Abstract
Governmental spending on science is usually justified by claims that the resulting research will yield benefits for the sponsoring nation. I present policy-analytic and ethnographic ...research—based on 30 hour-long interviews—of the Mexican ecological research community to explore the structural influence of publication incentives on research content and its relevance to national needs. During a financial crisis in the 1980s, Mexico created a national publication incentive system, the Sistema Nacional de Investigadores, to identify and reward scientists producing the most and the most-cited research as defined by dominant international scientific norms at the time. The system has increased productivity but in the process has undermined that country’s ability to benefit from its ecological research by surrendering priority setting to the editorial preferences of journals that are linguistically and financially unavailable to potential domestic users. The Mexican experience has implications for institutions worldwide that utilize quantitative productivity measures in researcher evaluation.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Canine malignant melanoma, a significant cause of mortality in domestic dogs, is a powerful comparative model for human melanoma, but little is known about its genetic etiology. We mapped the genomic ...landscape of canine melanoma through multi-platform analysis of 37 tumors (31 mucosal, 3 acral, 2 cutaneous, and 1 uveal) and 17 matching constitutional samples including long- and short-insert whole genome sequencing, RNA sequencing, array comparative genomic hybridization, single nucleotide polymorphism array, and targeted Sanger sequencing analyses. We identified novel predominantly truncating mutations in the putative tumor suppressor gene PTPRJ in 19% of cases. No BRAF mutations were detected, but activating RAS mutations (24% of cases) occurred in conserved hotspots in all cutaneous and acral and 13% of mucosal subtypes. MDM2 amplifications (24%) and TP53 mutations (19%) were mutually exclusive. Additional low-frequency recurrent alterations were observed amidst low point mutation rates, an absence of ultraviolet light mutational signatures, and an abundance of copy number and structural alterations. Mutations that modulate cell proliferation and cell cycle control were common and highlight therapeutic axes such as MEK and MDM2 inhibition. This mutational landscape resembles that seen in BRAF wild-type and sun-shielded human melanoma subtypes. Overall, these data inform biological comparisons between canine and human melanoma while suggesting actionable targets in both species.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
America's globally preeminent university research enterprise is constructed on two bedrock principles of self-governance. The first is autonomy: academic scientists should be left free to determine ...their own research agendas. The second is internal accountability: the quality of academic science is best assessed by academic scientists. The commitment to scientific self-governance carries with it a policy requirement as well: support for research will mostly have to come from the federal government; companies will never make the necessary investments in undirected research because they cannot capture the economic benefits for themselves.The origin story of how this arrangement came about is a familiar one. During World War II, civilian scientists and engineers developed pivotal innovations that contributed to the allied victory. Their work was funded, overseen, and coordinated by the US Office of Scientific Research and Development, directed by Vannevar Bush, formerly the president of the Carnegie Institution for Science and dean of engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Closely administered for relevance in advancing the war effort, wartime research and development activities were managed in a manner antithetical to contemporary ideals of scientific selfgovernance. Following the war, Bush made a pitch in his now famous report Science, The Endless Frontier that to secure social and economic benefits in the postwar period, including more and better paying jobs, more productive agriculture, and innovative industrial products desired by consumers, "the flow of scientific knowledge must be both continuous and substantial." To achieve this knowledge flow he felt that the government should provide generous funding for the scientific community, as it had during the war.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
BFBNIB, DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NMLJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Coat color and type are essential characteristics of domestic dog breeds. Although the genetic basis of coat color has been well characterized, relatively little is known about the genes influencing ...coat growth pattern, length, and curl. We performed genome-wide association studies of more than 1000 dogs from 80 domestic breeds to identify genes associated with canine fur phenotypes. Taking advantage of both inter- and intrabreed variability, we identified distinct mutations in three genes, RSPO2, FGF5, and KRT71 (encoding R-spondin-2, fibroblast growth factor-5, and keratin-71, respectively), that together account for most coat phenotypes in purebred dogs in the United States. Thus, an array of varied and seemingly complex phenotypes can be reduced to the combinatorial effects of only a few genes.
The size, shape, and behavior of the modern domesticated dog has been sculpted by artificial selection for at least 14,000 years. The genetic substrates of selective breeding, however, remain largely ...unknown. Here, we describe a genome-wide scan for selection in 275 dogs from 10 phenotypically diverse breeds that were genotyped for over 21,000 autosomal SNPs. We identified 155 genomic regions that possess strong signatures of recent selection and contain candidate genes for phenotypes that vary most conspicuously among breeds, including size, coat color and texture, behavior, skeletal morphology, and physiology. In addition, we demonstrate a significant association between HAS2 and skin wrinkling in the Shar-Pei, and provide evidence that regulatory evolution has played a prominent role in the phenotypic diversification of modern dog breeds. Our results provide a first-generation map of selection in the dog, illustrate how such maps can rapidly inform the genetic basis of canine phenotypic variation, and provide a framework for delineating the mechanistic basis of how artificial selection promotes rapid and pronounced phenotypic evolution.
