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Theobroma cacao is one of the most economically important tropical trees, being the source of chocolate. As part of an ongoing study to understand the diversity of the badnavirus complex, responsible for the cacao swollen shoot virus disease in West Africa, evidence was found recently of virus-like sequences in asymptomatic cacao plants. The present study exploited the wealth of genomic resources in this crop, and combined bioinformatic, molecular, and genetic approaches to report for the first time the presence of integrated badnaviral sequences in most of the cacao genetic groups. These sequences, which we propose to name eTcBV for endogenous T. cacao bacilliform virus, varied in type with each predominating in a specific genetic group. A diagnostic multiplex PCR method was developed to identify the homozygous or hemizygous condition of one specific insert, which was inherited as a single Mendelian trait. These data suggest that these integration events occurred before or during the species diversification in Central and South America, and prior to its cultivation in other regions. Such evidence of integrated sequences is relevant to the management of cacao quarantine facilities and may also aid novel methods to reduce the impact of such viruses in this crop.

Melioidosis, caused by the environmental gram-negative bacterium Burkholderia pseudomallei, usually develops in adults with predisposing conditions and in Australia more commonly occurs during the monsoonal wet season. We report an outbreak of 7 cases of melioidosis in immunocompetent children in Australia. All the children had participated in a single-day sporting event during the dry season in a tropical region of Australia, and all had limited cutaneous disease. All case-patients had an adverse reaction to oral trimethoprim/sulfamethoxazole treatment, necessitating its discontinuation. We describe the clinical features, environmental sampling, genomic epidemiologic investigation, and public health response to the outbreak. Management of this outbreak shows the potential benefits of making melioidosis a notifiable disease. The approach used could also be used as a framework for similar outbreaks in the future.

BackgroundPD-1 (CD279) is an immune checkpoint inhibitor that is expressed on the surface of T cells. Therapies inhibiting PD-1 interactions have become the most popular checkpoint inhibitor utilized in cancer immunotherapies. While treatments with anti-PD-1 can be highly effective, the combination of PD-1 with targeted treatment against other immune checkpoint molecules or costimulatory molecules has largely improved patient outcomes in the clinic. The pharmacokinetics of these treatments, including the retention of therapies to their target molecules, has played a critical role establishing effective dosing and treatment regimens. However, performing these assays can be costly, time intensive to develop, and require specialized equipment and expertise.MethodsHere, Champions Oncology has established a receptor occupancy (RO) assay against PD-1 in a scalable fashion using high dimensional flow cytometry. Flow cytometry is a powerful single cell technique that allows for the interrogation of drug-target cell interactions at the single cell level and has been utilized to evaluate receptor occupancy for several molecules, including PD-1.ResultsChampions Oncology has developed a panel that includes a drop-in channel to evaluate both the receptor occupancy of PD-1 and the expression of other key checkpoint markers used in combination therapies. The receptor occupancy assay was evaluated for both assay sensitivity and reproducibility. This assay has been further developed to be scalable and stable up to 48–72 hours on fresh whole blood samples.ConclusionsCollectively, this assay establishes the strength of the drug-target interaction, the sensitivity to which PD-1 interactions can be evaluated, and flexible nature of the custom-designed assay.Ethics ApprovalAll human biological samples utilized for the research described in this abstract have been procured or collected after an Informed Consent form has been issued according to the current local legislation. All animals studies described in this abstract have been conducted under Champions’ approved IACUC.

This research investigated the association between Internet searches and property crime levels in the United States. States with the highest levels of property crime tended to have the highest levels of Google crime prevention queries for target hardening, surveillance, and formal and informal social control. In addition, levels of crime reduction were often greatest in states with more crime prevention queries and the magnitude of the reduction was often substantial. Findings from this research support the conceptualization of aggregated online crime prevention queries as a potential factor for understanding crime reduction strategies and overall changes in crime rate patterns at the state-level.

