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Emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants and evidence of waning vaccine efficacy present substantial obstacles towards controlling the COVID-19 pandemic. Booster doses of SARS-CoV-2 vaccines might address these concerns by amplifying and broadening the immune responses seen with initial vaccination regimens. We aimed to assess the immunogenicity and safety of a homologous booster dose of a SARS-CoV-2 recombinant spike protein vaccine (NVX-CoV2373).This secondary analysis of a phase 2, randomised study assessed a single booster dose of a SARS-CoV-2 recombinant spike protein vaccine with Matrix-M adjuvant (NVX-CoV2373) in healthy adults aged 18-84 years, recruited from 17 clinical centres in the USA and Australia. Eligible participants had a BMI of 17-35 kg/msup2/supand, for women, were heterosexually inactive or using contraception. Participants who had a history of SARS-CoV or SARS-CoV-2, confirmed diagnosis of COVID-19, serious chronic medical conditions, or were pregnant or breastfeeding were excluded. Approximately 6 months following their primary two-dose vaccination series (administered day 0 and day 21), participants who received placebo for their primary vaccination series received a placebo booster (group A) and participants who received NVX-CoV2373 for their primary vaccination series (group B) were randomly assigned (1:1) again, via centralised interactive response technology system, to receive either placebo (group B1) or a single booster dose of NVX-CoV2373 (5 μg SARS-CoV-2 rS with 50 μg Matrix-M adjuvant; group B2) via intramuscular injection; randomisation was stratified by age and study site. Vaccinations were administered by designated site personnel who were masked to treatment assignment, and participants and other site staff were also masked. Administration personnel also assessed the outcome. The primary endpoints are safety (unsolicited adverse events) and reactogenicity (solicited local and systemic) events and immunogenicity (serum IgG antibody concentrations for the SARS-CoV-2 rS protein antigen) assessed 14 days after the primary vaccination series (day 35) and 28 days following booster (day 217). Safety was analysed in all participants in groups A, B1, and B2, according to the treatment received; immunogenicity was analysed in the per-protocol population (ie, participants in groups A, B1, and B2) who received all assigned doses and who did not test SARS-CoV-2-positive or received an authorised vaccine, analysed according to treatment assignment). This trial is registered with ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT04368988.1610 participants were screened from Aug 24, 2020, to Sept 25, 2020. 1282 participants were enrolled, of whom 173 were assigned again to placebo (group A), 106 were re-randomised to NVX-CoV2373-placebo (group B1), and 104 were re-randomised to NVX-CoV2373-NVX-CoV2373 (group B2); after accounting for exclusions and incorrect administration, 172 participants in group A, 102 in group B1, and 105 in group B2 were analysed for safety. Following the active booster, the proportion of participants with available data reporting local (80 [82%] of 97 participants had any adverse event; 13 [13%] had a grade ≥3 event) and systemic (75 [77%] of 98 participants had any adverse event; 15 [15%] had a grade ≥3 event) reactions was higher than after primary vaccination (175 [70%] of 250 participants had any local adverse event, 13 [5%] had a grade ≥3 event; 132 [53%] of 250 had any systemic adverse event, 14 [6%] had a grade ≥3 event). Local and systemic events were transient in nature (median duration 1·0-2·5 days). In the per-protocol immunogenicity population at day 217 (167 participants in group A, 101 participants in group B1, 101 participants in group B2), IgG geometric mean titres (GMT) had increased by 4·7-fold and MNsub50/subGMT by 4·1-fold for the ancestral SARS-CoV-2 strain compared with the day 35 titres.Administration of a booster dose of NVX-CoV2373 resulted in an incremental increase in reactogenicity. For both the prototype strain and all variants evaluated, immune responses following the booster were similar to or higher than those associated with high levels of efficacy in phase 3 studies of the vaccine. These data support the use of NVX-CoV2373 in booster programmes.Novavax and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations.

