Cybersecurity Threats & Challenges

Cyberattacks have brought a paradigm shift in how we secure & protect information. Today, NATO ranks attacks from phishing & malware among their greatest concerns. These attacks are attractive to hackers, who find them to be cheap, hard to track, and even harder to attribute. As budgets rise and fall, awareness of cyber threats and challenges has never been more critical. Theft of intellectual property, loss of research, and attacks on the reputation of the University are among the challenges managed by our team. Join the UNL Information Security team for a talk about today’s cyber threats and how they are impacting the University

Production and secretion of glucose in photosynthetic prokaryotes (cyanobacteria)

The present invention includes compositions and methods for making and using an isolated cyanobacterium that includes a portion of an exogenous bacterial cellulose operon sufficient to express bacterial cellulose, whereby the cyanobacterium produces extracellular glucose. The compositions and methods of the present invention may be used as a new global crop for the manufacture of cellulose, CO2 fixation, for the production of alternative sources of conventional cellulose as well as a biofuel and precursors thereof.Board of Regents, University of Texas Syste

Rocket studies of solar corona and transition region

The XSST (X-Ray Spectrometer/Spectrograph Telescope) rocket payload launched by a Nike Boosted Black Brant was designed to provide high spectral resolution coronal soft X-ray line information on a spectrographic plate, as well as time resolved photo-electric records of pre-selected lines and spectral regions. This spectral data is obtained from a 1 x 10 arc second solar region defined by the paraboloidal telescope of the XSST. The transition region camera provided full disc images in selected spectral intervals originating in lower temperature zones than the emitting regions accessible to the XSST. A H-alpha camera system allowed referencing the measurements to the chromospheric temperatures and altitudes. Payload flight and recovery information is provided along with X-ray photoelectric and UV flight data, transition camera results and a summary of the anomalies encountered. Instrument mechanical stability and spectrometer pointing direction are also examined

Granulocitna rezerva u kronignom eksperimentalnom otrovanju benzenom u štakora

The normal two-fold increase in granulocytes in the peripheral circulation induced by corticosteroids was almost abolished in chronic benzene poisoning in rats.Normalno očekivani dvostruki porast granulocita u perifernoj cirkulaciji nakon primjene kortikosteroida izostao je u štakora kronično otrovanih benzenom

Photochemically re-bridging disulfide bonds and the discovery of a thiomaleimide mediated photodecarboxylation of C-terminal cysteines

Described in this work is a novel method for photochemically manipulating peptides and proteins via the installation of cysteine-selective photoactive tags. Thiomaleimides, generated simply by the addition of bromomaleimides to reduced disulfide bonds, undergo [2 + 2] photocycloadditions to reconnect the crosslink between the two cysteine residues. This methodology is demonstrated to enable photoactivation of a peptide by macrocyclisation, and reconnection of the heavy and light chains in an antibody fragment to form thiol stable conjugates. Finally we report on an intriguing thiomaleimide mediated photochemical decarboxylation of C-terminal cysteines, discovered during this study

2007 AAPP Monograph Series

The African American Professors Program (AAPP) at the University of South Carolina is proud to publish the seventh edition of its annual monograph series. Furthermore, it is an honor to celebrate the remarkable tenth anniversary of AAPP through these manuscripts. The program recognizes the significance of offering its scholars a venue to engage actively in research and publish papers related thereto. Parallel with the publication of their refereed manuscripts is the opportunity to gain visibility among scholars throughout institutions worldwide. Scholars who have contributed papers for this monograph are to be commended for adding this responsibility to their academic workload. Writing across disciplines adds to the intellectual diversity of these papers. From neophytes, relatively speaking, to an array of very experienced individuals, the chapters have been researched and comprehensively written. Founded in 1997 through the Department of Educational Leadership and Policies in the College of Education, AAPP was designed to address the underrepresentation of African American professors on college and university campuses. Its mission is to expand the pool of these professors in critical academic and research areas. Sponsored by the University of South Carolina, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, and the South Carolina General Assembly, the program recruits doctoral students for disciplines in which African Americans currently are underrepresented among faculty in higher education. The continuation of this monograph series is seen as responding to a window of opportunity to be sensitive to an academic expectation of graduates as they pursue career placement and, at the same time, one that allows for the dissemination of products to a broader community. The importance of this monograph series has been voiced by one of our 2002 AAPP graduates, Dr. Shundele LaTjuan Dogan, formerly an Administrative Fellow at Harvard University and a Program Officer for the Southern Education Foundation. She is currently a Program Officer for the Arthur M. Blank Foundation in Atlanta. Dr. Dogan wrote: One thing in particular that I want to thank you for is having the African American Professors Program scholars publish articles for the monograph. have to admit that writing the articles seemed like extra work at the time. However, in my recent interview process, organizations have asked me for samples of my writing. Including an article from a published monograph helped to make my portfolio much more impressive. You were \u27right on target\u27 in having us do the monograph series. (AAPP 2003 Monograph, p. xi) The African American Professors Program dedicates this 2007 tenth anniversary publication as a special contribution to its readership and hopes that each will be inspired by this interdisciplinary group of manuscripts. John McFadden, Ph.D. The Benjamin Elijah Mays Distinguished Professor Emeritus Director, African American Professors Program University of South Carolinahttps://scholarcommons.sc.edu/mcfadden_monographs/1009/thumbnail.jp

The preparation of graft copolymers of cellulose and cellulose derivatives using ATRP under homogeneous reaction conditions