As comparative lawyer Otto Kahn-Freund observed in the mid-1970s, there is a \"far reaching free trade in legal ideas. Far reaching, not all embracing\". We see this manifested in the law of privacy, whether understood in the traditional sense of freedom from intrusion into private life or some more extended sense of, for instance, control over personal information or physical or sensory integrity stretching beyond the enjoyment of an intimate interior private life. On the one hand, there is a great deal of cross-fertilisation across jurisdictions as elements of the law of one are copied in others, allowing certain broad groupings to evolve. On the other hand, there are still many differences between and within these groupings which may be partly due to the different legal contexts of the laws, but are also partly due to factors having to do with different social-cultural histories and norms, as well as different political environments within which laws are developed, interpreted, and enforced. These tensions have ongoing implications for the protection of privacy in the digital century. Yet there are hopeful signs of the possibility of convergence around legal standards of privacy protection in the future, as in the present and past-for all the legal, social-cultural and political differences that remain and for all the new challenges to privacy that we can expect to see.

Efforts to expand the scope of legal protection given to reputation and brands in the Asia Pacific region have led to considerable controversy. Written by a variety of experts, the essays in this book consider the developing law of reputation and brands in a fraught area.

This study examined risk and protective factors for four types of bullying victimization – physical, verbal, relational, and cyber bullying – while assessing the influence of vicarious, anticipated, and experienced strains from General Strain Theory. In this study, experienced strain was operationalized as exposure to negative stimuli, such as rejection. Vicarious strain was operationalized as witnessing or being aware of other people’s negative experiences, such as peer victimization, and anticipated strain occurred when an individual had negative expectations about the future, such as a fear of harm. Using a sample of Southeastern high school students, this study found that individuals who experienced vicarious strain (peer victimization) had a higher likelihood of experiencing the same type of victimization as their peers. Previous bullies were also likely to experience the same type of bullying that they initiated. Anticipated strain (fear of attack) was associated with an increased likelihood of experiencing verbal and cyber bullying. Adult support was associated with an increased likelihood of verbal bullying but decreased likelihood of relational bullying victimization. Peer support was associated with an increased likelihood of experiencing relational and cyber bullying victimization. The results support Agnew’s (2006) proposal that experienced, vicarious, and anticipated strains are correlated with antisocial behavior and victimization (Zavala & Spohn, 2013). Policy implications and directions for future research are discussed.

To maintain and develop close relationships, people need to accurately represent the minds of their social partners. Although studies have characterized many aspects of children’s intuitive theory of the mind and children’s intuitive theory of relationships, it is largely unknown whether and how children think about mental state reasoning within relationships. In three experiments, we asked whether children think accurate mental state reasoning is a cue to social closeness. In Experiment 1 ( = 145), we found that 5- to 9-year-old children, but not 4-year-old children, inferred that characters who engage in affective touch (making physical contact, as though nuzzling, while moving together in synchrony) are socially closer and know about each other’s goals and desires. In Experiment 2 ( = 137), we found that 6- to 9-year-old children, but not younger children, inferred that characters who are correct about each other’s minds are socially close. Children did not think that being correct about external states of the world was evidence that a character was close to another. In Experiment 3 ( = 79), we conceptually replicated the main findings from Experiments 1 and 2, and we found that 6- to 9-year-old children did not form the same inferences concerning knowledge about observable features of individuals (e.g., an individual’s outfit); children’s inferences were specific to unobservable mental content. Thus, by 6 years of age, children integrate their intuitive theories of the mind and relationships to make sense of whether and how people are connected to each other, as well as the strength and nature of those connections.

This article examines how radio broadcasting in Australia in the 1930s challenged the monopolies of racing clubs who exercised tight control over access to the racecourse, supported by existing laws, with minimal media reporting in the form of scores scratched on boards at the racecourse and newspaper summaries after the event. In the 1937 case of Victoria Park Racing v Taylor, commercial radio emerged as a disruptive force that changed the way races were experienced by audiences, from attendance at the racecourse to listening to a contemporaneous report of the event as it was being played on a radio receiving set. The different approaches to the 'novel' practice confronting the court reveal a dispute over the common law's correct approach to dealing with new technologies more generally. In this case, the mechanical approach of Dixon J prevailed and the novel situation of live radio broadcast was treated as falling outside the established categories of legal protection, and therefore outside the law's control. As such, the case may appear as an example of the 'technology' of law extended now to the law made by judges. But to end the story there would be misleading. For it would not be long before the rather different approach of the dissenting judges, and especially Evatt J, would be embraced by a later High Court as its traditionally preferred methodology for dealing with new technologies as well as other changes in the economic and social environment. As to the decision, broadcasts of live spectacles were the subject of Commonwealth legislation in 1956. Even so, it was television rather than radio that was the subject of regulation, radio having become less unruly and more amenable to licensing arrangements.