Ecological Footprint of Flood Mitigation Structures at the Absecon Inlet

The primary goal of this clinic project is to measure the ecological footprint of the flood mitigation structures in Absecon Inlet. This area is prone to floods due to rising sea levels and storms. Beaches and boardwalks were affected during numerous hurricanes including: Jose (2017), Andrea (2013), Sandy (2012), Irene (2011), and Hanna (2008). Seawalls, sand dunes, and jetties were constructed to protect the shoreline from these floods based on the studies conducted by the US Army Corp of Engineers. In this clinic, we assess the effect of these man-made structures on the ecology of the surrounding areas. The ecology of the area is mainly the habitat of the residents, aquatic life and other animals that live on the sandy beaches and in the wetlands. This area is home to endangered species such as piping plovers and the diamondback terrapin. The proposed and existing flood mitigation structures could have a tremendous impact on the biodiversity of Absecon. In addition, we would investigate alternate sustainable solutions that can mitigate floods without affecting the ecology

Analytical description of mixed ohmic and space-charge-limited conduction in single-carrier devices

While space-charge-limited current measurements are often used to characterize charge-transport in relatively intrinsic, low-mobility semiconductors, it is currently difficult to characterize lightly or heavily doped semiconductors with this method. By combining the theories describing ohmic and space-charge-limited conduction, we derive a general analytical approach to extract the charge-carrier density, the conduction-band edge and the drift components of the current density-voltage curves of a single-carrier device when the semiconductor is either undoped, lightly doped or heavily doped. The presented model covers the entire voltage range, i.e., both the low-voltage regime and the Mott-Gurney regime. We demonstrate that there is an upper limit to how doped a device must be before the current density-voltage curves are significantly affected, and we show that the background charge-carrier density must be considered to accurately model the drift component in the low-voltage regime, regardless of whether the device is doped or not. We expect that the final analytical expressions presented herein to be directly useful to experimentalists studying charge transport in novel materials and devices

The Role of Eosinophils in the Regulation of CD4+ T helper 2 Regulated Inflammation

The eosinophil is a leukocyte whose intracellular mediators are considered to play a central role in the pathogenesis of allergic diseases, including allergic asthma, allergic rhinitis and atopic dermatitis, and which is also involved in immunological responses to parasites. Eosinophil differentiation and maturation from bone marrow progenitors is regulated by interleukin-5 (IL-5), which may be secreted by T helper 2 (Th2) T lymphocytes, and is consistently upregulated in allergic conditions. Eotaxin is a potent chemoattractant for circulating and tissue eosinophils, and the production of this chemokine promotes eosinophil infiltration and accumulation within sites of allergic inflammation.¶ ...¶ In conclusion, eosinophils residing in the allergic lung have the capacity to interact with activated T cells, both within this tissue and the draining lymph nodes. Despite their relative inefficiency as antigen presenting cells (Mawhorter et al., 1994), eosinophils may participate en masse in the serial triggering of activated TCRs, and provide appropriate costimulatory signals that modulate T lymphocyte function. Through the elaboration of Th2 cytokines and stimulation of T cell proliferation, antigen presenting eosinophils may transiently prolong or exacerbate the symptoms of allergic diseases. Alternatively, eosinophils presenting relevant antigens may inhibit T cell activity via degranulation, and such activity has recently been observed in a parasite model (Shinkai et al., 2002). Finally, experiments in the OT-II mouse have provided valuable information to suggest that therapies designed to modulate eosinophil numbers in allergic tissues through the secretion of opposing cytokines such as IFN-γ, may be of limited benefit. The results shown here suggest that airways dysfunction remains intact despite significantly reduced pulmonary eosinophili

Middle-Aged Death and Taxes in the USA: Association of State Tax Burden and Expenditures in 2005 with Survival from 2006 to 2015.

Background Longevity in the United States ranks below most other Western nations despite spending more on healthcare per capita than any other country. Across the world, mortality has been declining, but in the USA the trend toward improvement has stalled in some middle-aged demographic groups. Cross-national studies suggest that social welfare is positively associated with longevity. The United States has less government sponsored welfare, education and healthcare than almost all other Western nations, but the level of this social welfare commitment varies across the states. In this study we examined the association of state tax burden and state government expenditures with subsequent middle-aged mortality. Methods The primary exposure was state tax burden in 2005, defined as proportion of all state income paid to the state. We also examined the impact of state expenditures per capita in 2005 for education, healthcare, welfare, police and highways. The dependent variable was mortality during the subsequent 10 years. Death counts and population sizes by sex, age group and race strata for 2006–2015 were abstracted from CDC WONDER. Binomial logistic regression was employed based on the number of deaths and underlying population within each county-sex-age-race bin. Results State tax burden in 2005 varied from 5.8% to 12.2%. An increase of 1.0 percentage point in state tax burden was associated with a 5.8% (SE = 0.1%) reduction in mortality adjusted for sex, age and race, but was associated with a 1.1% (SE = 0.1%) reduction when further adjusting for state income and education levels. Controlling for sex, age and race each type of state expenditures was associated with decreases in middle aged mortality, notably K-12 education (reduction of 4.7%, SE = 0.1%, per 10% expenditure increase) except healthcare but all types were associated with mortality decreases further controlling for state income and education. Conclusion The residents of states with higher state taxation and higher expenditures per capita have lower middle aged mortality rates

