Bulgarian sport policy 1945-1989: A strategic relation perspective

The 2008 Beijing Olympic Games have stimulated discussions about the success of different sport systems and the Chinese model in particular. Revisiting explanations of sport in the former communist countries of Eastern Europe during the Cold War seems timely, as the current Chinese model of sport was largely designed after the Soviet example established in this period. This paper examines Bulgarian sport policy between 1945 and 1989. It employs a Strategic Relation approach (Jessop, 1990) to analyse sport policy making as a strategic relation closely linked to the dominant state project of building a new stateness. It goes beyond ideological interpretations and argues that the state represents a strategic terrain where these relations have to be established in struggles, the outcomes of which are always uncertain. Furthermore, past and present struggles and their outcomes create various socio-political environments that presuppose the forms of state selectivity and intervention in sport. The process of constructing sport policy was influenced by two main categories of strategic relations: intra-state, including political, organisational and personal relations between the Party, state apparatus and various sport and non-sport organisations and their managers, and transnational, concerning ideological, political, economic and organisational relations with both communist and western countries and international sport organisations

Bat responses to climate change: a systematic review

This is the final version. Available on open access from Wiley via the DOI in this recordUnderstanding how species respond to climate change is key to informing vulnerability assessments and designing effective conservation strategies, yet research efforts on wildlife responses to climate change fail to deliver a representative overview due to inherent biases. Bats are a species-rich, globally distributed group of organisms that are thought to be particularly sensitive to the effects of climate change because of their high surface-to-volume ratios and low reproductive rates. We systematically reviewed the literature on bat responses to climate change to provide an overview of the current state of knowledge, identify research gaps and biases and highlight future research needs. We found that studies are geographically biased towards Europe, North America and Australia, and temperate and Mediterranean biomes, thus missing a substantial proportion of bat diversity and thermal responses. Less than half of the published studies provide concrete evidence for bat responses to climate change. For over a third of studied bat species, response evidence is only based on predictive species distribution models. Consequently, the most frequently reported responses involve range shifts (57% of species) and changes in patterns of species diversity (26%). Bats showed a variety of responses, including both positive (e.g. range expansion and population increase) and negative responses (range contraction and population decrease), although responses to extreme events were always negative or neutral. Spatial responses varied in their outcome and across families, with almost all taxonomic groups featuring both range expansions and contractions, while demographic responses were strongly biased towards negative outcomes, particularly among Pteropodidae and Molossidae. The commonly used correlative modelling approaches can be applied to many species, but do not provide mechanistic insight into behavioural, physiological, phenological or genetic responses. There was a paucity of experimental studies (26%), and only a small proportion of the 396 bat species covered in the examined studies were studied using long-term and/or experimental approaches (11%), even though they are more informative about the effects of climate change. We emphasise the need for more empirical studies to unravel the multifaceted nature of bats' responses to climate change and the need for standardised study designs that will enable synthesis and meta-analysis of the literature. Finally, we stress the importance of overcoming geographic and taxonomic disparities through strengthening research capacity in the Global South to provide a more comprehensive view of terrestrial biodiversity responses to climate change.Natural Environment Research Council (NERC)MUR Rita Levi Montalcini programPortuguese Foundation for Science and TechnologySpanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and UniversitiesJunta de AndalucíaBulgarian National Science FundKaroll Knowledge Foundatio

Prevention and Mitigation of Acute Radiation Syndrome in Mice by Synthetic Lipopeptide Agonists of Toll-Like Receptor 2 (TLR2)

Bacterial lipoproteins (BLP) induce innate immune responses in mammals by activating heterodimeric receptor complexes containing Toll-like receptor 2 (TLR2). TLR2 signaling results in nuclear factor-kappaB (NF-κB)-dependent upregulation of anti-apoptotic factors, anti-oxidants and cytokines, all of which have been implicated in radiation protection. Here we demonstrate that synthetic lipopeptides (sLP) that mimic the structure of naturally occurring mycoplasmal BLP significantly increase mouse survival following lethal total body irradiation (TBI) when administered between 48 hours before and 24 hours after irradiation. The TBI dose ranges against which sLP are effective indicate that sLP primarily impact the hematopoietic (HP) component of acute radiation syndrome. Indeed, sLP treatment accelerated recovery of bone marrow (BM) and spleen cellularity and ameliorated thrombocytopenia of irradiated mice. sLP did not improve survival of irradiated TLR2-knockout mice, confirming that sLP-mediated radioprotection requires TLR2. However, sLP was radioprotective in chimeric mice containing TLR2-null BM on a wild type background, indicating that radioprotection of the HP system by sLP is, at least in part, indirect and initiated in non-BM cells. sLP injection resulted in strong transient induction of multiple cytokines with known roles in hematopoiesis, including granulocyte colony-stimulating factor (G-CSF), keratinocyte chemoattractant (KC) and interleukin-6 (IL-6). sLP-induced cytokines, particularly G-CSF, are likely mediators of the radioprotective/mitigative activity of sLP. This study illustrates the strong potential of LP-based TLR2 agonists for anti-radiation prophylaxis and therapy in defense and medical scenarios

Radiomitigation by sLP: administration of sLP after lethal TBI improves mouse survival.

