This article describes the founding and growth of the Canadian Statistical Sciences Institute (CANSSI), starting from its early roots and continuing through to establishment as a mature research ...enterprise. The goal is to present a historical record of events and activities that were important in the development of CANSSI.
Résumé
Cet article décrit la création et le développement de l'Institut canadien des sciences statistiques (INCASS), depuis ses débuts jusqu'à son établissement en tant qu'entreprise de recherche mature. L'objectif est de présenter un historique des événements et des activités qui ont été importants dans le développement de l'INCASS.
This study explored inclusion of female participants in Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada Discovery Grant (NSERC-DG)-funded human cardiovascular research at Ontario ...universities between 2010–2018. Ninety-six publications were examined and 4 principal investigators were interviewed. Females were excluded/underrepresented in 63% of publications with 49% male-only and 5% female-only samples. The sex-bias appears to be explained by dependence on research knowledge and methodologies that maintain and reproduce a firmly established discourse of the male norm.
Novelty
Female participants were underrepresented in NSERC DG-funded cardiovascular research at Ontario universities between 2010–2018.
The Canadian Macromolecular Crystallography Facility (CMCF) consists of two beamlines dedicated to macromolecular crystallography: CMCF‐ID and CMCF‐BM. After the first experiments were conducted in ...2006, the facility has seen a sharp increase in usage and has produced a significant amount of data for the Canadian crystallographic community. Upgrades aimed at increasing throughput and flux to support the next generation of more demanding experiments are currently under way or have recently been completed. At CMCF‐BM, this includes an enhanced monochromator, automounter software upgrades and a much faster detector. CMCF‐ID will receive a major upgrade including a new undulator, a new monochromator and new optics to stably focus the beam onto a smaller sample size, as well as a brand‐new detector.
The current capabilities of and future upgrade plans for the beamlines supporting structural biology at the Canadian Light Source are described.
This paper addresses the following question: why are some university researchers more likely to create spin-off companies than others? In order to explain why university researchers create spin-offs, ...we draw on the resource-based theory of the firm. The study database consists of 1554 university researchers funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC). The logistic regression results suggest that the traditional and entrepreneurial visions of university research complement each other when one looks at the resources mobilized by researchers to launch spin-offs.
This study seeks to examine the impact of alumni connections between the evaluators and evaluatees on the results of peer review ratings for the Korean national R&D project and selection success ...rate. Specifically, this study analyzed the evaluation results of 8,402 research proposal entries submitted between 2007 and 2011 for the "general researchers support project," all in the Natural Science and Engineering areas and sponsored by the National Research Foundation of Korea. Each proposal entry was evaluated by three evaluators, and approximately 39 percent of the proposals had at least one evaluator from the same university. The results of this study showed that evaluators have a tendency to give relatively high scores to research proposals submitted by the alumni of the same universities as their alma mater. Also, when an evaluator from the same university as an evaluatee was included in the evaluator group, the results of this study showed that the percentage of entry submissions was higher compared to the contrary. Such results show that in the process of peer review–based research proposal evaluations for national R&D projects, alumni connections have significant influence on evaluation results in South Korea.
Tartryl‐CoA inhibits succinyl‐CoA synthetase Huang, Ji; Fraser, Marie E.
Acta crystallographica. Section F, Structural biology communications,
July 2020, 2020-Jul-01, 2020-07-01, 20200701, Volume:
76, Issue:
7
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Succinyl‐CoA synthetase (SCS) catalyzes the only substrate‐level phosphorylation step in the tricarboxylic acid cycle. Human GTP‐specific SCS (GTPSCS), an αβ‐heterodimer, was produced in Escherichia ...coli. The purified protein crystallized from a solution containing tartrate, CoA and magnesium chloride, and a crystal diffracted to 1.52 Å resolution. Tartryl‐CoA was discovered to be bound to GTPSCS. The CoA portion lies in the amino‐terminal domain of the α‐subunit and the tartryl end extends towards the catalytic histidine residue. The terminal carboxylate binds to the phosphate‐binding site of GTPSCS.
Human GTP‐specific succinyl‐CoA synthetase was produced, purified and crystallized from a solution containing tartrate and CoA. The crystal structure shows tartryl‐CoA bound to the enzyme at 1.52 Å resolution.
