Emergence Probabilities of COVID-19 Lineages and Motivations for Further Indigenous COVID-19 Research

At this point in the COVID-19 pandemic, there are vaccines available that can protect us against the virus. These vaccines work by creating antibodies that attach to spike proteins on the virus’ surface, inhibiting them from binding the angiotensin-converting enzyme-2 (ACE2) receptor on our cells. To date, all COVID-19 lineages infect our cells by attaching to these ACE-2 receptors. This research project presents probability estimates of a new COVID-19 lineage emerging that binds a receptor other than ACE-2. This research also discusses available research on COVID-19 in Indigenous communities and why Indigenous research is so important. The methods used in this study involve a literature review, MATLAB coding, and self-reflection. It was found that a 95% chance of a new COVID-19 lineage emerging that binds a receptor other than ACE-2 over the next decade is consistent with the observed data to date. This observation would render our current COVID-19 vaccines ineffective and could revert us to a pre-vaccine stage in the pandemic. This would have major consequences for Indigenous communities, as they have suffered from COVID-19 more than the general population. Despite this, Indigenous Peoples have remained strong by implementing coping strategies based on their own culture and traditions. Further Indigenous COVID-19 research is needed to support the inequities present in Indigenous communities but also recognize their strengths

Body Fat is Associated with Decreased Endocrine and Cognitive Resilience to Acute Emotional Stress

*Objective:* Cortisol is elevated both in individuals with increased emotional stress as well as with higher percentages of body fat. Cortisol is also known to affect cognitive performance, particularly spatial processing, selective attention, and working memory. We hypothesized that increased body fat might therefore be associated with decreased performance on a spatial processing task, in response to an acute real-world stressor. 

*Design:* We tested two separate samples of subjects undergoing their first (tandem) skydive. In the first sample (N=78), subjects were tested for salivary cortisol and state-anxiety (Spielberger State Anxiety Scale) during the plane's fifteen-minute ascent to altitude in immediate anticipation of the jump. In a second sample (N=20), subjects were tested for salivary cortisol, as well as cardiac variables (heart rate, autonomic regulation via heart rate variability) and performance on a cognitive task of spatial processing, selective attention, and working memory. 

*Results:* In response to the skydive, individuals with greater body fat percentages showed significantly increased reactivity for both cortisol (on both samples) and cognition, including decreased accuracy of our task of spatial processing, selective attention, and working memory. These cognitive effects were restricted to the stress response and were not found under baseline conditions. There were no body fat interactions with cardiac changes in response to the stressor, suggesting that the cognitive effects were specifically hormone-mediated rather than secondary to general activation of the autonomic nervous system. 

*Conclusions:* Our results indicate that, under real-world stress, increased body fat may be associated with endocrine stress-vulnerability, with consequences for deleterious cognitive performance

Public and Situated Displays to Support Communities

This workshop will bring together researchers and practitioners working with public displays in communities to share experiences and to identify research themes and issues arising from social and community use of public and situated displays, while increasing awareness of various relevant projects and encouraging collaboration

The Role of Transaction Costs and Risk Premia in the Determination of Climate Change Policy Responses

Transaction costs and risk have generally not been taken into account in assessing the Kyoto mechanisms JI, CDM and emissions trading. However, they can have a significant influence. With regard to the project-based mechanisms, the factor that most determines the influence of transaction costs on the implementation of a project is the size of the particular project. For some projects transaction costs amount up to over 1000 ?/ton C reduced, which proves the necessity of streamlining procedures, as recognised in the Marrakesh Accords. With regard to international emissions trading it will be of high importance to build on experience with past national emissions trading schemes in order to keep transaction costs low. However, international trading schemes of the type envisaged under the Kyoto Protocol are likely to have significant issues that have not been addressed in previous national experience. In addition to transaction costs, we determine country risk premia to account for the fact that projects in different states may induce different levels of risk of default or project failure. --transaction costs,risk premia,Kyoto Protocol,emissions trading,small scale projects