Gold Coast nationalism cannot be approached solely through the prism of decolonization. Debates about what constituted the building blocks of the nation go back to the start of the 20th century, drawing on renditions dating back a further half-century. A fundamental contention was that the coastal populations had entered the Gold Coast Colony through active consent, and that the sovereignty that had been conceded to the British was limited. And it was asserted that while Asante had been conquered, and the Northern Territories had been added through treaty, southern populations had been partners in the process. A second contention was that the Gold Coast nation was constituted by the sum of its traditional parts, which were necessarily of unequal size and complexion. Although the British acted on the basis of a different reading, this version enjoyed hegemonic status. It was repeated by the chiefs themselves but was most clearly articulated by the coastal intelligentsia. In the 1920s, the formation of the National Congress of British West Africa (NCBWA) signaled a shift in which the educated elite across British West Africa combined to demand greater political rights and sought to pursue economic liberation in association with the black population of the Americas. In the 1930s, in the wake of the Great Depression, cocoa farmers were pitted against the European buying firms, and there was a proliferation of youth associations that took up causes such as the Italian invasion of Ethiopia. Meanwhile, the injection of ideas derived from international socialism added a more radical inflection to Pan-Africanism. However, this momentum was halted by the outbreak of the war. As the Gold Coast Youth Conference (GCYC) looked to the future in the early 1940s, it abandoned Pan-Africanism and socialism. It continued to emphasize economic freedom but paid more attention to gaining political concessions. After 1947, the United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC) sought to pursue this agenda in alliance with the chiefs. The notion that Kwame Nkrumah, who led the breakaway of the Convention People’s Party (CPP) in 1949, effected a radical rupture—even a revolution—is no longer tenable. Like his opponents, Nkrumah placed politics first and merely wanted self-government to come more quickly. After the 1951 election, the CPP governed in close alliance with the British. While it won the elections of 1954 and 1956, it singularly failed to attract mass support at the polls. Finally, while Nkrumah revisited older ideas derived from international socialism and Pan-Africanism, his real focus was on consolidating his grip on power in the Gold Coast—to the exclusion of addressing the concerns of border populations. After 1954, the CPP faced a coalition of parties that advocated a federal solution to the national question. Nkrumah, supported by Governor Arden-Clarke, insisted on a unitary state and toyed with drastically curtailing the powers of the chiefs. In the end the first was achieved, but Nkrumah backed away from a more radical overhaul. The conception of the Ghanaian nation as the sum of its traditional parts, and the assumption that the reach of the state is limited, was therefore further entrenched and remains fundamental to the social contract to this day.

Across Africa, One-Stop Border Posts are being rolled out as part of a continental/ regional integration agenda that seeks to facilitate the movement of people and goods. This article focuses on four OSBPs in East Africa and addresses the question, firstly, of how far they make a break with entrenched operational patterns within government bureaucracies, and secondly whether they represent a distinct type of border management regime. The article finds that while there has been progress on data sharing in Customs, the construction and management of OSBPs reflects the persistence of distinct institutional cultures within each country. Moreover, working practices involve practical workarounds which belie notions of a paperless border. Secondly, the article finds that OSBPs are unlike other border crossings and share some features with airports and seaports in that they have been designed to handle both cargo and people. But they differ in that they are not heavily securitized and represent co-produced spaces of interaction in which transporters and members of the surrounding community have helped to shape the organizational patterns. The outcomes fuse an official ideology of service, everyday bureaucratic practice and local understandings of ownership.

There has been a proliferation of research on Africa’s borderlands over the past decade, which reflects their centrality in regional systems of trade and the rapid growth of border settlements. The development of twin towns/cities at the border, which has attracted the interest of scholars in other regions of the world, has been a distinctive feature of Africa as well. This paper examines some of the particularities of peripheral urbanism in Africa, whilst seeking to avoid a resort to continental exceptionalism. It begins by tracing some broad patterns before homing in on two sets of case-studies along the Uganda/Kenya and Ghana/Togo borders. The paper argues, firstly, for the enduring importance of colonial infrastructural investments and the policy choices that were made after independence. Secondly, it highlights the markedly different variations of scale, ranging from the border capitals of Kinshasa and Brazzaville at one end of the spectrum, through growing towns like Busia-Uganda and Busia- Kenya, to a multiplicity of smaller border settlements at the other end. Thirdly, the paper argues that administrative logics and trade dynamics have been the main drivers in the expansion of twin cities/towns, although the flight of populations from insecurity have also played a significant role in the Great Lakes region and in West-Central Africa. Finally, the paper points to a feature that has been identified in other regions as well, notably the often marked asymmetries between border settlements, which reflects the influence of deeper historical trajectories and contemporary patterns of trade and population movement alike.

