2020 looks set to be a significant year for privacy, cyber security and Internet content reforms in China and Hong Kong. On 20 December 2019, the Cyberspace Administration of China released the “Regulation on Governance of Internet Information...

Dr. Azza Karam is the Secretary General of Religions for Peace International and Professor of Religion and Development at the Vrije Universiteit (VU), Amsterdam; Dr. Mustafa Y. Ali is the Secretary General of the Global Network of Religions for Children (GNRC) based in Nairobi, Kenya.

The post Religion & its Discontents: Considerations Around COVID-19 & Africa appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Facebook's new content oversight board will include a former prime minister, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate and several constitutional law experts and rights advocates in its first 20 members.

Facebook's new content oversight board will include a former prime minister, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate and several constitutional law experts and rights advocates in its first 20 members.

For any journal issue that has at least one open access or early access article, PMC is now displaying the table of contents (TOC) in advance of the whole issue becoming available. Not to worry, though—only those articles specified for early release are immediately viewable in PMC. As consistent with the terms of access in the journal agreement, the other articles will only become available on their specified release date, as shown in the TOC below.

The journal's accessiblity, as indicated on the PMC Journal list also has not changed; for example, Plant Physiology's embargo period is still 12 months. What has changed is that the issues with “preview” TOCs now additionally appear on the journal's archive page. Publishers and others can rest assured, however, that no access terms for any journal have been changed with the unveiling of this new format.

Axonal protein synthesis has been shown to play a role in developmental and regenerative growth, as well as in the maintenance of the axoplasm in a steady state. Recent studies have begun to identify the mRNAs localized in axons, which could be translated locally under different conditions. Despite that by now hundreds or thousands of mRNAs have been shown to be localized into the axonal compartment of cultured neurons in vitro, knowledge of which mRNAs are localized in mature myelinated axons is quite limited. With the purpose of characterizing the transcriptome of mature myelinated motor axons of peripheral nervous systems, we modified the axon microdissection method devised by Koenig, enabling the isolation of the axoplasm RNA to perform RNA-seq analysis. The transcriptome analysis indicates that the number of RNAs detected in mature axons is lower in comparison with in vitro data, depleted of glial markers, and enriched in neuronal markers. The mature myelinated axons are enriched for mRNAs related to cytoskeleton, translation, and oxidative phosphorylation. Moreover, it was possible to define core genes present in axons when comparing our data with transcriptomic data of axons grown in different conditions. This work provides evidence that axon microdissection is a valuable method to obtain genome-wide data from mature and myelinated axons of the peripheral nervous system, and could be especially useful for the study of axonal involvement in neurodegenerative pathologies of motor neurons such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and spinal muscular atrophies (SMA).

Loess, a wind-blown silty soil, can be deposited under a variety of moisture conditions, including dry deposition, wet deposition and gravitational settling of aggregations formed in moist air by capillary forces at grain contacts. This experimental study uses single and double oedometer tests to assess the effect of depositional water content on the collapse potential of reconstituted samples of the Langley Silt Member, known as Brickearth, a natural loessic soil. A freefall sample preparation technique was used to mimic loess formation and environmental scanning electron microscopy was used to relate the observed behaviour to sample fabric. The results show that loess deposited at higher water contents has a greater collapse potential, which is shown to be related to its looser, more granular fabric.

Q fever, caused by Coxiella burnetii, is a worldwide zoonotic disease that may cause severe forms in humans and requires a specific and prolonged antibiotic treatment. Although current serological and molecular detection tools allow a reliable diagnosis of the disease, culture of C. burnetii strains is mandatory to assess their susceptibility to antibiotics and sequence their genome in order to optimize patient management and epidemiological studies. However, cultivating this fastidious microorganism is difficult and restricted to reference centers, as it requires biosafety level 3 laboratories and relies on cell culture performed by experienced technicians. In addition, the culture yield is low, which results in a small number of isolates being available. In this work, we developed a novel high-content screening (HCS) isolation strategy based on optimized high-throughput cell culture and automated microscopic detection of infected cells with specifically designed algorithms targeting cytopathic effects. This method was more efficient than the shell vial assay, at the level of time dependency, when applied to both frozen specimens (7 isolates recovered by HCS only, sensitivity 91% versus 78% for shell vial) and fresh samples (1 additional isolate using HCS, sensitivity 7% versus 5% for shell vial), for which most strains were recovered more rapidly with the new technique. In addition, detecting positive cultures by an automated microscope reduced the need for expertise and saved 24% of technician working time. Application of HCS to antibiotic susceptibility testing of 12 strains demonstrated that it was as efficient as the standard procedure that combines shell vial culture and quantitative PCR.

