A Low Cost, Portable Fluorescence Correlation Spectrometer for Disease Diagnosis

People being treated for HIV need to periodically test to determine if their antiviral medication is effectively keeping their viral loads at a safe level. Individuals living in rural areas of developing countries would be more likely to get these viral load tests if an instrument existed which reduced costs and was small and rugged enough to be brought to the client rather than require the client to travel for hours to a clinic. The Diagnostics for Viral Disease team is developing such a device in cooperation with Dr. Edgar Simulundu and the Macha Research Trust in Zambia. Our design is based on advanced fluorescence spectroscopy utilizing a fluorescence protein probe, confocal optics, and low-cost, low-power electronics. This poster reviews work done in three subsystems of the overall instrument. First, we have optimized the program used during burst analysis spectroscopy for identification of individual viruses in dilute samples. Second, we have confirmed the operation of the amplifying and discriminating sections of the photon processing circuitry which converts light pulses into a digital signal ready to be processed in the signal analysis subsystem. Finally, we have completed the Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) and Raspberry Pi programming allowing successful transfer of the results of the signal processing in the FPGA to the Raspberry Pi for display to the end user. Going forward we will integrate these subsystems into a fully functional exploded prototype ready for the final stage of condensing the design into a portable prototype that can be tested and delivered to our client. Funding for this work provided by The Collaboratory for Strategic Partnerships and Applied Research.https://mosaic.messiah.edu/engr2022/1003/thumbnail.jp

Experimental Bounds on Masses and Fluxes of Nontopological Solitons

We have re-analyzed the results of various experiments which were not originally interested as searches for the Q-ball or the Fermi-ball. Based on these analyses, in addition to the available data on Q-balls, we obtained rather stringent bounds on flux, mass and typical energy scale of Q-balls as well as Fermi-balls. In case these nontopological solitons are the main component of the dark matter of the Galaxy, we found that only such solitons with very large quantum numbers are allowed. We also estimate how sensitive future experiments will be in the search for Q-balls and Fermi-balls.Comment: 19 pages, 7 eps figures, RevTeX, psfig.st

Ipl1/aurora kinase suppresses S-CDK-driven spindle formation during prophase I to ensure chromosome integrity during meiosis

Cells coordinate spindle formation with DNA repair and morphological modifications to chromosomes prior to their segregation to prevent cell division with damaged chromosomes. Here we uncover a novel and unexpected role for Aurora kinase in preventing the formation of spindles by Clb5-CDK (S-CDK) during meiotic prophase I and when the DDR is active in budding yeast. This is critical since S-CDK is essential for replication during premeiotic S-phase as well as double-strand break induction that facilitates meiotic recombination and, ultimately, chromosome segregation. Furthermore, we find that depletion of Cdc5 polo kinase activity delays spindle formation in DDR-arrested cells and that ectopic expression of Cdc5 in prophase I enhances spindle formation, when Ipl1 is depleted. Our findings establish a new paradigm for Aurora kinase function in both negative and positive regulation of spindle dynamics

Contextualizing the China dream: a reinforced consultative Leninist approach to government

After he took over as General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and as Chairman of the Central Military Commission in November 2012, Xi Jinping articulated for the first time ‘the China dream’ at ‘the road to revival’ exhibition at the National Museum in Beijing. As he did so he stressed that since the start of the reform period China had finally found the way to restore the greatness of the country and it was called ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics’.1 What Xi has revealed is not a new political system or even a new term to describe it. It is a confidence in the existing political system which, despite all its faults, he now believes is sufficiently strong, effective and robust to deliver the national revival encapsulated in his ‘China dream’. The nature of the system that Xi loosely refers to, in line with the long-standing usage after the end of the Mao Zedong era, as ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics’ gets clearer if it is set within the analytical framework of consultative Leninism

The intertwined geopolitics and geoeconomics of hopes/fears:China’s triple economic bubbles and the ‘One Belt One Road’ imaginary

This paper adopts a discursive-cum-material approach to China's new 'One Belt One Road' (OBOR) geostrategic imaginary and its development through the intertwining of geopolitics and geoeconomics of hopes and fears. It first contextualizes this development after the 2008 financial crisis when China promoted a vast stimulus package that inflated existing property and infrastructure bubbles and fuelled another in finance. Resulting debates over crisis management enabled an incoming President Xi to articulate a set of hope-based discourses that came to include 'China Dream', 'New Normal' and the OBOR. Familiar cartographic statecraft techniques and novel spatial metaphors were used to promote the OBOR's allegedly 'win-win' strategy discursively. The OBOR imaginary was translated materially, and importantly, into policies that promoted a grand transregional 'spatial fix' to postpone China's over-accumulation crises. This strategy is consolidating a China-oriented infrastructural mode of growth in production, finance and security. As this absorbs ever more productive and financial capital, we see the emergence of contradictions, antagonisms and conflicts, especially in the use of bilateral loan-debt contractuality to appropriate strategic infrastructure. The paper concludes with a call for an affective turn examining the intertwining of geoeconomics and geopolitics in the analysis of transregional spatial fixes

