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Background Microbial formation of acetone, isopropanol, and butanol is largely restricted to bacteria belonging to the genus Clostridium. This ability has been industrially exploited over the last 100 years. The solvents are important feedstocks for the chemical and biofuel industry. However, biological synthesis suffers from high substrate costs and competition from chemical synthesis supported by the low price of crude oil. To render the biotechnological production economically viable again, improvements in microbial and fermentation performance are necessary. However, no comprehensive comparisons of respective species and strains used and their specific abilities exist today. Results The genomes of a total 30 saccharolytic Clostridium strains, representative of the species Clostridium acetobutylicum, C. aurantibutyricum, C. beijerinckii, C. diolis, C. felsineum, C. pasteurianum, C. puniceum, C. roseum, C. saccharobutylicum, and C. saccharoperbutylacetonicum, have been determined; 10 of them completely, and compared to 14 published genomes of other solvent-forming clostridia. Two major groups could be differentiated and several misclassified species were detected. Conclusions Our findings represent a comprehensive study of phylogeny and taxonomy of clostridial solvent producers that highlights differences in energy conservation mechanisms and substrate utilization between strains, and allow for the first time a direct comparison of sequentially selected industrial strains at the genetic level. Detailed data mining is now possible, supporting the identification of new engineering targets for improved solvent production. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s13068-017-0742-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

This article describes the collaborative development of the cross-site evaluation of the Food & Fitness initiative. Evaluators and community partners together created a multi-site evaluation to doc...

In May 2012, police shot Rudy Eugene, a black man of Haitian decent, dead as he ‘ate the face’ of a homeless man on a deserted Miami causeway. Because of the strange gruesomeness of the attack and other similar violent acts, some in the media declared that a terrifying pandemic—the ‘zombie apocalypse’—had arrived. While this particular case may be yet another instance of mediated panic, we suggest cries of ‘zombies’ and ‘cannibals’ should not be dismissed as simply sensationalistic, irresponsible journalism. Rather, we see this case as a powerful example of the cultural production of a spectral sort of monstrosity that obscures and justifies police violence and state killing. As such, we argue that all of the contemporary ‘zombie talk’, usefully reveals how the logics of security, state violence and punitive disposability are imagined and reproduced as livable parts of late-capitalism.

This research tests aspects of differential social support and coercion theory of crime as proposed by Colvin, Cullen and Vander Ven (2002). The theory argues social interactions, either coercive or supportive, figure into development of self-control, delinquent behavior, and mental health. Coercive interactions involve force, direct and indirect intimidation and violence that compel compliance out of fear or anxiety. Coercive interactions can be employed consistently or erratically and individuals that are disciplined in an erratic manner will tend to develop strong anger directed toward others, low self-control, and weak alienated social bonds. These individuals are likely to become chronic offenders. Individuals that receive consistent coercion develop strong self-directed anger, high-externalized self-control, and weak social bonds. These individuals will have minimal legal difficulties, but are likely to have persistent mental health problems Social supports can also be erratic or consistent in natur...

Legislative performance can be understood in terms of results (the quality of the laws enacted) or in terms of the literal performativity of legislators (the quality of their appearances on the public stage). This article examines two different ethical frameworks for evaluating legislative performance in this latter, performative sense: a deliberative model, which restricts just political performances to deliberative exchanges among citizens, and a plebeian model, which expands just political performances to include those where political and economic elites endure special burdens as a condition of their elevated status. Given certain drawbacks of the deliberative model and parallel advantages of the plebeian model, I endorse the plebeian approach to political performativity. The article concludes by elaborating one of the key contrasts between the two models with regard to political communication, namely the plebeian model's embrace of a distinct form of legislative disruption. Beyond the way deliberation...