The World Bank, global accumulation and the antinomies of capitalist development

This thesis presents an investigation into the changing institutional form and policy content of the World Bank over the last two decades. It does this by relating the former to the contradictory trajectory of capitalist development at a global level. It is suggested that the noted transitions in the World Bank at the close of the millennium represent a series of reactive mediations to the unanticipated results of neoliberal-style reform. The latter are manifest in uneven development on a global scale, recurrent crises across the global South, and the expansion of local and global struggles that target the limits of development in its capitalist fonn. To build this argument the thesis examines the contradictory essence of capitalist development; the position of the World Bank as an international organisation within the context of global capitalist social relations; and the nature of Bank policy prescription in the 1980s and 1990s. Additionally, the thesis concretises this analysis through a case study of the Chilean experience of neoliberal-style reforms that closely mirror the World Bank's prescription of "best practice"

Synthesis of human plasminogen by the liver

Genetic types of plasminogen were determined from a donor and a recipient before and after hepatic homotransplantation. Examination of the plasminogen types demonstrated that the liver is the principal site of synthesis of human plasminogen. Copyright © 1980 AAAS

Water at an electrochemical interface - a simulation study

The results of molecular dynamics simulations of the properties of water in an aqueous ionic solution close to an interface with a model metallic electrode are described. In the simulations the electrode behaves as an ideally polarizable hydrophilic metal, supporting image charge interactions with charged species, and it is maintained at a constant electrical potential with respect to the solution so that the model is a textbook representation of an electrochemical interface through which no current is passing. We show how water is strongly attracted to and ordered at the electrode surface. This ordering is different to the structure that might be imagined from continuum models of electrode interfaces. Further, this ordering significantly affects the probability of ions reaching the surface. We describe the concomitant motion and configurations of the water and ions as functions of the electrode potential, and we analyze the length scales over which ionic atmospheres fluctuate. The statistics of these fluctuations depend upon surface structure and ionic strength. The fluctuations are large, sufficiently so that the mean ionic atmosphere is a poor descriptor of the aqueous environment near a metal surface. The importance of this finding for a description of electrochemical reactions is examined by calculating, directly from the simulation, Marcus free energy profiles for transfer of charge between the electrode and a redox species in the solution and comparing the results with the predictions of continuum theories. Significant departures from the electrochemical textbook descriptions of the phenomenon are found and their physical origins are characterized from the atomistic perspective of the simulations.Comment: 29 pages, 15 figure

Testing for seasonal unit roots by frequency domain regression

This paper develops univariate seasonal unit root tests based on spectral regression estimators. An advantage of the frequency domain approach is that it enables serial correlation to be treated non-parametrically. We demonstrate that our proposed statistics have pivotal limiting distributions under both the null and near seasonally integrated alternatives when we allow for weak dependence in the driving shocks. This is in contrast to the popular seasonal unit root tests of, among others, Hylleberg et al. (1990) which treat serial correlation parametrically via lag augmentation of the test regression. Moreover, our analysis allows for (possibly infinite order) moving average behaviour in the shocks, while extant large sample results pertaining to the Hylleberg et al. (1990) type tests are based on the assumption of a finite autoregression. The size and power properties of our proposed frequency domain regression-based tests are explored and compared for the case of quarterly data with those of the tests of Hylleberg et al. (1990) in simulation experiments.Seasonal unit root tests; moving average; frequency domain regression; spectral density estimator; Brownian motion

Inspirational Bits - Towards a Shared Understanding of the Digital Material

In any design process, a medium’s properties need to be considered. This is nothing new in design. Still we find that in HCI and interactive systems design the properties of a technology are often glossed over. That is, technologies are black-boxed without much thought given to how their distinctive properties open up design possibilities. In this paper we describe what we call inspirational bits as a way to become more familiar with the design material in HCI, the digital material. We describe inspirational bits as quick and dirty but fully working systems in both hardware and software built with the aim of exposing one or several of the dynamic properties of a digital material. We also show how they provide a means of sharing design knowledge across the members of a multi-disciplined design team