NUI Maynooth Eprint Archive
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Identification of Protein Biomarker Signatures for Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML) Using Both Nontargeted and Targeted Approaches
No full textAcute myeloid leukemia (AML) is characterized by an increasing number of clonal myeloid
blast cells which are incapable of differentiating into mature leukocytes. AML risk stratification is
based on genetic background, which also serves as a means to identify the optimal treatment of individual patients. However, constant refinements are needed, and the inclusion of significant measurements, based on the various omics approaches that are currently available to researchers/clinicians,
have the potential to increase overall accuracy with respect to patient management. Using both
nontargeted (label-free mass spectrometry) and targeted (multiplex immunoassays) proteomics, a
range of proteins were found to be significantly changed in AML patients with different genetic
backgrounds. The inclusion of validated proteomic biomarker panels could be an important factor
in the prognostic classification of AML patients. The ability to measure both cellular and secreted
analytes, at diagnosis and during the course of treatment, has advantages in identifying transforming
biological mechanisms in patients, assisting important clinical management decision
Investigation of type I interferon responses in ANCA-associated vasculitis
No full textType I interferon (IFN) dysregulation is a major contributory factor in the development of several
autoimmune diseases, termed type I interferonopathies, and is thought to be the pathogenic link with chronic infammation in these conditions. Anti-neutrophil cytoplasmic antibody (ANCA)-Associated Vasculitis (AAV) is an autoimmune disease characterised by necrotising infammation of small blood vessels. The underlying biology of AAV is not well understood, however several studies have noted abnormalities in type I IFN responses. We hypothesised that type I IFN responses are systemically dysregulated in AAV, consistent with features of a type I interferonopathy. To investigate this, we measured the expression of seven interferon regulated genes (IRGs) (ISG15, SIGLEC1, STAT1,
RSAD2, IFI27, IFI44L and IFIT1) in peripheral blood samples, as well as three type I IFN regulated proteins (CXCL10, MCP-1 and CCL19) in serum samples from AAV patients, healthy controls and disease controls. We found no difference in type I IFN regulated gene or protein expression between
AAV patients and healthy controls. Furthermore, IRG and IFN regulated protein expression did not correlate with clinical measurements of disease activity in AAV patients. Thus, we conclude that systemic type I IFN responses are not key drivers of AAV pathogenesis and AAV should not be
considered a type I interferonopathy
Tracing Antibiotic Resistance Genes along the Irrigation Water Chain to Chive: Does Tap or Surface Water Make a Difference?
No full textIrrigation water is well known as potential source of pathogens in fresh produce. However, its role in transferring antibiotic resistance determinants is less well investigated. Therefore, we analyzed the contribution of surface and tap water to the resistome of overhead-irrigated chive plants. Field-grown chive was irrigated with either surface water (R-system) or tap water (D-system),
from planting to harvest. Water along the two irrigation chains as well as the respective plants
were repeatedly sampled and screened for 264 antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) and mobile genetic
elements (MGEs), using high-capacity qPCR. Differentially abundant (DA) ARGs were determined by comparing the two systems. On R-chive, β-lactam ARGs, multidrug-resistance (MDR) determinants, and MGEs were most abundant, while D-chive featured DA ARGs from the vancomycin class.
Diversity and number of DA ARGs was the highest on young chives, strongly diminished at harvest,
and increased again at the end of shelf life. Most ARGs highly enriched on R- compared to D-chive
were also enriched in R- compared to D-sprinkler water, indicating that water played a major role in ARG enrichment. Of note, blaKPC was detected at high levels in surface water and chive. We conclude that water quality significantly affects the resistome of the irrigated produce
Exploring the role of peer observation of teaching in facilitating cross-institutional professional conversations about teaching and learning
No full textThis paper explores how cross-institutional Peer Observation of Teaching (PoT) provided a structured opportunity for professional conversations by which observers and observees shared and developed their perspectives on teaching experience and skills. Such professional conversations offer opportunities for both parties to gain a perspective on practices that may have been taken for granted. Participants from three Higher Education institutions engaged in cross-disciplinary and cross-institutional PoT, followed by facilitated reflective conversations. This paper captures the factors for success that enabled continuing conversations on teaching and learning and highlights the value of supporting such conversations outside formal, uni-institutional peer observation programmes
Hiding Instagram Likes: Effects on negative affect and loneliness
No full textInstagram, the social networking site (SNS), recently tested the initiative of hiding the number of Likes a post
receives from other users. Instagram’s rationale for hiding Likes was to support wellbeing through reduced
competition for Likes. In an experiment with 280 Instagram users in the United States, we investigated the effect
of hiding Likes on negative affect and loneliness. Scenarios were created to simulate receipt of higher or lower
Likes than desired, and the visibility of those Likes to others. Findings indicate that receiving greater Likes than
desired reduces loneliness but increases negative affect, and this result is exacerbated by the visibility of Likes.
