No evidence for replication of a field strain of bluetongue virus serotype 1 in the blood of domestic dogs.

The potential role of domestic dogs in the long-distance transmission of bluetongue virus (BTV) is currently unproven. This study set out, through an experimental infection study, to investigate whether domestic dogs mount a viraemia post-infection with a field strain of BTV serotype 1. All six experimentally infected dogs seroconverted within 14 days and viral RNA was detected in the blood of the dogs, albeit at significantly lower levels than that seen in domestic ruminants. There was no clear evidence for viral replication in the dogs as no increase in viral RNA was observed in, and it was not possible isolate virus from, the blood of the dogs. There was however evidence for a persistence of viral RNA in the blood of the dogs, which may be evidence for a low level of replication or could be indicative of persistence of the viral inoculum.

DFT investigations of the hydrogenation effect on silicene/graphene hybrids.

We report here a study on the effect of hydrogenation on a new one-atom thick material made of silicon and carbon atoms (silicene/graphene (SG) hybrid) within density functional theory. The structural, electronic and magnetic properties are investigated for non-, semi- and fully hydrogenated SG hybrids in a chair configuration and are compared with their parent materials. Calculations reveal that pure SG is a non-zero band gap semi-conductor with stable planar honeycomb structure. So mixing C and Si in an alternating manner gives another way to generate a finite band gap in one-atom thick materials. Fully hydrogenation makes the gap larger; however half chemical modification with H reduces the gap in favor of ferromagnetism order. The findings of this work open a wide spectrum of possibilities for designing SG-based nanodevices with controlled and tuned properties.