Dipole nanolaser

A "dipole" laser is proposed consisting of a nanoparticle and a two-level system with population inversion. If the threshold conditions are fulfilled, the dipole interaction between the two-level system and the nanoparticle leads to coherent oscillations in the polarization of the particles, even in the absence of an external electromagnetic field. The emitted radiation has a dipolar distribution. It does not need an optical cavity, and has a very small volume, 0.1 mu m(3), which can be important for applications in microelectronics. Estimates of the threshold conditions are carried out for a dipole laser composed of a quantum dot and a silver nanoparticle

Piezo-force and vibration analysis of ZnO nanowire arrays for sensor application

To estimate the potential of ZnO nanostructures for force sensing applications, arrays of single nanowires and arrays of nanowire bundles have been fabricated by wet chemical growth method. The piezoelectrical and electrical properties of the single nanowires have been investigated by atomic force microscopy based techniques. The piezoelectric constant d(33) = 15 pm/V has been determined from vibration analyses. The electrical response in the range up to 400 fA upon applying force between 40 nN and 1 mu N has been recorded. The nanowire bundles were studied by electro-mechanical macro probing technique within the force range 1 - 10 mN, where a reproducible response in pA range has been measured

An immunotherapy survivor population: health-related quality of life and toxicity in patients with metastatic melanoma treated with immune checkpoint inhibitors

© The Author(s) 2019. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.Purpose The immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) have resulted in subgroups of patients with metastatic melanoma achievinghigh-quality durable responses. Metastatic melanoma survivors are a new population in the era of cancer survivorship. The aimofthis study was to evaluate metastatic melanoma survivors in terms of health-related quality of life (HRQoL), immune-relatedadverse events (irAEs) and exposure to immunosuppressive agents in a large single centre in the UK.Methods We defined the survivor population as patients with a diagnosis of metastatic melanoma who achieved a durableresponse to an ICI and had been followed-up for a minimum of 12 months from initiation of ICI without disease progression.HRQoL was assessed using SF-36. Electronic health records were accessed to collect data on demographics, treatments, irAEsand survival. HRQoL data was compared with two norm-based datasets.Results Eighty-four metastatic melanoma survivors were eligible and 87% (N = 73) completed the SF-36. ICI-related toxicity ofany grade occurred in 92%of patients and 43%had experienced a grade 3 or 4 toxicity. Almost half (49%) of the patients requiredsteroids for the treatment of ICI-related toxicity, whilst 14% required treatment with an immunosuppressive agent beyondsteroids.Melanoma survivors had statistically significant lower HRQoL scores with regard to physical, social and physical rolefunctioning and general health compared with the normative population. There was a trend towards inferior scores in patientswith previous exposure to ipilimumab compared with those never exposed to ipilimumab.Conclusions Our results show that metastatic melanoma survivors have potentially experienced significant ICI-related toxicityand experience significant impairments in specific HRQoL domains. Future service planning is required to meet this population’sunique survivorship needs.Peer reviewe

P450 gene duplication and divergence led to the evolution of dual novel functions and insecticide cross-resistance in the brown planthopper Nilaparvata lugens

The sustainable control of many highly damaging insect crop pests and disease vectors is threatened by the evolution of insecticide resistance. As a consequence, strategies have been developed that aim to prevent or delay resistance development by rotating or mixing insecticides with different modes of action (MoA). However, these approaches can be compromised by the emergence of mechanisms that confer cross-resistance to insecticides with different MoA. Despite the applied importance of cross-resistance, its evolutionary underpinnings remain poorly understood. Here we reveal how a single gene evolved the capacity to detoxify two structurally unrelated insecticides with different MoA. Using transgenic approaches we demonstrate that a specific variant of the cytochrome P450 CYP6ER1, previously shown to confer resistance to the neonicotinoid imidacloprid in the brown planthopper, N. lugens, also confers cross-resistance to the phenylpyrazole ethiprole. CYP6ER1 is duplicated in resistant strains, and we show that while the acquisition of mutations in two encoded substrate recognition sites (SRS) of one of the parologs led to resistance to imidacloprid, a different set of mutations, outside of known SRS, are primarily responsible for resistance to ethiprole. Epistatic interactions between these mutations and their genetic background suggest that the evolution of dual resistance from the same gene copy involved functional trade-offs in respect to CYP6ER1 catalytic activity for ethiprole versus imidacloprid. Surprisingly, the mutations leading to ethiprole and imidacloprid resistance do not confer the ability to detoxify the insecticide fipronil, another phenylpyrazole with close structural similarity to ethiprole. Taken together, these findings reveal how gene duplication and divergence can lead to the evolution of multiple novel functions from a single gene. From an applied perspective they also demonstrate how cross-resistance to structurally unrelated insecticides can evolve, and illustrate the difficulty in predicting cross-resistance profiles mediated by metabolic mechanisms

