV disease after lung transplantation

Infections with cytomegalovirus (CMV) can induce severe complications after solid organ transplantation (SOT). The prognosis for ganciclovir-resistant CMV infection and disease is particularly poor. Whereas adoptive transfer of CMV-specific T cells has emerged as a powerful tool in hematopoietic stem cell transplant patients, its translation into the SOT setting remains a significant challenge as underlying immunosuppression inhibits the virus-specific T-cell response in vivo. Here, we demonstrate successful expansion and adoptive transfer of autologous CMV-specific T cells from a seronegative recipient of a seropositive lung allograft with ganciclovir-resistant CMV disease, resulting in the long-term reconstitution of protective anti-viral immunity, CMV infection, disease-free survival and no allograft rejection.Chien-Li Holmes-Liew, Mark Holmes, Leone Beagley, Peter Hopkins, Daniel Chambers Corey Smith and Rajiv Khann

The malleability of stigmatizing attitudes: Combining imagined social contact with implicit attitude feedback

© 2016, Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. Research is reported that examines whether imagined social contact combined with implicit attitude feedback may be an effective intervention for inducing changes in attitudes toward mental ill health. The Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure (IRAP) captured participants’ implicit attitudes toward individuals with a mental illness and provided a measure of attitude bias. Forty-eight participants (17 male, 95.8% White British) were randomly assigned to one of four experimental conditions: (1) Imagined social contact with implicit attitude feedback, (2) imagined social contact without feedback, (3) control with feedback, and (4) control without feedback. This resulted in a data set detailing 12,288 implicit responses, with each participant completing 256 IRAP trials. Participants then completed an attitude change assessment 24 hours later. Results revealed that imagined social contact was successful in changing implicit attitudes, with the addition of implicit attitude feedback further strengthening participants’ positive attitudes toward mental ill health. Explicit attitudes remained unaffected. These findings are the first to highlight the practical importance of combining imagined social contact with implicit attitude feedback to improve attitudes toward out-groups who are stigmatized

The effect of protons on the performance of second generation Swept Charge Devices

The e2v technologies Swept Charge Device (SCD) was developed as a large area detector for X-ray Florescence (XRF) analysis, achieving near Fano-limited spectroscopy at -15 °C. The SCD was flown in the XRF instruments on board the European Space Agency's SMART-1 and the Indian Space Research Organisation's Chandrayaan-1 lunar missions. The second generation SCD, proposed for use in the soft X-ray spectrometer on the Chandrayaan-2 lunar orbiter and the soft X-ray imager on China's HXMT mission, was developed, in part, using the findings of the radiation damage studies performed for the Chandrayaan-1 X-ray Spectrometer. This paper discusses the factor of two improvement in radiation tolerance achieved in the second generation SCD, the different SCD sizes produced and their advantages for future XRF instruments, for example through reduced shielding mass or higher operating temperatures

Benchtop magnetic shielding for benchmarking atomic magnetometers

Here, a benchtop hybrid magnetic shield containing four mumetal cylinders and nine internal flexible printed circuit boards is designed, constructed, tested, and operated. The shield is designed specifically as a test-bed for building and operating ultra-sensitive quantum magnetometers. The geometry and spacing of the mumetal cylinders are optimized to maximize shielding efficiency while maintaining Johnson noise $<15$ fT/$\sqrt{}$Hz. Experimental measurements at the shield's center show passive shielding efficiency of $\left(1.0\pm0.1\right){\times}10^6$ for a $0.2$ Hz oscillating field applied along the shield's axis. The nine flexible printed circuit boards generate three uniform fields, which all deviate from perfect uniformity by ${\leq}0.5$% along $50$% of the inner shield axis, and five linear field gradients and one second-order gradient, which all deviate by ${\leq}4$% from perfect linearity and curvature, respectively, over measured target regions. Together, the target field amplitudes are adjusted to minimize the remnant static field along $40$% of the inner shield axis, as mapped using an atomic magnetometer. In this region, the active null reduces the norm of the magnitudes of the three uniform fields and six gradients by factors of $19.5$ and $19.8$, respectively, thereby reducing the total static field from $1.68$ nT to $0.23$ nT.Comment: 8 pages, 9 figures; This work has been submitted to the IEEE for possible publication. Copyright may be transferred without notice, after which this version may no longer be accessibl

