DART Mass spectrometry as a potential tool for the differentiation of captive-bred and wild lion bones.

In recent years lion bones have been legally traded internationally to Asian markets from captive bred sources in South Africa. There are also indications of increasing instances of illegal international trade in wild lion bones. The existence of parallel captive and wild supplies of lion bone are a cause of law enforcement concern regarding the potential for the laundering of illegally sourced bones through legal trade, and present a problem for the assessment of the conservation impact of wild lion bone trade due to the difficulty of determining what market-share wild and captive-bred lion bones account for. Captive-bred and wild lion bone are visually indistinguishable and no reliable method currently exists for distinguishing them. We present a preliminary study that explores the use of DART mass spectrometry as a method to differentiate between captive-bred and wild lion bones. We find that DART is able to differentiate between a batch of captive-bred South African lion bone and a batch of wild lion bone and suggest that DART mass spectrometry shows strong potential as a tool for the regulation and investigation of lion bone trade. Further testing is needed to prove the suitability of this technique. Therefore, we suggest that further research focuses on testing the capability of DART to differentiate between contemporary wild and captive-bred lion bone originating from South Africa, and attempts to identify chemical markers in bone that can be used as indicators of captive-bred origin

Deep uncertainty, public reason, the conservation of biodiversity and the regulation of markets for lion skeletons

Public reason is a formal concept in political theory. There is a need to better understand how public reason might be elicited in making public decisions that involve deep uncertainty, which arises from pernicious and gross ignorance about how a system works, the boundaries of a system, and the relative value (or disvalue) of various possible outcomes. This article is the third in a series to demonstrate how ethical argument analysis—a qualitative decision-making aid—may be used to elicit public reason in the presence of deep uncertainty. The first article demonstrated how argument analysis is capable of probing deep into a single argument. The second article demonstrated how argument analysis can analyze a broad set of arguments and how argument analysis can be operationalized for use as a decision-making aid. This article demonstrates (i) the relevance of argument analysis to public reasoning, (ii) the relevance of argument analysis for decision-making under deep uncertainty, an emerging direction in decision theory, and (iii) how deep uncertainty can arise when the boundary between facts and values is inescapably entangled. This article and the previous two make these demonstrations using, as an example, the conservation and sustainable use of lions

The ethics of human-animal relationships and public discourse: A case study of lions bred for their bones

Conservation and natural resource management are increasingly attending the ethical elements of public decisions. Ethical considerations are challenging, in part, because they typically require accounting for the moral consideration of various human and nonhuman forms of life, whose interests sometimes conflict (or seem to conflict). A valuable tool for such evaluations is the formal analysis of ethical arguments. An ethical argument is a collection of premises, logically interrelated, to yield a conclusion that can be expressed in the form, “We ought to…” According to the rules of logic, a conclusion is supported by an argument if all its premises are true or appropriate and when it contains no mistaken inferences. We showed how the formal analysis of ethical arguments can be used to engage stakeholders and decision-makers in decision-making processes. We summarised the method with ten specific guidelines that would be applicable to any case. We illustrated the technique using a case study focused on captive-bred lions, the skeletons of which form part of an international trade to supply traditional medicine markets in Southeast Asia with felid bones. As a matter of public policy, the practice is a complicated nexus of concerns for entrepreneurial freedom, wildlife conservation, and the fair treatment of animals

Sleeping Beauty screen reveals Pparg activation in metastatic prostate cancer

Prostate cancer (CaP) is the most common adult male cancer in the developed world. The paucity of biomarkers to predict prostate tumor biology makes it important to identify key pathways that confer poor prognosis and guide potential targeted therapy. Using a murine forward mutagenesis screen in a Pten-null background, we identified peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma (Pparg), encoding a ligand-activated transcription factor, as a promoter of metastatic CaP through activation of lipid signaling pathways, including up-regulation of lipid synthesis enzymes [fatty acid synthase (FASN), acetyl-CoA carboxylase (ACC), ATP citrate lyase (ACLY)]. Importantly, inhibition of PPARG suppressed tumor growth in vivo, with down-regulation of the lipid synthesis program. We show that elevated levels of PPARG strongly correlate with elevation of FASN in human CaP and that high levels of PPARG/FASN and PI3K/pAKT pathway activation confer a poor prognosis. These data suggest that CaP patients could be stratified in terms of PPARG/FASN and PTEN levels to identify patients with aggressive CaP who may respond favorably to PPARG/FASN inhibition

