On the type species of Aubignyna and a description of A. hamblensis, a new microforaminifer from temperate shallow waters

The genus Aubignyna Margerel, 1970 (type A. mariei) was originally described from the upper Pliocene of NW France. Examination and re-illustration of topotypes of A. mariei Margerel, 1970, the holotype of Buccella planidorso Atkinson, 1969 (from the Recent of Cardigan Bay, Wales) and syntypes of Rotalia perlucida Heron-Allen and Earland, 1913 (from the Clare Island Survey, western Ireland) shows them to be conspecific. Consequently, the type-species of Aubignyna becomes R. perlucida, for which a lectotype is chosen. A new species of microforaminifera formally described here is assigned to Aubignyna and shown to occur in a wide range of intertidal - shallow subtidal, brackish - normal marine estuaries and lagoons in Europe and North America

Presence of an expressed 13-tubulin gene (TUBB) in the HLA class I region may provide the genetic basis for HLA-linked microtubule dysfunction

An expressed beta-tubulin gene (TUBB) has previously been localized to chromosome region 6pter-p21 in man. By using a panel of deletion mutant cell lines and radiation-reduced hybrids containing fragments of chromosome 6, the TUBB locus could be mapped to the HLA class I region at 6p21.3. A long range restriction map including TUBB and several HLA class I genes was then generated by rotating field gel electrophoresis. The results show that TUBB maps to a segment 170-370 kb telomeric of HLA-C. This location suggests that a mutation at the TUBB locus could be the cause for certain forms of HLAlinked microtubule dysfunction, including immotile cilia syndrome

On Commitments and Other Uncertainty Reduction Tools

In this paper, we evaluate the proposal that a central function of commitments within joint action is to reduce various kinds of uncertainty, and that this accounts for the prevalence of commitments in joint action. While this idea is prima facie attractive, we argue that it faces two serious problems. First, commitments can only reduce uncertainty if they are credible, and accounting for the credibility of commitments proves not to be straightforward. Second, there are many other ways in which uncertainty is commonly reduced within joint actions, which raises the possibility that commitments may be superfluous. Nevertheless, we argue that the existence of these alternative uncertainty reduction processes does not make commitments superfluous after all but, rather, helps to explain how commitments may contribute in various ways to uncertainty reduction

Bioorthogonal Modification of the Major Sheath Protein of Bacteriophage M13: Extending the Versatility of Bionanomaterial Scaffolds

This document is the unedited Author’s version of a Submitted Work that was subsequently accepted for publication in Biconjugate Chemistry, copyright © American Chemical Society after peer review. To access the final edited and published work see http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/acs.bioconjchem.6b00460With a mass of ~1.6 x 107 Daltons and com- posed of approximately 2700 proteins, bacteriophage M13 has been employed as a molecular scaffold in bionanomaterials fabrication. In order to extend the versatility of M13 in this area, residue-specific unnatural amino acid incorporation was employed to successfully display azide functionalities on specific solvent-exposed positions of the pVIII major sheath protein of this bacteriophage. Employing a combination of engineered mutants of the gene coding for the pVIII protein, the methionine (Met) analog, L-azidohomoalanine (Aha), and a suitable Escherichia coli Met auxotroph for phage pro- duction, conditions were developed to produce M13 bacteri- ophage labeled with over 350 active azides (estimated by fluorescent dye labeling utilizing a strain-promoted azide- alkyne cycloaddition) and capable of azide-selective attach- ment to 5 nm gold nanoparticles as visualized by transmis- sion electron microscopy. The capability of this system to undergo dual labeling utilizing both chemical acylation and bioorthogonal cycloaddition reactions was also verified. The above stratagem should prove particularly advantageous in the preparation of assemblies of larger and more complex molecular architectures based on the M13 building block.Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council University of Waterloo NSERC Canadian Graduate Scholarship (CGS-M) Ontario Graduate Scholarship Waterloo Institute for Nanotechnology Nanofellowshi

The ‘Alice in Wonderland’ mechanics of the rejection of (climate) science:simulating coherence by conspiracism

Science strives for coherence. For example, the findings from climate science form a highly coherent body of knowledge that is supported by many independent lines of evidence: greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from human economic activities are causing the global climate to warm and unless GHG emissions are drastically reduced in the near future, the risks from climate change will continue to grow and major adverse consequences will become unavoidable. People who oppose this scientific body of knowledge because the implications of cutting GHG emissions—such as regulation or increased taxation—threaten their worldview or livelihood cannot provide an alternative view that is coherent by the standards of conventional scientific thinking. Instead, we suggest that people who reject the fact that the Earth’s climate is changing due to greenhouse gas emissions (or any other body of well-established scientific knowledge) oppose whatever inconvenient finding they are confronting in piece-meal fashion, rather than systematically, and without considering the implications of this rejection to the rest of the relevant scientific theory and findings. Hence, claims that the globe “is cooling” can coexist with claims that the “observed warming is natural” and that “the human influence does not matter because warming is good for us.” Coherence between these mutually contradictory opinions can only be achieved at a highly abstract level, namely that “something must be wrong” with the scientific evidence in order to justify a political position against climate change mitigation. This high-level coherence accompanied by contradictory subordinate propositions is a known attribute of conspiracist ideation, and conspiracism may be implicated when people reject well-established scientific propositions

Risk Maps of Lassa Fever in West Africa

Previous studies on the eco-epidemiology of Lassa fever in Guinea, West Africa, have shown that the reservoir is two to three times more infected by Lassa virus in the rainy season than in the dry season. None of the intrinsic variables of the murine population, such as abundance or reproduction, was able to explain this seasonal variation in prevalence. We therefore here investigate the importance of extrinsic environmental variables, partly influenced by the idea that in the case of nephropathia epidemica in Europe contamination of the environment, and therefore survival of the pathogen outside the host, appears to be an important factor in this disease's epidemiology. We therefore made an extensive review of the literature, gathering information about the geographical location of sites where Lassa fever has been certainly identified. Environmental data for these sites (rainfall, temperature, vegetation and altitude) were gathered from a variety of sources, both satellites and ground-based meteorological stations. Several statistical treatments were applied to produce Lassa ‘risk maps’. These maps all indicate a strong influence of rainfall, and a lesser influence of temperature in defining high risk areas. The area of greatest risk is located between Guinea and Cameroon

Evaluating New Digital Technologies Through a Framework of Resilience

© 2015 The Author(s). Published by Taylor & Francis. This paper explores how an evaluative framework of resilience might be utilised to assess the impact of new digital technologies. This paper outlines key themes and indicators from recent literature on community-level and rural resilience and incorporates insights from work on digital inclusion and rural information and communication technologies to build a framework of rural community resilience. It then highlights a successful case study carried out by the Digital Engagement and Resilience project and describes some of the methodological challenges that can be encountered in cross-cutting evaluative work in a digital economy context. Finally, it contextualises this work in the current policy climate of rural digital agendas to stress the growing need for holistic and critical approaches to ‘resilience’

Redbird Buzz Episode 22: Elisabeth Reed, April 18, 2023

Interview with the director of the Office of Sustainability at Illinois State University, Elisabeth Reed. The interview was conducted by John Twork from University Marketing and Communications on April 18, 2023, for the Illinois State University Redbird Buzz Podcast