Evidence of Titan's Climate History from Evaporite Distribution

Water-ice-poor, 5-$\mu$m-bright material on Saturn's moon Titan has previously been geomorphologically identified as evaporitic. Here we present a global distribution of the occurrences of the 5-$\mu$m-bright spectral unit, identified with Cassini's Visual Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) and examined with RADAR when possible. We explore the possibility that each of these occurrences are evaporite deposits. The 5-$\mu$m-bright material covers 1\% of Titan's surface and is not limited to the poles (the only regions with extensive, long-lived surface liquid). We find the greatest areal concentration to be in the equatorial basins Tui Regio and Hotei Regio. Our interpretations, based on the correlation between 5-$\mu$m-bright material and lakebeds, imply that there was enough liquid present at some time to create the observed 5-$\mu$m-bright material. We address the climate implications surrounding a lack of evaporitic material at the south polar basins: if the south pole basins were filled at some point in the past, then where is the evaporite

The norovirus NS3 protein is a dynamic lipid- and microtubule-associated protein involved in viral RNA replication

Norovirus (NoV) infections are a significant health burden to society, yet the lack of reliable tissue culture systems has hampered the development of appropriate antiviral therapies. Here we show that the NoV NS3 protein, derived from murine NoV (MNV), is intimately associated with the MNV replication complex and the viral replication intermediate double-stranded RNA (dsRNA). We observed that when expressed individually, MNV NS3 and NS3 encoded by human Norwalk virus (NV) induced the formation of distinct vesicle-like structures that did not colocalize with any particular protein markers to cellular organelles but localized to cellular membranes, in particular those with a high cholesterol content. Both proteins also showed some degree of colocalization with the cytoskeleton marker β-tubulin. Although the distribution of MNV and NV NS3s were similar, NV NS3 displayed a higher level of colocalization with the Golgi apparatus and the endoplasmic reticulum (ER). However, we observed that although both proteins colocalized in membranes counterstained with filipin, an indicator of cholesterol content, MNV NS3 displayed a greater association with flotillin and stomatin, proteins known to associate with sphingolipid- and cholesterol-rich microdomains. Utilizing time-lapse epifluorescence microscopy, we observed that the membrane-derived vesicular structures induced by MNV NS3 were highly motile and dynamic in nature, and their movement was dependent on intact microtubules. These results begin to interrogate the functions of NoV proteins during virus replication and highlight the conserved properties of the NoV NS3 proteins among the seven Norovirus genogroups

Non-structural protein-1 is required for West Nile virus replication complex formation and viral RNA synthesis

BACKGROUND: Flavivirus NS1 is a non-structural glycoprotein that is expressed on the cell surface and secreted into the extracellular space, where it acts as an antagonist of complement pathway activation. Despite its transit through the secretory pathway and intracellular localization in the lumen of the endoplasmic reticulum and Golgi vesicles, NS1 is as an essential gene for flavivirus replication. How NS1 modulates infection remains uncertain given that the viral RNA replication complex localizes to the cytosolic face of the endoplasmic reticulum. METHODS AND RESULTS: Using a trans-complementation assay, we show that viruses deleted for NS1 (∆-NS1) can be rescued by transgenic expression of NS1 from West Nile virus (WNV) or heterologous flaviviruses in the absence of adaptive mutations. In viral lifecycle experiments, we demonstrate that WNV NS1 was not required for virus attachment or input strand translation of the infectious viral RNA, but was necessary for negative and positive strand RNA synthesis and formation of the endoplasmic reticulum-associated replication complex. CONCLUSIONS: WNV RNA lacking intact NS1 genes was efficiently translated but failed to form canonical replication complexes at early times after infection, which resulted in an inability to replicate viral RNA. These results expand on prior studies with yellow fever and Kunjin viruses to show that flavivirus NS1 has an essential co-factor role in regulating replication complex formation and viral RNA synthesis