The Logic of Peace

Jonathan Schell’s The Unconquerable World points the way out of the devastation of the twentieth century toward another, more peaceful path. And his investigations into the great nonviolent events of modern times — from Gandhi’s independence movement in India to the explosion of civic activity that brought about the surprising collapse of the Soviet Union — suggest foundations of an entirely new kind on which to construct an enduring peace. As Schell makes clear, all-out war, with its risk of human extinction, must cease to play the role of final arbiter. “The Logic of Peace,” printed here, is the final chapter of Schell’s book

Ballistic transport in graphene antidot lattices

Graphene samples can have a very high carrier mobility if influences from the substrate and the environment are minimized. Embedding a graphene sheet into a heterostructure with hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) on both sides was shown to be a particularly efficient way of achieving a high bulk mobility. Nanopatterning graphene can add extra damage and drastically reduce sample mobility by edge disorder. Preparing etched graphene nanostructures on top of an hBN substrate instead of SiO2 is no remedy, as transport characteristics are still dominated by edge roughness. Here we show that etching fully encapsulated graphene on the nanoscale is more gentle and the high mobility can be preserved. To this end, we prepared graphene antidot lattices where we observe magnetotransport features stemming from ballistic transport. Due to the short lattice period in our samples we can also explore the boundary between the classical and the quantum transport regime

A study of detecting child pornography on smart phone

© Springer International Publishing AG 2018. Child Pornography is an increasingly visible rising cybercrime in the world today. Over the past decade, with rapid growth in smart phone usage, readily available free Cloud Computing storage, and various mobile communication apps, child pornographers have found a convenient and reliable mobile platform for instantly sharing pictures or videos of children being sexually abused. Within this new paradigm, law enforcement officers are finding that detecting, gathering, and processing evidence for the prosecution of child pornographers is becoming increasingly challenging. Deep learning is a machine learning method that models high-level abstractions in data and extracts hierarchical representations of data by using a deep graph with multiple processing layers. This paper presents a conceptual model of deep learning approach for detecting child pornography within the new paradigm by using log analysis, file name analysis and cell site analysis which investigate text logs of events that have happened in the smart phone at the scene of the crime using physical and logical acquisition to assists law enforcement officers in gathering and processing child pornography evidence for prosecution. In addition, this paper shows an illustrative example of logical and physical acquisition on smart phones using forensics tools

The War on Terror

Presents comments (from the EPIIC Symposium at Tufts University, February 2004) concerning the war on terror; concern on the problem about terrorism; elaboration on the claim that the world is not in a global war on terror; and problems of the use and abuse of the word terrorism

Formation of lower bainite in a high carbon steel – an in-situ synchrotron XRD study

The microstructural evolution of and simultaneous dimensional changes in high-carbonSAE 52100 bearing steel were monitored continuously during austempering for 120 min atselected temperatures in the range of 210 C-270 C, and also during its subsequenttempering to 340 C for an additional 120 min, via high-energy X-ray diffraction in real timeand in-situ dilatometry. The austenite-to-bainitic ferrite transformation induces lattice defectsand internal lattice stresses that increase with austempering time and at lower austemperingtemperatures. These changes are evidenced by the increase in the full-width halfmaximumof the relevant reflections in X-ray diffraction. The lattice parameter of bainiticferrite takes its highest value during the early stages of austempering, and then graduallydecreases as the transformation progresses. This observation points to an initial state ofcarbon supersaturation in the ferritic lattice that is likely reducing due to carbon segregationclose to dislocations, fine carbide precipitation within the bainitic ferrite, and carbon partitioninginto the surrounding austenite. The carbon partitioning into austenite is evidencedin particular at the higher austempering temperatures of 240 C and 270 C, at which there isa noticeable increase in the lattice parameter of the remaining austenite at longer times. Thedimensions of the bearing steel specimens are governed by the volume change due to theformation of bainitic ferrite during austempering and by the relaxation of its lattice distortionduring tempering at 340 C in the absence of further phase transformation

Disruption of Toxoplasma gondii Parasitophorous Vacuoles by the Mouse p47-Resistance GTPases