This article aims to correct the widespread imbalance in contemporary liberal thought, which makes explicit appeal to the “least advantaged” without parallel attention to the “most advantaged” as a distinct group in need of regulatory attention. Rawls's influential theory of justice is perhaps the paradigmatic instance of this imbalance, but I show how a Rawlsian framework nonetheless provides three justifications for why implementers of liberal justice—above all, legislators—should regulate the economic prospects of a polity's richest citizens: as a heuristic device for ensuring that a system of inequalities not reach a level at which inequalities cease being mutually advantageous, as protection against excessive inequalities threatening civic liberty, and as redress for a liberal society's inability to fully realize fair equality of opportunity with regard to education and politics. Against the objection that such arguments amount to a defense of envy, insofar as they support policies that in certain instances impose economic costs on the most advantaged with negative or neutral economic impact on the rest of society, I attend to Rawls's often overlooked distinction between irrational and reasonable forms of envy, showing that any envy involved in the proposed regulation of the most advantaged falls within this latter category.

We report herein a dual-purpose role for polyacidic domains in an aqueous-phase polymer amphiphile assembly. In addition to their typical role as ionized water-solubilizing and self-repulsive motifs, we find that polycarboxylic acid domains uniquely enable high levels of hydrophobic drug encapsulation. By attenuated total reflectance infrared spectroscopy, we find significant differences in the carbonyl stretching region of the nanoparticles formed by polyacidic amphiphiles relative to those in soluble, single-domain poly(acrylic acid), suggesting that stabilization may be derived from limited ionization of the carboxylate groups upon assembly. Acidic-hydrophobic diblock polyacrylates were prepared and coassembled with up to 60 wt % camptothecin (CPT) into nanoparticles, the highest loading reported to date. Controlled release of bioactive CPT from polymer nanoparticles is observed, as well as protection from human serum albumin-induced hydrolysis. Surface protection with PEG limits uptake of the CPT-loaded nanoparticles by MCF-7 breast cancer cells, as expected. Acidic-hydrophobic polymer amphiphiles thus have the hallmarks of a useful and general drug delivery platform and are readily accessible from living radical polymerization of cheap, commercially available monomers. We highlight here the potential utility of this common polymer design in high-capacity, controlled-release polymer nanoparticle systems.

Summary Background In survivors of Ebola virus disease, clinical sequelae including uveitis, arthralgia, and fatigue are common and necessitate systematic follow-up. However, the infection risk to health-care providers is poorly defined. Here we report Ebola virus RT-PCR data for body site and fluid samples from a large cohort of Ebola virus survivors at clinic follow-up. Methods In this cross-sectional cohort study, consecutive survivors of Ebola virus disease attending Kerry Town survivor clinic (Freetown, Sierra Leone), who had been discharged from the Kerry Town Ebola treatment unit, were invited to participate. We collected and tested axillary, blood, conjunctival, forehead, mouth, rectal, semen, urine, and vaginal specimens for presence of Ebola virus using RT-PCR. We regarded samples to be positive for Ebola virus disease if the cycle threshold was 40 or lower. We collected demographic data from survivors of their age, sex, time since discharge from the treatment unit, and length of acute admission in the Ebola treatment unit using anonymised standard forms. Findings Between April 2, and June 16, 2015, of 151 survivors of Ebola virus disease invited to participate, 112 (74%) provided consent. The median age of participants was 21·5 years (IQR 14–31·5) with 34 (30%) participants younger than 16 years. 50 (45%) of 112 participants were male. We tested a total of 555 specimens: 103 from the axilla, 93 from blood, 92 from conjunctiva, 54 from forehead, 105 from mouth, 17 from the rectum, one from semen, 69 from urine, and 21 from the vagina. The median time from Ebola treatment unit discharge to specimen collection was 142 days (IQR 127–159). 15 participants had a total of 74 swabs taken less than 100 days from discharge. The semen sample from one participant tested positive for Ebola virus at 114 days after discharge from the treatment unit; specimens taken from the axilla, blood, conjunctiva, forehead, mouth, rectum, and urine of the same participant tested negative. All specimens from the other 111 participants tested negative. Interpretation Patients recovering from Ebola virus disease who do not meet the case definition for acute disease pose a low infection risk to health-care providers 6 weeks after clearance of viraemia. Personal protective equipment after this time might be limited to standard barrier precautions, unless contact with fluids from sanctuary sites is envisaged. Funding Save the Children International, Public Health England.

