The Magdalene's Friend : The Control of Prostitutes in Glasgow, 1840-1890

This thesis is a contribution to three areas of sociological interest: the history of sexuality, the history of prostitution and, the more general area of the moral regulation of the working class in the nineteenth century. In order to accomplish this, the following research questions are raised. First, the system of moral policing and control introduced in Glasgow in the 1870's raises interesting questions concerning the difference between systems of police repression as an alternative to the state regulation of prostitution. The thesis attempts to evaluate the impact of the 'Glasgow System' which was developed as an alternative to state regulation in the 1870's. The Glasgow System was composed of the Glasgow Lock hospital, the Glasgow Magdalene Institution and the Glasgow Police Act (1866). The second issue addressed in this thesis concerns the internal management of the Glasgow Magdalene Institution. Nicole Rafter has identified 3 techniques for social control used in female penitentiaries in the nineteenth century: 1) physical incarceration of women who violated middle class standards of sexual behaviour, 2) resocialization, 3) the provision of stipends and rewards to women who successfully completed the two year stay in the Institution. The manner in which these techniques were used to control the sexual and vocational behaviour of the women who entered the Glasgow Magdalene Institution between 1960 and 1889 are examined. The final issue examined is the public discourse of the 'prostitution problem' in Scotland in the nineteenth century. Contributions to the discourse came from four main interest groups: the medical profession, philanthropists, local state representatives, and socialists, By the 1840's the socialists were marginalized. It is argued that through its control over key repressive and ideological apparatuses, such as the Glasgow police and Magdalene Institution the ideas of the dominant bourgeois discourse were reproduced in the institutional practices of these institutions

Evidence for and Mechanisms of Ecosystem Transformation In The Great Basin of The Western United States

Ecosystem transformations are difficult to reverse and often create novel ecosystems. These systems can be maintained by stabilizing feedbacks driven by external or internal mechanisms. Increasing our understanding of these feedback components and how they relate to each other is crucial to know if and when they can be reversed. We studied the sagebrush biome in the western United states. Here, cheatgrass invasion and fire are converting vast areas of shrublands into grasslands, which may be two alternative stable states. We aimed to understand the components of positive feedback mechanisms that maintain these two states, and the impacts that conversion from shrubland to grassland has on ecosystem function. In chapter one the connectivity of fuel influenced the burn severity of fire, which favored fire-tolerant annuals in the seedbank. In chapter two invasion and the loss of shrubs and perennial grasses by fire changed the system from a sink to a source of soil carbon and nitrogen. In chapter three, we constructed a fire history atlas to isolate the effect of time since fire by removing the effect of repeated fires. There was little evidence of recovery towards the pre-fire state, and instead livestock grazing and cheatgrass abundance interacted to maintain the grass-dominated state. In chapter four we created an allometric equation to calculate biomass from cover estimates that can be applied to broad-scale models of cheatgrass abundance. Overall, we document self-reinforcing mechanisms of an alternative stable state, over several decades. We demonstrate how interannual climate variability creates initial or sustaining conditions that can alter longer-term trends and interannual oscillations in ecosystem functions. Finally, there are important management implications of this work, as cheatgrass dominance can present a sustained and novel ecosystem type with few opportunities to restore to native shrubland. Cheatgrass-dominated landscapes in the U.S. Great Basin offer a critical view into how novel alternative stable vegetation states can be initiated through disturbance and sustained through self-reinforcing mechanisms. Global changes such as climate warming, expanding land use, and invasive species present novel disturbance regimes and species assemblages. This study provides key insights into what prompts and sustains ecosystem transformation in drylands.</p

Screening and classifying small-molecule inhibitors of amyloid formation using ion mobility spectrometry-mass spectrometry

