Interaction of the Host and Viral Genome and Their Influence on HIV Disease

The course of Human Immunodeficiency Virus type 1 (HIV) infection is a dynamic interplay in which both host and viral genetic variation, among other factors, influence disease susceptibility and rate of progression. HIV set-point viral load (spVL), a key indicator of HIV disease progression, has an estimated 30% of variance attributable to common heritable effects and roughly 70% attributable to environmental factors and/or additional non-genetic factors. Genome-wide genotyping and sequencing studies have allowed for large-scale association testing studying host and viral genetic variants associated with infection and disease progression. Host genomics of HIV infection has been studied predominantly in Caucasian populations consistently identifying human leukocyte antigen (HLA) genes and C-C motif chemokine receptor 5 as key factors of HIV susceptibility and progression. However, these studies don’t fully assess all classes of genetic variation (e.g., very rare polymorphisms, copy number variants etc.) and do not inform on non-European ancestry groups. Additionally, viral sequence variability has been demonstrated to influence disease progression independently of host genetic variation. Viral sequence variation can be attributed to the rapid evolution of the virus within the host due to the selective pressure of the host immune response. As the host immune system responds to the virus, e.g., through recognition of HIV antigens, the virus is able to mitigate this response by evolving HLA-specific escape mutations. Diversity of viral genotypes has also been correlated with moderate to strong effects on CD4+ T cell decline and some studies showing weak to no correlation with spVL. There is evidence to support these viral genetic factors being heritable between individuals and the evolution of these factors having important consequences in the genetic epidemiology of HIV infection on a population level. This review will discuss the host-pathogen interaction of HIV infection, explore the importance of host and viral genetics for a better understanding of pathogenesis and identify opportunities for additional genetic studies

Vortex density spectrum of quantum turbulence

The fluctuations of the vortex density in a turbulent quantum fluid are deduced from local second-sound attenuation measurements. These measurements are performed with a micromachined open-cavity resonator inserted across a flow of turbulent He-II near 1.6 K. The power spectrum of the measured vortex line density is compatible with a (-5/3) power law. The physical interpretation, still open, is discussed.Comment: Submitted to Europhys. Let

Thermal dissipation in quantum turbulence

The microscopic mechanism of thermal dissipation in quantum turbulence has been numerically studied by solving the coupled system involving the Gross-Pitaevskii equation and the Bogoliubov-de Gennes equation. At low temperatures, the obtained dissipation does not work at scales greater than the vortex core size. However, as the temperature increases, dissipation works at large scales and it affects the vortex dynamics. We successfully obtained the mutual friction coefficients of the vortex dynamics as functions of temperature, which can be applied to the vortex dynamics in dilute Bose-Einstein condensates.Comment: 4 pages, 6 figures, submitted to AP

Kolmogorov spectrum of superfluid turbulence: numerical analysis of the Gross-Pitaevskii equation with the small scale dissipation

The energy spectrum of superfluid turbulence is studied numerically by solving the Gross-Pitaevskii equation. We introduce the dissipation term which works only in the scale smaller than the healing length, to remove short wavelength excitations which may hinder the cascade process of quantized vortices in the inertial range. The obtained energy spectrum is consistent with the Kolmogorov law.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures and 1 table. Submitted to American Journal of Physic

Main bearing replacement and damage - a field data study on 15 gigawatts of wind energy capacity

This study seeks to establish a comprehensive baseline of knowledge for the replacement and damage of main bearings in wind turbines. The purpose of this report is to provide a high-level summary of the data set, methodology, and results of this work. Full technical details and an extended analysis will be made available in a future publication. We collected data on main bearing replacements and reported damage from industrial partners based in Europe and the United States. In total, we obtained data for 167 wind power plants, with a combined capacity of 15.3 gigawatts (GW). Most of the data set was comprised of land-based, three-point mount, spherical roller bearings. Within this data set were 689 instances of main bearing replacement. Analysis was undertaken in two parts: first, a statistical analysis of the main bearing time-to-replacement data using survival analysis techniques; second, quantitative and qualitative analyses of the obtained damage information. Our results showed that 10% of a fixed main bearing population would be expected to have been replaced by 10.5 years. This is close to half of the 20-year design value. Fitted parametric distributions then indicated that by year 20, between 22% and 25% of main bearings are expected to have been replaced. Analysis of the damage reports revealed spalling to be the main type of damage listed. The additional presence of surface damage in the collected data indicates that at least part of the spalling cases are likely due to surface-initiated rolling contact fatigue. At this stage is not clear what proportion of spalling cases result from "wear induced", surface-initiated and subsurface-initiated rolling contact fatigue. While this work provides important insights into the current state of main bearing replacements and damage, many questions remain. An ongoing and expanding data collection and analysis effort focused on wind turbine main bearings is therefore recommended

Neighbourhood characteristics, lifestyle factors, and child development: Secondary analysis of the All our families cohort study