This paper is directed toward presenting a novel approach based on “consolidity charts” for the analysis of natural and man-made systems during their change pathway or course of life. The physical ...significance of the consolidity chart (region) is that it marks the boundary of all system interactive behavior resulting from all exhaustive internal and external influences. For instance, at a specific event state, the corresponding consolidity region describes all the plausible points of normalized input–output (fuzzy or non-fuzzy) interactions. These charts are developed as each event step for zone scaling of system parameters changes due to affected events or varying environments “on and above” their normal operation or set points and following the “time driven-event driven-parameters change” paradigm. Examples of the consolidity trajectory movement in the regions or patterns centers in the proposed charts of various consolidity classes are developed showing situations of change pathways from the unconsolidated form to the consolidated ones and vice versa. It is shown that the regions comparisons are based on type of consolidity region geometric shapes properties. Moreover, it is illustrated that the centerlines connecting consolidity regions during the change pathway could follow some certain type of trajectories designated as “consolidity pathway trajectory” that could assume various forms including zigzagging patterns depending on the consecutive affected influences. Implementation procedures are elaborated for the consolidity chart analysis of four real life case studies during their conventional and unconventional change pathways, describing: (i) the drug concentration production problem, (ii) the prey–predator population problem, (iii) the spread of infectious disease problem and (iv) the HIV/AIDS Epidemic problem. These solved case studies have lucidly demonstrated the applicability and effectiveness of the suggested consolidity chart approach that could open the door for a comprehensive analysis of system change pathway of many other real life applications. Examples of the fields of these applications are engineering, materials sciences, biology, medicine, geology, life sciences, ecology, environmental sciences and other important disciplines.
This paper is directed toward presenting a novel approach based on “consolidity charts” for the analysis of natural and man-made systems during their change pathway or course of life. The physical ...significance of the consolidity chart (region) is that it marks the boundary of all system interactive behavior resulting from all exhaustive internal and external influences. For instance, at a specific event state, the corresponding consolidity region describes all the plausible points of normalized input–output (fuzzy or non-fuzzy) interactions. These charts are developed as each event step for zone scaling of system parameters changes due to affected events or varying environments “on and above” their normal operation or set points and following the “time driven-event driven-parameters change” paradigm. Examples of the consolidity trajectory movement in the regions or patterns centers in the proposed charts of various consolidity classes are developed showing situations of change pathways from the unconsolidated form to the consolidated ones and vice versa. It is shown that the regions comparisons are based on type of consolidity region geometric shapes properties. Moreover, it is illustrated that the centerlines connecting consolidity regions during the change pathway could follow some certain type of trajectories designated as “consolidity pathway trajectory” that could assume various forms including zigzagging patterns depending on the consecutive affected influences. Implementation procedures are elaborated for the consolidity chart analysis of four real life case studies during their conventional and unconventional change pathways, describing: (i) the drug concentration production problem, (ii) the prey–predator population problem, (iii) the spread of infectious disease problem and (iv) the HIV/AIDS Epidemic problem. These solved case studies have lucidly demonstrated the applicability and effectiveness of the suggested consolidity chart approach that could open the door for a comprehensive analysis of system change pathway of many other real life applications. Examples of the fields of these applications are engineering, materials sciences, biology, medicine, geology, life sciences, ecology, environmental sciences and other important disciplines.
Arctic environmental changes already impact regional ecosystems, economies and northern communities, and are having increasing influence on many aspects of the global system. Interest in the Arctic ...has increased in concert with our improved awareness of potential changes; however, research funding has not necessarily kept pace with the need to improve our understanding of Arctic system change to inform evidence-based decision making. Analyses of data on research funding trends (2003-14) in Canada, the USA and the EU indicate that less than 3% of the total budget the funding agencies considered is allocated in any given year to Arctic-related research. Furthermore, alignment is uneven among established scientific research priorities, existing societal needs and projects awarded funding. New support mechanisms and improved alignment among resources, expertise and priorities, including Indigenous research priorities, are vital to planning and adaptation in the face of ongoing Arctic change.
Following activation of mammalian B cells, class switch recombination (CSR) and somatic hypermutation (SHM) of the Ig heavy chain (IgH) gene can improve the functions of the expressed antibodies. ...Activation-induced cytidine deaminase (AID) is the only known B cell-specific protein required for inducing CSR and SHM in mammals. Lower vertebrates have an AID homologue, and there is some evidence of SHM in vivo. However there is no evidence of CSR in the cartilaginous or bony fishes, and this may be due in part to a lack of cis-elements in the IgH gene that are the normal targets of AID-mediated recombination. We have tested whether bony fish (zebrafish and catfish) AID can mediate CSR and SHM in mammalian cells. As expected, ectopic expression of fish AID in mouse fibroblasts resulted in mutations in an introduced SHM reporter gene, indicating that fish AID can mediate SHM. Unexpectedly, expression of fish AID in mouse AID−/− B cells induced surface IgG expression as well as switched transcripts from Ig gene loci, clearly indicating that the fish AID protein can mediate CSR, at least in mouse cells. These results suggest that the AID protein acquired the ability to mediate CSR before the IgH locus evolved the additional exon clusters and switch regions that are the targets of recombination. We discuss how pleiotropic functions of specific domains within the AID protein may have facilitated the early evolution of CSR in lower vertebrates.
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