The search for therapeutic agents that bind specifically to precursor protein conformations and inhibit amyloid assembly is an important challenge. Identifying such inhibitors is difficult because many protein precursors of aggregation are partially folded or intrinsically disordered, which rules out structure-based design. Furthermore, inhibitors can act by a variety of mechanisms, including specific or nonspecific binding, as well as colloidal inhibition. Here we report a high-throughput method based on ion mobility spectrometry–mass spectrometry (IMS–MS) that is capable of rapidly detecting small molecules that bind to amyloid precursors, identifying the interacting protein species and defining the mode of inhibition. Using this method we have classified a variety of small molecules that are potential inhibitors of human ​islet amyloid polypeptide (​hIAPP) aggregation or ​amyloid-beta 1-40 aggregation as specific, nonspecific, colloidal or non-interacting. We also demonstrate the ability of IMS–MS to screen for inhibitory small molecules in a 96-well plate format and use this to discover a new inhibitor of ​hIAPP amyloid assembly

Cover-based allometric estimate of aboveground biomass of a non-native, invasive annual grass (Bromus tectorum L.) in the Great Basin, USA

Cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum L.) presence in the Great Basin is associated with an increase in fire frequency andsize, likely due to increased spatial continuity of fine fuel biomass. Measurements of the extent and cover ofcheatgrass are steadily improving, but the strength of the relationship between cover and aboveground biomass(AGB) is unclear. An allometric equation that can reliably convert cover to AGB of cheatgrass would allow forimproved incorporation of regional estimates of cover into models of fire activity, carbon storage, and net pri&shy;mary productivity, all of which rely on biomass. We measured cover and AGB of cheatgrass at 60 locations in thenorth-central Great Basin and used these measurements to model the relationship. We found a strong, linearrelationship between the percent cover and AGB, which was improved after square root transformation of bothcover and AGB, and after incorporating the number of days after peak NDVI that the biomass and cover weremeasured. These results show that AGB of cheatgrass can be reliably estimated from cover. It is likely thatallometric equations based on cover will be effective for other grass species, but care must be taken to account forphenology (e.g., peak NDVI) in the estimation.</p

Six central questions about biological invasions to which NEON data science is poised to contribute

Biological invasions are a leading cause of rapid ecological change and often present a signifi-cant financial burden. As a vibrant discipline, invasion biology has made important strides in identifying,mapping, and beginning to manage invasions, but questions remain surrounding the mechanisms bywhich invasive species spread and the impacts they bring about. Frequent, multiscalar ecological monitor-ing such as that provided through the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) can be an impor-tant tool for addressing some of these questions. We articulate a set of major outstanding questions ininvasion biology, consider how NEON data science is positioned to contribute to addressing these ques-tions, and provide suggestions to help equip a growing contingent of NEON data users in solving invasionbiology problems. We demonstrate these ideas through four case studies examining the mechanisms ofplant invasions in the U.S. Intermountain West. In Case Study I, we evaluate the relationships betweennative species richness, non-native species richness, and probability of invasion across scales. In Case Stud-ies II and III, we explore the relationship between environmental factors and non-native species presenceto understand invasion mechanisms. Case Study IV outlines a method for improving the ability to distin-guish invasive plants from native vegetation in remotely sensed data by leveraging temporal patterns ofphenology. There are many novel elements in the NEON sampling design that make it uniquely poised toshed light on the mechanisms that can help us understand invasibility, prediction, and progression, as wellas on the variability, longevity, and interactions of multiple invasive species&rsquo; impacts. Thus, knowledgegained through analysis of NEON data is expected to inform sound decision-making in unique ways formanagers of systems experiencing biological invasions.</p

FIRED (Fire Events Delineation): An Open, Flexible Algorithm and Database of US Fire Events Derived from the MODIS Burned Area Product (2001-2019)

Harnessing the fire data revolution, i.e., the abundance of information from satellites, government records, social media, and human health sources, now requires complex and challenging data integration approaches. Defining fire events is key to that effort. In order to understand the spatial and temporal characteristics of fire, or the classic fire regime concept, we need to critically define fire events from remote sensing data. Events, fundamentally a geographic concept with delineated spatial and temporal boundaries around a specific phenomenon that is homogenous in some property, are key to understanding fire regimes and more importantly how they are changing. Here, we describe Fire Events Delineation (FIRED), an event-delineation algorithm, that has been used to derive fire events (N = 51,871) from the MODIS MCD64 burned area product for the coterminous US (CONUS) from January 2001 to May 2019. The optimized spatial and temporal parameters to cluster burned area pixels into events were an 11-day window and a 5-pixel (2315 m) distance, when optimized against 13,741 wildfire perimeters in the CONUS from the Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity record. The linear relationship between the size of individual FIRED and Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity (MTBS) events for the CONUS was strong (R2 = 0.92 for all events). Importantly, this algorithm is open-source and flexible, allowing the end user to modify the spatio-temporal threshold or even the underlying algorithm approach as they see fit. We expect the optimized criteria to vary across regions, based on regional distributions of fire event size and rate of spread. We describe the derived metrics provided in a new national database and how they can be used to better understand US fire regimes. The open, flexible FIRED algorithm could be utilized to derive events in any satellite product. We hope that this open science effort will help catalyze a community-driven, data-integration effort (termed OneFire) to build a more complete picture of fire.</p

