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Some insights for researchers in Catholic schools and Catholic education
No full textThis chapter offers guidance and support to new and emerging researchers in the field of Catholic education studies. This guidance seeks to support the researcher’s thinking, scoping and planning, research practice and publication strategy. It also offers some academic insights for experienced researchers. Research can be described or defined in different ways but, in relation to education, is a pre-planned systematic investigation, using prescribed methods, into a conceptual theme or topic of social reality. The aim for researchers of Catholic education is to generate new knowledge and understanding that will inform, further develop and progress discussion and debate. This can then have an impact on educational policy and practice as it relates to Catholic education. This chapter proceeds by responding to ten questions about researching Catholic education
Natural flood risk management in tropical Southeast Asia: prospects in the biodiverse archipelagic nation of the Philippines
Get PDFNatural flood management (NFM) has gained prominence as a flood risk management approach in temperate settings but lacks extensive applied examples and evidence in tropical settings, despite significant ecosystem degradation and high flood risk exposure. Tropical river catchments often experience highly variable hydrographs (i.e., prone to flash floods) and intense rainfall from monsoon and typhoon-dominated weather systems that can cause landslides and sediment-transporting river flows. These conditions provide a backdrop to the prospects for NFM in tropical Southeast Asia, of which the Philippines is representative. Catchments in the country are typically small and thus associated with short hydrological response times. They are also characterized by diversity of river types, high rates of lateral mobility, extensive downstream urbanization, and complex land use mosaics at the coast. Consideration of NFM as a conceptual framework in the Philippines may enable conversations about adapting existing flood risk management approaches. To explore these NFM alternatives, we conceptualize opportunities in a typical catchment that we divide into four nested, connected parts: managing headwaters as sponges; conserving and restoring river and floodplain width; blue-green infrastructure in urban areas; and maintaining and creating space for water in fluvial-coastal settings. There is potential in countries such as the Philippines to adopt NFM strategies that have shown promise in temperate regions and select Southeast Asian countries, where emerging evidence supports their effectiveness. Monitoring tropical NFM interventions remains crucial to gather evidence supporting broader application of nature-based solutions for flood risk mitigation and biodiversity loss in tropical Southeast Asia
Palmitoylation and regulation of potassium-dependent sodium/calcium exchangers (NCKX)
Get PDFCellular Ca2+ homeostasis is critical for normal cell physiology and is regulated by several mechanisms. Two major players in intracellular Ca2+ homeostasis in multiple tissues belong to SLC8 (Na+/Ca2+ exchangers (NCXs); NCX1-3) and SLC24 (K+ dependent Na+/Ca2+ exchangers (NCKXs); NCKX1-5) families. It has been established that NCXs and NCKX4 are palmitoylated, and that palmitoylation promotes NCX1 inactivation. However, there is still little known about NCKXs’ palmitoylation. We found that (1) NCKX3 and NCKX5 but not NCKX1 are palmitoylated, (2) Cys to Ala mutation at position 467 for NCXK3 and 325 for NCKX5 notably diminished palmitoylation and (3) reduced palmitoylation enhanced NCKX3 activity. Our findings bring novel insights on NCKX1, NCKX3 and NCKX5 palmitoylation, and establish palmitoylation as endogenous regulator of NCKX3 activity, paving the way for investigations evaluating the role of palmitoylation in NCKX3 function in health and disease
Predicting the impact of targeted fence removal on connectivity in a migratory ecosystem
Get PDFFencing is one of the most widely utilized tools for reducing human-wildlife conflict in agricultural landscapes. However, the increasing global footprint of fencing exceeds millions of kilometers and has unintended consequences for wildlife, including habitat fragmentation, movement restriction, entanglement, and mortality. Here, we present a novel and quantitative approach to prioritize fence removal within historic migratory pathways of white-bearded wildebeest (Connochaetes taurinus) across Kenya's Greater Masai Mara Ecosystem. Our approach first assesses historic and contemporary landscape connectivity of wildebeest between seasonal ranges by incorporating two sets of GPS tracking data and fine-scale fencing data. We then predict connectivity gains from simulated fence removal and evaluate the impact of different corridor widths and locations on connectivity and removal costs derived from locally implemented interventions. Within the study system, we found that modest levels of fence removal resulted in substantial connectivity gains (39%–54% improvement in connectivity for 15–140 km of fence line removed). By identifying the most suitable corridor site, we show that strategically placed narrow corridors outperform larger, more expensive interventions. Our results demonstrate how and where targeted fence removal can enhance connectivity for wildlife. Our framework can aid in identifying suitable and cost-effective corridor restoration sites to guide decision-makers on the removal of fences and other linear barriers. Our approach is transferable to other landscapes where the removal or modification of fences or similar barriers is a feasible mitigation strategy to restore habitat and migratory connectivity