Accumulation of lipid in skeletal muscle is thought to be related to the development of insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes. Initial work in this area focused on accumulation of intramuscular triglyceride; however, bioactive lipids such as diacylglycerols and sphingolipids are now thought to play an important role. Specific species of these lipids appear to be more negative toward insulin sensitivity than others. Adding another layer of complexity, localization of lipids within the cell appears to influence the relationship between these lipids and insulin sensitivity. This article summarizes how accumulation of total lipids, specific lipid species, and localization of lipids influence insulin sensitivity in humans. We then focus on how these aspects of muscle lipids are impacted by acute and chronic aerobic and resistance exercise training. By understanding how exercise alters specific species and localization of lipids, it may be possible to uncover specific lipids that most heavily impact insulin sensitivity.

In light of the ongoing COVID-19 crisis, this week’s resources continue to have the dual focus of providing resources that can help us navigate this […]

The post David Kelly’s Curated L&D Content for the Week of 5/4/20 appeared first on e-Learning Feeds.

In light of the ongoing COVID-19 crisis, this week’s resources continue to have the dual focus of providing resources that can help us navigate this […]

The post David Kelly’s Curated L&D Content for the Week of 4/27/20 appeared first on e-Learning Feeds.

Smithsonian's Earth Optimism Summit features CNN's Chief Climate Correspondent Bill Weir

A woman allegedly spat at and threw the contents of a sick bowl over a nurse while being treated for Covid-19 symptoms.

The company has faced criticism in recent years for its handling of issues ranging from user privacy to policing hate speech to stopping the spread of disinformation.

Newly discovered documents have revealed the first telegraph messages and joy when England was linked for the first time with India on 23 June, 1870.

'Weekend Update' among segments returning

'The Mindy Project' star and writer talks to Priya Arora about breaking boundaries with her new Netflix show 'Never Have I Ever', a coming-of-age comedy about a modern-day first-generation Indian American teenage girl, much like younger herself

David Walliams and Matt Lucas's comedy comeback proved controversial

'We tried to tell that story, but it defeated us every time'

Get the royally-approved glow

We are a new board overseeing Facebook. Here’s what we’ll decide.Catalina Botero-Marino, Jamal Greene, Michael W. McConnell and Helle Thorning-Schmidt, The New York TimesFacebook announced the first members of its content oversight board this week, a...

Sometimes I jokingly introduce myself as “the guy from the AMP videos”, as lately the public largely knows me, and by extension my team at Google, in the AMP context. But there’s actually much more happening in our small-but-mighty Content Ecosystem team at Google: We’ve made it our mission to ensure the web is the […]

The post I’m hiring! Help us make content experiences for everyone appeared first on Paul Bakaus' blog.

Michael Schumacher confessed himself satisfied with his best result of the season after finishing fourth in the Spanish Grand Prix

Major social media companies are having to adjust to a difficult reality: Due to social distancing requirements, much of their human workforce that moderates content has been sent home.  The timing is challenging, as platforms are fighting to contain an epidemic of misinformation, with user traffic hitting all-time records. To make up for the absence…

Amid a catastrophe, new information is often revealed at a faster pace than leaders can manage it, experts can analyze it, and the public can integrate it. In the case of the COVID-19 pandemic, the resulting lag in making sense of the crisis has had a profound impact. Public health authorities have warned of the…

Amid a catastrophe, new information is often revealed at a faster pace than leaders can manage it, experts can analyze it, and the public can integrate it. In the case of the COVID-19 pandemic, the resulting lag in making sense of the crisis has had a profound impact. Public health authorities have warned of the…

Amid a catastrophe, new information is often revealed at a faster pace than leaders can manage it, experts can analyze it, and the public can integrate it. In the case of the COVID-19 pandemic, the resulting lag in making sense of the crisis has had a profound impact. Public health authorities have warned of the…

Major social media companies are having to adjust to a difficult reality: Due to social distancing requirements, much of their human workforce that moderates content has been sent home.  The timing is challenging, as platforms are fighting to contain an epidemic of misinformation, with user traffic hitting all-time records. To make up for the absence…

Amid a catastrophe, new information is often revealed at a faster pace than leaders can manage it, experts can analyze it, and the public can integrate it. In the case of the COVID-19 pandemic, the resulting lag in making sense of the crisis has had a profound impact. Public health authorities have warned of the…

The Oil Drum is a website published by the Institute for the Study of Energy and Our Future, a non-profit that conducts research and educates the public about energy issues and their impact on society.

It turns out, there are a lot of chemicals that have to be dealt with before fabrics can be reused.