In Chapter 11, I pointed to the very different – and indeed fundamentally incompatible – manner in which incumbent regimes in Senegal and the Gambia responded to the crisis of the early 1970s. I also highlighted the ways in which the enhanced mobility of Senegambians and the accelerated flow of contraband goods together brought about a spatial reordering that was neither in any official plan nor the outcome of any formal cross-border co-operation agreement. In this chapter, I will perform a similar exercise for the trans-Volta with a view to establishing how far comparable dynamics were at play. There are, however, some underlying differences, which it is worth pointing out at the start because they account for some of the variations of emphasis in the text that follows. First of all, as we have seen, Ghana had pioneered a statist vision of development well before the crisis of the end of the 1960s, whereas Togo had yet to find its feet as an entrepôt state by 1967. The points of departure were therefore significantly different from those in the Senegambia. Secondly, a succession of military interventions in Togo (1963 and 1967) and in Ghana (1966, 1972, 1978/9 and 1981) brought another set of forces into the equation. The prolongation of military rule had institutional consequences of its own because the pressure to increase the numbers of armed personnel typically led to greater demands on the budget. In addition, there was a leakage of military norms into other areas of governance, including not only much routine administration, but also border policing. Furthermore, there were more or less explicit demands that the military be considered as partners to the wider social contract. It was only in the Gambia after 1994 that something comparable seemed conceivable.

African borders, which mostly follow the contours of the former colonies, are widely regarded as artificial and yet have enjoyed remarkable longevity. On the one hand, there have been relatively few serious secessionist and/or irredentist bids. On the other hand, a limited number of border disputes have been settled and mostly without recourse to conflict. This is often attributed to the willingness of states to accept the principle of the intangibility of borders inherited from colonialism and the associated legal principle of uti possidetis. Most claims to secession are based on a preexisting sense of territoriality, whereas there are relatively few that are premised on the rights of peoples to self-determination. It has been pointed out that claims to secession are often tabled as a bargaining position rather than as a nonnegotiable demand. However, the secession of South Sudan has created a genuine precedent, and there has been an upsurge of secessionist movements that reflects this reality. In addition, there has been a proliferation of fresh border disputes, which reflects the increased competition for valuable resources such as oil. This would suggest that some of the landscape of border politics is undergoing a shift. However, a number of factors continue to work in favor of the reproduction of existing borders. Paradoxically, the fact that guerrilla insurgencies tend to breed in borderlands, from where movements either aspire to take over the existing state or seek to carve out zones of de facto control, means that the borders themselves are not challenged. War economies depend on transboundary flows in which local populations themselves are deeply invested. Moreover, the flight of displaced populations and refugees toward borders may create greater insecurity at the margins but also tends to reinforce borders in both a legal and a practical sense. Finally, the struggle to determine the basis on which trade and transport is managed involves associational actors operating at the national level. Equally, fishermen, herders, farmers, and other local actors frequently invoke national affiliations to justify their own right to exploit resources within border zones. At the border itself, one observes a convergence of international, national, and local political scales in a particularly striking manner.

Parasites, by definition, extract energy from their hosts and thus affect trophic and food web dynamics even when the parasite may have limited effects on host population size. We studied the energetic costs of mange (Sarcoptes scabiei) in wolves (Canis lupus) using thermal cameras to estimate heat losses associated with compromised insulation during the winter. We combined the field data of known, naturally infected wolves with a data set on captive wolves with shaved patches of fur as a positive control to simulate mange-induced hair loss. We predict that during the winter in Montana, more severe mange infection increases heat loss by around 5.2-12 MJ per night (1,240-2,850 kcal, or a 65-78% increase) for small and large wolves, respectively, accounting for wind effects. To maintain body temperature would require a significant proportion of a healthy wolf's total daily energy demands (18-22 MJ/day). We also predict how these thermal costs may increase in colder climates by comparing our predictions in Bozeman, Montana to those from a place with lower ambient temperatures (Fairbanks, Alaska). Contrary to our expectations, the 14°C differential between these regions was not as important as the potential differences in wind speed. These large increases in energetic demands can be mitigated by either increasing consumption rates or decreasing other energy demands. Data from GPS-collared wolves indicated that healthy wolves move, on average, 17 km per day, which was reduced by 1.5, 1.8, and 6.5 km for light, medium, and severe hair loss. In addition, the wolf with the most hair loss was less active at night and more active during the day, which is the converse of the movement patterns of healthy wolves. At the individual level, mange infections create significant energy demands and altered behavioral patterns, this may have cascading effects on prey consumption rates, food web dynamics, predator-prey interactions, and scavenger communities.

