Gunba Control The Constitutionality of Semi-Automatic Robotic Weapons

This piece examines how the Second Amendment, and its recent jurisprudential standards would apply to foreseeable semi-autonomous weapons in the private sector. Following an analysis of the landmark Supreme Court decision in District of Columbia v. Heller and its progeny, the work forecasts how the rules would apply to a home defense drone designed to defend at the exterior of a domicile, an armed “digi-dog” designed for self-defense in public, and an armed robot (“Gunba”) designed to operate entirely within one’s domicile. Ultimately, it concludes that an semi-autonomous robot, designed for in-home use, could conceivably receive Second Amendment protection

A Tale of Two Proteins: The Budding Yeast STUbL Subunit Slx5 Functionally Interacts with the SUMO Ligase Siz1

Eukaryotic cells utilize the dynamic addition and removal of post-translational modifications to modulate protein function. Two such modifiers are ubiquitin and SUMO (Small Ubiquitin-like MOdifier), which traditionally regulate their substrates in opposite ways. The discovery of SUMO-targeted ubiquitin ligases (STUbLs), E3 ligases that ubiquitylate sumoylated targets, offers an opportunity for cross-talk between the SUMO and ubiquitin pathways. STUbLs are crucial for the response to DNA damage and maintenance of genomic integrity, but currently only a few STUbL substrates are known. Recently, we observed a novel interaction between the yeast STUbL subunit Slx5 and the SUMO ligase Siz1 both in a yeast two-hybrid system and in vitro. The goals of this study were to develop protein extraction and purification protocols for the purpose of determining if Slx5 and Siz1 also interact in vivo. This study additionally seeks to determine if Siz1 is a target for ubiquitylation by Slx5 in vivo. Here we report our finding that Slx5 and Siz1Δ440 co-affinity purify in in vivo pulldown experiments, and that Siz1Δ440 is ubiquitylated in vivo in an Slx5-dependent manner. We also describe the intrinsic binding ability of the RING domain present in E3 ligases for metal affinity purification

Large 2D Coulomb crystals in a radio frequency surface ion trap

We designed and operated a surface ion trap, with an ion-substrate distance of 500\mum, realized with standard printed-circuit-board techniques. The trap has been loaded with up to a few thousand Sr+ ions in the Coulomb-crystal regime. An analytical model of the pseudo-potential allowed us to determine the parameters that drive the trap into anisotropic regimes in which we obtain large (N>150) purely 2D ion Coulomb crystals. These crystals may open a simple and reliable way to experiments on quantum simulations of large 2D systems.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure