Migration of NH Veterinary Diagnostic Lab VADDS Accounting System from COLSA Server VETLAB1 to UNH IT Services Central Virtual Server

The New Hampshire Veterinary Diagnostic Lab (NHVDL) has hosted their accounting system called VADDS, supplied by their vendor, ATC, on an out of date system in the UNH Research Computing Data Center located in Morse Hall for six plus years. Microsoft had recently announced that direct support for the both the hardware and software would cease in June 2015. Of the replacement options considered, the one that looked to provide the most benefit for the NHVDL operations from a cost and performance stand point was creating a new virtual server environment hosted by UNH IT Services in the central UNH Data Center at One Leavitt Lane. My role as project manager derived from my position as senior IT staff person in the College of Life Sciences and Agriculture, home organization for the NHVDL

What Tc Tells

Superconductivity has continued to be a fascinating phenomenon ever since its discovery in 1911. The magnitude of the transition temperature, Tc, provides valuable insight into the underlying physics. Here we provide select examples of the extensive research that has been done towards understanding Tc, and some cases where further investigation is called for. We believe that searching for new and enhanced Tc's remains a fertile frontier.Comment: Accepted for publication in Physica C, Special Issue on Superconducting Material

Eco-Apocalypse: Environmentalism, Political Alienation and Therapeutic Agency

If apocalypse is an event the script of which is already written, in what sense do human beings participate in apocalypse? For some analysts, today’s representations of apocalypse are simply the latest version of a “pervasive sense of doom” which has characterized human civilization for millennia. For others, in the context of current environmental problems, a sense of impending disaster expresses a scientifically-supported assessment of today’s “risk society.” Giddens argues that “Doomsday is no longer a religious concept, a day of spiritual reckoning, but a possibility imminent in our society and economy.”3 Our argument is that the current fascination with the end of the world is best understood neither as a near-timeless feature of human culture nor as a reasoned response to objective environmental problems. Rather, it is driven by unconscious fantasy; the symbolic expression of an alienation from political subjectivity, characteristic of a historically specific period in the life of post-Cold War societies. With the script of the real apocalypse already written through scientific projections, how does environmental discourse and popular culture represent people? We will first consider recent critiques of the use of apocalypticism in environmental discourse; then examine elite uses of eco-apocalypse in political discourse; and finally discuss two films which envisage a world destroyed by catastrophic climate change: The Day After Tomorrow (USA, 2004) and The Age of Stupid (UK, 2009)

An Investigation of the Reactivity and Mutagenicity of Alkyl N-acyloxybenzohydroxamates

A new class of relatively stable compounds, alkyl N-acyloxybenzohydroxamates, were synthesised and found to he excellent sources of alkoxy stabilised nitrenium ions under acidic conditions. Under basic conditions the alkyl N acyloxybenzohydroxamates are rapidly consumed in bimolecular reactions. All precursors were determined to he mutagenic. In aqueous acetonitrile, butyl N-acetoxybenzohydroxamate decomposes via an AA11 mechanism to an N-acyl-N-hutoxynitrenium ion and the progress of the reaction was monitored by ¹H NMR across the temperature range 298-338K. The acid-catalysed solvolysis was repeated with a number of electron-donating and electron-withdrawing Para substituents and the Arrhenius data was obtained, which determined that nitrenium ion formation proceeds with positive entropy of activation and negative heat of enthalpy. Analysis of the Hammett plot revealed an excellent a+ relationship with moderate slope that reflected the separation between the ring and the developing positive charge of the nitrenium ion

Molecular Interactions Between Sex Hormone-Binding Globulin and Nonsteroidal Ligands That Enhance Androgen Activity

Sex hormone-binding globulin (SHBG) determines the equilibrium between free and protein-bound androgens and estrogens in the blood and regulates their access to target tissues. Using crystallographic approaches and radiolabeled competitive binding-capacity assays, we report here how two non-steroidal compounds bind to human SHBG, and how they influence androgen activity in cell culture. We found that one of these compounds, (-)3,4-divanillyltetrahydrofuran (DVT), present in stinging nettle root extracts and used as a nutraceutical, binds SHBG with relatively low affinity. By contrast a, synthetic compound, 3-(1H-imidazol-1-ylmethyl)-2phenyl-1H-indole (IPI), bound SHBG with an affinity similar to that of testosterone and estradiol. Crystal structures of SHBG in complex with DVT or IPI at 1.71-1.80 Å resolutions revealed their unique orientations in the SHBG ligand-binding pocket and suggested opportunities for the design of other non-steroidal ligands of SHBG. As observed for estradiol but not testosterone, IPI binding to SHBG was reduced by ~20 fold in the presence of zinc, whereas DVT binding was almost completely lost. Estradiol dependent fibulin-2 interactions with SHBG similarly occurred for IPI-bound SHBG, but not with DVT-bound SHBG. Both DVT and IPI increased the activity of testosterone in a cell culture androgen reporter system by competitively displacing testosterone from SHBG. These findings indicate how non-steroidal ligands of SHBG maybe designed to modulate the bioavailability of sex steroids.Peer reviewe

Characterization and comparison of recombinant full-length ursine and human sex hormone-binding globulin

Sex hormone‐binding globulin (SHBG) regulates the bioavailability of sex steroid hormones in the blood. Levels of SHBG increase markedly in brown bears (Ursus arctos) during hibernation, suggesting that a key regulatory role of this protein is to quench sex steroid bioavailability in hibernation physiology. To enable characterization of ursine SHBG and a cross species comparison, we established an insect cell‐based expression system for recombinant full‐length ursine and human SHBG. Compared with human SHBG, we observed markedly lower secretion levels of ursine SHBG, resulting in a 10‐fold difference in purified protein yield. Both human and ursine recombinant SHBG appeared as dimeric proteins in solution, with a single unfolding temperature of ~ 58 °C. The thermal stability of ursine and human SHBG increased 5.4 and 9.5 °C, respectively, in the presence of dihydrotestosterone (DHT), suggesting a difference in affinity. The dissociation constants for [(3)H]DHT were determined to 0.21 ± 0.04 nm for human and 1.32 ± 0.10 nm for ursine SHBG, confirming a lower affinity of ursine SHBG. A similarly reduced affinity, determined from competitive steroid binding, was observed for most steroids. Overall, we found that ursine SHBG had similar characteristics to human SHBG, specifically, being a homodimeric glycoprotein capable of binding steroids with high affinity. Therefore, ursine SHBG likely has similar biological functions to those known for human SHBG. The determined properties of ursine SHBG will contribute to elucidating its potential regulatory role in hibernation physiology