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Violent abstractions. Book review of Lucky Valley: Edward Long and the History of Racial Capitalism, by Catherine Hall
No full textNo abstract available
Inhibition of placental trophoblast fusion by guanylate-binding protein 5
Get PDFSyncytin-1 and Syncytin-2 are envelope glycoproteins encoded by human endogenous retroviruses that have been exapted for the fusion of cytotrophoblast cells into syncytiotrophoblasts during placental development. Pregnancy complications like preeclampsia are associated with altered expression of interferon-stimulated genes, including guanylate-binding protein 5 (GBP5). Here, we show that misdirected antiviral activity of GBP5 impairs processing and activation of Syncytin-1. In contrast, the proteolytic activation of Syncytin-2 is not affected by GBP5, and its fusogenic activity is only modestly reduced. Mechanistic analyses revealed that Syncytin-1 is mainly cleaved by the GBP5 target furin, whereas Syncytin-2 is also efficiently processed by the proprotein convertase subtilisin/kexin type 7 (PCSK7) and thus resistant to GBP5-mediated restriction. Mutational analyses mapped PCSK7 processing of Syncytin-2 to a leucine residue upstream of the polybasic cleavage site. In summary, we identified an innate immune mechanism that impairs the activity of a co-opted endogenous retroviral envelope protein during pregnancy and may potentially contribute to the pathogenesis of pregnancy disorders
The recency and geographical origins of the bat viruses ancestral to SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2
Get PDFThe emergence of SARS-CoV in 2002 and SARS-CoV-2 in 2019 led to increased sampling of sarbecoviruses circulating in horseshoe bats. Employing phylogenetic inference while accounting for recombination of bat sarbecoviruses, we find that the closest-inferred bat virus ancestors of SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 existed less than a decade prior to their emergence in humans. Phylogeographic analyses show bat sarbecoviruses traveled at rates approximating their horseshoe bat hosts and circulated in Asia for millennia. We find that the direct ancestors of SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 are unlikely to have reached their respective sites of emergence via dispersal in the bat reservoir alone, supporting interactions with intermediate hosts through wildlife trade playing a role in zoonotic spillover. These results can guide future sampling efforts and demonstrate that viral genomic regions extremely closely related to SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 were circulating in horseshoe bats, confirming their importance as the reservoir species for SARS viruses
From pitch perfect to epic fail: the Green parties and the Green Deal in the European elections
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The one is the many: Buddhist relational holism in Uno e altri amori by Carlo Coccioli
No full textThe literary production of Carlo Coccioli in the 1980s is characterized by a growing interest in Hinduism and Buddhism, supported by and in turn reinforcing his strong sense of compassion and proximity towards more-than-human forms of life. In particular, in the collection of short stories Uno e altri amori (1984), animals represent a comforting spiritual presence that remains persistent even as the religious and spiritual framing evolves. This essay discusses Coccioli’s horizontal relationship with animals in the light of a relational holism that derives from the author’s interest in Buddhism, in which the absolute and the relative, as well as the one and the many, are conceived in relations of mutual determination. The analysis focuses specifically on three short stories from Uno e altri amori—“Se ci fosse, si saprebbe,” “L’asciugamano di spugna,” and “Salmo XXIII (o theological spiders)”—in which questions of faith are overtly foregrounded, at the same time situating the collection as a whole in the context of Coccioli’s key texts of the 1980s and 1990s: La casa di Tacubaya (1982), Piccolo Karma (1987), and Budda e il suo glorioso mondo (1990)
Modelling the Feasibility of Using Disused Mines for Heat Extraction and Storage
No full textThe subsurface offers significant opportunities for geothermal heat extraction and storage. Disused, flooded coal mines, in particular, are capable of providing a major low-enthalpy, renewable and long-term heat resource if carefully managed. To establish a mine water geothermal system requires significant capital investment and a large amount of time. Therefore, a solid investigation of the feasibility of a mine as heat source or storage medium is essential.
