Technology Assessment and Experimentation Plan

An assessment is given of the critical and enhancing technologies necessary to build the basic personal terminal (BPT), the supplier, and the Network Management Center (NMC). The experimentation plan for testing the Personal Access Satellite System (PASS) utilizing ACTS is detailed. The experiment plan gives a list of candidate experiments and describes the proposed experimental set-up. ACTS will be used in the Microwave Switch Matrix (MSM) mode. The Microwave Switch Matrix - Link Evaluation Terminal (MSM-LET) at the NASA Lewis Research Center will serve as the microwave front-end for the PASS supplier and the NMC. Link budgets are given for both the forward and return links between the supplier and the basic personal terminal. The equipment required for the experiments is identified

CLIP/CETL Fellowship Report 2006/7 : Enhancing practice - to investigate an appropriate strategy for using Clip Cetl enhanced textile facilities to improve the student learning experience

To investigate and identify an appropriate strategy to inform the planning of course teams for the use of LCF’s enhanced textile facility at Lime Grove. The project aimed to design material to underpin workshop based specialist skills and establish a system to encourage the creative use of new equipment. The work aimed to enrich the student learning experience and enable students’ learning to be organised on a more flexible basis by supporting independent learning

Entry Denied: Revolution in North Africa and the Continued Centrality of Migration to European Responses

The recent revolutions in Tunisia and Libya have brought the issue of trans-Mediterranean migration to the forefront of popular discussions about Europe’s relationship with its immediate neighbors in the Middle East and North Africa. It was on the back of hyperbolic and cataclysmic predictions of Europe being “swamped” by migrants that the case for intervention in Libya was partly made and following this, a number of EU member states have agreed on a temporary suspension of the Schengen Agreement

Did Labour fundamentally change Britain in its thirteen years of power? Hardly at all

The ‘new Labour’ governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown altered the societal landscape in the UK. But did they fundamentally change Britain? In a new book, David Walker and Polly Toynbee take an in-depth and balanced look at the achievements of the Labour project. There were some policy successes, and the authors give Labour 6 out of 10 for these. Yet the party lacked an overall vision or narrative, and so squandered its opportunity to push the UK in a more social democratic directio

In vitro reconstitution of Bluetongue virus infectious cores.

Bluetongue virus (BTV) is a vector-borne, nonenveloped icosahedral particle that is organized in two capsids, an outer capsid of two proteins, VP2 and VP5, and an inner capsid (or core) composed of two major proteins, VP7 and VP3, in two layers. The VP3 layer (subcore) encloses viral transcription complex (VP1 polymerase, VP4 capping enzyme, VP6 helicase) and a 10-segmented double-stranded (dsRNA) genome. Although much is known about the BTV capsids, the order of the core assembly and the mechanism of genome packaging remain unclear. Here, we established a cell-free system to reconstitute subcore and core structures with the proteins and ssRNAs, demonstrating that reconstituted cores are infectious in insect cells. Furthermore, we showed that the BTV ssRNAs are essential to drive the assembly reaction and that there is a distinct order of internal protein recruitment during the assembly process. The in vitro engineering of infectious BTV cores is unique for any member of the Reoviridae and will facilitate future studies of RNA-protein interactions during BTV core assembly