•Integration of research findings from other fields such as medical, psychology, family business and physiology.•Consumers’ perceptions of cleanliness are partially shaped by subconscious cues•Degree ...of lighting, use of solid white bedding, and presence of cleaning staff can influence both actual and perceived cleanliness.•Plants/greenery, shiny surfaces, and ambient scents can influence guests’ perceptions of cleanliness.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, now and for years to come, guests at hospitality venues will have heightened awareness with regard to formulating their perceptions of cleanliness. While perceived cleanliness has received attention in our existing body of literature, this conceptual paper integrates potential subconscious influencers on cleanliness perceptions into our understanding. Specifically, findings contained in various streams of research suggest that a number of factors can have subconscious influences on individuals’ perceptions of cleanliness in service environments. Such factors include the degree of lighting, the presence of plants / greenery, the shininess of surfaces, the use of ambient scents, the use of white bedding, and the presence of cleaning staff. Evidently, the sooner hospitality venues (particularly airlines, lodging operations, restaurants, and cruise ships) are perceived as clean and safe, the faster they will recover from the pandemic. As such, this paper is rich with both practical and research implications.
Macrophages undergo metabolic changes during activation that are coupled to functional responses. The gram negative bacterial product lipopolysaccharide (LPS) is especially potent at driving ...metabolic reprogramming, enhancing glycolysis and altering the Krebs cycle. Here we describe a role for the citrate-derived metabolite malonyl-CoA in the effect of LPS in macrophages. Malonylation of a wide variety of proteins occurs in response to LPS. We focused on one of these, glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase (GAPDH). In resting macrophages, GAPDH binds to and suppresses translation of several inflammatory mRNAs, including that encoding TNFα. Upon LPS stimulation, GAPDH undergoes malonylation on lysine 213, leading to its dissociation from TNFα mRNA, promoting translation. We therefore identify for the first time malonylation as a signal, regulating GAPDH mRNA binding to promote inflammation.
Food fraud is generally agreed to be defined as an illegal deception for economic gain using food which includes all types of fraud and all products. Food fraud – including the sub-category of ...Economically Motivated Adulteration or EMA – is an urgent global public policy issue that requires the development of common definitions and harmonized prevention management systems.
There is a need to assess the food fraud public policy development steps to understand the current state and more importantly to identify next steps that will support efficient and successful implementation. Since food fraud policy development is in early stages of development, there is a unique opportunity to build upon the current state and make adjustments that will potentially yield tremendous benefit through harmonization and coordination.
Problem Identification (Foundation Setting and Definition & Formation), Agenda Setting, Alternate Approaches, Legitimation, Implementation, and Evaluation. The research included a review of the current public policy development stages for the United Kingdom, European Commission, China, United States of America, and then also the Global Food Safety Initiative GFSI.
The international food fraud policy-making is currently advancing through Agenda Setting, Alternate Approaches, and Legitimation. The next steps for an efficient and effective food fraud policy-making implementation are to: (1) establish the definition and scope, (2) define food fraud as a food agency issue, (3) publish an official government statement focused on prevention (e.g., law, regulation, rule, guidance, etc.), (4) support and fund the policy implementation, and (5) continue to evaluate and adjust the response. Since food fraud policy development is in the early stages of development, there is a unique opportunity to build upon the current state and make adjustments that will potentially yield tremendous benefit through harmonization and coordination.
•Food fraud is one of the most urgent and changing food research topics.•The food public policy making is under development.•There are public policy theory that can apply to food fraud.•Understanding the stages of public policy development can help identify actions that will help food fraud prevention.
The intensification of malaria control interventions has resulted in its global decline, but it remains a significant public health burden especially in sub-Saharan Africa (sSA). Knowledge on the ...parasite diversity, its transmission dynamics, mechanisms of adaptation to environmental and interventional pressures could help refine or develop new control and elimination strategies. Critical to this is the accurate assessment of the parasite's genetic diversity and monitoring of genetic markers of anti-malarial resistance across all susceptible populations. Such wide molecular surveillance will require selected tools and approaches from a variety of ever evolving advancements in technology and the changing epidemiology of malaria. The choice of an effective approach for specific endemic settings remains challenging, particularly for countries in sSA with limited access to advanced technologies. This article examines the current strategies and tools for Plasmodium falciparum genetic diversity typing and resistance monitoring and proposes how the different tools could be employed in resource-poor settings. Advanced approaches enabling targeted deep sequencing is valued as a sensitive method for assessing drug resistance and parasite diversity but remains out of the reach of most laboratories in sSA due to the high cost of development and maintenance. It is, however, feasible to equip a limited number of laboratories as Centres of Excellence in Africa (CEA), which will receive and process samples from a network of peripheral laboratories in the continent. Cheaper, sensitive and portable real-time PCR methods can be used in peripheral laboratories to pre-screen and select samples for targeted deep sequence or genome wide analyses at these CEAs.
The enzyme type IIA secreted phospholipase A2 (sPLA2-IIA) is crucial for mammalian innate host defense against bacterial pathogens. Most studies have investigated the role of sPLA2-IIA in systemic ...bacterial infections, identifying molecular pathways of bacterial resistance against sPLA2-IIA-mediated killing, and providing insight into sPLA2-IIA mechanisms of action. Sensitization of (antibiotic-resistant) bacteria to sPLA2-IIA action by blocking bacterial resistance or by applying sPLA2-IIA to treat bacterial infections might represent a therapeutic option in the future. Because sPLA2-IIA is highly expressed at mucosal barriers, we also discuss how sPLA2-IIA is likely to be an important driver of microbiome composition; we anticipate that future research in this area may bring new insights into the role of sPLA2-IIA in health and disease.
sPLA2-IIA is an endogenous antimicrobial protein produced by many tissues and host cells, and displays high constitutive expression at barrier sites and inducible expression in the circulation.sPLA2-IIA is unique in its particular selectivity and potency in killing Gram-positive bacteria; it plays an underappreciated role in defense against Gram-negative pathogens.Bacteria can interfere with sPLA2-IIA-mediated killing through manipulation of its expression or through cell-envelope modifications and effective repair mechanisms.On mucosal surfaces, sPLA2-IIA expression impacts on the composition of the microbiome.sPLA2-IIA could be used as a stand-alone therapeutic agent, or as an adjunct therapy to existing antibiotics, to treat infections caused by antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
Therapeutic approaches for the induction of immune tolerance remain an unmet clinical need for the treatment of autoimmune diseases, including multiple sclerosis (MS). Based on its role in the ...control of the immune response, the ligand-activated transcription factor aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AhR) is a candidate target for novel immunotherapies. Here, we report the development of AhR-activating nanoliposomes (NLPs) to induce antigen-specific tolerance. NLPs loaded with the AhR agonist ITE and a T cell epitope from myelin oligodendrocyte glycoprotein (MOG)35–55 induced tolerogenic dendritic cells and suppressed the development of experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE), a preclinical model of MS, in preventive and therapeutic setups. EAE suppression was associated with the expansion of MOG35–55-specific FoxP3⁺ regulatory T cells (Treg cells) and type 1 regulatory T cells (Tr1 cells), concomitant with a reduction in central nervous system-infiltrating effector T cells (Teff cells). Notably, NLPs induced bystander suppression in the EAE model established in C57BL/6 × SJL F1 mice. Moreover, NLPs ameliorated chronic progressive EAE in nonobese diabetic mice, a model which resembles some aspects of secondary progressive MS. In summary, these studies describe a platform for the therapeutic induction of antigen-specific tolerance in autoimmune diseases.
Focused Ultrasound (FUS) coupled with intravenous administration of microbubbles (MB) is a non-invasive technique that has been shown to reliably open (increase the permeability of) the blood-brain ...barrier (BBB) in multiple in vivo models including non-human primates (NHP). This procedure has shown promise for clinical and basic science applications, yet the safety and potential neurological effects of long term application in NHP requires further investigation under parameters shown to be efficacious in that species (500 kHz, 200-400 kPa, 4-5 μm MB, 2 minute sonication). In this study, we repeatedly opened the BBB in the caudate and putamen regions of the basal ganglia of 4 NHP using FUS with systemically-administered MB over 4-20 months. We assessed the safety of the FUS with MB procedure using MRI to detect edema or hemorrhaging in the brain. Contrast enhanced T1-weighted MRI sequences showed a 98% success rate for openings in the targeted regions. T2-weighted and SWI sequences indicated a lack edema in the majority of the cases. We investigated potential neurological effects of the FUS with MB procedure through quantitative cognitive testing of' visual, cognitive, motivational, and motor function using a random dot motion task with reward magnitude bias presented on a touchpanel display. Reaction times during the task significantly increased on the day of the FUS with MB procedure. This increase returned to baseline within 4-5 days after the procedure. Visual motion discrimination thresholds were unaffected. Our results indicate FUS with MB can be a safe method for repeated opening of the BBB at the basal ganglia in NHP for up to 20 months without any long-term negative physiological or neurological effects with the parameters used.