The night-sky at the Calar Alto Observatory

We present a characterization of the main properties of the night-sky at the Calar Alto observatory for the time period between 2004 and 2007. We use optical spectrophotometric data, photometric calibrated images taken in moonless observing periods, together with the observing conditions regularly monitored at the observatory, such as atmospheric extinction and seeing. We derive, for the first time, the typical moonless night-sky optical spectrum for the observatory. The spectrum shows a strong contamination by different pollution lines, in particular from Mercury lines, which contribution to the sky-brightness in the different bands is of the order of ~0.09 mag, ~0.16 mag and ~0.10 mag in B, V and R respectively. The zenith-corrected values of the moonless night-sky surface brightness are 22.39, 22.86, 22.01, 21.36 and 19.25 mag arcsec^-2 in U, B, V, R and I, which indicates that Calar Alto is a particularly dark site for optical observations up to the I-band. The fraction of astronomical useful nights at the observatory is ~70%, with a ~30% of photometric nights. The typical extinction at the observatory is k_V~0.15 mag in the Winter season, with little dispersion. In summer the extinction has a wider range of values, although it does not reach the extreme peaks observed at other sites. The median seeing for the last two years (2005-6) was ~0.90", being smaller in the Summer (~0.87") than in the Winter (~0.96"). We conclude in general that after 26 years of operations Calar Alto is still a good astronomical site, being a natural candidate for future large aperture optical telescopes.Comment: 16 pages, 5 figures, accepted for publishing in the Publications of Astronomical Society of the Pacific (PASP

Opto-mechanical measurement of micro-trap via nonlinear cavity enhanced Raman scattering spectrum

High-gain resonant nonlinear Raman scattering on trapped cold atoms within a high-fineness ring optical cavity is simply explained under a nonlinear opto-mechanical mechanism, and a proposal using it to detect frequency of micro-trap on atom chip is presented. The enhancement of scattering spectrum is due to a coherent Raman conversion between two different cavity modes mediated by collective vibrations of atoms through nonlinear opto-mechanical couplings. The physical conditions of this technique are roughly estimated on Rubidium atoms, and a simple quantum analysis as well as a multi-body semiclassical simulation on this nonlinear Raman process is conducted.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figure

Dissociation constants and thermodynamic properties of amino acids used in CO2 absorption from (293 to 353) K

The second dissociation constants of the amino acids βalanine, taurine, sarcosine, 6-aminohexanoic acid, DL-methionine, glycine, L-phenylalanine, and L-proline and the third dissociation constants of L-glutamic acid and L-aspartic acid have been determined from electromotive force measurements at temperatures from (293 to 353) K. Experimental results are reported and compared to literature values. Values of the standard state thermodynamic properties are derived from the experimental results and compared to the values of commercially available amines used as absorbents for CO 2 capture.

DE Canum Venaticorum : a bright, eclipsing red dwarf–white dwarf binary

Context. Close white dwarf–red dwarf binaries must have gone through a common-envelope phase during their evolution. DE CVn is a detached white dwarf–red dwarf binary with a relatively short (∼8.7 h) orbital period. Its brightness and the presence of eclipses makes this system ideal for a more detailed study. Aims. From a study of photometric and spectroscopic observations of DE CVn we derive the system parameters that we discuss in the framework of common-envelope evolution. Methods. Photometric observations of the eclipses are used to determine an accurate ephemeris. From a model fit to an average lowresolution spectrum of DE CVn, we constrain the temperature of the white dwarf and the spectral type of the red dwarf. The eclipse light curve is analysed and combined with the radial velocity curve of the red dwarf determined from time-resolved spectroscopy to derive constraints on the inclination and the masses of the components in the system. Results. The derived ephemeris is HJDmin = 2 452 784.5533(1) + 0.3641394(2) × E. The red dwarf in DE CVn has a spectral type of M3V and the white dwarf has an effective temperature of 8 000 K. The inclination of the system is 86+3◦ −2 and the mass and radius of the red dwarf are 0.41 ± 0.06 M and 0.37+0.06 −0.007 R, respectively, and the mass and radius of the white dwarf are 0.51+0.06 −0.02 M and 0.0136+0.0008 −0.0002 R, respectively. Conclusions. We found that the white dwarf has a hydrogen-rich atmosphere (DA-type). Given that DE CVn has experienced a common-envelope phase, we can reconstruct its evolution and we find that the progenitor of the white dwarf was a relatively lowmass star (M ≤ 1.6 M). The current age of this system is 3.3−7.3 × 109 years, while it will take longer than the Hubble time for DE CVn to evolve into a semi-detached system

‘Blindness to the obvious’?: Treatment experiences and feminist approaches to eating disorders

Eating disorders (EDs) are now often approached as biopsychosocial problems, but the social or cultural aspects of the equation are often marginalised in treatment - relegated to mere contributory or facilitating factors. In contrast, feminist and socio-cultural approaches are primarily concerned with the relationship between EDs and the social/ cultural construction of gender. Yet although such approaches emerged directly from the work of feminist therapists, the feminist scholarship has increasingly observed, critiqued and challenged the biomedical model from a scholarly distance. As such, this article draws upon data from 15 semi-structured interviews with women in the UK context who have experience of anorexia and/or bulimia in order to explore a series of interlocking themes concerning the relationship between gender identity and treatment. In engaging the women in debate about the feminist approaches (something which has been absent from previous feminist work), the article explores how gender featured in their own understandings of their problem, and the ways in which it was - or rather wasn’t - addressed in treatment. The article also explores the women’s evaluations of the feminist discourse, and their discussions of how it might be implemented within therapeutic and clinical contexts