Complement Potentiates Immune Sensing of HIV-1 and Early Type I Interferon Responses

Importantly, our study highlights an unusual target on DCs—the α chain of complement receptor 4 (CR4) (CD11c)—for therapeutic interventions in HIV-1 treatment. Targeting CD11c on DCs mediated a potent antiviral immune response via clustering of CR4 and CCR5 and subsequent opening of an antiviral recognition pathway in DCs via MAVS.

The survival of blown pack spoilage associated Clostridium estertheticum and Clostridium gasigenes spores during the ensiling of grass

Blown pack spoilage (BPS) of vacuum packaged primals, caused by Clostridium estertheticum and Clostridium gasigenes, is a serious issue for the beef industry. There are multiple sources of these bacteria on beef farms, including grass and associated feed preparations. The aim of this study was to investigate the survival of C. estertheticum and C. gasigenes spores during the ensiling of grass and the subsequent opening of the silos. Grass, harvested from fields, with and without cattle slurry amendment, was inoculated with approximately 100 spores g–1 and ensiled using a laboratory (silo) model system at 20°C in the dark. Adding formic acid or sucrose resulted in 6 treatment combination as follows; no slurry (NS), no slurry plus formic acid (NSFA), no slurry plus sucrose (NSS), slurry (S), slurry plus formic acid (SFA) and slurry plus sucrose (SS). During the silage fermentation, samples were removed periodically and tested for C. estertheticum, C. gasigenes, total viable, Escherichia coli, Enterobacteriaceae and lactic acid bacteria (LAB) counts. The pH, ethanol, volatile fatty acids (VFA), lactic acid and ammonia concentrations were also monitored throughout the experiment. C. estertheticum did not survive the ensiling process, regardless of treatment. In contrast, C. gasigenes grew in the early stages and was detected during the entirety of the fermentation for all treatments. Based on these observations, it was concluded that the silage fermentation process described would not remove C. gasigenes and contaminated grass may result in contaminated feed for animals.

China’s and Japan’s Divergent Institutions

China and Japan share some historical affinities, and they faced similar challenges of foreign threats and unequal treaties in the nineteenth century. Their subsequent paths were very different, however. As a late developer, Japan experienced industrialization in two movements, the more recent being the postwar period under the strong influence of the United States and its New Deal institutions. After its 1949 revolution, China also underwent late-developer industrialization, but under the initial influence of the Soviet model. China’s rapprochement with the United States and subsequent opening led to massive institutional change and rapid growth as a compressed developer, with significant foreign direct investment and global-value-chain engagement. A comparison of education and skill development highlights just how different these paths were.

Pears, pistachios, pencils and punctuation: Performative encounter and the art of conversation

Words, utterance, gesture, mark-making, ink, nut shells, a peach or a stray button prompt material-discursive engagement. Nothing is taken for granted in terms of knowledge or experience other than a belief that such engagement is a practice, revealing of itself. This article proposes and exemplifies an ‘apparatus’ of such practice, in which the materially embedded and/or physically embodied production of speech, writing, objects and images are intermingled. This practice has evolved through collaboration, within and across successive performative encounters. Through the intra-acting agencies of performative encounter, the material and the verbal are in conversation, questioning the production of knowledge, critically and metaphorically determined as a ‘digestive tract of knowing’. A material engagement emerges that is continuously enmeshed, unravelled and revealed as an embodied tract that surfaces as diagram, apparatus or a conjunction of vertices. In this context, words, whether written, spoken, uttered or as yet unsaid, are interior to the practice. Together and continuously, their shared and formative meanings are mobile, never settling, always productive. Whether critically informed or invented on the spur of the moment, words (including the writing of this article) act as material-discursive fabric. This research-in-action is evident both in the operative engagement and in the subsequent opening of the practice to others, whether as display, text, performance or dialogic example.

Preparation of aromatic γ-hydroxyketones by means of Heck coupling of aryl halides and 2,3-dihydrofuran, catalyzed by a palladium(ii) glycine complex under microwave irradiation

The synthesis of phenyl-γ-hydroxyketones through Heck coupling and subsequent opening of the tetrahydrofuran ring by the nucleophilic attack of a water molecule catalyzed by PdCl2·Gly2 under microwave irradiation.

International Relations: The Story So Far

‘The Story So Far’ is the conclusion of the first centenary Special Issue of the journal International Relations. The issue marks 100 years since the birth of the academic discipline of International Relations (IR), whose institutional moment was the endowment establishing the Department of International Politics at the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, at the end of 1918, and its subsequent opening in April 1919. The collection of articles marking this unique event consists of reflections by a group of leading scholars on themes of continuity and change at the international level of world politics in that century. The present article considers these reflections in the context of problematising our attempts to understand the long history and complex dynamics of international relations.

Classroom observation in context: an exploratory study in secondary schools from Northern Colombia

ABSTRACT This paper discusses the role of classroom observations in informing debates on the quality of teaching and learning in secondary education. Specifically, the document proposes a methodology for classroom observation in context (CoC) to address many of the epistemological limitations of mainstream input-output observation models in relation to the professionalisation of educators. To observe in context entails working with a non-structured observation strategy to identify patterns in classroom events and the subsequent opening of spaces for collaborative dialogues (among observers and between observes and observees) to reflect about the potential mechanisms behind these patterns. The results of an exploratory study of CoC in Northern Colombia indicate the potential of such a strategy in informing education policy debates beyond the classroom setting.

Pioneer Factors in Animals and Plants—Colonizing Chromatin for Gene Regulation

Unlike most transcription factors (TF), pioneer TFs have a specialized role in binding closed regions of chromatin and initiating the subsequent opening of these regions. Thus, pioneer TFs are key factors in gene regulation with critical roles in developmental transitions, including organ biogenesis, tissue development, and cellular differentiation. These developmental events involve some major reprogramming of gene expression patterns, specifically the opening and closing of distinct chromatin regions. Here, we discuss how pioneer TFs are identified using biochemical and genome-wide techniques. What is known about pioneer TFs from animals and plants is reviewed, with a focus on the strategies used by pioneer factors in different organisms. Finally, the different molecular mechanisms pioneer factors used are discussed, highlighting the roles that tertiary and quaternary structures play in nucleosome-compatible DNA-binding.

Shanghai’s Jazz Venues

This chapter discusses jazz venues in Shanghai. The historical presence of jazz in Shanghai as the music of the city, from the late 1910s and even throughout the Japanese invasion, continues to this day. Even though Mao suppressed anything Western within a few years of his defeat of the Nationalists in 1949, his passing in 1976 and the subsequent opening up of China to the world in the late 1970s spurred the rejuvenation of jazz in the city. By the mid-2000s, one could find numerous venues presenting jazz in Shanghai. Some of the venues are housed in the hotels, such as the Shanghai Hilton, the George V, and the Portman Ritz-Carlton Bar. The most historic of the hotel jazz venues is the Peace Hotel Jazz Bar on the Bund.