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What is the state of the book today? This is not an inquiry after the book’s health. Questions of the book’s ostensible decline have hounded it for decades, if not centuries, and have variously led to the conclusion that the book is dying, or that it is in the prime of its life, depending. I have argued at length elsewhere that anxieties about the book’s obsolescence are frequently driven by the conservative impulse to shore up the hierarchies between the book and newer media forms (and, not at all incidentally, the hierarchies between those who participate in what we might think of as book culture and those who happily engage with newer media), and I hope in this chapter not to dwell for too long on that phenomenon.1 Rather, I am asking after the book’s physical state, in a different sense: is it solid or liquid—or perhaps more pertinently, does it exist in some altogether ambiguous state? The book has always been, like light, both particle and wave—both material substance and transmitted information. I begin by asking about the book’s physical state in order to open a series of questions—and this essay, I should admit up front, is more question than answer—about what might become of the book, and of our relationship to it, as its material substance changes.

Since the founding of the Royal Society in the 1660s and with the development of disciplinary fields in the later nineteenth century, scholarly societies have established themselves as mediators of the professional lives of faculty and as vital components of the ecology of scholarly communication. In their interactions with libraries, societies may appear primarily as publishers of newsletters, books, reports, journals, indexes, and databases, but they also promote the creation and diffusion of knowledge by serving as hubs for professional activity, contributors to the making of public policy and opinion, providers of education, representatives of the interests of their members, and, more generally, shapers of the institutions and purposes of higher education. Society operations and education or outreach programs depend to varying degrees on revenues from publishing programs and membership dues. Today, however, changing demographics and membership decline, the academic job market, the weakening of library budgets, new modes of publishing and media for establishing scholarly reputation, and the importance of making scholarship available to a broader audience than those who can afford to purchase it challenge traditional society roles and especially the business models that have supported those roles . This paper addresses the ways in which scholarly societies are addressing the current information environment and how societies are adjusting programs and roles as they continue to build and maintain communities of scholars and promote the interests of teaching, learning, and research.

Changing perceptions of and assumptions about the book in contemporary culture, and particularly those perceptions as situated within an increasingly complex media and communication landscape, have been at the heart of my research for nearly 15 years. One would think that the situation might have stabilized over that time — after all, if the book were genuinely on its way out, having been shunted aside by movies, or television, or video games or the internet, one would expect that trajectory over the course of that length of time to be clear. One would expect the tale to be unambiguously one of decline. Yet while, in the last decade and a half, ongoing technological developments have produced an ever-increasing number of new challengers to the book’s role as the primary vector through which literate culture communicates, the forms that the book takes and the ways that readers encounter the book have proliferated. While the relationship to the book as an object is certainly changing in the West, those changes may indicate a more thorough imbrication of books and reading with popular culture, rather than their marginalization.1

Background. Saudi Arabia is ranked 23rd for tobacco consumption globally, and approximately 25%-43% of male college students in Saudi Arabia were smokers. The current study uses a qualitative approach to explore the facilitators and barriers that influence the smoking behavior among Saudi international college students in the U.S. Method. Fifteen Saudi male international students who studied at a small liberal arts college were recruited and interviewed for about 30 to 50 minutes, following a semi-structured interview guideline. Results. The hookah was preferred by participants to the cigarettes because of its smell and the entertaining way of doing it. The major facilitators of the smoking behavior were socializing and leisure activity, academic stress, and reduced family influence. The protective factors included cost, accessibility, smoking policy, and influences from American culture. Conclusion. It is necessary to consider the Saudi students’ social needs, the level of stress, and the influences of the American culture when health professionals and colleges and universities examine smoking behavior among Saudi international students.

8014Background: Panobinostat (pano), a potent inhibitor of histone deacetylases (HDACs), is approved for use in combination with bortezomib (bortez) and dexamethasone (dex) in relapsed and refracto...