The p47 GTPases are essential for interferon-γ-induced cell-autonomous immunity against the protozoan parasite, Toxoplasma gondii, in mice, but the mechanism of resistance is poorly understood. We show that the p47 GTPases, including IIGP1, accumulate at vacuoles containing T. gondii. The accumulation is GTP-dependent and requires live parasites. Vacuolar IIGP1 accumulations undergo a maturation-like process accompanied by vesiculation of the parasitophorous vacuole membrane. This culminates in disruption of the parasitophorous vacuole and finally of the parasite itself. Over-expression of IIGP1 leads to accelerated vacuolar disruption whereas a dominant negative form of IIGP1 interferes with interferon-γ-mediated killing of intracellular parasites. Targeted deletion of the IIGP1 gene results in partial loss of the IFN-γ-mediated T. gondii growth restriction in mouse astrocytes

Comparison of granulocyte colony-stimulating factor (G-CSF)--mobilized peripheral blood progenitor cells and G-CSF--stimulated bone marrow as a source of stem cells in HLA-matched sibling transplantation

AbstractHLA-identical bone marrow or stem cell transplantation from a sibling is the preferred treatment for patients with chronic myelogenous leukemia, bone marrow failure syndromes, relapsed acute leukemia, and specific inborn errors of metabolism. Several groups have shown that granulocyte colony-stimulating factor (G-CSF)--mobilized peripheral blood progenitor cells (PBPCs) obtained from HLA-matched siblings are effective in reconstitution of marrow function after marrow ablative conditioning therapy. To evaluate whether G-CSF treatment before bone marrow harvest leads to enhanced recovery of PBPC counts and recovery from limited graft-versus-host disease (GVHD), we assessed the outcome of a sequential cohort of patients treated identically and then given either G-CSF--mobilized PBPCs or G-CSF--stimulated bone marrow from HLA-identical siblings. We show that the time to neutrophil engraftment is identical in the 2 cohorts, whereas platelet engraftment is earlier with the use of PBPCs. The incidence of acute GVHD was decreased, and that of chronic GVHD significantly decreased, in the group receiving bone marrow. Overall survival was not different between the 2 groups. Thus, G-CSF--stimulated bone marrow offers a source of stem cells that allows for early neutrophil engraftment with a decreased risk of GVHD.Biol Blood Marrow Transplant 2000;6(4A):434-40

RARE-Bestpractices: a platform for sharing best practices for the management of rare diseases

No abstract available

RARE-Bestpractices: a platform for sharing best practices for the management of rare diseases

No abstract available

Age, Disease Severity and Ethnicity Influence Humoral Responses in a Multi-Ethnic COVID-19 Cohort

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected all individuals across the globe in some way. Despite large numbers of reported seroprevalence studies, there remains a limited understanding of how the magnitude and epitope utilization of the humoral immune response to SARS-CoV-2 viral anti-gens varies within populations following natural infection. Here, we designed a quantitative, multi-epitope protein microarray comprising various nucleocapsid protein structural motifs, including two structural domains and three intrinsically disordered regions. Quantitative data from the microarray provided complete differentiation between cases and pre-pandemic controls (100% sensitivity and specificity) in a case-control cohort (n = 100). We then assessed the influence of disease severity, age, and ethnicity on the strength and breadth of the humoral response in a multi-ethnic cohort (n = 138). As expected, patients with severe disease showed significantly higher antibody titers and interestingly also had significantly broader epitope coverage. A significant increase in antibody titer and epitope coverage was observed with increasing age, in both mild and severe disease, which is promising for vaccine efficacy in older individuals. Additionally, we observed significant differences in the breadth and strength of the humoral immune response in relation to ethnicity, which may reflect differences in genetic and lifestyle factors. Furthermore, our data enabled localization of the immuno-dominant epitope to the C-terminal structural domain of the viral nucleocapsid protein in two independent cohorts. Overall, we have designed, validated, and tested an advanced serological assay that enables accurate quantitation of the humoral response post natural infection and that has revealed unexpected differences in the magnitude and epitope utilization within a population