Wilayat al-Qawkaz - The Islamic State in the North Caucasus. Frames, Strategies and Credibility of Radical Islamist Propaganda Videos

The growing influence of the terror organization “Islamic State in Iraq and Syria” (ISIS) on Russian speaking communities has come to fruition in the North Caucasus. ISIS has not only managed to attract individuals from the North Caucasus to join the jihad in Syria and Iraq, but further to establish the regional branch “Wilayat al-Qawkaz”. Now, as a major international event in Russia 2018, the FIFA World Cup poses an attractive target for ISIS that has been threatened through ISIS’s online channels. In order to reach different target groups, ISIS has produced several high-quality propaganda videos. According to Benford and Snow (2000), social movements perceive social phenomena differently and communicate their interpretation of reality by using frames. To sustain or increase the number of followers, ISIS spreads a narrative that identifies problems, proposes solutions and offers incentives to join. Benford and Snow describe this pattern as the three frame dimensions: diagnostic, prognostic and motivational frame. This research paper aims to highlight the strategies of ISIS's propaganda videos in the North Caucasus by identifying the main topics within the three frame dimensions. Based on the analysis of five propaganda videos, it points out the main frames addressing the oppression of Muslims as the problem, jihad as the solution, religious duty and rewards in this world and the next as the incentives. Considering that persuasion of propaganda is only effective with credible frames, it can be observed that this requires references to real events and more important the use of reputable speakers that can be religious or militant leaders, as well as ordinary but authentic jihadists. Taking the visual frame analysis into account, the visualization of violence and community plays a huge role to create credibility, offer identity and to claim relevance as a serious opponent

The meningococcal vaccine antigen GNA2091 is an analogue of YraP and plays key roles in outer membrane stability and virulence

K.L.S. was supported by the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) C. J. Martin Fellowship and Career Development Fellowship. A.F.H. was supported by a Marie Curie Fellowship (PIEF-GA-2012-328377). F.O., L.F., and S.B. were recipients of Novartis fellowships from the Ph.D. program of the University of Siena (Siena, Italy) and University of Bologna (Bologna, Italy), respectively.GNA2091 is one of the components of the 4-component meningococcal serogroup B vaccine (4CMenB) vaccine and is highly conserved in all meningococcal strains. However, its functional role has not been fully characterized. Here we show that nmb2091 is part of an operon and is cotranscribed with the nmb2089, nmb2090, and nmb2092 adjacent genes, and a similar but reduced operon arrangement is conserved in many other gram-negative bacteria. Deletion of the nmb2091 gene causes an aggregative phenotype with a mild defect in cell separation; differences in the outer membrane composition and phospholipid profile, in particular in the phosphoethanolamine levels; an increased level of outer membrane vesicles; and deregulation of the zinc-responsive genes such as znuD. Finally, the Δ2091 strain is attenuated with respect to the wild-type strain in competitive index experiments in the infant rat model of meningococcal infection. Altogether these data suggest that GNA2091 plays important roles in outer membrane architecture, biogenesis, homeostasis, and in meningococcal survival in vivo, and amodel for its role is discussed. These findings highlight the importance of GNA2091 as a vaccine component.PostprintPeer reviewe

Psychology and aggression

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/68264/2/10.1177_002200275900300301.pd

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Investigation on the Influence of Production and Incubation Temperature on the Growth, Virulence, Germination, and Conidial Size of <i>Metarhizium brunneum</i> for Granule Development

Important for the infection of an insect with an entomopathogenic fungus and its use as a plant protection agent are its growth, conidiation, germination, and virulence, which all depend on the environmental temperature. We investigated not only the effect of environmental temperature but also that of production temperature of the fungus. For this purpose, Metarhizium brunneum JKI-BI-1450 was produced and incubated at different temperatures, and the factors mentioned as well as conidial size were determined. The temperature at which the fungus was produced affects its subsequent growth and conidiation on granule formulation, the speed of germination, and the conidial width, but not its final germination or virulence. The growth and conidiation was at its highest when the fungus was produced at 25 °C, whereas when the germination was faster, the warmer the fungus was produced. The incubation temperature optimum of JKI-BI-1450 in relation to growth, speed of germination, and survival time was 25–30 °C and for conidiation 20–25 °C. Conidial length decreased with increasing incubation temperature. Although the fungus could not be adapted to unfavorable conditions by the production temperature, it was found that the quality of a biological control agent based on entomopathogenic fungi can be positively influenced by its production temperature