BST2 (HM1.24; CD317; tetherin) is an interferon-inducible transmembrane protein that restricts the release of several enveloped viruses, including HIV, from infected cells. Before its activity as an antiviral factor was described, BST2 was identified as an inducer of NF-κB activity. Here we show that human BST2 induces NF-κB in a dose-dependent manner. This activity is separable from the restriction of virus release: a YxY sequence in the cytoplasmic domain of BST2 is required for the induction of NF-κB but is dispensable for restriction, whereas the glycosylphosphatidylinositol (GPI) addition site in the protein's ectodomain is required for restriction but is largely dispensable for the induction of NF-κB. Mutations predicted to disrupt the coiled-coil structure of the BST2 ectodomain impaired both signaling and restriction, but disruption of the tetramerization interface differentially affected signaling. The induction of NF-κB by BST2 was impaired by inhibition of transforming growth factor β (TGF-β)-activated kinase 1 (TAK1) or by calcium chelation, suggesting potential linkage to the mitogen-activated protein kinase and endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress response pathways. Consistent with a role for TAK1, BST2 coimmunoprecipitated with TAK1 and the TAK1-associated pseudophosphatase TAB1; these interactions required the YxY sequence in BST2. Moreover, signaling by BST2 was blocked by expression of an IκB-mutant that inhibits the canonical pathway of NF-κB activation. The expression of HIV-1 Vpu inhibited the induction of NF-κB by BST2; this inhibition required Vpu's ability to bind the cellular β-TrCP-E3-ubiquitin ligase complex. The expression of HIV-1 lacking vpu augmented the induction of NF-κB activity by BST2, suggesting that BST2 can act as a virus sensor. This augmentation was also inhibited by Vpu in a β-TrCP-dependent manner. The role of BST2 in the host-pathogen relationship is apparently multifaceted: signaling during the innate immune response, sensing of viral gene expression, and direct restriction of virus release. HIV-1 Vpu counteracts each of these functions.

Debates about open-access scholarly publishing often focus on the costs of scholarship, whether costs incurred by publishers in producing books and journals or costs faced by libraries in acquiring those publications. Taking those costs as the centre of such discussions often results in an impasse, as the financial realities of publishing—particularly within disciplines that are less well-funded than STEM fields (science, technology, engineering and mathematics)—seem to present an insurmountable obstacle to greater openness. What if, however, we were to refocus the discussion on values rather than costs? How might such a shift in focus lead us to think differently about the motives and benefits involved in scholarly communication, and how might this lead us to recognize the generosity that keeps the engine running?

Pathogenic microorganisms encode proteins that antagonize specific aspects of innate or adaptive immunity. Just as the study of the HIV-1 accessory protein Vif led to the identification of cellular cytidine deaminases as host defense proteins, the study of HIV-1 Vpu recently led to the discovery of the interferon-induced transmembrane protein BST-2 (CD317; tetherin) as a novel component of the innate defense against enveloped viruses. BST-2 is an unusually structured protein that restricts the release of fully formed progeny virions from infected cells, presumably by a direct retention mechanism that is independent of any viral protein target. Its spectrum of activity includes at least four virus families: retroviruses, filoviruses, arenaviruses, and herpesviruses. Viral antagonists of BST-2 include HIV-1 Vpu, HIV-2 and SIV Env, SIV Nef, the Ebola envelope glycoprotein, and the K5 protein of KSHV. The mechanisms of antagonism are diverse and currently include viral cooption of cellular endosomal trafficking and protein degradation pathways, including those mediated by ubiquitination. Orthologs of human BST-2 are present in mammals. Primate BST-2 proteins are differentially sensitive to antagonism by lentiviral Vpu and Nef proteins, suggesting that BST-2 has subjected lentiviruses to evolutionary pressure and presents barriers to cross-species transmission. BST-2 functions not only as an effector of the interferon-induced antiviral response but also as a negative feedback regulator of interferon production by plasmacytoid dendritic cells. Future work will focus on the role and regulation of BST-2 during the innate response to viral infection, on the mechanisms of restriction and of antagonism by viral gene products, and on the role of BST-2 in primate lentiviral evolution. The augmentation of BST-2 activity and the inhibition of virally encoded antagonists, in particular Vpu, represent new approaches to the prevention and treatment of HIV-1 infection.

The current study aimed to screen for indications of psychopathology displayed by the parents of adolescents diagnosed with Anorexia Nervosa (AN), and examine the relationship between severity of adolescent eating disorder symptoms and parental psychopathology. Sixty female adolescents diagnosed with DSM-IV-TR AN (restricting-type and binge-purge-type) were administered the Eating Disorder Examination (EDE) and parents completed the Symptom Checklist 90-Revised (SCL-90-R). As compared to established non-patient norms, both fathers and mothers of adolescents with AN reported greater levels of obsessive compulsive behaviors, hostility, depression, and anxiety as measured by the SCL-90-R. In addition, duration of AN was positively associated with hostility scores in fathers, and global EDE scores were associated with hostility in mothers. While parental scores on the SCL-90 were elevated as compared to community samples, results of this study do not support a direct influence of parental psychopathology on symptom severity of adolescent AN. Increasing rates of hostility scores in parents with increased duration of AN may represent either a response to the presence of the disorder or be a maintaining factor for AN.

Kathleen Fitzpatrick argues that as online platforms for scholarly publishing foster increasingly fluid means of communication amongst researchers, the principles on which such publishing is founded—including, most crucially, peer review—must become more flexible.