However, when Likes are low, it does not make a difference to negative affect whether those Likes are visible or
not. Vulnerable narcissism was associated with loneliness. Findings provide support for Instagram’s initiative,
and reveal new insights about the interrelationship between loneliness and negative affect in Instagram use
Regional Differences in Spatiotemporal Drought Characteristics in Great Britain
No full textDespite being one of the most damaging natural hazards, droughts and their
spatiotemporal dynamics are typically not well understood. Great Britain, which is
the focus of this work, has experienced many major drought episodes in the past,
causing a range of socioeconomic and environmental impacts. Here, we apply a recently
developed technique to identify and characterise past droughts, using space-time
connectivity to extract events from a monthly gridded precipitation dataset covering
1862–2015, without imposing fixed geographical boundaries or time-frames. For each
grid cell, the data was aggregated into four new time series using moving averages
over 3-, 6-, 12- and 24-month windows. These reflect a range of response times for
different types of drought impacts. Drought events were then extracted for each time
window separately. In order to assess regional differences in drought characteristics,
each extracted drought was assigned to one of three regions: the South-East (SE),
the North-West (NW) and a “Transition” region in-between them. A frequency analysis
of drought characteristics (duration, area, intensity and severity) highlighted differences
between regions: for short and medium accumulation periods (3, 6, and 12 months),
short and less severe droughts are more frequent in the NW than in the SE, whereas
long, spatially extended and more severe droughts are more frequent in the SE than in
the NW. However, for long accumulation periods (24 months), fewer differences are
observed between the NW and the SE. In the “Transition” region, severe droughts
are less frequent than in the other two regions. A timeline of historic drought events
detected by our method included the vast majority of known drought events from
previous studies, with a few additional ones, and we shed important new light on the
relative severity of these historical drought episodes. Finally, an analysis of the spatial
coherence between regions showed that the most extreme drought events presented
little spatial coherence, whereas less severe droughts tend to be more spatially coherent.
This has important implications for water resources planning and drought management
strategies, particularly given the increasing emphasis on inter-regional water transfers as
a potential solution in situations of extreme drought
Why Opposites Don’t Always Attract: Reflections on Binaries and Their Implications for Decolonising Development Communications and Education.
No full textIn this article, I argue that addressing binaries is an important aspect of decolonising development communication and development education (DE). I draw on some key points emerging in research I am currently conducting on ethical communications among international development NGOs in Ireland. Though critique of binaries in development education is often focused on the binaries of ‘North-South’ or ‘local-global’, in this article I address other binaries common to development education and communications such as ‘means and end’, ‘real and not real’, ‘positive vs negative’ and ‘us and them’. Exploring their implications, I argue that binary thinking doesn’t only limit our field of vision but it distorts it, often leading to damaging consequences. This article is not designed to present a full discussion of binaries but to highlight some of the processes at play in relation to them. The hope is that it may encourage us to critically reflect on the effects of what we say and the stories we use in global education as well as in development communications
Multi-decadal trends in Antarctic sea-ice extent driven by ENSO–SAM over the last 2,000 years
No full textAntarctic sea ice has paradoxically become more extensive over the past four decades despite a warming climate. The regional expression of this trend has been linked to changes in vertical redistribution of ocean heat and large-scale wind-field shifts. However, the short length of modern observations has hindered attempts to attribute this trend to anthropogenic forcing or natural variability. Here, we present two new decadal-resolution records of sea ice and sea surface temperatures that document pervasive regional climate heterogeneity in Indian Antarctic sea-ice cover over the last 2,000 years. Data assimilation of our marine records in a climate model suggests that the reconstructed dichotomous regional conditions were driven by the multi-decadal variability of the El Niño Southern Oscillation and Southern Annular Mode (SAM). For example, during an El Niño/SAM– combination, the northward sea-ice transport was reduced while heat advection from the subtropics to the Southern Ocean increased, which resulted in reduced sea-ice extent in the Indian sector as sea ice was compacted along the Antarctic coast. Our results therefore indicate that natural variability is large in the Southern Ocean and suggest that it has played a crucial role in the recent sea-ice trends and their decadal variability in this region
Towards a Late Modernist Theater
No full textJoan Didion begins her 1968 collection Slouching Towards Bethlehem with W. B. Yeats’s “The Second Coming” printed in full as an epigraph; the title and the long quotation underscore Didion’s perception of the rupture of the 1960s: a revolution—sexual and political—of which she was skeptical. As she explains in her preface, she “had been paralyzed by the conviction that writing was an irrelevant act, that the world as I had understood it no longer existed.”[2] Later in the same book, in the essay “On Morality” she argues that the “ethic of conscience” as a measure of a writer or anyone else’s morality was an “insidious” metric; neither the individual’s intention nor—as will be discussed in this essay—the form of the work conferred “any ipso facto virtue.” Scholars of modernism have not been so careful. In what may be a reaction to John Carey’s still-influential castigation of canonical “high modernists” in his 1992 book, The Intellectuals and the Masses: Pride and Prejudice Among the Literary Intelligentsia, 1880–1939, over the last two decades, scholars have delineated a new configuration, late modernism, which has been defined increasingly as an ethically virtuous aesthetic
Evidence for an MHD Disk Wind via Optical Forbidden Line Spectroastrometry*
No full textSpectroastrometry is used to investigate the low-velocity component (LVC) of the optical forbidden emission from
the T Tauri stars RU Lupi and AS 205 N. Both stars also have high-velocity forbidden emission, which is tracing a
jet. For AS 205 N, analysis reveals a complicated outflow system. For RU Lupi, the [O I] λ6300 and [S II]
λλ6716,6731 LV narrow component (NC) is offset along the same position angle (PA) as the high-velocity
component but with a different velocity gradient than the jet, in that displacement from the stellar position along
the rotation axis is decreasing with increasing velocity. From the LVC, NC, PA, and velocity gradient, it is inferred
that the NC is tracing a wide-angled magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) disk wind. A photoevaporative wind is ruled
out. This is supported by a comparison with a previous spectroastrometric study of the CO fundamental line. The
decrease in offset with increasing velocity is interpreted as tracing an increase in the height of the wind with
increasing disk radius. This is one of the first measurements of the spatial extent of the forbidden emission line LVC NC (∼40 au, 8 au for RU Lupi in the [S II] λ6731 and [O I] λ6300 lines) and the first direct confirmation that the LVC narrow component can trace an MHD disk wind