High-order numerical methods for unstructured grids combine the superior accuracy of high-order spectral or finite difference methods with the geometric flexibility of low-order finite volume or ...finite element schemes. The Flux Reconstruction (FR) approach unifies various high-order schemes for unstructured grids within a single framework. Additionally, the FR approach exhibits a significant degree of element locality, and is thus able to run efficiently on modern streaming architectures, such as Graphical Processing Units (GPUs). The aforementioned properties of FR mean it offers a promising route to performing affordable, and hence industrially relevant, scale-resolving simulations of hitherto intractable unsteady flows within the vicinity of real-world engineering geometries. In this paper we present PyFR, an open-source Python based framework for solving advection–diffusion type problems on streaming architectures using the FR approach. The framework is designed to solve a range of governing systems on mixed unstructured grids containing various element types. It is also designed to target a range of hardware platforms via use of an in-built domain specific language based on the Mako templating engine. The current release of PyFR is able to solve the compressible Euler and Navier–Stokes equations on grids of quadrilateral and triangular elements in two dimensions, and hexahedral elements in three dimensions, targeting clusters of CPUs, and NVIDIA GPUs. Results are presented for various benchmark flow problems, single-node performance is discussed, and scalability of the code is demonstrated on up to 104 NVIDIA M2090 GPUs. The software is freely available under a 3-Clause New Style BSD license (see www.pyfr.org).
Program title: PyFR v0.1.0
Catalogue identifier: AETY_v1_0
Program summary URL:http://cpc.cs.qub.ac.uk/summaries/AETY_v1_0.html
Program obtainable from: CPC Program Library, Queen’s University, Belfast, N. Ireland
Licensing provisions: New style BSD license
No. of lines in distributed program, including test data, etc.: 12733
No. of bytes in distributed program, including test data, etc.: 214183
Distribution format: tar.gz
Programming language: Python, CUDA and C.
Computer: Variable, up to and including GPU clusters.
Operating system: Recent version of Linux/UNIX.
RAM: Variable, from hundreds of megabytes to gigabytes.
Classification: 6.5, 12.
External routines: Python 2.7, numpy, PyCUDA, mpi4py, SymPy, Mako
Nature of problem:
Compressible Euler and Navier–Stokes equations of fluid dynamics; potential for any advection–diffusion type problem.
Solution method:
High-order flux reconstruction approach suitable for curved, mixed, unstructured grids.
Unusual features:
Code makes extensive use of symbolic manipulation and runtime code generation through a domain specific language.
Running time:
Many small problems can be solved on a recent workstation in minutes to hours.
All‐optical deformation and recovery of complex topographical features is demonstrated within elastic sheets composed of main‐chain type azobenzene‐functionalized liquid crystalline elastomers ...(azo‐LCEs). The azo‐LCEs are synthesized via an orthogonal, two‐step reaction between commercially available LC monomers and n‐butylamine. By employing surface alignment, the local orientation of the nematic director is spatially complex (“blueprinted”). Exposing the blueprinted LCE films to light as an actinic stimulus generates a photomechanical response which yields reversible shape changes between 2D and 3D shapes. The deformation of azo‐LCEs strongly depends on the azobenzene concentration as well as the network structure (i.e., crosslink density). Blueprinting complex director profiles within azo‐LCEs yield reconfigurable elastic sheets that can be addressed both remotely and selectively which may have benefit in a variety of applications in aerospace, medicine, and optics.
All‐optical deformation and recovery of complex 3D topographical features that can be addressed both remotely and selectively is demonstrated in blueprinted azobenzene‐functionalized liquid crystalline elastomers. The photoinduced shape transformation strongly depends on the azobenzene concentration as well as the network structure (i.e., crosslink density).
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