Real Time Radiation Monitoring Using Nanotechnology

System and method for monitoring receipt and estimating flux value, in real time, of incident radiation, using two or more nanostructures (NSs) and associated terminals to provide closed electrical paths and to measure one or more electrical property change values .DELTA.EPV, associated with irradiated NSs, during a sequence of irradiation time intervals. Effects of irradiation, without healing and with healing, of the NSs, are separately modeled for first order and second order healing. Change values.DELTA.EPV are related to flux, to cumulative dose received by NSs, and to radiation and healing effectivity parameters and/or.mu., associated with the NS material and to the flux. Flux and/or dose are estimated in real time, based on EPV change values, using measured .DELTA.EPV values. Threshold dose for specified changes of biological origin (usually undesired) can be estimated. Effects of time-dependent radiation flux are analyzed in pre-healing and healing regimes

Louisiana Oyster Leasing and Conflicts With Coastal Restoration: The Impact of Speculative Activities

State water bottom acreage leased by the Louisiana oyster industry has increased sharply over the past 50 years. Because of the property rights associated with these leases, there has been increasing conflict between the oyster industry and other coastal resource users, in particular oil-and-gas companies and entities engaged in coastal restoration activities. A complete understanding of these conflicts, however, depends upon knowledge of the economic incentives that drive the oyster industry and those individuals that lease water bottoms from the state. At the extreme, nominal lease fees and the potential to generate lease-based income from non-harvest sources can lead to speculative leasing that might be socially inefficient given the need to shift state water bottoms to better uses. In this paper, we first estimate the speculative value of Louisiana oyster leases, compare them to the producing value of oyster leases, and draw some inferences about the relative importance of these two revenue sources to the oyster industry. Then, we examine the conflicts between oyster leasing and coastal restoration activities and draw inferences regarding the conflicts in relation to speculative leasing activities. Finally, we propose alternative leasing arrangements that may mitigate future conflicts.Keywords: Fisheries Economics, Oil-and-gas companies, Oyster leases, Louisiana oyster industry, Coastal restorationKeywords: Fisheries Economics, Oil-and-gas companies, Oyster leases, Louisiana oyster industry, Coastal restoratio

Practising the Space Between: Embodying Belief as an Evangelical Anglican Student

This article explores the formation of British evangelical university students as believers. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted with a conservative evangelical Anglican congregation in London, I describe how students in this church come to embody a highly cognitive, word-based mode of belief through particular material practices. As they learn to identify themselves as believers, practices of reflexivity and accountability enable them to develop a sense of narrative coherence in their lives that allows them to negotiate tensions that arise from their participation in church and broader social structures. I demonstrate that propositional belief – in contexts where it becomes an identity marker – is bound up with relational practices of belief, such that distinctions between “belief in” and “belief that” are necessarily blurred in the lives of young evangelicals

The melanoma-specific graded prognostic assessment does not adequately discriminate prognosis in a modern population with brain metastases from malignant melanoma

The melanoma-specific graded prognostic assessment (msGPA) assigns patients with brain metastases from malignant melanoma to 1 of 4 prognostic groups. It was largely derived using clinical data from patients treated in the era that preceded the development of newer therapies such as BRAF, MEK and immune checkpoint inhibitors. Therefore, its current relevance to patients diagnosed with brain metastases from malignant melanoma is unclear. This study is an external validation of the msGPA in two temporally distinct British populations.Performance of the msGPA was assessed in Cohort I (1997-2008, n=231) and Cohort II (2008-2013, n=162) using Kaplan-Meier methods and Harrell's c-index of concordance. Cox regression was used to explore additional factors that may have prognostic relevance.The msGPA does not perform well as a prognostic score outside of the derivation cohort, with suboptimal statistical calibration and discrimination, particularly in those patients with an intermediate prognosis. Extra-cerebral metastases, leptomeningeal disease, age and potential use of novel targeted agents after brain metastases are diagnosed, should be incorporated into future prognostic models.An improved prognostic score is required to underpin high-quality randomised controlled trials in an area with a wide disparity in clinical care

Optimal translational termination requires C4 lysyl hydroxylation of eRF1

Efficient stop codon recognition and peptidyl-tRNA hydrolysis are essential in order to terminate translational elongation and maintain protein sequence fidelity. Eukaryotic translational termination is mediated by a release factor complex that includes eukaryotic release factor 1 (eRF1) and eRF3. The N terminus of eRF1 contains highly conserved sequence motifs that couple stop codon recognition at the ribosomal A site to peptidyl-tRNA hydrolysis. We reveal that Jumonji domain-containing 4 (Jmjd4), a 2-oxoglutarate- and Fe(II)-dependent oxygenase, catalyzes carbon 4 (C4) lysyl hydroxylation of eRF1. This posttranslational modification takes place at an invariant lysine within the eRF1 NIKS motif and is required for optimal translational termination efficiency. These findings further highlight the role of 2-oxoglutarate/Fe(II) oxygenases in fundamental cellular processes and provide additional evidence that ensuring fidelity of protein translation is a major role of hydroxylation