Influenza Growth Variations Within MDCK Cells

Regardless of the preventative measures taken to keep the seasonal influenza virus under control, millions of people still get sick and tens of thousands die each year in the United States alone. This virus does not only affect the health of our nation but is also an economic burden. One study found that $16.3 billion is the average lost earnings due to flu-related illness or death each year. The total economic losses of annual influenza amounted to$87.1 billion in the US on average. This is merely the standard virus that comes around on a yearly basis causing the average “flu season.” During the 1918 Spanish influenza pandemic; this virus affected every age group in every region, it quickly spread worldwide. The purpose of this research study is to better understand influenza growth within a laboratory setting. This becomes important when growing high titer virus for use in challenge studies and other procedures, where the most effective dose of virus is needed to test the proposed vaccine. To be able to grow the virus, there need to be cells available for infection and propagation. For this purpose, the MDCK cell line was used. There are many conditions that can affect influenza growth in MDCK cells. The assay of virus concentration is also cumbersome and somewhat variable. We show here an analysis of some of the variables affecting growth and some comparison of alternate quantification methods. The preliminary data shown here include effects of cell confluence (‘thickness”) upon initial infection; the amount of virus inoculum added for infection; when and how much TPCK – trypsin to be added to the media; when to harvest; and the growth medium type and volume. We are reporting the effect of these parameters on resulting virus titer

The df: A proposed data format standard

A standard is proposed describing a portable format for electronic exchange of data in the physical sciences. Writing scientific data in a standard format has three basic advantages: portability; the ability to use metadata to aid in interpretation of the data (understandability); and reusability. An improperly formulated standard format tends towards four disadvantages: (1) it can be inflexible and fail to allow the user to express his data as needed; (2) reading and writing such datasets can involve high overhead in computing time and storage space; (3) the format may be accessible only on certain machines using certain languages; and (4) under some circumstances it may be uncertain whether a given dataset actually conforms to the standard. A format was designed which enhances these advantages and lessens the disadvantages. The fundamental approach is to allow the user to make her own choices regarding strategic tradeoffs to achieve the performance desired in her local environment. The choices made are encoded in a specific and portable way in a set of records. A fully detailed description and specification of the format is given, and examples are used to illustrate various concepts. Implementation is discussed

The Old Red Roses Growing by the Door

https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mmb-me/1194/thumbnail.jp

Analysis of Modified Vaccinia Ankara Tropism and Growth Conditions

Vaccinia is a large enveloped virus belonging to the poxvirus family. It has linear, double stranded DNA, averaging about 190 kbp in length. Although vaccinia's origin is unknown, it is closely related to cowpox, smallpox and horsepox. It is used as a vaccine for smallpox. Recombinant vaccinia is also used a vaccine for multiple other diseases. We employed a mutant form of the virus, modified vaccinia Ankara (MVA), which has a limited host range and limited virulence compared to the wild-type vaccinia, which infects almost all cell types. MVA was established to infect the hamster cell line BHK-21. This cell line was used to test culture conditions and to determine the tissue culture infectious dose 50% (TCID50), which is the measure of the results. This work was undertaken to establish how different culture and infection conditions affect virus growth. This study reports several factors that influence growth and preliminary results for infection rates in several cell lines

Polybridge Technical Report

This study examined the physical and chemical properties of a novel, fully-recirculated prawn and polychaete production system that incorporated polychaete-assisted sand filters (PASF). The aims were to assess and demonstrate the potential of this system for industrialisation, and to provide optimisations for wastewater treatment by PASF. Two successive seasons were studied at commercially-relevant scales in a prototype system constructed at the Bribie Island Research Centre in Southeast Queensland. The project produced over 5.4 tonnes of high quality black tiger prawns at rates up to 9.9 tonnes per hectare, with feed conversion of up to 1.1. Additionally, the project produced about 930 kg of high value polychaete biomass at rates up to 1.5 kg per square metre of PASF, with the worms feeding predominantly on waste nutrients. Importantly, this closed production system demonstrated rapid growth of healthy prawns at commercially relevant production levels, using methods that appear feasible for application at large scale. Deeper (23 cm) PASF beds provided similar but more reliable wastewater treatment efficacies compared with shallower (13 cm) beds, but did not demonstrate significantly greater polychaete productivity than (easier to harvest) shallow beds. The nutrient dynamics associated with seasonal and tidal operations of the system were studied in detail, providing technical and practical insights into how PASF could be optimised for the mitigation of nutrient discharge. The study also highlighted some of the other important advantages of this integrated system, including low sludge production, no water discharge during the culture phase, high ecosystem health, good prospects for biosecurity controls, and the sustainable production of a fishery-limited resource (polychaetes) that may be essential for the expansion of prawn farming industries throughout the world. Regarding nutrient discharge from this prototype mariculture system, when PASF was operating correctly it proved feasible to have no water (or nutrient) discharge during the entire prawn growing season. However, the final drain harvest and emptying of ponds that is necessary at the end of the prawn farming season released 58.4 kg ha-1 of nitrogen and 6 kg ha-1 of phosphorus (in Season 2). Whilst this is well below (i.e., one-third to one-half of) the current load-based licencing conditions for many prawn farms in Australia, the levels of nitrogen and chlorophyll a in the ponds remained higher than the more-stringent maximum limits at the Bribie Island study site. Zero-net-nutrient discharge was not achieved, but waste nutrients were low where 5.91 kg of nitrogen and 0.61 kg of phosphorus was discharged per tonne of prawns produced. This was from a system that deployed PASF at 14.4% of total ponded farm area which treated an average of 5.8% of pond water daily and did not use settlement ponds or other natural or artificial water remediation systems. Four supplemental appendices complement this research by studying several additional aspects that are central to the industrialisation of PASF. The first details an economic model and decision tool which allows potential users to interactively assess construction and operational variables of PASF at different scales. The second provides the qualitative results of a prawn maturation trial conducted collaboratively with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) to assess dietary inclusions of PASF-produced worms. The third provides the reproductive results from industry-based assessments of prawn broodstock produced using PASF. And the fourth appendix provides detailed elemental and nutritional analyses of bacterial biofilm produced by PASF and assesses its potential to improve the growth of prawns in recirculated culture systems

