Indigenous Vibrio cholerae strains from a non-endemic region are pathogenic

Of the 200+ serogroups of Vibrio cholerae, only O1 or O139 strains are reported to cause cholera, and mostly in endemic regions. Cholera outbreaks elsewhere are considered to be via importation of pathogenic strains. Using established animal models, we show that diverse V. cholerae strains indigenous to a nonendemic environment (Sydney, Australia), including non-O1/O139 serogroup strains, are able to both colonize the intestine and result in fluid accumulation despite lacking virulence factors believed to be important. Most strains lacked the type three secretion system considered a mediator of diarrhoea in non- O1/O13 V. cholerae. Multi-locus sequence typing (MLST) showed that the Sydney isolates did not form a single clade and were distinct from O1/O139 toxigenic strains. There was no correlation between genetic relatedness and the profile of virulence-associated factors. Current analyses of diseases mediated by V. cholerae focus on endemic regions, with only those strains that possess particular virulence factors considered pathogenic. Our data suggest that factors other than those previously well described are of potential importance in influencing disease outbreaks. © 2013 The Authors

Transdisciplinary learning: Transformative collaborations between students, industry, academia and communities.

Background and objectives of the case An analogy: Imagine you are invited to a dinner party, but instead of a stuffy sit-down affair, your host asks you to bring your favourite ingredient, and together you prepare a delicious feast of unique and distinct flavours. UTS’s transdisciplinary initiatives are changing the shape of higher education and forging innovative partnerships by bringing together diverse professional fields. With a focus on practice-based and problem-focused learning, UTS educational programs combine the strengths of multiple disciplines, industries, public sector organisations, and the community to turn real-world problems into rewarding opportunities for education and also “learning for a lifetime”. In place of the limitations of artificial disciplinary boundaries, transdisciplinary learning practices create synergistic and innovative approaches to grappling with complex applied challenges. Students, researchers, practitioners, community members and other stakeholders combine their knowledge, tools, techniques, methods, theories, concepts, as well as cultural and personal perspectives. By understanding problems holistically, the solutions that emerge are bold, innovative, and creative, as well as mutually beneficial. We view this as the future of education: good to work with, and good to think with — problem solving for (and with) industry and society. The Faculty of Transdisciplinary Innovation is re-imagining how education, research, and professional practice can work together to navigate today’s complex problems, and create commercially attractive and socially responsible futures. We also practice what we preach: for example, staff professional development to enact these models in our own teaching; educational programs to provide experiential learning around problem solving within a rapidly-changing environment involving students from across different disciplines and cultural backgrounds; as well as policy development and research on today’s pressing “wicked problems” with industry and government. Primary objectives of this next practice concept of transdisciplinary learning, include: - To promote a shift in industry-university engagement from producing “knowledge for society” to co-generating “knowledge with society”; - To build a resilient ecosystem for co-learning; - To create and sustain future-oriented degree programs with collaboration between industry, government, and community at the centre, geared to prepare our graduates for the complex challenges of a networked world; - To create an agile and responsive industry-university lab environment for generating and testing new experimental models; - To enable industry – by collaborating with our students and academics – to see their problems from a fresh perspective, often through different and revealing lenses, and to notice opportunities and spot challenges that may have otherwise been overlooked; - To prepare students to lead innovation in a rapidly-changing and challenging world; and - To graduate students who are ‘complexity-fluent’, systems thinkers, creative problem-posers and -solvers, and imaginative, ethical citizens

Teaching Resilience: Enabling Factors for Effective Responses to COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted higher education globally. Teaching staff have pivoted to online learning and employed a range of strategies to facilitate student success. Aside from offering a testing ground for innovative teaching strategies, the pandemic has also provided an opportunity to better understand the pre-existing conditions that enable higher education systems to be resilient - that is, to respond and adapt to disturbances in ways that retain the functions and structures essential for student success. This article presents a case study covering two transdisciplinary undergraduate courses at the University of Technology Sydney, Australia. The results highlight the importance of information flows, feedbacks, self-organisation, leadership, openness, trust, equity, diversity, reserves, social learning and nestedness. These results show that resilience frameworks developed by previous scholars are relevant to university teaching systems and offer guidance on which system features require protection and strengthening to enable effective responses to future disturbances

PARP1 suppresses homologous recombination events in mice in vivo

Recent studies suggest that PARP1 inhibitors, several of which are currently in clinical trial, may selectively kill BRCA1/2 mutant cancers cells. It is thought that the success of this therapy is based on immitigable lethal DNA damage in the cancer cells resultant from the concurrent loss or inhibition of two DNA damage repair pathways: single-strand break (SSB) repair and homologous recombination repair (HRR). Presumably, inhibition of PARP1 activity obstructs the repair of SSBs and during DNA replication, these lesions cause replication fork collapse and are transformed into substrates for HRR. In fact, several previous studies have indicated a hyper-recombinogenic phenotype in the absence of active PARP1 in vitro or in response to DNA damaging agents. In this study, we demonstrate an increased frequency of spontaneous HRR in vivo in the absence of PARP1 using the pun assay. Furthermore, we found that the HRR events that occur in Parp1 nullizygous mice are associated with a significant increase in large, clonal events, as opposed to the usually more frequent single cell events, suggesting an effect in replicating cells. In conclusion, our data demonstrates that PARP1 inhibits spontaneous HRR events, and supports the model of DNA replication transformation of SSBs into HRR substrates

The ice-free topography of Svalbard

We present a first version of the Svalbard ice-free topography (SVIFT1.0) using a mass-conserving approach for mapping glacier ice thickness. SVIFT1.0 is informed by more than 900’000 point-measurements of glacier thickness, totalling almost 8’300 km of thickness profiles. It is publicly available for download. Our estimate for the total ice volume is 6’253km3, equivalent to 1.6cm sea-level rise. The thickness map suggests that 13% of the glacierised area is grounded below sea-level. Thickness values are provided together with a map of error estimates that comprise uncertainties in the thickness surveys as well as in other input variables. Aggregated error estimates are used to define a likely ice-volume range of 5’200-7’400km3. The ice-front thickness of marine-terminating glaciers is a key quantity for ice-loss attribution because it controls the potential ice discharge by iceberg calving into the ocean. We find a mean ice-front thickness of 133m for the archipelago

Mouse Chromosome 3

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/46995/1/335_2004_Article_BF00648421.pd

Back-To-Back Hvdc System Performance with Different Smoothing Reactors

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Students guiding students: Implementing student peer review into a large first year science subject. A Practice Report

Learning how to give and receive peer review is a skill that science students need support in developing. We included student peer review in an assessment for a large first year science subject. Class time was dedicated to introducing and developing peer review skills and increasing engagement among students and between students and teachers. Students worked in pairs, small groups, and facilitated group discussions and were encouraged to learn from each other. The student peer review exercise provided students with the opportunity to reflect on and improve their work prior to submission. Survey results showed 78% of students agreed that peer review developed their ability to give constructive feedback. Training and resources provision for the teaching staff was crucial to the integration of peer review activities. Supported teaching staff were able to engage with and support the students, and the students valued this engagement and guidance