Cognitive Behavior Therapy for Anxious Adolescents: Developmental Influences on Treatment Design and Delivery

Anxiety disorders in adolescence are common and disruptive, pointing to a need for effective treatments for this age group. Cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) is one of the most popular interventions for adolescent anxiety, and there is empirical support for its application. However, a significant proportion of adolescent clients continue to report anxiety symptoms post-treatment. This paper underscores the need to attend to the unique developmental characteristics of the adolescent period when designing and delivering treatment, in an effort to enhance treatment effectiveness. Informed by the literature from developmental psychology, developmental psychopathology, and clinical child and adolescent psychology, we review the ‘why’ and the ‘how’ of developmentally appropriate CBT for anxious adolescents. ‘Why’ it is important to consider developmental factors in designing and delivering CBT for anxious adolescents is addressed by examining the age-related findings of treatment outcome studies and exploring the influence of developmental factors, including cognitive capacities, on engagement in CBT. ‘How’ clinicians can developmentally tailor CBT for anxious adolescents in six key domains of treatment design and delivery is illustrated with suggestions drawn from both clinically and research-oriented literature. Finally, recommendations are made for research into developmentally appropriate CBT for anxious adolescents

Construction, Concentration, and (Dis)Continuities in Social Valuations

I review and integrate recent sociological research that makes progress on three interrelated questions pertaining to social valuation: (a) the degree of social construction relative to objective constraints; (b) the degree of concentration in social valuations at a single point in time; and (c) the conditions that govern two broad forms of temporal discontinuity—(i) fashion cycles, especially in cultural expression and in managerial practices, and (ii) bubble/crash dynamics, as witnessed in such domains as authoritarian regimes and financial markets. In the course of the review, I argue for the importance of identifying how objective conditions constrain social construction and suggest two contrarian mechanisms by which this is accomplished—valuation opportunism and valuation entrepreneurship—and the conditions under which they are more or less effective

Co-optation & Clientelism: Nested Distributive Politics in China’s Single-Party Dictatorship

What explains the persistent growth of public employment in reform-era China despite repeated and forceful downsizing campaigns? Why do some provinces retain more public employees and experience higher rates of bureaucratic expansion than others? Among electoral regimes, the creation and distribution of public jobs is typically attributed to the politics of vote buying and multi-party competition. Electoral factors, however, cannot explain the patterns observed in China’s single-party dictatorship. This study highlights two nested factors that influence public employment in China: party co-optation and personal clientelism. As a collective body, the ruling party seeks to co-opt restive ethnic minorities by expanding cadre recruitment in hinterland provinces. Within the party, individual elites seek to expand their own networks of power by appointing clients to office. The central government’s professed objective of streamlining bureaucracy is in conflict with the party’s co-optation goal and individual elites’ clientelist interest. As a result, the size of public employment has inflated during the reform period despite top-down mandates to downsize bureaucracy.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/116599/1/Ang, Cooptation & Clientelism, posted 2016-01.pdfDescription of Ang, Cooptation & Clientelism, posted 2016-01.pdf : First Onlin

The changing role of china in the global illegal cigarette trade

This study explores the history of the illegal production, distribution, and smuggling of cigarettes in mainland China. Data were obtained from a content analysis of 931 media reports retrieved from LexisNexis for the time period 1975 until 2010, and from other open sources. The illegal cigarette trade first emerged in the form of violations of state tobacco monopoly regulations. In the course of the restructuring of the legal tobacco sector, which occurred under external political pressure to open the Chinese market to foreign competition, an illegal cigarette industry emerged which at first primarily produced fake Chinese brand cigarettes for the domestic black market. At the same time, China became a destination country for smuggled genuine Western brand cigarettes. It was only after effective crackdowns against cigarette smuggling and domestic distribution channels in the late 1990s that the Chinese illegal cigarette industry shifted to exporting large numbers of counterfeit Western brand cigarettes to black markets abroad. China’s current role as a leading supplier of counterfeit cigarettes is a result of the contradictions of the economic reform process and of external licit and illicit forces that worked toward opening up the Chinese tobacco sector to the outside world