P04-17. The N-glycosylation sites N295, N332 and N392 of gp120 are necessary but not sufficient for HIV-1 to be neutralized by 2G12

International audiencen.

Is higher education more important for firms than research? Disentangling university spillovers

The paper is the first attempt to integrate microdata on universities and firms across most European countries in order to disentangle the impact of knowledge spillovers from human capital (graduates) and intellectual capital (codified research output) on the performance of firms. Data cover all Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) registered in the official European Tertiary Education Register (ETER). Data on performance of firms are from ORBIS and refer to change in the 2011–2015 period in turnover, total assets, intangible assets, and employment. Firms are georeferred and the spillovers from all HEIs located at a given distance are summed and integrated. The findings suggest that, among knowledge spillovers, the creation of human capital via education of students has a larger impact than the circulation of research knowledge. Moreover, the two factors seem to be complements rather than substitutes. Spatial proximity is important for embodied knowledge spillovers (i.e. educated people), while for codified and disembodied spillovers (citations to publications) the spatial dimension is less relevant. The findings have important managerial and policy-making consequences

Epidemiological patterns of hepatitis B virus (HBV) in highly endemic areas

This paper uses meta-analysis of published data and a deterministic mathematical model of hepatitis B virus (HBV) transmission to describe the patterns of HBV infection in high endemicity areas. We describe the association between the prevalence of carriers and a simple measure of the rate of infection, the age at which half the population have been infected (A50), and assess the contribution of horizontal and perinatal transmission to this association. We found that the two main hyper-endemic areas of sub-Saharan Africa and east Asia have similar prevalences of carriers and values of A50, and that there is a negative nonlinear relationship between A50 and the prevalence of carriers in high endemicity areas (Spearman's Rank, P = 0·0086). We quantified the risk of perinatal transmission and the age-dependent rate of infection to allow a comparison between the main hyper-endemic areas. East Asia was found to have higher prevalences of HBeAg positive mothers and a greater risk of perinatal transmission from HBeAg positive mothers than sub-Saharan Africa, though the differences were not statistically significant. However, the two areas have similar magnitudes and age-dependent rates of horizontal transmission. Results of a simple compartmental model suggest that similar rates of horizontal transmission are sufficient to generate the similar patterns between A50 and the prevalences of carriers. Interrupting horizontal transmission by mass immunization is expected to have a significant, nonlinear impact on the rate of acquisition of new carriers

The effect of PGPR inoculation on the growth of wheat

Many agricultural soils of Iran have high pH, resulting in low availability of Fe and Zn. The potentials of nonsymbiotic plant growth-promoting rhizbacteria (PGPR) for stimulating plant growth have been extensively used during recent decades. This experiment was carried out in growth chamber to evaluate the effects of siderophoreproducing Pseudomonads on the growth as well as Fe and Zn uptake of wheat. A randomized complete block design experiments was conducted using with Alborz genotype (an efficient phytosiderophore-producing bread wheat) treated with either 7NSK2 strain as a siderophore positive (sid+) or with MPFM1 mutant strain of the same isolate as a siderophore negative (sid-) treatments with three replications. The potentials of these strains for auxin production and phosphate solubilizing activity were evaluated by standard methods. The results showed that inoculation with sid+ strain increased dry matter production in shoots as compared with the control (sterile condition) or with sid - strain. Likewise, the concentration of chlorophyll a in leaves of sid+ and sid - treatments were 1.27 and 0.41 g mg-1 of fresh weight, respectively, and the concentration of chlorophyll b were measured to be 1.09 and 0.35 g mg-1 of fresh weight, respectively, indicating significantly more chlorophyll formation due to inoculation with sid+ as compared with sid -. The uptake of Fe by roots and its rate of translocation to the shoots were greater for the sid+ treated plants as compared with the sid - treated ones, indicating that siderophores increased the rate of Fe uptake by wheat. The effect of microbial inoculation on shoot Zn was not significant, but increased the concentration of Zn on roots compared with control. The results suggested that the siderophores of Pseudomonads may involve on increasing bioavailability of iron

High-fidelity simulations of CdTe vapor deposition from a new bond-order potential-based molecular dynamics method

CdTe has been a special semiconductor for constructing the lowest-cost solar cells and the CdTe-based Cd1-xZnxTe alloy has been the leading semiconductor for radiation detection applications. The performance currently achieved for the materials, however, is still far below the theoretical expectations. This is because the property-limiting nanoscale defects that are easily formed during the growth of CdTe crystals are difficult to explore in experiments. Here we demonstrate the capability of a bond order potential-based molecular dynamics method for predicting the crystalline growth of CdTe films during vapor deposition simulations. Such a method may begin to enable defects generated during vapor deposition of CdTe crystals to be accurately explored

Combustion synthesis of metal carbides: Part II. Numerical simulation and comparison with experimental data

Based on the general theoretical model proposed in Part I of this work [J. Mater. Res. 20, 1257 (2005)], a series of numerical simulations related to the self-propagating high-temperature synthesis in the Ti-C system is presented. A detailed and quantitative description of the various physical and chemical processes that take place during combustion synthesis processes is provided in Part II of this work. In particular, the proposed mathematical description of the system has been discussed by highlighting the relation between system macroscopic behavior obtained experimentally with the modeled phenomena taking place at the microscopic scale. Model reliability is tested by comparison with suitable experimental data being nucleation parameters adopted for the fitting procedure. The complex picture emerging as a result of the model sophistication indicates that the rate of conversion is essentially determined by the rate of nucleation and growth. In addition, comparison between model results and experimental data seems to confirm the occurrence of heterogeneous nucleation in product crystallization