The coming robot crime wave

Rapid advances in robotics technology for the battlefield and policing could promote a new breed of copycat "garden shed" robot criminals

Whirl and Stall Flutter Simulation Using CFD

This paper presents recent research on numerical methods for whirl and stall flutter using computational fluid dynamics. The method involves coupling of the HMB3 CFD solver of the University of Glasgow and a NASTRAN derived structural model. Based upon a literature survey, a significant amount of research has been conducted on the numerical investigation of tiltrotors, with a focus on the XV-15 and V-22 aircraft. Within this paper, the coupling procedure is presented along with a steady CFD computation to highlight the accuracy of the high-fidelity method. In addition to this, a simple method is used to investigate the whirl flutter boundary of a standard propeller and the XV-15 blade

Vaccination with DNA plasmids expressing Gn coupled to C3d or alphavirus replicons expressing Gn protects mice against rift valley fever virus

Background: Rift Valley fever (RVF) is an arthropod-borne viral zoonosis. Rift Valley fever virus (RVFV) is an important biological threat with the potential to spread to new susceptible areas. In addition, it is a potential biowarfare agent. Methodology/Principal Findings: We developed two potential vaccines, DNA plasmids and alphavirus replicons, expressing the Gn glycoprotein of RVFV alone or fused to three copies of complement protein, C3d. Each vaccine was administered to mice in an all DNA, all replicon, or a DNA prime/replicon boost strategy and both the humoral and cellular responses were assessed. DNA plasmids expressing Gn-C3d and alphavirus replicons expressing Gn elicited high titer neutralizing antibodies that were similar to titers elicited by the live-attenuated MP12 virus. Mice vaccinated with an inactivated form of MP12 did elicit high titer antibodies, but these antibodies were unable to neutralize RVFV infection. However, only vaccine strategies incorporating alphavirus replicons elicited cellular responses to Gn. Both vaccines strategies completely prevented weight loss and morbidity and protected against lethal RVFV challenge. Passive transfer of antisera from vaccinated mice into naïve mice showed that both DNA plasmids expressing Gn-C3d and alphavirus replicons expressing Gn elicited antibodies that protected mice as well as sera from mice immunized with MP12. Conclusion/Significance: These results show that both DNA plasmids expressing Gn-C3d and alphavirus replicons expressing Gn administered alone or in a DNA prime/replicon boost strategy are effective RVFV vaccines. These vaccine strategies provide safer alternatives to using live-attenuated RVFV vaccines for human use. © 2010 Bhardwaj et al

The Behaviour of the Green Function for the BFKL Pomeron with Running Coupling

We analyse here in LO the physical properties of the Green function solution for the BFKL equation. We show that the solution obeys the orthonormality conditions in the physical region and fulfills the completeness requirements. The unintegrated gluon density is shown to consists of a set of few poles with parameters which could be determined by comparison with the DIS data of high precision