Estimating different lengths, shades and shapes can be difficult when their background is changed or when you attempt to compare volumes in different shaped containers, or straight lines and curves, This is a simple example of the latter with a mathematical twist, a question of judgement rather than illusion. I have also included what may be called confusing optical illusions examples which mislead the observer due to background as illustrations.

Since the mid-1990s, Africa has experienced a re-enchantment with the transformative effects of investments in ports, roads, railways and, to some extent, airports. This is reflected in where the World Bank and the African Development Bank place their money, as well as in the heightened profile of China, which is the largest single external investor in infrastructure. This chapter begins by mapping the different regional patterns before addressing the specific question of how far spending has been driven by the requirements of the extractive industries. Whereas petroleum and diamonds are associated with enclave dynamics and infrastructure that is dedicated to extraction – notably pipelines and airports – most mining relies on road and rail that is shared with other users. The second part of the chapter addresses the impact of infrastructural spending on state capacity and whether it is sustainable in the current economic climate. What is often not appreciated is that African governments account for the greatest investments. In effect, this spending comes at the expense of the provision of other public goods. The argument is that while the agenda might appear to be set by external actors, African governments have been adept at retaining control. Public–private partnerships have been much more limited than the World Bank would prefer. Although global logistics companies have played a role in the construction and operation of many seaports, African governments have assigned overall control to semi-autonomous port authorities, which have shown their capacity to flex their muscles. All of this casts doubt on the contention that neoliberal governance involves an attenuation of state sovereignty.

Several classes of drugs have been shown to cause drug-induced vascular injury (DIVI) in preclinical toxicity studies. Measurement of blood flow and vessel diameter in numerous vessels and across various tissues by ultrasound imaging has the potential to be a noninvasive translatable biomarker of DIVI. Our objective was to demonstrate the utility of high-frequency ultrasound imaging for measuring changes in vascular function by evaluating blood flow and vessel diameter in the superior mesenteric arteries (SMA) of rats treated with compounds that are known to cause DIVI and are known vasodilators in rat: fenoldopam, CI-1044, and SK&F 95654. Blood flow, vessel diameter, and other parameters were measured in the SMA at 4, 8, and 24 hr after dosing. Mild to moderate perivascular accumulations of mononuclear cells, neutrophils in tunica adventitia, and superficial tunica media as well as multifocal hemorrhage and necrosis in the tunica media were found in animals 24 hr after treatment with fenoldopam and SK&F 95654. Each compound caused marked increases in blood flow and shear stress as early as 4 hr after dosing. These results suggest that ultrasound imaging may constitute a functional correlate for the microscopic finding of DIVI in the rat.

This section is dedicated to the special event that was organised at the London School of Economics (LSE) by the Association for the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism (ASEN) on Wednesday 2 November 2011 in the context of the fourth bi-annual Obi Igwara Memorial Lecture. The previous year, 2010, before the next Igwara Lecture came round, had been marked by celebrations of the fiftieth anniversary of what has come to be called, ‘The Year of Africa’. This was the year 1960, when the processes of independence were accelerated. It was the year that saw seventeen new states being born in Africa, freed from European rule, as the ‘wind of change’ (in the memorable phrase of British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan) blew through Europe and its overseas colonies.

Publisher Summary This chapter highlights the basic process of rotational molding, the markets that it serves, the materials, molds and machinery that are used. It overviews at design basics that can help make molding easier. Rotational molding, also known as rotomolding or rotocasting, is a relatively small part of the plastics industry practiced by around 2500 companies around the world and it consumes approximately 0.7% of the total volume of the world production of plastics. The versatility of rotational molding is constantly demonstrated by a wide range of products in an equally wide range of markets. Ideal nontank applications for rotational molding are typically complex hollow forms in relatively low quantities. Rotational molding has four basic steps: loading, heating, cooling, and unloading. The main advantages of rotational molding can be summarized as: it is ideally suited to the manufacture of hollow, complex shapes ranging in size from hearing aid components to industrial tanks of over 20,000 gallons capacity and boats up to 23 ft long; Both molds and machines are simple and relatively low-cost. It is a low-pressure process that allows thin wall, low strength molds to be used. Small production runs can be cost effective.