Brief report : The defense mechanisms of homophobic adolescent males : a descriptive discriminant analysis

The study examined the role of defense mechanisms in homophobic attitudes of older male adolescents aged 17e18 years. A cross-sectional survey collected data from final year high school students (N ¼ 86) attending an all male school in a regional centre in Victoria, Australia. The school was identified by teachers as having a problematic culture of homophobic intolerance. Participants were divided into homophobic and non-homophobic groups based on their scores on the Homophobia Scale Questionnaire. Discriminant analysis was conducted to identify the predictors that would best categorise students into those two groups on the basis of defense styles derived from the Defense Style Questionnaire-40 (DSQ-40). The strongest predictors of homophobia amongst defense styles were idealisation, denial, somatisation and devaluation accounting for 18.31%, 17.64%, 13.10% and 11.35% of the variance, respectively. Results generally supported the larger contribution of more immature defenses to higher levels of homophobia.

Predicting subjective quality of life

This thesis showed that as samples move from a homeostatic position of high-normal subjective quality of life, to normal, to low-normal subjective quality of life, the contributions of personality (extroversion and neuroticism) and perceived control (approach and avoidant control) to the maintenance of subjective quality of life becomes more complicated

Profiling of secondary metabolites in blue lupin inoculated with Phytophthora cinnamomi following phosphite treatment

In order to discover phytochemicals that are potentially bioactive against Phytophthora cinnamomi, (a soil-borne plant pathogen) a metabolite profiling protocol for investigation of metabolic changes in Lupinus angustifolius L. plant roots in response to pathogen challenge has been established. Analysis of the metabolic profiles from healthy and P. cinnamomi-inoculated root tissue with high resolution mass spectrometry and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy confirmed that although susceptible, L. angustifolius upregulated a defence associated genistein and 2′-hydroxygenistein-based isoflavonoid and a soyasapogenol saponin at 12h post inoculation which increased in concentration at 72h post inoculation. In contrast to the typical susceptible interaction, the application of a phosphorous-based treatment to L. angustifolius foliage 48h before P. cinnamomi challenge negated the ability of the pathogen to colonise the root tissue and cause disease. Importantly, although the root profiles of water-treated and phosphite-treated plants post pathogen inoculation contained the same secondary metabolites, concentration variations were observed. Accumulation of secondary metabolites within the P. cinnamomi-inoculated plants confirms that pathogen ingress of the root interstitially occurs in phosphite-treated plants, confirming a direct mode of action against the pathogen upon breaching the root cells.

Heterotrimeric G proteins-mediated resistance to necrotrophic pathogens includes mechanisms independent of salicylic acid-, jasmonic acid/ethylene- and abscisic acid-mediated defense signaling

Heterotrimeric G proteins are involved in the defense response against necrotrophic fungi in Arabidopsis. In order to elucidate the resistance mechanisms involving heterotrimeric G proteins, we analyzed the effects of the Gβ (subunit deficiency in the mutant agb1-2 on pathogenesis-related gene expression, as well as the genetic interaction between agb1-2 and a number of mutants of established defense pathways. Gβ-mediated signaling suppresses the induction of salicylic acid (SA)-, jasmonic acid (JA)-, ethylene (ET)- and abscisic acid (ABA)-dependent genes during the initial phase of the infection with Fusarium oxysporum (up to 48 h after inoculation). However, at a later phase it enhances JA/ET-dependent genes such as PDF1.2 and PR4. Quantification of the Fusarium wilt symptoms revealed that Gβ- and SA-deficient mutants were more susceptible than wild-type plants, whereas JA- and ET-insensitive and ABA-deficient mutants demonstrated various levels of resistance. Analysis of the double mutants showed that the Gβ-mediated resistance to F. oxysporum and Alternaria brassicicola was mostly independent of all of the previously mentioned pathways. However, the progressive decay of agb1-2 mutants was compensated by coi1-21 and jin1-9 mutations, suggesting that at this stage of F. oxysporum infection Gβ acts upstream of COI1 and ATMYC2 in JA signaling.

Defense and traceback mechanisms in opportunistic wireless networks

 In this thesis, we have identified a novel attack in OppNets, a special type of packet dropping attack where the malicious node(s) drops one or more packets (not all the packets) and then injects new fake packets instead. We name this novel attack as the Catabolism attack and propose a novel attack detection and traceback approach against this attack referred to as the Anabolism defence. As part of the Anabolism defence approach we have proposed three techniques: time-based, Merkle tree based and Hash chain based techniques for attack detection and malicious node(s) traceback. We provide mathematical models that show our novel detection and traceback mechanisms to be very effective and detailed simulation results show our defence mechanisms to achieve a very high accuracy and detection rate.