When the commitment to liberal rights conflicts with the commitment to democratic procedures, which side ought to prevail? Whereas rights foundationalists hold that rights trump procedures and democratic positivists hold that procedures trump rights, theorists of co-originality affirm both rights and procedures as coeval, equally valid commitments within a liberal democracy. But the notion of co-originality itself can be interpreted in two different ways: either in a rationalist form (as the idea that rights and procedures can be reconciled, so that those rights which limit democratic majorities are understood as being required by the very meaning of democracy itself) or in a paradoxicalist form (as the idea that rights and procedures do inescapably conflict, with neither side having primacy, but such conflicts are understood as conducive to salutary democratic goods like diversity and ongoing activism). Taking Corey Brettschneider and Chantal Mouffe as key exponents of the rationalist and paradoxicalist forms of co-originality, respectively, this article examines how these two renderings of co-originality ought to be understood in relation to each other. After elaborating the implicit critique each account makes of the other, my ultimate point is that one should understand Brettschneider and Mouffe’s alternate forms of co-originality as themselves being co-original. On the one hand, I demonstrate how Brettschneider’s rationalism and Mouffe’s paradoxicalism remain in permanent tension, with each side opposed to – yet nonetheless unable to dispense with – the other. On the other hand, I show how their two divergent notions of co-originality, when viewed not in abstract terms as rival political epistemologies but as practical guides for how actual citizens ought to operate within liberal democracies, can work in tandem with each other without necessarily involving direct conflict.

Abstract This essay takes up the fundamental question of the proper place of history in the study of political thought through critical engagement with Mark Bevir’s seminal work, The Logic of the History of Ideas. While I accept the claim of Bevir, as well as of other exponents of the so-called “Cambridge School,” that there is a conceptual difference between historical and non-historical modes of reading past works of political philosophy, I resist the suggestion that this conceptual differentiation itself justifies the specialization, among practicing intellectuals, between historians of ideas and others who read political-philosophical texts non-historically. Over and against the figure of the historian of ideas, who interprets political thought only in the manner of a historian, I defend the ideal of the pupil, who in studying past traditions of political thought also seeks to extend and modify them in light of contemporary problems and concerns. Against Bevir, I argue that the mixture of historical and non-historical modes of learning, in the manner of the pupil, need not do damage to the historian of ideas’ commitment to scholarship that is non-anachronistic, objective, and non-indeterminate.

Chiral tertiary alpha-hydroxy esters of known stereochemical configuration were transformed to alpha-azido esters by Mitsunobu reaction with HN3. Optimization of this reaction was shown to proceed at room temperature with high chemical yield using 1,1-(azodicarbonyl)dipiperidine (ADDP) and trimethylphosphine (PMe3). Complete inversion of configuration was observed at the alpha-carbon. Several alpha,alpha-disubstituted amino acids were synthesized in high overall chemical yield and optical purity.

A key to the enduring power of Duke Ellington's best compositions is their motivic integrity. For this reason, it is revelatory to consider his music from the perspective of “Grundgestalt” theory—a mode of analysis pioneered by Arnold Schoenberg. This theory argues that beneath the diversity of any composition is a single motivic idea. The value of this methodology for the understanding of jazz as a whole, and Ellington in particular, is explored through a study of three of Ellington's finest works: The Mooche (1928), Ko‐Ko (1940), and Far East Suite (1963–1966). This essay also explores the impact of Will Marion Cook's motivic thinking upon Ellington, and the value of looking at motivic composition, per se, from the perspective of Aesthetic Realism, the philosophy founded by Eli Siegel, whose central principle is: “The world, art, and self explain each other: each is the aesthetic oneness of opposites.”

Political scientists are not generally accustomed to treating Max Weber’s unusual account of democracy—plebiscitary leader democracy—as a genuine democratic theory. The typical objection is that Weber’s account of democracy in terms of the generation of charismatic leadership is not really a democratic theory at all, because it contains no positive account of popular power: specifically, that it presents democracy in such a fashion that there is no capacity for the People to participate in the articulation and ratification of the norms, laws and policies governing the conduct of public life. This essay argues that Weber’s theory of plebiscitary leader democracy ought to be interpreted as rejecting, not any account of popular power, but only a traditional and still dominant vocal paradigm of popular power: one which assumes that popular power must refer to an authorial power to self-legislate the norms and conditions of public life, or at least to express substantive opinions, values and preferences about what kinds of decisions political leaders ought to be making. Properly understood, plebiscitary leader democracy embodies a novel, ocular paradigm of popular power according to which the object of popular power is the leader (not the law), the organ of popular power is the People’s gaze (not its voice), and the critical ideal associated with popular empowerment is the candor of leaders (not the autonomous authorship of laws). Thus, rather than abandon the concept of popular power, Weber’s theory of democracy reinvents its meaning under conditions of mass society.