BackgroundNeighbourhood characteristics have been found to influence child development, but little is known about lifestyle factors that may moderate this relationship, which can provide modifiable targets for policies and programing. This study investigated the association between neighbourhood characteristics (e.g., deprivation, disorder) during pregnancy and child development at age 5 in relation to various lifestyle factors (e.g., physical activity, parent-child reading, community resource use) during early childhood.MethodsA secondary analysis was conducted using multilevel modeling of data from the All Our Families cohort, recruited in Canada from 2008 to 2010. Participants self-reported on demographics during pregnancy, lifestyle factors at 3 years, and child development at 5 years using the Ages and Stages Questionnaire (ASQ-3). Neighbourhood deprivation was evaluated using the Vancouver Area Deprivation Index (VANDIX), while disorder was measured using police services' community crime reports.ResultsGeocoded information was available for 2,444 participants. After adjusting for covariates, multilevel modeling indicated a significant negative association between neighbourhood deprivation and overall child development (b = −.726, 95% CI: −1.344, −.120). Parent-child reading was found to be a significant moderator of the effect of neighbourhood disorder (b = .005, 95% CI: .001, .009). There were no statistically significant moderation effects for physical activity or community resource use.ConclusionNeighbourhood deprivation during pregnancy is associated with early child development. Parent-child reading may function as a protective factor in the presence of higher neighbourhood disorder. Overall, neighbourhood-level effects should be considered in policies and community programs that promote family and child well-being

Has education lost sight of children?

The reflections presented in this chapter are informed by clinical and personal experiences of school education in the UK. There are many challenges for children and young people in the modern education system and for the professionals who support them. In the UK, there are significant gaps between the highly selective education provided to those who pay privately for it and to the majority of those educated in the state-funded system. Though literacy rates have improved around the world, many children, particularly boys, do not finish their education for reasons such as boredom, behavioural difficulties or because education does not ‘pay’. Violence, bullying, and sexual harassment are issues faced by many children in schools and there are disturbing trends of excluding children who present with behavioural problems at school whose origins are not explored. Excluded children are then educated with other children who may also have multiple problems which often just make the situation worse. The experience of clinicians suggests that school-related mental health problems are increasing in severity. Are mental health services dealing with the consequences of an education system that is not meeting children’s needs? An education system that is testing- and performance-based may not be serving many children well if it is driving important decisions about them at increasingly younger ages. Labelling of children and setting them on educational career paths can occur well before they reach secondary schools, limiting potential very early on in their developmental trajectory. Furthermore, the emphasis at school on testing may come at the expense of creativity and other forms of intelligence, which are also valuable and important. Meanwhile the employment marketplace requires people with widely different skills, with an emphasis on innovation, creativity, and problem solving. Is education losing sight of the children it is educating

Flow Phase Diagram for the Helium Superfluids

The flow phase diagram for He II and $^3$He-B is established and discussed based on available experimental data and the theory of Volovik [JETP Letters {\bf{78}} (2003) 553]. The effective temperature - dependent but scale - independent Reynolds number $Re_{eff}=1/q=(1+\alpha')/\alpha$, where $\alpha$ and $\alpha'$ are the mutual friction parameters and the superfluid Reynolds number characterizing the circulation of the superfluid component in units of the circulation quantum are used as the dynamic parameters. In particular, the flow diagram allows identification of experimentally observed turbulent states I and II in counterflowing He II with the turbulent regimes suggested by Volovik.Comment: 2 figure

Educating for urban sustainability: A transdisciplinary approach

An understanding of sustainability issues should be a key component of degree programmes. It is widely regarded as being a central attribute to professional practice and responsible global citizenship, arguably more so for the training of teachers since they potentially influence their students. This issue was brought to the fore when responsibility for delivering the 'design and the environment' course was transferred to the building discipline at the University of Newcastle in Australia as a result of restructuring. The attractiveness of the subject as an elective, the need to make it accessible to distance learning students and the desirability of applying transdisciplinary approaches to solving environmental problems presented the course designers with both challenges and opportunities, particularly in devising an assessment context within which students from multiple disciplines could be exposed to, and learn from each other's professional environmental evaluation norms. This paper describes an innovative holistic, multi-criteria problem-solving course design that allows a diverse mix of undergraduates to develop a transdisciplinary understanding of sustainability issues through the use of learning contracts. It reports the experiences of staff and students involved with the course, highlighting the beneficial outcomes

Dynamics of vortex tangle without mutual friction in superfluid 4^4He

A recent experiment has shown that a tangle of quantized vortices in superfluid $^4$He decayed even at mK temperatures where the normal fluid was negligible and no mutual friction worked. Motivated by this experiment, this work studies numerically the dynamics of the vortex tangle without the mutual friction, thus showing that a self-similar cascade process, whereby large vortex loops break up to smaller ones, proceeds in the vortex tangle and is closely related with its free decay. This cascade process which may be covered with the mutual friction at higher temperatures is just the one at zero temperature Feynman proposed long ago. The full Biot-Savart calculation is made for dilute vortices, while the localized induction approximation is used for a dense tangle. The former finds the elementary scenario: the reconnection of the vortices excites vortex waves along them and makes them kinked, which could be suppressed if the mutual friction worked. The kinked parts reconnect with the vortex they belong to, dividing into small loops. The latter simulation under the localized induction approximation shows that such cascade process actually proceeds self-similarly in a dense tangle and continues to make small vortices. Considering that the vortices of the interatomic size no longer keep the picture of vortex, the cascade process leads to the decay of the vortex line density. The presence of the cascade process is supported also by investigating the classification of the reconnection type and the size distribution of vortices. The decay of the vortex line density is consistent with the solution of the Vinen's equation which was originally derived on the basis of the idea of homogeneous turbulence with the cascade process. The obtained result is compared with the recent Vinen's theory.Comment: 16 pages, 16 figures, submitted to PR