Optimal income drawdown and investment with longevity basis risk
No full textWe investigate a utility maximisation problem for a pension scheme which offers an income drawdown policy. Apart from market risk, we specifically focus on longevity basis risk which arises when the forces of mortality of the scheme's target population and the reference population of a longevity bond used for hedging, are not perfectly correlated. By modelling the forces of mortality of the reference and target populations as stochastic affine processes, we derive analytic solutions for the relevant investment strategy and benefit withdrawal rate. Our model also accounts for dependencies between mortality rate fluctuations and stock prices. Our extensive numerical results demonstrate that the longevity bond acts as an effective hedging instrument, even in the presence of longevity basis risk
scRNA-seq reveals elevated interferon responses and TNF-α signaling via NFkB in monocytes in children with uncomplicated malaria
Get PDFMalaria causes significant morbidity and mortality worldwide, disproportionately impacting sub-Saharan Africa. Disease phenotypes associated with Plasmodium falciparum infection can vary widely, from asymptomatic to life-threatening. To date, prevention efforts, particularly those related to vaccine development, have been hindered by an incomplete understanding of which factors impact host immune responses resulting in these divergent outcomes. Here, we conducted a field study of 224 individuals to determine host-parasite factors associated with symptomatic malaria “patients” compared to asymptomatic malaria-positive “controls” at both the community and healthy facility levels. We further performed comprehensive immune profiling to obtain deeper insights into differences in response between the pair. First, we determined the relationship between host age and parasite density in patients (n = 134/224) compared to controls (n = 90/224). Then, we applied single-cell RNA sequencing to compare the immunological phenotypes of 18,176 peripheral blood mononuclear cells isolated from a subset of the participants (n = 11/224), matched on age, sex, and parasite density. Patients had higher parasite densities compared to the controls, although the levels had a negative correlation with age in both groups, suggesting that they are key indicators of disease pathogenesis. On average, patients were characterized by a higher fractional abundance of monocytes and an upregulation of innate immune responses, including those to type I and type II interferons and tumor necrosis factor-alpha signaling via NFκB. Further, in the patients, we identified more putative interactions between antigen-presenting cells and proliferating CD4 T cells, and naïve CD8 T cells driven by MHC-I and MHC-II signaling pathways, respectively. Together, these findings highlight transcriptional differences between immune cell subsets associated with disease phenotypes that may help guide the development of improved malaria vaccines and new therapeutic interventions
Identification of novel PfEMP1 variants containing domain cassettes 11, 15 and 8 that mediate the Plasmodium falciparum virulence-associated rosetting phenotype
Get PDFPlasmodium falciparum erythrocyte membrane protein 1 (PfEMP1) is a diverse family of variant surface antigens, encoded by var genes, that mediates binding of infected erythrocytes to human cells and plays a key role in parasite immune evasion and malaria pathology. The increased availability of parasite genome sequence data has revolutionised the study of PfEMP1 diversity across multiple P. falciparum isolates. However, making functional sense of genomic data relies on the ability to infer binding phenotype from var gene sequence. For P. falciparum rosetting, the binding of infected erythrocytes to uninfected erythrocytes, the analysis of var gene/PfEMP1 sequences encoding the phenotype is limited, with only eight rosette-mediating PfEMP1 variants described to date. These known rosetting PfEMP1 variants fall into two types, characterised by N-terminal domains known as “domain cassette” 11 (DC11) and DC16. Here we test the hypothesis that DC11 and DC16 are the only PfEMP1 types in the P. falciparum genome that mediate rosetting, by examining a set of thirteen recent culture-adapted Kenyan parasite lines. We first analysed the var gene/PfEMP1 repertoires of the Kenyan lines and identified an average of three DC11 or