We have used a biological analogy for the title of this special issue of Contemporary Music Review—and with good reason. Put simply, music ought to be alive! There is nothing worse than ‘new music’...

From 1987 to 1994, Zhou Long composed in a manner he declared ‘Buddhist’. A work that exemplifies this period—and its aesthetic preoccupations—is the quintet Dhyana. This article investigates that work in close technical detail, exploring how key concepts inherent in the term ‘dhyana’ are reflected in the music. Most centrally, ‘dhyana’ implies the oneness of concentration of thought and expansion of consciousness—and concentration and expansion prove to be primary opposites in Zhou Long's compositional technique. Buddhism (especially Chan Buddhism) asserts the inseparability of these opposites. So does the great Tang Dynasty poet Du Fu, in whom Zhou Long has had an abiding interest. And so does Aesthetic Realism, the philosophy of the arts founded by Eli Siegel, which serves as the methodological framework for this article. Central to Aesthetic Realism is Siegel's statement: ‘In reality opposites are one, art shows this’.

It may seem paradoxical to argue that twenty-first-century music educators, in search of a pedagogical perspective that meets the needs of our Internet-savvy young students, should study the way the earliest "ethnomusicologists" wrote about music: those reports by Jean de Lery, Simon de la Loubere, Jean Chardin, and others who, prior to 1700, traveled far from their homes in Europe, met musical customs very much at variance with those they were familiar with, and felt impelled to comment on this new and startling music. Paradox or no, the reason I think it is so useful to study these early writings is one that transcends the centuries, and all the changes in music and musical technology. The reason is ethical. In those centuries-old writings by de Lery, et al., there are two things that still are very much present in our classrooms today-in our students and, if we are honest, likely in ourselves as well. First, a praiseworthy and educationally efficient desire to appreciate music different from what is familiar. And second, its opposite: the desire to swiftly sum up and then dismiss-or even scorn- what is new. No amount of technology, per se, can alter this second attitude. What can alter it is a change of ethical awareness. Students need to be made aware, in a way that doesn't seem "preachy" or patronizing, that there can be a dual response to what is new, so they can discover for themselves which looks better to them. Which brings us face-to-face with the value of looking at these early ethnomusicologists--namely that the distance of the centuries enables us to talk with our students about this fundamentally ethical issue without immediately stirring up current musical prejudices: against rap, country-and-western, or opera. In fact, it has been my experience that once students learn about the issues involved 300 or 400 years ago, they are unanimous in their opinion: they object to the prejudices of centuries ago, and applaud the honest desire in some of these explorers of new musical territory to stretch their ears and their human sympathies. Understanding all of this enables students to know their own minds better, and to be in a far stronger position to object to prejudices in themselves and their classmates. I would go so far as to say that an increased awareness of the ethics involved in listening to "new" or "different" music helps every other aspect of music education go better. For the entire point is to introduce students to what is new- whether it be new genres of music, or new perspectives on music that is familiar to them. Therefore, the most fundamental concept in music education isn't specifically about music at all: it is about our personal ethics, our attitude toward what is new or different. What Is "Appreciation"? Some decades back, the most common title for an introductory course in music was "Music Appreciation." The term is less often applied today, yet it remains the key to what we are attempting to accomplish in our classrooms. Appreciation, as the great American educator Eli Siegel defined it, is "being able to see something as it is and liking it at the same time." He offered this definition in his March 31, 1950, lecture titled "Aesthetic Realism and Appreciation," in which he also laid out the ethical significance of the matter: The word appreciation ... is one of those words synonymous with life itself. When a person doesn't like himself, one of the chief reasons is that he has failed to appreciate what he should appreciate. Whenever we fail to appreciate something deeply it's because we appreciate something else too much. We are lopsided somewhere. Just as when a person fails to be excited by something that should excite him, he appreciates indifference too much--so when some people cannot see with any greatness or depth of feeling what deserves to be seen, it means that something else has been given too much value. …

This article describes two very different projects undertaken in the same basic writing course: collaborative ethnography and ACT test prep. At first glance, it appears that the work on collaborative ethnography accomplished our goal of creating better, more self-con- scious writers while the work on test prep achieved our goal of creating better written products: essays that pass the standardized test. However, that interpretation ignores the powerful inter- action between these two elements of the course and how each served as the context of the other.