A defense system against DDoS attacks by large-scale IP traceback

In this paper, we present a new approach, called Flexible Deterministic Packet Marking (FDPM), to perform a large-scale IP traceback to defend against Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. In a DDoS attack the victim host or network is usually attacked by a large number of spoofed IP packets coming from multiple sources. IP traceback is the ability to trace the IP packets to their sources without relying on the source address field of the IP header. FDPM provides many flexible features to trace the IP packets and can obtain better tracing capability than current IP traceback mechanisms, such as Probabilistic Packet Marking (PPM), and Deterministic Packet Marking (DPM). The flexibilities of FDPM are in two ways, one is that it can adjust the length of marking field according to the network protocols deployed; the other is that it can adjust the marking rate according to the load of participating routers. The implementation and evaluation demonstrates that the FDPM needs moderately only a small number of packets to complete the traceback process; and can successfully perform a large-scale IP traceback, for example, trace up to 110,000 sources in a single incident response. It has a built-in overload prevention mechanism, therefore this scheme can perform a good traceback process even it is heavily loaded.

Viral RNA silencing suppressors (RSS) : novel strategy of viruses to ablate the host RNA interference (RNAi) defense system

Pathogenic viruses have developed a molecular defense arsenal for their survival by counteracting the host anti-viral system known as RNA interference (RNAi). Cellular RNAi, in addition to regulating gene expression through microRNAs, also serves as a barrier against invasive foreign nucleic acids. RNAi is conserved across the biological species, including plants, animals and invertebrates. Viruses in turn, have evolved mechanisms that can counteract this anti-viral defense of the host. Recent studies of mammalian viruses exhibiting RNA silencing suppressor (RSS) activity have further advanced our understanding of RNAi in terms of host–virus interactions. Viral proteins and non-coding viral RNAs can inhibit the RNAi (miRNA/siRNA) pathway through different mechanisms. Mammalian viruses having dsRNA-binding regions and GW/WG motifs appear to have a high chance of conferring RSS activity. Although, RSSs of plant and invertebrate viruses have been well characterized, mammalian viral RSSs still need in-depth investigations to present the concrete evidences supporting their RNAi ablation characteristics. The information presented in this review together with any perspective research should help to predict and identify the RSS activity-endowed new viral proteins that could be the potential targets for designing novel anti-viral therapeutics.

Effects of omega-3 PUFA on the vitamin E and glutathione antioxidant defense system in individuals at ultra-high risk of psychosis

BACKGROUND: Oxidative stress and impaired antioxidant defenses are reported in schizophrenia and are associated with disturbed neurodevelopment, brain structural alterations, glutamatergic imbalance, increased negative symptoms, and cognitive impairment. There is evidence that oxidative stress predates the onset of acute psychotic illness. Here, we investigate the effects of omega-3 PUFA on the vitamin E and glutathione antioxidant defense system (AODS). METHOD: In 64 help-seeking UHR-individuals (13-25 years of age), vitamin E levels and glutathione were investigated before and after 12 weeks of treatment with either 1.2g/d omega-3 (PUFA-E) or saturated fatty acids (SFA-E), with each condition also containing 30.4mg/d alpha-tocopherol to ensure absorption without additional oxidative risk. RESULTS: In multivariate tests, the effects on the AODS (alpha-tocopherol, total glutathione) were not significantly different (p=0.13, p=0.11, respectively) between treatment conditions. According to univariate findings, only PUFA-E caused a significant alpha-tocopherol increase, while PUFA-E and SFA-E caused a significant gamma- and delta-tocopherol decrease. Total glutathione (GSHt) was decreased by PUFA-E supplementation. CONCLUSION: Effects of the PUFA-E condition on the vitamin E and glutathione AODS could be mechanisms underlying its clinical effectiveness. In terms of the vitamin E protection system, PUFA-E seems to directly support the antioxidative defense at membrane level. The effect of PUFA-E on GSHt is not yet fully understood, but could reflect antioxidative effects, resulting in decreased demand for glutathione. It is still necessary to further clarify which type of PUFA/antioxidant combination, and in which dose, is effective at each stage of psychotic illness.