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The role of nucleosome binding by human cytomegalovirus proteins IE1 and pp65 in lytic and latent infection
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Reflections on complexity, nuclear ordering and disordering over time
Get PDFIntensive development of a rule-based international nuclear order, with its multiple treaties and agreements, was crowded into a thirty-year period from the early-1960 to mid-1990. A tendency towards disorder has predominated since then, leading to today’s anxiety that nuclear affairs are becoming ‘beyond ordering’. The article examines the historical experience of ordering and disordering through the lens of complexity, and considers the parts that the nuclear field’s extraordinary and ever shifting technological, politico-military, politico-economic and moral complexities—and contentions—have played in affecting outcomes. Emphasis is placed on the concerted ‘political organisation of complexity’ or its absence, as practised by the US and USSR/Russia (increasingly joined by China), the dominant nuclear powers. They have been the primary creators, guardians and disruptors of the nuclear order. The article ends with a comment, looking to the long run, on Norbert Elias’s ‘end of the road?’ for hegemonic war or human survival in the nuclear age.Peer reviewe
A universal preference for animate agents in hominids
Get PDFFunding: This study was supported by fundings from the Swiss National Science Foundation grants number 310030_185324 (K.Z.) and 100015_182845 (B.B.), as well as by the National Center for Competence in Research \u201CEvolving Language\u201D, SNSF agreement number 51NF40_180888 (B.B. and K.Z.).When conversing, humans instantaneously predict meaning from fragmentary and ambiguous mspeech, long before utterance completion. They do this by integrating priors (initial assumptions about the world) with contextual evidence to rapidly decide on the most likely meaning. One powerful prior is attentional preference for agents, which biases sentence processing but universally so only if agents are animate. Here, we investigate the evolutionary origins of this preference, by allowing chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans, human children, and adults to freely choose between agents and patients in still images, following video clips depicting their dyadic interaction. All participants preferred animate (and occasionally inanimate) agents, although the effect was attenuated if patients were also animate. The findings suggest that a preference for animate agents evolved before language and is not reducible to simple perceptual biases. To conclude, both humans and great apes prefer animate agents in decision tasks, echoing a universal prior in human language processing.Peer reviewe
Immune response to MVA-BN vaccination for Mpox : current evidence and future directions
Get PDFFunding: This work was supported by Health Research Board (grant number MONKEYVAX-2022-1) and by Global Health EDCTP3 (grant number 101195540—MpoxVax AFRIVAC).The 2022 global mpox outbreak, caused by clade IIb of the monkeypox virus (MPXV), prompted emergency use authorisation of the Modified Vaccinia Ankara–Bavarian Nordic (MVA-BN) vaccine, previously approved for smallpox prevention. Understanding immune responses to the MVA-BN vaccine is critical to inform both current and future mpox vaccine policy, particularly amid reports of breakthrough infections in vaccinated persons, uncertainty about the durability of vaccine-induced protection, and the emergence of further outbreaks of mpox from different viral clades, including the clade I-driven public health emergency of international concern. MVA-BN elicits binding and neutralising antibody, memory B cells, and T cell responses. Immune responses vary by host factors, prior orthopoxvirus exposure, and dosing regimens. While seroconversion is generally robust, circulating antibody titres often wane rapidly, particularly in vaccinia-naïve and/or immunocompromised individuals, including people with HIV. Vaccine-induced neutralising antibody responses to MPXV are frequently lower than to vaccinia virus, and their role in protection remains ill-defined. In contrast, T cell responses appear more sustained and may support long-term immunity in the absence of persistent antibody titres. This narrative review synthesises current evidence on the immunogenicity and durability of MVA-BN vaccination, highlights challenges in assay interpretation, and outlines key research priorities, including the need to explore correlates of protection, booster strategies, and next-generation vaccine design.Peer reviewe
Allometric scale model reveals temperature effects on growth and reproduction in Daphnia magna