Sprouty2 loss‐induced IL6 drives castration‐resistant prostate cancer through scavenger receptor B1

Metastatic castration‐resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC) is a lethal form of treatment‐resistant prostate cancer and poses significant therapeutic challenges. Deregulated receptor tyrosine kinase (RTK) signalling mediated by loss of tumour suppressor Sprouty2 (SPRY2) is associated with treatment resistance. Using pre‐clinical human and murine mCRPC models, we show that SPRY2 deficiency leads to an androgen self‐sufficient form of CRPC. Mechanistically, HER2‐IL6 signalling axis enhances the expression of androgen biosynthetic enzyme HSD3B1 and increases SRB1‐mediated cholesterol uptake in SPRY2‐deficient tumours. Systemically, IL6 elevated the levels of circulating cholesterol by inducing host adipose lipolysis and hepatic cholesterol biosynthesis. SPRY2‐deficient CRPC is dependent on cholesterol bioavailability and SRB1‐mediated tumoral cholesterol uptake for androgen biosynthesis. Importantly, treatment with ITX5061, a clinically safe SRB1 antagonist, decreased treatment resistance. Our results indicate that cholesterol transport blockade may be effective against SPRY2‐deficient CRPC

Feasibility Experiment Of Granular Target Options for Future Neutrino Facilities

Fragmented solid targets made of either fluidised tungsten powder or static pebble bed of tungsten spheres, have been long proposed and are being studied as an alternative configuration towards high-power (>1 MW of beam power) target systems, suitable for a future Super Beam or Neutrino Factory. Such assemblies offer many advantages as better thermal and inertial stress absorption, thermal cooling and, if in the fluidised form, regeneration. We propose to perform a validation test of a tungsten powder target. The proposed feasibility experiment will try on a pulse-by-pulse basis to address the effect of the impact of a high-power pulsed beam in such an assembly using both online diagnostic tools with high-speed cameras, laser vibrometry and acoustic measurements, as well as offline, post-irradiation analysis of the target material

Feasibility Experiment of a Granular Target for Future Neutrino Facilities

Granular, solid targets made of fluidized tungsten powder or static pebble bed of tungsten spheres, have been proposed and are being studied as an alternative configurations towards high-power (1MW of beam power) target systems, suitable for a future Super Beam or Neutrino Factory. With the lack of experimental data on this field, a feasibility experiment was performed in HiRadMat facility of CERN/SPS that tried on a pulse-by-pulse basis to address the effect of the impact of the SPS beam (440GeV/c) on a static tungsten granular target. Online instrumentation such as high-speed photography and laser-Doppler vibrometry was employed. Preliminary results show a powder disruption speed of less than 0.6 m/s at 3E11 protons/pulse while the disruption speed appears to be scaling proportionally with the beam intensity

A FEASIBILITY EXPERIMENT OF A W-POWDER TARGET IN THE HIRADMAT FACILITY AT CERN

Granular solid targets made of fluidized tungsten powder or a static pebble bed of tungsten spheres, have been proposed and are being studied as an alternative configuration for high-power (>1MW of beam power) target systems, suitable for a future Super Beam or Neutrino Factory. Due to the lack of experimental data on this field, a feasibility experiment was performed in HiRadMat facility of CERN to address the effect of the impact of the SPS beam (440 GeV/c) on a static tungsten powder target. Online instrumentation such as high-speed photography and laser-Doppler vibrometry was employed. Preliminary results show a powder disruption speed of less than 0.6 m/s at 3 1011 protons/pulse while the disruption speed appears to scale with the beam intensity

Analysis and design methods for energy geostructures

Based on discussions at the international workshop on “Thermoactive geotechnical systems for near-surface geothermal energy”, hosted at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland (http://www.olgun.cee.vt.edu/workshop/), this article attempts to provide a broad overview of the analysis methods used for evaluation of systems that use either boreholes or geo-structures for heat exchange. It identifies commonalities where knowledge transfer from the former to the latter can be made, and highlights where there are significant differences that may limit this cross-fertilisation. The article then focusses on recent developments and current understanding pertaining to the analysis of the thermo-mechanical interaction between a geostructure and the ground, and how this may be incorporated into the geotechnical design of energy geostructures