The meningococcal vaccine antigen GNA2091 is an analogue of YraP and plays key roles in outer membrane stability and virulence

GNA2091 is one of the components of the 4-component meningococcal serogroup B vaccine (4CMenB) vaccine and is highly conserved in all meningococcal strains. However, its functional role has not been fully characterized. Here we show that nmb2091 is part of an operon and is cotranscribed with the nmb2089, nmb2090, and nmb2092 adjacent genes, and a similar but reduced operon arrangement is conserved in many other gram-negative bacteria. Deletion of the nmb2091 gene causes an aggregative phenotype with a mild defect in cell separation; differences in the outer membrane composition and phospholipid profile, in particular in the phosphoethanolamine levels; an increased level of outer membrane vesicles; and deregulation of the zinc-responsive genes such as znuD. Finally, the ∆2091 strain is attenuated with respect to the wild-type strain in competitive index experiments in the infant rat model of meningococcal infection. Altogether these data suggest that GNA2091 plays important roles in outer membrane architecture, biogenesis, homeostasis, and in meningococcal survival in vivo, and a model for its role is discussed. These findings highlight the importance of GNA2091 as a vaccine component.—Seib, K. L., Haag, A. F., Oriente, F., Fantappiè, L., Borghi, S., Semchenko, E. A., Schulz, B. L., Ferlicca, F., Taddei, A. R., Giuliani, M. M., Pizza, M., Delany, I. The meningococcal vaccine antigen GNA2091 is an analogue of YraP and plays key roles in outer membrane stability and virulence. Neisseria meningitidis, a gram-negative β-proteobacteria, is a leading cause of bacterial sepsis and meningitis worldwide (1). The meningococcal protein Genome-derived Neisseria Antigen 2091 (GNA2091) was first described during the N. meningitidis serogroup B reverse vaccinology project as a lipoprotein predicted to be surface exposed in some meningococcal strains, which is able to induce passive protection in the adult mouse model of meningococcal bacteraemia (2). The function of GNA2091 is still unknown, but because of its protective properties, it was selected for inclusion in the 4-component meningococcal serogroup B vaccine (4CMenB; trade name Bexsero) (3). The 4CMenB vaccine is widely licensed and used to protect against invasive meningococcal disease from MenB and has also been introduced in the United Kingdom for mass vaccination of infants (4). 4CMenB contains 3 recombinant proteins [factor H binding protein (fHbp), Neisseria heparin binding antigen (NHBA), and Neisserial adhesin A] and outer membrane vesicles (OMVs) derived from New Zealand strain NZ 98/254 (2, 5). The immunogenicity and stability of the recombinant antigens was optimized by generating protein-protein fusions of fHbp-GNA2091 and NHBA-GNA1030, which induce higher serum bactericidal activity titers than those induced by the individual antigens alone (2). fHbp, Neisserial adhesin A, and NHBA have been extensively characterized and shown to be involved in meningococcal virulence (6–11). The accessory protein GNA1030 has recently been characterized as a Neisseria ubiquinone binding protein (NUbp) (12). However, the role of GNA2091 has not yet been characterized in detail. GNA2091 has been shown to be localized at the periplasmic side of the outer membrane, where it is proposed to be required for the efficient assembly of a subset of outer membrane proteins (OMPs), including porin (Por)A, PorB, pili associated protein Q (PilQ), and the β-barrel assembly machinery (Bam) complex, with accumulation of misassembled monomeric proteins seen in a gna2091 mutant strain (13). The gna2091 mutant is also sensitive to detergent stress, indicating compromised membrane integrity (14). Here we further characterize the expression and functional role of GNA2091 in vitro and in the in vivo infant rat model of meningococcal bacteraemia