Get PDFFunding: MB was supported by a postdoctoral fellowship from FCT (SFRH/BPD/82259/2011) and had financial support from CESAM (UIDP/50017/2020; UIDB/50017/2020). HS was partially supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (KAKENHI Grant Number: JP19K21569; JP21H03402, 25K09165).Climate change amplifies temperature variability, thereby subjecting organisms to increased stress as they more frequently encounter temperatures outside their optimal range. Temperature influences resource distribution across fundamental processes in organisms, such as metabolism, reproduction and overall fitness, yet energy allocation strategies are primarily understood under stable temperature conditions. Predicting organisms’ responses to fluctuating temperatures, however, remains challenging. To address this gap, we develop an allometric growth model to predict energy allocation between growth and reproduction under both constant and variable temperature conditions. The model predictions perform and align well with the observed growth patterns of Daphnia magna, a keystone species in aquatic ecosystems, exposed to various thermal scenarios. Results indicate that exposure to unpredictablePeer reviewe
Chiral molecular 4f qubits by post functionalization
Get PDFFunding: The authors thank the Novo Nordisk Foundation for research grants NNF20OC0065610 Project Grants in the Natural and Technical Sciences 2020, NNF21OC0068806 Research Infrastructure – Large equipment and facilities 2021 financing the Copenhagen Pulse-EPR Facility, NNF21OC0070832 Exploratory Inter-disciplinary Synergy Programme 2021 and NNF23OC0083201 NERD – New Exploratory Research and Discovery 2023. BEB thanks BBSRC (BB/R013780/1) for funding.We herein demonstrate the synthesis of a pair of enantiomerically pure YbIII complexes by post-functionalisation of the parent YbIII complex via condensation with an enantiomerically pure chiral amine. The enantiomeric pair is structurally characterised by single crystal and powder X-ray diffraction, showing that it crystalises in the P212121 Sohncke space group with Flack parameters close to zero, which confirms their enantiopurity. Circular Dichroism (CD) and absorption spectroscopies in the NIR reveal sharp 27/2 → 25/2 f–f transitions, with gabs values up to 0.07, indicating a chiral environment for the ytterbium centre. Furthermore, a dynamic mechanism with mixing of ligand states is shown to contribute to the CD intensity. X-band pulse Electron Paramagnetic Resonance spectroscopy, on a magnetically dilute single crystal containing 1% of YbIII complexes within the isostructural YIII diamagnetic host, reveals a phase memory time, Tm, of the electronic spin of 600 ns and that it can be coherently manipulated by microwave pulses, as evidenced by Rabi nutations.Peer reviewe
Technology, labour, livestock, and the Maoist developmental state : four-wheeled tractors in China, 1953–1963
Get PDFFour-wheeled, 25–50 horsepower tractors imported to China from other socialist countries in the 1950s were a symbol of modernity and a source of problems. They were introduced to North China to increase multiple cropping. No significant increase in multiple cropping occurred in that region. The cost of tractor services far outweighed what could be earned with the labour they displaced in the 1950s and early 1960s. However, the government remained committed to them, even as it promoted cheaper five horsepower two-wheeled tractors. Greater use of four-wheeled tractors was sustained by the rapid downgrading of the hitherto privileged role of the tractor driver, alongside an ad hoc system of tacit subsidies. These changes meant deviation from the original vision for tractors. The dire fate of draught livestock during the era of rural collectivisation was an important reason for persevering with four-wheeled tractors even as the country turned away from Soviet development models.Peer reviewe
Climate change-related regulatory risks and bank lending
Get PDFFunding: This paper was prepared by the authors under the Lamfalussy Fellowship Programme sponsored by the ECB.We analyze how firms’ climate change-related regulatory risks affect banks’ lending. Exploiting the Paris Agreement in a difference-in-differences setting, we find that effects depend on how borrowers will be affected by regulation as well as the stringency of the existing regulatory environment where firms are located. Firms that benefit from regulation receive more credit only if located in more stringent regulatory environments. Conversely, firms hurt by regulation receive more credit if located in less stringent environments or if linked to banks with a portfolio tilted towards lending to negatively impacted firms.Peer reviewe
Electronic monitoring and surveillance in the workplace : literature review and policy recommendations
