I Was Roofied At Work

I used to sling drinks at a notoriously sketchy bar in Campustown. In the six months I spent working there, I knew five people who were roofied—including myself. One dead winter weekend, I let two lady coworkers off early and made them drinks. At the end of the bar were a few of the older creepy skeezeball-types you find prowling the college bars in search of impressionable (read: drunk) tail. The girls went to dance and I almost always set any untended drinks behind the bar as good practice. ‘Almost’ being this night

Indoor Optical Wireless Receiver – Theory And Design

This paper presents a systematic approach to the design of receiver for indoor optical wireless communication. In particular, it is concerned with how one can properly chooses the front-end preamplifier and biasing circuitry for the photodetector. A comparison between differences types of amplifier, and bandwidth enhancement technique is also discussed. For most photodetector applications, large values of RL and CD would severely restrict bandwidth. It is shown that a proper front-end design incorporates a transimpedance preamplifier which tends to integrate the detector output. Such a design provides significant reduction in photodiode capacitance and increase bandwidth when compared to a design which does not integrate initially. Two novel techniques, using bandwidth adjustment for better service quality with a bootstrapped transimpedance amplifier and bootstrapped composite transimpedance amplifier is presented. A controllable capacitance is introduced at the output of the second stage of the amplifier. These technique permits a bandwidth adjustment from 52Hz to 233MHz for a capacitance range of 10uF to 1pF, while the composite amplifier bandwidth adjustment of the circuit can be controlled in the frequency range of 6MHz to 60MHz for a capacitance range of 50pF to 1nF

Tooling materials compatible with carbon fibre composites in a microwave environment

Although metals are the most commonly used tooling materials to cure composites, they do not provide optimal results in a microwave environment. Following a selection process based on the properties of the materials, an alternative tooling material in carbon fibre reinforced plastic (CFRP) was successfully utilised to cure CFRP panels in laboratory and industrial microwaves. The conductive carbon fibres in the tool facilitated the fast heat transfer across the part. Other tooling materials including a glass fibre cyanate ester prepreg and tooling board were trialled, although the latter exhibited damage during cure. These advantages demonstrate that the CFRP tool is a compatible material that can be used when microwave curing composites

JAK2V617F promotes replication fork stalling with disease-restricted impairment of the intra-S checkpoint response

Cancers result from the accumulation of genetic lesions, but the cellular consequences of driver mutations remain unclear, especially during the earliest stages of malignancy. The V617F mutation in the JAK2 non-receptor tyrosine kinase (JAK2V617F) is present as an early somatic event in most patients with myeloproliferative neoplasms (MPNs), and the study of these chronic myeloid malignancies provides an experimentally tractable approach to understanding early tumorigenesis. Introduction of exogenous JAK2V617F impairs replication fork progression and is associated with activation of the intra-S checkpoint, with both effects mediated by phosphatidylinositide 3-kinase (PI3K) signaling. Analysis of clonally derived JAK2V617F-positive erythroblasts from MPN patients also demonstrated impaired replication fork progression accompanied by increased levels of replication protein A (RPA)-containing foci. However, the associated intra-S checkpoint response was impaired in erythroblasts from polycythemia vera (PV) patients, but not in those from essential thrombocythemia (ET) patients. Moreover, inhibition of p53 in PV erythroblasts resulted in more gamma-H2Ax (γ-H2Ax)–marked double-stranded breaks compared with in like-treated ET erythroblasts, suggesting the defective intra-S checkpoint function seen in PV increases DNA damage in the context of attenuated p53 signaling. These results demonstrate oncogene-induced impairment of replication fork progression in primary cells from MPN patients, reveal unexpected disease-restricted differences in activation of the intra-S checkpoint, and have potential implications for the clonal evolution of malignancies

Cell and gene therapies at the forefront of innovative medical care: Implications for South Africa

The fields of cell and gene therapy are moving rapidly towards providing  innovative cures for incurable diseases. A current and highly topical  example is immunotherapies involving T-cells that express chimeric antigen receptors (CAR T-cells), which have shown promise in the treatment of leukaemia and lymphoma. These new medicines are indicative of the changes we can anticipate in the practice of medicine in the near future. Despite their promise, they pose challenges for introduction into the healthcare sector in South Africa (SA), including: (i) that they are  technologically demanding and their manufacture is resource intensive; (ii) that the regulatory system is underdeveloped and likely to be challenged by ethical, legal and social requirements that accompany these new therapies; and (iii) that costs are likely to be prohibitive, at least initially, and before economies of scale take effect. Investment should be made into finding novel and innovative ways to introduce these therapies into SA sooner rather than later to ensure that SA patients are not excluded from these exciting new opportunitie

Plant perfomance across latitude: the role of plasticity and local adaltation in aquatic plant

Geographic variation can lead to the evolution of different local varieties within a given species, therefore influencing its distribution and genetic structure. We investigated the contribution of plasticity and local adaptation to the performance of a common aquatic plant (Potamogeton pectinatus) in contrasting climates, using reciprocal transplants at three experimental sites across a latitudinal cline in Europe. Plants from 54 genets, originally collected from 14 populations situated within four climatic regions (sub- arctic, cold temperate, mild temperate, and mediterranean) were grown in three different localities within three of these regions (cold temperate, Nor way; mild temperate, The Netherlands; mediterranean, Spain). Tuber production was highest for the mild-temperate genets, irrespective of locality where the genets were grown. Selection coefficients indicated that populations at the European center of the species distribution perform better than all other populations, at all sites. However, marginal populations showed changes in life-histor y traits, such as compressed life cycles in the north and true perenniality in the south, that may allow them to perform better locally, at the limits of their distribution range. Our results thus suggest that local adaptation may overlap spatially with center–peripher y gra- dients in performance caused by genetic factors (such as genetic drift and inbreeding in range-marginal populations).Peer reviewe

Development of an optically pumped polarized deuterium target

The development of a polarized deuterium target for internal use at an electron storage ring is of great interest for fundamental studies in nuclear physics. In order to achieve the maximum allowable target thickness, 10/sup 14/ nuclei/cm/sup 2/, consistent with various constraints imposed by the storage ring environment, a flux of 4 x 10/sup 17/ polarized atom/s must be provided. This flux exceeds the capability of conventional atomic beam sources by an order of magnitude. We have been developing an alternative source based upon the spin-exchange optical pumping method in which the flux is limited only by laser power. 7 refs., 1 fig