Keys to success in social media marketing (SMM): prospects for the German airline industry.

The continuous growth and economic contribution of Germany's commercial aviation industry are directly linked to the implementation of new marketing practices. Especially in light of challenging market conditions and fierce competition within a highly segmented industry, new marketing paradigms assist airlines to overcome difficulties in order to promote their brands, products and services more effectively and in a circulated manner. In this regard, Social Media Marketing provides German airlines with a powerful set of marketing tools and multiple platforms to digitally gather, communicate, collaborate and share content with its customers. Despite a growing public awareness, an extensive review of current and relevant literature revealed that consumer perceptions on German airline organisations' Social Media practices have not been examined. This paper aims to address this

Polybridge Season 3: Ecosystem effects of polychaete-assisted sand filters

This study is an extension of research undertaken in the first two seasons of the Polybridge Project (2013-2016: for results see Palmer et al., 2016), which sought to investigate operational aspects of polychaete-assisted sand filters (PASF) when deployed for scaled prawn farm recirculation at the Bribie Island Research Centre (BIRC). The aims of the present work were to assess its functionality with increased organic loading rates provided by higher prawn stocking densities than previously trialled, and to assess the ecological effects on this integrated farming system when using PASF to initially fill ponds for a range of biosecurity purposes. Using prawn postlarval stocking densities in excess of 44 m-2, prawn production of up to 12 tonnes ha-1 was achieved without discharge of any wastewater during the production season (2015-16). However, the average production for the two ponds was 9.4 tonnes ha-1, which was lower than in the previous season (9.9 tonnes ha-1 in 2014/15) which used a lower prawn stocking density (37.5 postlarvae m-2). The prawns and worms produced were again healthy and of high commercial quality and value, but slower prawn growth (particularly after 140 d) and lower worm survival limited overall production in the fully-recirculated system. There were also several concerning aspects to this closed-system approach that need to be highlighted. Firstly, nutrient levels in the pond waters rose to particularly high levels, and some of the more toxic parameters, such as ammonia, reached critical levels that could be considered dangerous for routine prawn culture operations. Worm production in the PASF beds also suffered from the very rich wastewaters in the integrated system, and the capacity of PASF to filter water via percolation was limited by excessive sand clogging and a build-up of organic matter on the upper surface of the sand beds. The resultant excessive anoxic conditions created in the sand beds appeared to reduce worm productivity which, in turn, reduced their sand cleansing actions, for an overall lower functionality in terms of nutrient (and particularly nitrogen) removal rates. Alternatively, within the confines of the overall study, there were no significant deleterious effects on worm production or nutrient removal efficacies from using the PASF beds to initially fill the prawn production pond. The apparent effect of this on pond plankton communities was: 1) to slow the development of copepod populations; and 2) change the assemblage of algal species in the first few weeks after filling. This slower development of natural feed organisms in the PASF-filled pond may have provided lower survival of the particularly-young (PL 13) prawn seedstock used to stock the pond. Importantly however, there may be several potential remedies to this issue. These include management for a longer period for bloom development after fill and before stocking, and assuming a greater reliance on artificial feeds more suited to small prawns. As expected, this pond-fill strategy appeared to beneficially help exclude some problematic algal species, and greatly reduced barnacle fouling, though tube worm fouling did not appear overly affected. The project successfully demonstrated a third successive season of zero-water discharge from an integrated prawn/ worm production system, though ultimately, the water in ponds with some residual nutrients were discharged. The expansion of prawn farming in Australia is limited by nutrient discharge issues, and biosecurity measures are also of increasing interest to this industry. In this legacy project, polychaete-assisted sand filters are further demonstrated to hold potential for biosecurity controls whilst minimising nutrient discharge

Two rare table-top presses at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History

A description and history of two rare table-top presses at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, used there to print specimen labels between around 1850 and 1970