Get PDFThis report re-evaluates the literature about surveillance/monitoring in the standard workplace, in home working during the COVID 19 pandemic and in respect of digital platform work. It utilised a systematic review methodology (see Appendix I). A total of 398 articles were identified, evaluated and synthesised. The report finds that worker surveillance practices have extended to cover many different features of the employees as they work. Surveillance in the workplace targets thoughts, feelings and physiology, location and movement, task performance and professional profile and reputation. In the standard workplace, more aspects of employees’ lives are made visible to managers through data. Employees’ work/non-work boundaries are contested terrain. The surveillance of employees working remotely during the pandemic has intensified, with the accelerated deployment of keystroke, webcam, desktop and email monitoring in Europe, the UK and the USA. Whilst remote monitoring is known to create work-family conflict, and skilled supervisory support is essential, there is a shortage of research which examines these recent phenomena. Digital platform work features end-to-end worker surveillance. Data are captured on performance, behaviours and location, and are combined with customer feedback to determine algorithmically what work and reward are offered to the platform worker in the future. There is no managerial support and patchy colleague support in a hyper-competitive and gamified freelance labour market. Once again there is a shortage of research which specifically addresses the effects of monitoring on those who work on digital platforms. Excessive monitoring has negative psycho-social consequences including increased resistance, decreased job satisfaction, increased stress, decreased organisational commitment and increased turnover propensity. The design and application of monitoring, as well as the managerial practices, processes and policies which surround it influence the incidence of these psycho-social risks. Policy recommendations target at mitigating the psycho-social risks of monitoring and draw upon privacy, data justice and organisational justice principles. Numerous recommendations are derived both for practice and for higher level policy development
Factors associated with bycatch of marine mammals in United Kingdom static net fisheries
Get PDFFunding: European Commission (SEAwise 10002799) (Sophie Smout, Faye Moyes). UK Government Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) and The Scottish Marine Directorate (UK Bycatch Monitoring Programme) (Al Kingston, Simon Northridge).The accidental capture (‘bycatch’) of marine animals can pose a conservation threat to populations of endangered, threatened, and protected species. We evaluated the factors influencing or associated with estimated bycatch-per-haul (BpH) using a unique long-term data set with almost 20 000 monitored static net fishing operations collected between 1996 and 2023 as part of the UK Bycatch Monitoring Programme. We developed statistical models to explore relationships between BpH and potential explanatory variables for two small cetacean species, harbour porpoise (Phocoena phocoena) and common dolphin (Delphinus delphis), and a pinniped category [which included grey seal (Halichoerus grypus) and harbour seal (Phoca vitulina)]. Explanatory variables were spatio-temporal [ICES Division, season (day of year), year], environmental (depth), and operational [metier, effort, presence of acoustic deterrent devices (ADDs)]. Harbour porpoise and common dolphin BpH were relatively stable up to 2014, but since then have generally shown opposing trends with harbour porpoise BpH decreasing and common dolphin BpH increasing. Seal BpH has been gradually increasing across the time-period. Seasonal patterns in BpH were also evident, with harbour porpoise rates highest in spring and autumn, and common dolphin and seal rates highest in winter. Harbour porpoise and seal BpH generally decreased with increasing depth; no clear association with depth was found for common dolphin BpH. BpH exhibited an increasing trend as haul effort increased (effort being estimated per haul based on soak time and net length), and there was a tendency for bycatch rates to increase more slowly at high effort levels. The use of ADDs was associated with lower BpH of harbour porpoise (approximately a 75% reduction) but no clear effect was seen for common dolphin. BpH of seals was positively associated with use of ADDs. Model predictions for ICES Divisions, metiers and seasons with relatively higher BpH for the different species can be used to refine current bycatch estimation procedures and inform the development of targeted bycatch mitigation.Peer reviewe
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