<p>(A) Time window for effective post-irradiation administration of sLP. Female ICR (CD-1®) mice (<i>n = 15</i>/group) were irradiated with 9 Gy TBI (at time “0”) and then injected sc with PBS at 1 h after irradiation or with sLP (50 µg/mouse) at 10 or 30 min, or 1, 3, 6, 9, 12, 24, or 48 h after irradiation. Mouse survival was monitored for 30 days. The differences in 30-day survival between the vehicle-treated group and groups treated with sLP between 10 min and 3 h after TBI and at 24 h after TBI were statistically significant (as indicated by *, P<0.05, Fisher's Exact test). (B) Determination of the DRF for the optimal radiomitigative regimen of sLP administration. Probit analysis was performed using Kaplan-Meier survival curves generated from treatment of female ICR mice with PBS vehicle or 50 µg/mouse sLP at 1 h after exposure to different TBI doses (see <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0033044#pone.0033044.s002" target="_blank">figure S2A</a>). (C) SLP-mediated mitigation of death induced by low dose rate irradiation. Female ICR (CD-1®) mice (<i>n = 15</i>/group) received TBI at a continuous exposure rate of 0.4 cGy/min for 60 or 70 h (total dose of 14.4 or 16.8 Gy, respectively). At the mid-point of the irradiation period (i.e., 30 or 35 h after irradiation was started for the 60 and 70 h TBI groups, respectively), irradiation was halted for about 5 min during which time mice were injected sc with 10 µg/mouse sLP. Mouse survival was monitored for 30 days.</p

Administration of sLP in mice results in cytokine induction.

<p>Non-irradiated female C57BL/6 mice were injected sc with 10 µg sLP and euthanized 1, 2, 4, 8, 24, or 48 h later (<i>n</i> = 6/time point) for blood collection. Blood from untreated female C57BL/6 mice (<i>n</i> = 6) was analyzed as the “0 hour” time point. G-CSF, IL-6, and KC (A) and IL-1β, IL-10, IL-12(p70), SCF, GM-CSF, and TNF-α (B) levels were determined in individual mouse serum samples using multiplex Luminex assays. The mean cytokine concentration at each time point is shown. Error bars indicate standard error.</p

sLP-mediated radioprotection and cytokine induction is TLR2-dependent and involves both bone marrow and non-bone marrow cells.

<p>(A) TLR2-dependence of sLP-mediated radioprotection. Groups of isogenic TLR2(−/−) and wild type C57BL/6 mice (<i>n = 15</i>/group) were injected sc with vehicle (PBS) or sLP (3 µg/mouse) and irradiated (9 Gy TBI) 24 h later. Survival was monitored for 30 days. (B) sLP-mediated radioprotection in chimeric mice with wild type (WT) or TLR2(−/−) (TLR2KO) bone marrow (BM). Reciprocal radiation BM chimeras were generated as described in Results and <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0033044#s4" target="_blank">Materials and Methods</a>. Four types of chimeric mice, (i) TLR2KO BM transplanted into TLR2KO background, (ii) TLR2KO BM into WT background, (iii) WT BM into TLR2KO background, and (iv) WT BM into WT background, were injected sc with 20 µg/mouse sLP and irradiated with 9 Gy TBI 24 h later (<i>n = 8</i>/group). Survival was monitored for 30 days. (C) sLP-mediated cytokine induction in chimeric mice with WT or TLR2KO BM. The four types of chimeric mice described in (B) were injected with 20 µg/kg sLP without irradiation. Four sLP-injected mice of each genotype (2 males and 2 females) were euthanized at each time point (1, 2, 4, and 8 h post-injection) and serum cytokine levels of individual mice were determined using multiplex Luminex assays. The AUC for each cytokine was calculated as described in <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0033044#s4" target="_blank">Materials and Methods</a> and is presented for “TLR2KO to TLR2KO”, “TLR2KO-to-WT”, and “WT-to TLR2KO” chimeric mice as the percentage of that in “WT-to-WT” chimeric mice.</p

Toxin Genes and Other Characteristics of Staphylococcus aureus Isolates from Milk of Cows with Mastitis

In the present study, 103 Staphylococcus aureus strains isolated from milk samples from 60 cows with mastitis from eight different farms in seven different locations in one region of Germany were compared pheno- and genotypically and by identification of various toxins. On the basis of culture and hemolytic properties and by determination of the tube coagulase reaction, all of the isolates could be identified as S. aureus. This could be confirmed by PCR amplification of species-specific parts of the gene encoding the 23S rRNA. In addition, all of the S. aureus isolates harbored the genes encoding staphylococcal coagulase and clumping factor and the genes encoding the X region and the immunoglobulin G binding region of protein A. These four genes displayed size polymorphisms. By PCR amplification, the genes for the toxins staphylococcal enterotoxin A (SEA), SEC, SED, SEG, SEI, SEJ, and TSST-1 but not those for SEB, SEE, SEH, and the exfoliative toxins ETA and ETB could be detected. To analyze the epidemiological relationships, the isolates were subjected to DNA fingerprinting by macrorestriction analysis of their chromosomal DNAs. According to the observed gene polymorphisms, the toxin patterns, and the information given by macrorestriction analysis of the isolates by pulsed-field gel electrophoresis, a limited number of clones seemed to be responsible for the cases of bovine mastitis on the various farms