We have developed a modelling tool, GEMSToolbox, to investigate the feasibility of abandoned mines for long-term heat extraction and/or storage. This tool allows for a computationally fast and a low-cost study into the viability of mine water heating for given mine workings. We combine numerical and analytical methods with digitised legacy mine plan data to estimate the variations in the abstraction water temperature over the lifetime of a project. We couple the heat transfer approximation method originally proposed by Rodriguez and Diaz (2009) to that of flow in a pipe network as described by Todini and Pilati (1987), and refine the original heat transfer approximation by accounting for a flow regime specific heat transfer coefficient between the rock mass and the water, as prescribed by Loredo et al. (2017). A novel weighting function is also developed to account for the interference between adjacent mine galleries. This tool has been successfully applied to a range of mine system in the North East of England, and the results of this study are used to draw widely applicable conclusions on the feasibility of mine workings for heat extraction or storage more generally
Attendance and Risk of Exclusion among Scottish Secondary School Pupils with Additional Support Needs
Get PDFWe seek to demonstrate differences in attendance across pupils with and without additional support needs (ASN), accounting for broader categories of as well as specific types of ASN. The aim is to provide more nuanced insights into the risks for educational absence and determine whether certain ASN are associated with specific types or patterns of absence.
We first compared the differences in average attendance and absence across pupils with and without ASN using standardised effect sizes. ASN categories differentiate by health needs, social and emotional needs, family circumstances, learning environment, and other types of need. Following the descriptive analysis, we ran a latent class analysis to identify underlying patterns of non-participation within pupils with ASN. This is followed by a binomial logistic regression to predict class membership of pupils based on their specific ASN.
We find distinct gaps in attendance and absence behaviour between pupils with and without ASN and significant effect sizes for these differences. The latent class analysis reveals that pupils with health needs and issues relating to the learning environment are more likely to have low authorised and unauthorised absence, as well as a low risk of exclusion. In contrast, pupils with social and emotional needs and experiences of adverse family circumstances are more likely to have higher absence and a greater risk of exclusion.
While ASN is regularly considered as an adverse influence on attendance, less differentiation has been made between different support needs and types of educational absence. Our results help identify these differences and inform dedicated support and interventions for pupils with ASN
Study of Ds1 (2460)+ → Ds+π+π- in B → D‾(*)Ds+π+π- decays
Get PDFAn amplitude analysis of the Ds1(2460)+→Ds+π+π- transition is performed simultaneously in B0→D-Ds+π+π-, B+→D‾0Ds+π+π-, and B0→D*-Ds+π+π- decays. The study is based on a data sample of proton-proton collisions recorded with the LHCb detector at centre-of-mass energies of s=7,8, and 13 TeV, corresponding to a total integrated luminosity of 9fb-1. A clear double-peak structure is observed in the m(π+π-) spectrum of the Ds1(2460)+→Ds+π+π- decay. The data can be described either with a model including f0500,f0980, and f2(1270) resonances, in which the contributions of f0(980) and f2(1270) are unexpectedly large, or with a model including f0(500), a doubly charged open-charm tetraquark state Tcs¯++ and its isospin partner Tcs¯0. If the former is considered implausible, the Tcs¯ states are observed with high significance, and the data are consistent with isospin symmetry. When imposing isospin constraints between the two Tcs¯ states, their mass and width are determined to be (2327±13±13) MeV and (96±16-23+170) MeV, respectively, where the first uncertainty is statistical and the second is systematic. The mass is slightly below the DK threshold, and a spin-parity of 0+ is favoured with high significance
Distributed fault-tolerant consensus tracking control for multi-agent systems under multiple attacks: an encoding–decoding strategy
No full textThis study investigates the distributed fault-tolerant consensus tracking (FCT) problem of multi-agent systems (MASs) subject to actuator faults, and deception and eavesdropping attacks. The problem is addressed through the proposal of a unified framework that integrates decentralized high-gain estimator-based (HGE) estimation, encoding–decoding strategy-based (EDS) encryption–decryption, and distributed fault-tolerant consensus tracking control (FCTC). The decentralized HGE simultaneously estimates system states, actuator faults, and deception attacks, while mitigating the impact of deception attacks on the estimation. The EDS encrypts and decrypts the estimated state and/or alleviates communication congestion. The distributed FCT controller, incorporating fault estimation and state encryption, achieves compensation for faults and maintains data confidentiality against eavesdropping attacks. Rigorous analysis establishes sufficient conditions that guarantee leader-following consensus with uniform ultimate boundedness. The communication data size is explicitly analyzed as a performance metric, revealing the intrinsic trade-off between tracking accuracy and communication efficiency. Simulation studies under various faults/attacks scenarios validate the effectiveness of the proposed framework
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