DC16 PfEMP1 variants per genotype. In vitro rosette selection of the parasite lines yielded four with a high rosette frequency, and analysis of their var gene transcription, infected erythrocyte PfEMP1 surface expression, rosette disruption and erythrocyte binding function identified four novel rosette-mediating PfEMP1 variants. Two of these were of the predicted DC11 type (one showing the dual rosetting/IgM-Fc-binding phenotype), whereas two contained DC15 (DBLα1.2-CIDRα1.5b) a PfEMP1 type not previously associated with rosetting. We also showed that a Thai parasite line expressing a DC8-like PfEMP1 binds to erythrocytes to form rosettes. Hence, these data expand current knowledge of rosetting mechanisms and emphasize that the PfEMP1 types mediating rosetting are more diverse than previously recognised
Aligning Task- and Reconstruction-Oriented Communications for Edge Intelligence
Get PDFExisting communication systems aim to reconstruct the information at the receiver side, and are known as reconstruction-oriented communications. This approach often falls short in meeting the real-time, task-specific demands of modern AI-driven applications such as autonomous driving and semantic segmentation. As a new design principle, task-oriented communications have been developed. However, it typically requires joint optimization of encoder, decoder, and modified inference neural networks, resulting in extensive cross-system redesigns and compatibility issues. This paper proposes a novel communication framework that aligns reconstruction-oriented and task-oriented communications for edge intelligence. The idea is to extend the Information Bottleneck (IB) theory to optimize data transmission by minimizing task-relevant loss function, while maintaining the structure of the original data by an information reshaper. Such an approach integrates taskoriented communications with reconstruction-oriented communications, where a variational approach is designed to handle the intractability of mutual information in high-dimensional neural network features. We also introduce a joint source-channel coding (JSCC) modulation scheme compatible with classical modulation techniques, enabling the deployment of AI technologies within existing digital infrastructures. The proposed framework is particularly effective in edge-based autonomous driving scenarios. Our evaluation in the Car Learning to Act (CARLA) simulator demonstrates that the proposed framework significantly reduces bits per service by 99.19% compared to existing methods, such as JPEG, JPEG2000, and BPG, without compromising the effectiveness of task execution
A C4 plant K+ channel accelerates stomata to enhance C3 photosynthesis and water use efficiency
Get PDFAccelerating stomatal kinetics through synthetic optogenetics and mutations that enhance guard cell K+ flux has proven a viable strategy to improve water use efficiency and biomass production. Stomata of the model C4 species Gynandropsis gynandra, a relative of the C3 plant Arabidopsis thaliana, are similarly fast to open and close. We identified and cloned the guard cell rectifying outward K+ channel (GROK) of Gynandropsis and showed that GROK is preferentially expressed in stomatal guard cells. GROK is homologous to the Arabidopsis guard cell K+ channel GORK and, expressed in oocytes, yields a K+ current consistent with that of Gynandropsis guard cells. Complementing the Arabidopsis gork mutant with GROK promoted K+ channel gating and K+ flux, increasing stomatal kinetics and yielding gains in water use efficiency and biomass with varying light, especially under water limitation. Our findings demonstrate the potential for engineering a C4 K+ channel into guard cells of a C3 species and they speak to the puzzle of how C4 species have evolved mechanisms that enhance water use efficiency and growth under stress
Constraint on the total width of the Higgs boson from Higgs boson and four-top-quark measurements in pp collisions at √s = 13 TeV with the ATLAS detector
Get PDFThis Letter presents a constraint on the total width of the Higgs boson (ΓH) using a combined measurement of on-shell Higgs boson production and the production of four top quarks, which involves contributions from off-shell Higgs boson-mediated processes. This method relies on the assumption that the tree-level Higgs-top Yukawa coupling strength is the same for on-shell and off-shell Higgs boson production processes, thereby avoiding any assumptions about the relationship between on-shell and off-shell gluon fusion Higgs production rates, which were central to previous measurements. The result is based on up to 140 fb−1 of proton–proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of
√s = 13 TeV collected with the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider. The observed (expected) 95% confidence level upper limit on ΓH is 450 MeV (75 MeV). Additionally, considering the constraint on the Higgs-top Yukawa coupling from loop-induced Higgs boson production and decay processes further yields an observed (expected) upper limit of 160 MeV (55 MeV)
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