Qatar and the 2022 FIFA World Cup: Kick-starting a Global Economy

Overview: December 2, 2010 was my father’s fifty-fifth birthday. He and I were expecting the greatest present that would be given to the United States in a long time. The 2018 and 2022 World Cup bidding was that day, and we were giddy waiting for it to be awarded to the United States. We were planning on going together in twelve years, to the games because we love soccer and the United States men’s national team. We have watched every televised game that they have played for years now and were still excited from the previous World Cup. And now, we thought the United States was about to host another World Cup and we could actually be there. Needless to say, we were disappointed when on December 2, 2010 in Zurich, Switzerland FIFA President Sepp Blatter announced that the 2018 FIFA World Cup would be awarded to Russia and that the 2022 FIFA World Cup was awarded to Qatar (Trecker 1-4). According to an article from FIFA’s official webpage, in the voting process one nation was eliminated each round until only one host remained. In the final round of the 2022 voting, Qatar defeated the United States in a vote of 14-8 by obtaining an absolute majority (8). Qatar’s hopes and dreams of bringing one of the world’s greatest sporting events to the Middle East came true. My first reaction was anger because my father might never live to see a World Cup come to the United States again. We are both extremely pro-American and thought that it was ridiculous that a small oil-rich nation could host such a magnanimous sporting event. I knew nothing about Qatar originally except of its oil wealth, and upon starting research for this paper I was planning on writing why it was an awful idea for Qatar to host a World Cup. But upon researching, watching the Qatari bid, and the American bid, I realized that Qatar 2022 will be something very special. I am still disappointed that the United States lost, but I will look forward with wide eyes to see what Qatar does to make their World Cup as amazing as they say it will be

Forager bees (Apis mellifera) highly express immune and detoxification genes in tissues associated with nectar processing.

Pollinators, including honey bees, routinely encounter potentially harmful microorganisms and phytochemicals during foraging. However, the mechanisms by which honey bees manage these potential threats are poorly understood. In this study, we examine the expression of antimicrobial, immune and detoxification genes in Apis mellifera and compare between forager and nurse bees using tissue-specific RNA-seq and qPCR. Our analysis revealed extensive tissue-specific expression of antimicrobial, immune signaling, and detoxification genes. Variation in gene expression between worker stages was pronounced in the mandibular and hypopharyngeal gland (HPG), where foragers were enriched in transcripts that encode antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) and immune response. Additionally, forager HPGs and mandibular glands were enriched in transcripts encoding detoxification enzymes, including some associated with xenobiotic metabolism. Using qPCR on an independent dataset, we verified differential expression of three AMP and three P450 genes between foragers and nurses. High expression of AMP genes in nectar-processing tissues suggests that these peptides may contribute to antimicrobial properties of honey or to honey bee defense against environmentally-acquired microorganisms. Together, these results suggest that worker role and tissue-specific expression of AMPs, and immune and detoxification enzymes may contribute to defense against microorganisms and xenobiotic compounds acquired while foraging

Synchronization of Nonlinear Circuits in Dynamic Electrical Networks with General Topologies

Sufficient conditions are derived for global asymptotic synchronization in a system of identical nonlinear electrical circuits coupled through linear time-invariant (LTI) electrical networks. In particular, the conditions we derive apply to settings where: i) the nonlinear circuits are composed of a parallel combination of passive LTI circuit elements and a nonlinear voltage-dependent current source with finite gain; and ii) a collection of these circuits are coupled through either uniform or homogeneous LTI electrical networks. Uniform electrical networks have identical per-unit-length impedances. Homogeneous electrical networks are characterized by having the same effective impedance between any two terminals with the others open circuited. Synchronization in these networks is guaranteed by ensuring the stability of an equivalent coordinate-transformed differential system that emphasizes signal differences. The applicability of the synchronization conditions to this broad class of networks follows from leveraging recent results on structural and spectral properties of Kron reduction---a model-reduction procedure that isolates the interactions of the nonlinear circuits in the network. The validity of the analytical results is demonstrated with simulations in networks of coupled Chua's circuits