The meningococcal vaccine antigen GNA2091 is an analogue of YraP and plays key roles in outer membrane stability and virulence

GNA2091 is one of the components of the 4-component meningococcal serogroup B vaccine (4CMenB) vaccine and is highly conserved in all meningococcal strains. However, its functional role has not been fully characterized. Here we show that nmb2091 is part of an operon and is cotranscribed with the nmb2089, nmb2090, and nmb2092 adjacent genes, and a similar but reduced operon arrangement is conserved in many other gram-negative bacteria. Deletion of the nmb2091 gene causes an aggregative phenotype with a mild defect in cell separation; differences in the outer membrane composition and phospholipid profile, in particular in the phosphoethanolamine levels; an increased level of outer membrane vesicles; and deregulation of the zinc-responsive genes such as znuD. Finally, the Δ2091 strain is attenuated with respect to the wild-type strain in competitive index experiments in the infant rat model of meningococcal infection. Altogether these data suggest that GNA2091 plays important roles in outer membrane architecture, biogenesis, homeostasis, and in meningococcal survival in vivo, and amodel for its role is discussed. These findings highlight the importance of GNA2091 as a vaccine component

Multicentre double-blind randomised placebo-controlled trial evaluating the efficacy of the meningococcal B vaccine, 4CMenB (Bexsero), against Neisseria gonorrhoeae infection in men who have sex with men: the GoGoVax study protocol

Introduction Gonorrhoea, the sexually transmissible infection caused by Neisseria gonorrhoeae, has a substantial impact on sexual and reproductive health globally with an estimated 82 million new infections each year worldwide. N. gonorrhoeae antimicrobial resistance continues to escalate, and disease control is largely reliant on effective therapy as there is no proven effective gonococcal vaccine available. However, there is increasing evidence from observational cohort studies that the serogroup B meningococcal vaccine four-component meningitis B vaccine (4CMenB) (Bexsero), licensed to prevent invasive disease caused by Neisseria meningitidis, may provide cross-protection against the closely related bacterium N. gonorrhoeae. This study will evaluate the efficacy of 4CMenB against N. gonorrhoeae infection in men (cis and trans), transwomen and non-binary people who have sex with men (hereafter referred to as GBM+).Methods and analysis This is a double-blind, randomised placebo-controlled trial in GBM+, either HIV-negative on pre-exposure prophylaxis against HIV or living with HIV (CD4 count &gt;350 cells/mm3), who have had a diagnosis of gonorrhoea or infectious syphilis in the last 18 months (a key characteristic associated with a high risk of N. gonorrhoeae infection). Participants are randomised 1:1 to receive two doses of 4CMenB or placebo 3 months apart. Participants have 3-monthly visits over 24 months, which include testing for N. gonorrhoeae and other sexually transmissible infections, collection of demographics, sexual behaviour risks and antibiotic use, and collection of research samples for analysis of N. gonorrhoeae-specific systemic and mucosal immune responses. The primary outcome is the incidence of the first episode of N. gonorrhoeae infection, as determined by nucleic acid amplification tests, post month 4. Additional outcomes consider the incidence of symptomatic or asymptomatic N. gonorrhoeae infection at different anatomical sites (ie, urogenital, anorectum or oropharynx), incidence by N. gonorrhoeae genotype and antimicrobial resistance phenotype, and level and functional activity of N. gonorrhoeae-specific antibodies.Ethics and dissemination Ethical approval was obtained from the St Vincent’s Hospital Human Research Ethics Committee, St Vincent’s Hospital Sydney, NSW, Australia (ref: 2020/ETH01084). Results will be disseminated in peer-reviewed journals and via presentation at national and international conferences.Trial registration number NCT04415424