Atmospheric aerosols have been shown to be an important input of organic carbon and nutrients to alpine watersheds and influence biogeochemical processes in these remote settings. For many remote, ...high elevation watersheds, direct evidence of the sources of water soluble organic aerosols and their chemical and optical characteristics is lacking. Here, we show that the concentration of water soluble organic carbon (WSOC) in the total suspended particulate (TSP) load at a high elevation site in the Colorado Rocky Mountains was strongly correlated with UV absorbance at 254 nm (Abs254, r = 0.88 p < 0.01) and organic carbon (OC, r = 0.95 p < 0.01), accounting for >90% of OC on average. According to source apportionment analysis, biomass burning had the highest contribution (50.3%) to average WSOC concentration; SOA formation and motor vehicle emissions dominated the contribution to WSOC in the summer. The source apportionment and backward trajectory analysis results supported the notion that both wildfire and Colorado Front Range pollution sources contribute to the summertime OC peaks observed in wet deposition at high elevation sites in the Colorado Rocky Mountains. These findings have important implications for water quality in remote, high-elevation, mountain catchments considered to be our pristine reference sites.
Abstract
My recent publication highlighting the unintended steering influences of publication incentives on the research agenda of Mexican ecological scientists elicited a vehement critique from two ...renowned Mexican ecologists, Williams and Morrone. The argument I advance is that Mexico’s National System of Researchers (SNI) unintentionally steers ecological researchers away from the knowledge needs of local, national, and regional users of scientific knowledge and relinquishes research priority-setting to individuals and institutions disconnected from Mexico’s knowledge needs. Rather than engaging with the substance of argument, these critics focus on what they believe to be factual errors. In their response, Williams and Morrone effectively but unintentionally confirm the premise, mechanism, and indeed the key factual claims in my article. I stand behind my analysis as published.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Information we collect about our planet depends, in part, on the questions scientists ask regarding the natural world. Asking other questions might lead to different innovations and alternative ...understandings of policy problems and their potential solutions. With a seemingly infinite number of potential study subjects but limited resources with which to study them, why have we chosen to focus on the topics that we have? Here, I present a Q-method study that explores ecologists' thought processes as they evaluate the merits of potential research topics. The participants, ecologists attending the Ecological Society of America's 2008 Annual Meeting, nominally agreed with one another that their discipline should contribute to solving environmental problems, but they interpreted that goal differently. This study uncovers four competing visions that ecologists have for their discipline. On the basis of these findings, I contend that ecology might be more effective in informing policy if priority setting were a more deliberative process and open to insights from individuals and institutions outside of ecology.
Recent political events serve as a reminder that American society comprises groups with divergent visions for the future and mutually incompatible ideas of how to achieve those futures. Despite this ...diversity of policy orientations within the American public, we find that many students in our environmental studies courses have relatively little awareness of, or experience with, that diversity. Without the experience of interacting with people with different policy orientations, it is easy for students to believe policy consensus would emerge if everyone were sufficiently educated on the facts. Factual understanding, however, does not yield consensus on contemporary policy dilemmas such as climate change. We believe that equipping students to be effective agents of change means exposing them to the plurality of cultural commitments and policy orientations latent in current policy disputes. In this paper, we present a preliminary version of a survey tool, the Policy Orientation Survey, to evaluate how the diversity of cultural and policy orientations at a university is distributed across academic units. After describing the tool and its utility, we briefly present pilot results from our own university and discuss implications for higher education.
A crippling dwarfism was first described in the Miniature Poodle in Great Britain in 1956. Here, we resolve the genetic basis of this recessively inherited disorder. A case-control analysis (8:8) of ...genotype data from 173 k SNPs revealed a single associated locus on CFA14 (P(raw) <10(-8)). All affected dogs were homozygous for an ancestral haplotype consistent with a founder effect and an identical-by-descent mutation. Systematic failure of nine, nearly contiguous SNPs, was observed solely in affected dogs, suggesting a deletion was the causal mutation. A 130-kb deletion was confirmed both by fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) analysis and by cloning the physical breakpoints. The mutation was perfectly associated in all cases and obligate heterozygotes. The deletion ablated all but the first exon of SLC13A1, a sodium/sulfate symporter responsible for regulating serum levels of inorganic sulfate. Our results corroborate earlier findings from an Slc13a1 mouse knockout, which resulted in hyposulfatemia and syndromic defects. Interestingly, the metabolic disorder in Miniature Poodles appears to share more clinical signs with a spectrum of human disorders caused by SLC26A2 than with the mouse Slc13a1 model. SLC26A2 is the primary sodium-independent sulfate transporter in cartilage and bone and is important for the sulfation of proteoglycans such as aggregan. We propose that disruption of SLC13A1 in the dog similarly causes undersulfation of proteoglycans in the extracellular matrix (ECM), which impacts the conversion of cartilage to bone. A co-dominant DNA test of the deletion was developed to enable breeders to avoid producing affected dogs and to selectively eliminate the mutation from the gene pool.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
PDF