Air Travel - Greener by Design is an initiative of the UK civil aviation community, embracing the aircraft and engine manufacturing industry, the airline and airport operators, the research community and government departments. Its primary objective is to identify and promote options for reducing the environmental impact of air travel. This paper considers what might be achieved within the next 50 years by advances in aircraft and engine technology and by a shift in design priority from minimising costs to minimising environmental impact. The emphasis of the paper is on climate change and it is suggested that, in the medium term, a substantial reduction in climate impact per passenger kilometre is potentially achievable. Present understanding of the effects of aviation on the atmosphere is, however, not yet sufficiently robust for this to be asserted with confidence. Atmospheric research, focussing on those effects of aviation which it may be possible to mitigate by design and operational changes, therefore remains a high environmental priority.

I use rhetorical theory to reconceptualize the diffusion of managerial practices. Specifically, I argue that the diffusion of a practice depends on the discursive justifications used to rationalize it. When such justifications are accepted and taken for granted, a practice reaches a state of institutionalization. Furthermore, I propose that changes in justifications and diffusion provide a basis for explaining institutionalization as both a process and a state. I then develop several propositions from this model.

This essay turns to ancient sources in order to rethink the relationship between political apathy and democracy. If modern democratic theorists place political apathy entirely outside of democracy – either as a destructive limit upon the full realization of a democratic polity, or, more sanguinely, as a pragmatic necessity which tempers democracy so that it may function in a workable yet watered-down form – the ancients conceived of political apathy as a peculiarly democratic phenomenon that was likely to flourish in tandem with the expansion of egalitarian institutional structures and moral ideas. Evidence for the ancient recognition of political apathy as a uniquely democratic kind of affliction centers on, but is not limited to, three main sources. In literature, the Homeric epic, and specifically the story of Achilles, present apathy for politics and commitment to human equality as synonymous forces. In philosophy, one of the main reasons Plato opposes the democratic regime is precisely that it engenders apathy among the citizenry. And in history, Herodotus’ account of the first debate on constitutions as well as the ancient democratic practice of election by lot reveal an ancient egalitarian interest in using democracy to quell, rather than encourage, political behavior.

This essay argues that there are several positive aspects of Socratic ignorance which have received insufficient scholarly attention: that Socrates’ claim not to have knowledge of the ‘highest things’ raises the possibility that there is a body of truth to be discovered along these lines; that this possibility invigorates Socrates with a sense of wonder; and that several specific moral requirements can be generated from wonder and the knowledge of one’s ignorance.

Crime, deviance, and unethical conduct can be found in almost every occupation and profession. Just open a newspaper, turn on the television, or listen to the radio and you will be exposed to abundant accounts of misdeeds by political leaders, government regulators, members of the clergy, people in business, and even college professors. Police are not unique in this sense, and it is safe to conclude that virtually every United States (U.S.) law enforcement agency has witnessed some form of unethical conduct, corruption, or scandal (Bracey, 1989; Kappeler, Sluder, & Alpert, 1998; Punch, 2009; Sherman, 1974). It is equally important to recognize that many police officers are honest, hardworking people, as are many doctors, stockbrokers, and college professors. Many police officers would never consider taking money in exchange for not enforcing the law or intentionally misusing their legal authority to use force. These same police officers, however, might not think twice about accepting a free cup of coffee, using deception during a criminal investigation, or even falsifying a police report to help ensure that a “dangerous” criminal is taken off the street.

In a copy of Rosemary Hughes' biography of Haydn (the Collier Books edition of 1963) Eli Siegel, one of America's great poets, wrote these lines: 1 1 Printed with permission of Definition Press, Ne...