Cerebellar Integrity in the Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis - Frontotemporal Dementia Continuum

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) are multisystem neurodegenerative disorders that manifest overlapping cognitive, neuropsychiatric and motor features. The cerebellum has long been known to be crucial for intact motor function although emerging evidence over the past decade has attributed cognitive and neuropsychiatric processes to this structure. The current study set out i) to establish the integrity of cerebellar subregions in the amyotrophic lateral sclerosis-behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia spectrum (ALS-bvFTD) and ii) determine whether specific cerebellar atrophy regions are associated with cognitive, neuropsychiatric and motor symptoms in the patients. Seventy-eight patients diagnosed with ALS, ALS-bvFTD, behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD), most without C9ORF72 gene abnormalities, and healthy controls were investigated. Participants underwent cognitive, neuropsychiatric and functional evaluation as well as structural imaging using voxel-based morphometry (VBM) to examine the grey matter subregions of the cerebellar lobules, vermis and crus. VBM analyses revealed: i) significant grey matter atrophy in the cerebellum across the whole ALS-bvFTD continuum; ii) atrophy predominantly of the superior cerebellum and crus in bvFTD patients, atrophy of the inferior cerebellum and vermis in ALS patients, while ALS-bvFTD patients had both patterns of atrophy. Post-hoc covariance analyses revealed that cognitive and neuropsychiatric symptoms were particularly associated with atrophy of the crus and superior lobule, while motor symptoms were more associated with atrophy of the inferior lobules. Taken together, these findings indicate an important role of the cerebellum in the ALS-bvFTD disease spectrum, with all three clinical phenotypes demonstrating specific patterns of subregional atrophy that associated with different symptomology

Angiostatin anti-angiogenesis requires IL-12: The innate immune system as a key target

© 2009 Albini et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licens

Quantifying the recent expansion of native invasive rush species in a UK upland environment

Rushes, such as soft rush (Juncus effusus L.), hard rush (Juncus inflexus L.) and compact rush (Juncus conglomeratus L.) have become problem species within upland grasslands across the UK and the coastal grasslands of western Norway. Indeed, being largely unpalatable to livestock and having a vigorous reproductive ecology means that they can rapidly come to dominate swards. However, rush dominance results in a reduction in grassland biodiversity and farm productivity. Anecdotal evidence from the UK suggests that rush cover within marginal upland grasslands has increased considerably in recent decades. Yet, there is currently no published evidence to support this observation. Here, we use recent and historical Google Earth imagery to measure changes in rush frequency over a 13-year period within four survey years: 2005, 2009, 2015 and 2018. During each survey year, we quantified rush presence or absence using a series of quadrats located within 300 upland grassland plots in the West Pennine Moors, UK. Data were analysed in two stages, first, by calculating mean rush frequencies per sample year using all the available plot-year combinations (the full dataset), and second by examining 25 differences in rush frequency using only the plots for which rush frequency data were available in every sample year (the continuous dataset). The full dataset indicated that rush frequency has increased by 82% between 2005 and 2018. Similarly, the continuous dataset suggested that rush frequency has increased by 174% over the same period, with the increases in frequency being statistically significant (P<0.05) between 2005-2018 and 2009-2018. We discuss the potential drivers of rush expansion in the West Pennine Moors, the ecological and agronomic implications of grassland rush infestations, and priorities for future research

Feeding the rural tourism strategy? Food and notions of place and identity

The humble rural cuisine has now been thrust at the forefront of economic development strategies. This conceptual paper is a contribution to a growing critical awareness of the operations of the food industry and helps to foster a critical understanding of how, if at all, local food and its associated culture can help sustain rural tourism particularly and rural communities generally. It is inspired by literature about the international political economy of food and the many experiences of local food development, and is aware of the contrast between the structure of the industry and the hopes associated with its practice on the ground. The paper thus argues that, beyond the glamour and hype, there are those who gain, as well as those who lose, from the current food fad. While it explains the causes of the contemporary craze with food, the paper also interrogates the naı¨ve expectations often placed in food as a motor of rural development, and as the panacea for struggling rural communities. The empirical data on which this chapter is based are drawn from 18 short chapters explaining the history of various “traditional dishes” from the islands of the broad North Atlantic that feature in a recent food publication.peer-reviewe