Whodunnit? Do officers have the skills they need to answer that eternal question?

A qualitative, scoping review based largely on interviews with detectives in five police forces in England & Wales. A summary report on the first phase of a project. The review found that staff believe that to be effective, CID and PVP departments need either more staff or less work. Staff employed in those departments want less administration and bureaucracy surrounding their work. Investigators need lighter workloads if the quality of service to victims and communities is to improve. Investigators must have more time to devote to individual cases so that they can provide the excellent service that individuals, groups, and communities expect. Investigators want to feel valued and recognised for the work they do; largely, they do not measure recognition and value solely in financial terms. They also need more peer, mentor, and wellbeing support. Many want more time for professional development

Ranking models of transmembrane β-barrel proteins using Z-coordinate predictions

Motivation: Transmembrane β-barrels exist in the outer membrane of gram-negative bacteria as well as in chloroplast and mitochondria. They are often involved in transport processes and are promising antimicrobial drug targets. Structures of only a few β-barrel protein families are known. Therefore, a method that could automatically generate such models would be valuable. The symmetrical arrangement of the barrels suggests that an approach based on idealized geometries may be successful

Periodically Disturbing the Spatial Structure of Biofilms Can Affect the Production of an Essential Virulence Factor in Pseudomonas aeruginosa

Understanding the environmental factors that affect the production of virulence factors has major implications in evolution and medicine. While spatial structure is important in virulence factor production, observations of this relationship have occurred in undisturbed or continuously disturbed environments. However, natural environments are subject to periodic fluctuations, including changes in physical forces, which could alter the spatial structure of bacterial populations and impact virulence factor production. Using Pseudomonas aeruginosa PA14, we periodically applied a physical force to biofilms and examined production of pyoverdine. Intermediate frequencies of disturbance reduced the amount of pyoverdine produced compared to undisturbed or frequently disturbed conditions. To explore the generality of this finding, we examined how an intermediate disturbance frequency affected pyoverdine production in 21 different strains of P. aeruginosa. Periodic disturbance increased, decreased, or did not change the amount of pyoverdine produced relative to undisturbed populations. Mathematical modeling predicts that interactions between pyoverdine synthesis rate and biofilm density determine the amount of pyoverdine synthesized. When the pyoverdine synthesis rates are high, depletion of the biofilm due to disturbance reduces the accumulation of pyoverdine. At intermediate synthesis rates, production of pyoverdine increases during disturbance as bacteria dispersed into the planktonic state enjoy increased growth and pyoverdine production rates. At low synthesis rates, disturbance does not alter the amount of pyoverdine produced since disturbance-driven access to nutrients does not augment pyoverdine synthesis. Our results suggest that environmental conditions shape robustness in the production of virulence factors and may lead to novel approaches to treat infections

Fashioning a beautiful future?

Supporting workers and addressing labour exploitation in Leicester’s textile and garment industry

Wearable Technology: A Wellbeing Option for Serving Police Officers and Staff? A Comparison of Results of a Pilot Study with Firearms Officers and a Group of Mixed Officers and Staff

The high-stress nature of policing contributes to deterioration of officer health and wellbeing as well as high levels of absenteeism and attrition. Wearable technology (WT) has been identified as a potential tool that can help in improving officer health and wellbeing. This pilot study aimed to give initial insight into acceptability and engagement with WT amongst officers. The study also aimed to uncover any notable areas for exploration in future research within the domain of officer health and wellbeing. Two groups were observed in firearms officers and a mixed group of officers. Participants wore the WT for an extended period, completed a variety of health and wellbeing questionnaires and discussed their experience in focus groups. Firearms officers and mixed group officers displayed similar sleep efficiency, but firearms officers have worse sleep consistency and sleep performance. Firearms officers appear to have higher HRV and slightly lower resting heart rate. Both groups display reasonable acceptance for use of WT speaking favorably during the focus groups of how monitoring the data had improved their quality of life in terms of their understanding of sleep, wellbeing and how they had consequently completed lifestyle modification. WT offers some promise in managing officer health and wellbeing; studies with larger sample sizes are needed to confirm this

Monoclonal Antibodies to Meningococcal Factor H Binding Protein with Overlapping Epitopes and Discordant Functional Activity

Background: Meningococcal factor H binding protein (fHbp) is a promising vaccine candidate. Anti-fHbp antibodies can bind to meningococci and elicit complement-mediated bactericidal activity directly. The antibodies also can block binding of the human complement down-regulator, factor H (fH). Without bound fH, the organism would be expected to have increased susceptibility to bacteriolysis. Here we describe bactericidal activity of two anti-fHbp mAbs with overlapping epitopes in relation to their different effects on fH binding and bactericidal activity. Methods and Principal Findings: Both mAbs recognized prevalent fHbp sequence variants in variant group 1. Using yeast display and site-specific mutagenesis, binding of one of the mAbs (JAR 1, IgG3) to fHbp was eliminated by a single amino acid substitution, R204A, and was decreased by K143A but not by R204H or D142A. The JAR 1 epitope overlapped that of previously described mAb (mAb502, IgG2a) whose binding to fHbp was eliminated by R204A or R204H substitutions, and was decreased by D142A but not by K143A. Although JAR 1 and mAb502 appeared to have overlapping epitopes, only JAR 1 inhibited binding of fH to fHbp and had human complement-mediated bactericidal activity. mAb502 enhanced fH binding and lacked human complement-mediated bactericidal activity. To control for confounding effects of different mouse IgG subclasses on complement activation, we created chimeric mAbs in which the mouse mAb502 or JAR 1 paratopes were paired with human IgG1 constant regions. While both chimeric mAbs showed similar binding to fHbp, only JAR 1, whic