Proposed Role for COUP-TFII in Regulating Fetal Leydig Cell Steroidogenesis, Perturbation of Which Leads to Masculinization Disorders in Rodents

Reproductive disorders that are common/increasing in prevalence in human males may arise because of deficient androgen production/action during a fetal ‘masculinization programming window’. We identify a potentially important role for Chicken Ovalbumin Upstream Promoter-Transcription Factor II (COUP-TFII) in Leydig cell (LC) steroidogenesis that may partly explain this. In rats, fetal LC size and intratesticular testosterone (ITT) increased ∼3-fold between e15.5-e21.5 which associated with a progressive decrease in the percentage of LC expressing COUP-TFII. Exposure of fetuses to dibutyl phthalate (DBP), which induces masculinization disorders, dose-dependently prevented the age-related decrease in LC COUP-TFII expression and the normal increases in LC size and ITT. We show that nuclear COUP-TFII expression in fetal rat LC relates inversely to LC expression of steroidogenic factor-1 (SF-1)-dependent genes (StAR, Cyp11a1, Cyp17a1) with overlapping binding sites for SF-1 and COUP-TFII in their promoter regions, but does not affect an SF-1 dependent LC gene (3β-HSD) without overlapping sites. We also show that once COUP-TFII expression in LC has switched off, it is re-induced by DBP exposure, coincident with suppression of ITT. Furthermore, other treatments that reduce fetal ITT in rats (dexamethasone, diethylstilbestrol (DES)) also maintain/induce LC nuclear expression of COUP-TFII. In contrast to rats, in mice DBP neither causes persistence of fetal LC COUP-TFII nor reduces ITT, whereas DES-exposure of mice maintains COUP-TFII expression in fetal LC and decreases ITT, as in rats. These findings suggest that lifting of repression by COUP-TFII may be an important mechanism that promotes increased testosterone production by fetal LC to drive masculinization. As we also show an age-related decline in expression of COUP-TFII in human fetal LC, this mechanism may also be functional in humans, and its susceptibility to disruption by environmental chemicals, stress and pregnancy hormones could explain the origin of some human male reproductive disorders

Antibody-mediated protection against MERS-CoV in the murine model

Murine antisera with neutralising activity for the coronavirus causative of Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) were induced by immunisation of Balb/c mice with the receptor binding domain (RBD) of the viral Spike protein. The murine antisera induced were fully-neutralising in vitro for two separate clinical strains of the MERS coronavirus (MERS-CoV). To test the neutralising capacity of these antisera in vivo, susceptibility to MERS-CoV was induced in naive recipient Balb/c mice by the administration of an adenovirus vector expressing the human DPP4 receptor (Ad5-hDPP4) for MERS-CoV, prior to the passive transfer of the RBD-specific murine antisera to the transduced mice. Subsequent challenge of the recipient transduced mice by the intra-nasal route with a clinical isolate of the MERS-CoV resulted in a significantly reduced viral load in their lungs, compared with transduced mice receiving a negative control antibody. The murine antisera used were derived from mice which had been primed sub-cutaneously with a recombinant fusion of RBD with a human IgG Fc tag (RBD-Fc), adsorbed to calcium phosphate microcrystals and then boosted by the oral route with the same fusion protein in reverse micelles. The data gained indicate that this dual-route vaccination with novel formulations of the RBD-Fc, induced systemic and mucosal anti-viral immunity with demonstrated in vitro and in vivo neutralisation capacity for clinical strains of MERS-CoV