The provision of fire services in rural areas

Fire services have been neglected in discussions of public service provision in rural areas. The way in which they are provided has a broader significance in terms of current debates about risk management. Fire service policy was transferred away from the Home Office, but the Bain Report provided the major stimulus to change. Early central government attempts to stimulate fire service provision in rural area were hampered by a lack of cooperation between local authorities. Rates of death from fire are influenced by attendance times and are particularly high in remote rural areas. The development of national standards of fire cover was focused on protecting property rather than saving lives with disproportionate funding being provided for urban areas. Social changes in rural areas have made it more difficult to secure sufficient numbers of retained fire fighters. It has proved particularly difficult to provide an adequate service in remote rural areas such as the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, despite recent policy initiatives there. Problems of providing fire cover are particularly acute on isolated islands. The development of integrated risk management plans should offer a more fine grained approach to providing fire cover. However, they may be too sophisticated for the task in rural areas and more traditional democratic mechanisms for expressing perceived community needs may have a greater relevance

Marine Biotoxins: Emergence of Harmful Algal Blooms as Health Threats to Marine Wildlife

Harmful algal blooms (HABs) affect aquatic ecosystems around the world, adversely affecting marine animal and human health, coastal ecosystem integrity, and economies that depend on coastal resources. Shellfish poisoning events involving humans who had ingested bivalves contaminated with HAB toxins primarily drove early scientific and social interest in HABs. More recently, research efforts have shown that HABs are often temporally and spatially correlated with the occurrence of acute morbidity or mortality of marine animals (Landsberg et al. 2005), and to date at least four classes of algal toxins have been associated with such events. Although fish, seabirds, and many other groups of marine wildlife are affected, these mortality events frequently involve marine mammals, and as such this chapter will focus primarily on the latter. In addition, since marine mammals are important sentinel species that act as barometers of ocean health and demonstrate the link between ocean and human health, the importance placed on these species in this context is warranted (Aguirre and Tabor 2004; Tabor and Aguirre 2004; Wells et al. 2004; Bossart 2006)

Marine Biotoxins: Emergence of Harmful Algal Blooms as Health Threats to Marine Wildlife

Harmful algal blooms (HABs) affect aquatic ecosystems around the world, adversely affecting marine animal and human health, coastal ecosystem integrity, and economies that depend on coastal resources. Shellfish poisoning events involving humans who had ingested bivalves contaminated with HAB toxins primarily drove early scientific and social interest in HABs. More recently, research efforts have shown that HABs are often temporally and spatially correlated with the occurrence of acute morbidity or mortality of marine animals (Landsberg et al. 2005), and to date at least four classes of algal toxins have been associated with such events. Although fish, seabirds, and many other groups of marine wildlife are affected, these mortality events frequently involve marine mammals, and as such this chapter will focus primarily on the latter. In addition, since marine mammals are important sentinel species that act as barometers of ocean health and demonstrate the link between ocean and human health, the importance placed on these species in this context is warranted (Aguirre and Tabor 2004; Tabor and Aguirre 2004; Wells et al. 2004; Bossart 2006)

Investigation of the functional roles of host cell proteins involved in Coronavirus infection using highly specific and scalable RNA interference (RNAi) approach

Since its identification in the 1990s, the RNA interference (RNAi) pathway has proven extremely useful in elucidating the function of proteins in the context of cells and even whole organisms. In particular, this sequence-specific and powerful loss-of-function approach has greatly simplified the study of the role of host cell factors implicated in the life cycle of viruses. Here, we detail the RNAi method we have developed and used to specifically knock down the expression of ezrin, an actin binding protein that was identified by yeast two-hybrid screening to interact with the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (SARS-CoV) spike (S) protein. This method was used to study the role of ezrin, specifically during the entry stage of SARS-CoV infection

Structural analysis of hyperperiodic DNA from Caenorhabditis elegans

Several bioinformatics studies have identified an unexpected but remarkably prevalent ∼10 bp periodicity of AA/TT dinucleotides (hyperperiodicity) in certain regions of the Caenorhabditis elegans genome. Although the relevant C.elegans DNA segments share certain sequence characteristics with bent DNAs from other sources (e.g. trypanosome mitochondria), the nematode sequences exhibit a much more extensive and defined hyperperiodicity. Given the presence of hyperperiodic structures in a number of critical C.elegans genes, the physical characteristics of hyperperiodic DNA are of considerable interest. In this work, we demonstrate that several hyperperiodic DNA segments from C.elegans exhibit structural anomalies using high-resolution atomic force microscopy (AFM) and gel electrophoresis. Our quantitative analysis of AFM images reveals that hyperperiodic DNA adopts a significantly smaller mean square end-to-end distance, hence a more compact coil structure, compared with non-periodic DNA of similar length. While molecules remain capable of adopting both bent and straight (rod-like) configurations, indicating that their flexibility is still retained, examination of the local curvatures along the DNA contour length reveals that the decreased mean square end-to-end distance can be attributed to the presence of long-scale intrinsic bending in hyperperiodic DNA. Such bending is not detected in non-periodic DNA. Similar studies of shorter, nucleosome-length DNAs that survived micrococcal nuclease digestion show that sequence hyperperiodicity in short segments can likewise induce strong intrinsic bending. It appears, therefore, that regions of the C.elegans genome display a significant correlation between DNA sequence and unusual mechanical properties