Meningococcal Factor H Binding Proteins in Epidemic Strains from Africa: Implications for Vaccine Development

Epidemics of meningococcal meningitis are common in sub-Saharan Africa. Most are caused by encapsulated serogroup A strains, which rarely cause disease in industrialized countries. A serogroup A polysaccharide protein conjugate vaccine recently was introduced in some countries in sub-Saharan Africa. The antibodies induced, however, may allow replacement of serogroup A strains with serogroup W-135 or X strains, which also cause epidemics in this region. Protein antigens, such as factor H binding protein (fHbp), are promising for prevention of meningococcal serogroup B disease. These proteins also are present in strains with other capsular serogroups. Here we report investigation of the potential of fHbp vaccines for prevention of disease caused by serogroup A, W-135 and X strains from Africa. Four fHbp amino acid sequence variants accounted for 81% of the 106 African isolates studied. While there was little cross-protective activity by antibodies elicited in mice by recombinant fHbp vaccines from each of the four sequence variants, a prototype native outer membrane vesicle (NOMV) vaccine from a mutant with over-expressed fHbp elicited antibodies with broad protective activity. A NOMV vaccine has the potential to supplement coverage by the group A conjugate vaccine and help prevent emergence of disease caused by non-serogroup A strains

PDBe: Protein Data Bank in Europe

The Protein Data Bank in Europe (PDBe) (http://www.ebi.ac.uk/pdbe/) is actively working with its Worldwide Protein Data Bank partners to enhance the quality and consistency of the international archive of bio-macromolecular structure data, the Protein Data Bank (PDB). PDBe also works closely with its collaborators at the European Bioinformatics Institute and the scientific community around the world to enhance its databases and services by adding curated and actively maintained derived data to the existing structural data in the PDB. We have developed a new database infrastructure based on the remediated PDB archive data and a specially designed database for storing information on interactions between proteins and bound molecules. The group has developed new services that allow users to carry out simple textual queries or more complex 3D structure-based queries. The newly designed ‘PDBeView Atlas pages’ provide an overview of an individual PDB entry in a user-friendly layout and serve as a starting point to further explore the information available in the PDBe database. PDBe’s active involvement with the X-ray crystallography, Nuclear Magnetic Resonance spectroscopy and cryo-Electron Microscopy communities have resulted in improved tools for structure deposition and analysis

Design and implementation of a generalized laboratory data model

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Investigators in the biological sciences continue to exploit laboratory automation methods and have dramatically increased the rates at which they can generate data. In many environments, the methods themselves also evolve in a rapid and fluid manner. These observations point to the importance of robust information management systems in the modern laboratory. Designing and implementing such systems is non-trivial and it appears that in many cases a database project ultimately proves unserviceable.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We describe a general modeling framework for laboratory data and its implementation as an information management system. The model utilizes several abstraction techniques, focusing especially on the concepts of inheritance and meta-data. Traditional approaches commingle event-oriented data with regular entity data in <it>ad hoc </it>ways. Instead, we define distinct regular entity and event schemas, but fully integrate these via a standardized interface. The design allows straightforward definition of a "processing pipeline" as a sequence of events, obviating the need for separate workflow management systems. A layer above the event-oriented schema integrates events into a workflow by defining "processing directives", which act as automated project managers of items in the system. Directives can be added or modified in an almost trivial fashion, i.e., without the need for schema modification or re-certification of applications. Association between regular entities and events is managed via simple "many-to-many" relationships. We describe the programming interface, as well as techniques for handling input/output, process control, and state transitions.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The implementation described here has served as the Washington University Genome Sequencing Center's primary information system for several years. It handles all transactions underlying a throughput rate of about 9 million sequencing reactions of various kinds per month and has handily weathered a number of major pipeline reconfigurations. The basic data model can be readily adapted to other high-volume processing environments.</p

Identifying Cognate Binding Pairs among a Large Set of Paralogs: The Case of PE/PPE Proteins of Mycobacterium tuberculosis

We consider the problem of how to detect cognate pairs of proteins that bind when each belongs to a large family of paralogs. To illustrate the problem, we have undertaken a genomewide analysis of interactions of members of the PE and PPE protein families of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Our computational method uses structural information, operon organization, and protein coevolution to infer the interaction of PE and PPE proteins. Some 289 PE/PPE complexes were predicted out of a possible 5,590 PE/PPE pairs genomewide. Thirty-five of these predicted complexes were also found to have correlated mRNA expression, providing additional evidence for these interactions. We show that our method is applicable to other protein families, by analyzing interactions of the Esx family of proteins. Our resulting set of predictions is a starting point for genomewide experimental interaction screens of the PE and PPE families, and our method may be generally useful for detecting interactions of proteins within families having many paralogs