In this comprehensive review, we report on the preparation of graft-copolymers of cellulose and cellulose derivatives using atom transfer radical polymerization (ATRP) under homogeneous conditions. The review is divided into four sections according to the cellulosic material that is graft-copolymerised; (i) cellulose, (ii) ethyl cellulose, (iii) hydroxypropyl cellulose and (iv) other cellulose derivatives. In each section, the grafted synthetic polymers are described as well as the methods used for ATRP macro-initiator formation and graft-copolymerisation. The physical properties of the graft-copolymers including their self-assembly in solution into nanostructures and their stimuli responsive behaviour are described. Potential applications of the self-assembled graft copolymers in areas such as nanocontainers for drug delivery are outline

Human Pathogen Shown to Cause Disease in the Threatened Eklhorn Coral Acropora palmata

Coral reefs are in severe decline. Infections by the human pathogen Serratia marcescens have contributed to precipitous losses in the common Caribbean elkhorn coral, Acropora palmata, culminating in its listing under the United States Endangered Species Act. During a 2003 outbreak of this coral disease, called acroporid serratiosis (APS), a unique strain of the pathogen, Serratia marcescens strain PDR60, was identified from diseased A. palmata, human wastewater, the non-host coral Siderastrea siderea and the corallivorous snail Coralliophila abbreviata. In order to examine humans as a source and other marine invertebrates as vectors and/or reservoirs of the APS pathogen, challenge experiments were conducted with A. palmata maintained in closed aquaria to determine infectivity of strain PDR60 from reef and wastewater sources. Strain PDR60 from wastewater and diseased A. palmata caused disease signs in elkhorn coral in as little as four and five days, respectively, demonstrating that wastewater is a definitive source of APS and identifying human strain PDR60 as a coral pathogen through fulfillment of Koch's postulates. A. palmata inoculated with strain PDR60 from C. abbreviata showed limited virulence, with one of three inoculated fragments developing APS signs within 13 days. Strain PDR60 from non-host coral S. siderea showed a delayed pathogenic effect, with disease signs developing within an average of 20 days. These results suggest that C. abbreviata and non-host corals may function as reservoirs or vectors of the APS pathogen. Our results provide the first example of a marine “reverse zoonosis” involving the transmission of a human pathogen (S. marcescens) to a marine invertebrate (A. palmata). These findings underscore the interaction between public health practices and environmental health indices such as coral reef survival

The Genomic Ancestry of Individuals from Different Geographical Regions of Brazil Is More Uniform Than Expected

Based on pre-DNA racial/color methodology, clinical and pharmacological trials have traditionally considered the different geographical regions of Brazil as being very heterogeneous. We wished to ascertain how such diversity of regional color categories correlated with ancestry. Using a panel of 40 validated ancestry-informative insertion-deletion DNA polymorphisms we estimated individually the European, African and Amerindian ancestry components of 934 self-categorized White, Brown or Black Brazilians from the four most populous regions of the Country. We unraveled great ancestral diversity between and within the different regions. Especially, color categories in the northern part of Brazil diverged significantly in their ancestry proportions from their counterparts in the southern part of the Country, indicating that diverse regional semantics were being used in the self-classification as White, Brown or Black. To circumvent these regional subjective differences in color perception, we estimated the general ancestry proportions of each of the four regions in a form independent of color considerations. For that, we multiplied the proportions of a given ancestry in a given color category by the official census information about the proportion of that color category in the specific region, to arrive at a “total ancestry” estimate. Once such a calculation was performed, there emerged a much higher level of uniformity than previously expected. In all regions studied, the European ancestry was predominant, with proportions ranging from 60.6% in the Northeast to 77.7% in the South. We propose that the immigration of six million Europeans to Brazil in the 19th and 20th centuries - a phenomenon described and intended as the “whitening of Brazil” - is in large part responsible for dissipating previous ancestry dissimilarities that reflected region-specific population histories. These findings, of both clinical and sociological importance for Brazil, should also be relevant to other countries with ancestrally admixed populations

Evolution of Plant Nucleotide-Sugar Interconversion Enzymes

Nucleotide-diphospho-sugars (NDP-sugars) are the building blocks of diverse polysaccharides and glycoconjugates in all organisms. In plants, 11 families of NDP-sugar interconversion enzymes (NSEs) have been identified, each of which interconverts one NDP-sugar to another. While the functions of these enzyme families have been characterized in various plants, very little is known about their evolution and origin. Our phylogenetic analyses indicate that all the 11 plant NSE families are distantly related and most of them originated from different progenitor genes, which have already diverged in ancient prokaryotes. For instance, all NSE families are found in the lower land plant mosses and most of them are also found in aquatic algae, implicating that they have already evolved to be capable of synthesizing all the 11 different NDP-sugars. Particularly interesting is that the evolution of RHM (UDP-L-rhamnose synthase) manifests the fusion of genes of three enzymatic activities in early eukaryotes in a rather intriguing manner. The plant NRS/ER (nucleotide-rhamnose synthase/epimerase-reductase), on the other hand, evolved much later from the ancient plant RHMs through losing the N-terminal domain. Based on these findings, an evolutionary model is proposed to explain the origin and evolution of different NSE families. For instance, the UGlcAE (UDP-D-glucuronic acid 4-epimerase) family is suggested to have evolved from some chlamydial bacteria. Our data also show considerably higher sequence diversity among NSE-like genes in modern prokaryotes, consistent with the higher sugar diversity found in prokaryotes. All the NSE families are widely found in plants and algae containing carbohydrate-rich cell walls, while sporadically found in animals, fungi and other eukaryotes, which do not have or have cell walls with distinct compositions. Results of this study were shown to be highly useful for identifying unknown genes for further experimental characterization to determine their functions in the synthesis of diverse glycosylated molecules