An infectious recombinant foot-and-mouth disease virus expressing a fluorescent marker protein

Foot-and-mouth disease virus (FMDV) is one of the most extensively studied animal pathogens because it remains a major threat to livestock economies worldwide. However, the dynamics of FMDV infection are still poorly understood. The application of reverse genetics provides the opportunity to generate molecular tools to further dissect the FMDV life cycle. Here, we have used reverse genetics to determine the capsid packaging limitations for a selected insertion site in the FMDV genome. We show that exogenous RNA up to a defined length can be stably introduced into the FMDV genome, whereas larger insertions are excised by recombination events. This led us to construct a recombinant FMDV expressing the fluorescent marker protein, termed iLOV. Characterization of infectious iLOV-FMDV showed the virus has a plaque morphology and rate of growth similar to the parental virus. In addition, we show that cells infected with iLOV-FMDV are easily differentiated by flow cytometry using the inherent fluorescence of iLOV and that cells infected with iLOV-FMDV can be monitored in real-time with fluorescence microscopy. iLOV-FMDV therefore offers a unique tool to characterize FMDV infection in vitro, and its applications for in vivo studies are discussed

Stretched to the Limit: Organizations for Short Statured People and the Management of Stigma.

While there has been a significant amount of work in the sociological literature looking at how short stature has become medicalized, virtually no research has been conducted as a comparison of the organizations that deal with issues of short stature. This dissertation examines how three such organizations mobilize around issues of stigma, normalcy, and difference. The data were collected through ethnographic fieldwork and 32 in-depth interviews with organization leaders and rank-and-file members of the following organizations: Little People of America (LPA), the MAGIC Foundation, and the National Organization of Short Statured Adults (NOSSA). My dissertation addresses the following research questions: 1) How and why do parents and persons considered short (or different) mobilize? 2) How do these movements frame their stance toward short stature, and how does this framing reflect their ideas about difference, normalcy, and stigma? 3) How do these movements frame their stance toward technologies affecting short people? 4) What strategies and tactics do the organizations use in articulating and publicizing their stance on the Internet, in the mass media, and to the general public? 5) What causes some short statured organizations to succeed while others ultimately fail? Utilizing previous research on social movements, I find that each organization has its own unique way of viewing short stature and subsequently how short stature should be dealt with, both within the organization and also within the general public; therefore, there is a chapter devoted to each organization. Using identity politics, assimilation, and normalization, respectively, each organization not only reacts to short stature differently, but also to the technologies that exist to mitigate the effects that short stature has, on both the individual and society-at-large. Drawing on previous work, we see how different types of social movement actors (e.g. parents, adult activists, etc.) mobilize around issues of difference, normalcy, and stigma, and whether a collective identity is created. Finally, through the dissolution of one of the three organizations during the course of this research, I directly compare the three organizations, pointing to characteristics that helped two succeed, while the other failed.PHDSociologyUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/102489/1/lesliero_1.pd

Hyper-velocity impact test and simulation of a double-wall shield concept for the Wide Field Monitor aboard LOFT

The space mission LOFT (Large Observatory For X-ray Timing) was selected in 2011 by ESA as one of the candidates for the M3 launch opportunity. LOFT is equipped with two instruments, the Large Area Detector (LAD) and the Wide Field Monitor (WFM), based on Silicon Drift Detectors (SDDs). In orbit, they would be exposed to hyper-velocity impacts by environmental dust particles, which might alter the surface properties of the SDDs. In order to assess the risk posed by these events, we performed simulations in ESABASE2 and laboratory tests. Tests on SDD prototypes aimed at verifying to what extent the structural damages produced by impacts affect the SDD functionality have been performed at the Van de Graaff dust accelerator at the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics (MPIK) in Heidelberg. For the WFM, where we expect a rate of risky impacts notably higher than for the LAD, we designed, simulated and successfully tested at the plasma accelerator at the Technical University in Munich (TUM) a double-wall shielding configuration based on thin foils of Kapton and Polypropylene. In this paper we summarize all the assessment, focussing on the experimental test campaign at TUM.Comment: Proc. SPIE 9144, Space Telescopes and Instrumentation 2014: Ultraviolet to Gamma Ray, 91446

New Sensitivity to Solar WIMP Annihilation using Low-Energy Neutrinos

Dark matter particles captured by the Sun through scattering may annihilate and produce neutrinos, which escape. Current searches are for the few high-energy neutrinos produced in the prompt decays of some final states. We show that interactions in the solar medium lead to a large number of pions for nearly all final states. Positive pions and muons decay at rest, producing low-energy neutrinos with known spectra, including nuebar through neutrino mixing. We demonstrate that Super-Kamiokande can thereby provide a new probe of the spin-dependent WIMP-proton cross section. Compared to other methods, the sensitivity is competitive and the uncertainties are complementary.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure

Digital Fairness for Consumers

The New Digital Fairness (NDF) project is a research and advocacy initiative launched by BEUC with support from the Adessium Foundation, seeking to address the challenges and potential harms caused to consumers, citizens and societies by the use of new technologies and business models in today’s digital economy. The present report arrives in direct succession of the EU Consumer Protection 2.0 (EUCP2.0) project and builds on the conceptual framework developed at that stage of the research, particularly in regard to the disempowerment of consumers due to asymmetries of knowledge and power, new categories of consumer vulnerability caused and aggravated by algorithmic environments as well as omnipresent surveillance and behavioural personalisation. This work takes the analysis further, identifying systemic processes gradually weakening the position of consumers in the digitalised markets. It also shows the way forward, by proposing a regulatory framework that would strengthen and safeguard consumers and provide a digital market that is safe and fair to them by design and by default. The broad applicability and technological neutrality of horizontal consumer law render it a fitting vehicle for protecting the needs and safeguarding the rights of modern-day digital consumers. In the light of the ongoing, EU ‘digital fairness’ fitness check assessment of consumer law, this work proposes specific solutions and recommendations that could form the backbone of EU’s regulatory response to the age of digital asymmetries that should be the Digital Fairness Act. This publication constitutes independent research that was commissioned by BEUC, the European Consumer Organisationpean Consumer Organisatio

Evolution of surface velocities and ice discharge of Larsen B outlet glaciers from 1995 to 2013

We use repeat-pass SAR data to produce detailed maps of surface motion covering the glaciers draining into the former Larsen B ice shelf, Antarctic Peninsula, for different epochs between 1995 and 2013. We combine the velocity maps with estimates of ice thickness to analyze fluctuations of ice discharge. The collapse of the central and northern sections of the ice shelf in 2002 led to a near-immediate acceleration of tributary glaciers as well as of the remnant ice shelf in Scar Inlet. Velocities of the glaciers discharging directly into the ocean remain to date well above the velocities of the pre-collapse period. The response of individual glaciers differs and velocities show significant temporal fluctuations, implying major variations in ice discharge and mass balance as well. Due to reduced velocity and ice thickness the ice discharge of Crane Glacier decreased from 5.02 Gt a−1 in 2007 to 1.72 Gt a−1 in 2013, whereas Hektoria and Green glaciers continue to show large temporal fluctuations in response to successive stages of frontal retreat. The velocity on Scar Inlet ice shelf increased two- to three fold since 1995, with the largest increase in the first years after the break-up of the main section of Larsen B. Flask and Leppard glaciers, the largest tributaries to Scar Inlet ice shelf, accelerated. In 2013 their discharge was 38% and 46%, higher than in 1995