Identification of drug resistance mutations in HIV from constraints on natural evolution

Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) evolves with extraordinary rapidity. However, its evolution is constrained by interactions between mutations in its fitness landscape. Here we show that an Ising model describing these interactions, inferred from sequence data obtained prior to the use of antiretroviral drugs, can be used to identify clinically significant sites of resistance mutations. Successful predictions of the resistance sites indicate progress in the development of successful models of real viral evolution at the single residue level, and suggest that our approach may be applied to help design new therapies that are less prone to failure even where resistance data is not yet available.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure

The automotive industry supply chain case competition: A university and industry partnership

The importance of business schools collaborating with industry, and especially local companies, is selfevident. One way that the Global Supply Chain Management Program in the Mike Ilitch School of Business at Wayne State University has collaborated with General Motors and several major suppliers, and potential employers of students, is through an automotive industry supply chain management (SCM) case competition. In 2016, the Global Supply Chain Management Program, along with General Motors, will host the 6th annual General Motors/Wayne State University Supply Chain Case Competition. Supply Chain Management students from universities around the world travel to Detroit, MI to participate in the competition and learn about the global automotive industry. In addition to the competition, students tour an automotive assembly plant and network with industry executives and young managers. General Motors and other sponsoring companies utilize the competition to recruit top talent for entry level supply chain management positions, and to help with the education of students. Wayne State and its students benefit from increased exposure to companies with benefits relating to research, faculty recruiting, placement of students, and general development of the Wayne State SCM brand name. This article discusses the nature of the competition and the competitors, issues involved in producing such an event, the costs, and other benefits and challenges related to hosting such a competition

Setting the foundation for renewal: restoring sponge communities aids the ecological recovery of Florida Bay

Coastal ecosystems are constantly buffeted by anthropogenic forces that degrade habitats and alter ecological processes and functions; in turn, this habitat degradation diminishes the ecosystem goods and services on which humans rely. Within the last few decades, the field of restoration ecology has burgeoned into a discipline that marries scientific rigor with functional restoration practice—an idea championed by Pete Peterson and his research. Here, we describe our efforts to restore the hard-bottom sponge communities of Florida Bay, FL (USA)—a once-diverse subtropical lagoon severely degraded by cyanobacteria blooms—and the scientific and practical lessons learned from those efforts. Sponge community restoration yielded insights into basic sponge biology and ecology (e.g., density-dependent growth rates) and hastened the recovery of ecological processes (e.g., rates of sedimentation, structuring of water column characteristics, soundscape productions). Because the results of our initial restoration efforts were promising, our collaboration among academic researchers, natural resource managers, and non-governmental organizations has begun scaling up restoration efforts to re-establish the sponge communities over large areas of degraded hard-bottom to “jump start” the ecological recovery of Florida Bay. Though our efforts show promise for ecological recovery, restoration will require a concerted effort by scientists, resource managers, and citizens to stem the anthropogenic drivers of ecological degradation of this unique South Florida ecosystem

Book Reviews

Reviews of the following books: Dawn Over the Kennebec by Mary R. Calvert; An Honest Woodsman: The Life and Opinions of Dave Priest-Maine Trapper, Guide, and Game Warden by William S. Warner; An Old New England Farm by William Thomson and Kenneth Maclver

Low Mass Companions for Five Solar-Type Stars from the Magellan Planet Search Program

We report low mass companions orbiting five Solar-type stars that have emerged from the Magellan precision Doppler velocity survey, with minimum (Msini) masses ranging from 1.2 to 25 Mjup. These nearby target stars range from mildly metal-poor to metal-rich, and appear to have low chromospheric activity. The companions to the brightest two of these stars have previously been reported from the CORALIE survey. Four of these companions (HD 48265-b, HD 143361-b, HD 28185-b, HD 111232-b) are low-mass Jupiter-like planets in eccentric intermediate and long-period orbits. On the other hand, the companion to HD 43848 appears to be a long period brown dwarf in a very eccentric orbit.Comment: Accepted for publication on ApJ, 26 pages, 10 figures, 7 table

Long-lived heteronuclear spin-singlet states

We report observation of long-lived spin-singlet states in a 13C-1H spin pair at zero magnetic field. In 13C-labeled formic acid, we observe spin-singlet lifetimes as long as 37 seconds, about a factor of three longer than the T1 lifetime of dipole polarization in the triplet state. We also observe that the lifetime of the singlet-triplet coherence, T2, is longer than T1. Moreover, we demonstrate that this singlet states formed by spins of a heteronucleus and a 1H nucleus, can exhibit longer lifetimes than the respective triplet states in systems consisting of more than two nuclear spins. Although long-lived homonuclear spin-singlet states have been extensively studied, this is the first experimental observation of analogous spin-singlets consisting of a heteronucleus and a proton.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure