Total Quality Management Practices and Technology Transfer in Malaysian Public University

It is widely accepted that the implementation of Total Quality Management (TQM) as a management philosophy has significantly contributed to good management practice in business organization particularly in the manufacturing and service sectors. The applications of that concepts, techniques and tools have been successfully tailored to non-profit service or government-based organization. In the context of higher education institution, it has been seriously debated by the TQM scholars and academicians on the issue of to what extent TQM can be applied and how relevant its practices are to higher education\u27s core business i.e. teaching and research. Despite having sufficient knowledge and research on TQM implementation in the scope of manufacturing practices and administration-related services, it is hard to find a research on TQM, which focuses on the scope of R&D at a university. This gap has to be filled because the management of research is a critical topic for universities worldwide. For developing countries such as Malaysia the need to have good management practice in R&D is even greater. Without effective research management, the task of becoming significant players in the global knowledge market will become harder. Thus, the first part of this paper will discuss the applicability of TQM and propose a theoretical framework or model of TQM to suit the need of R&D context. The constructs for the TQM framework are based on previous empirical studies and the evaluation criteria of world standard criteria such as MBNQA, EFQM, and QMS ISO 9000. The TQM constructs that will be proposed are leadership, strategic planning, student/stakeholder & industry focus, data & information management, staff management, process & system approach, partnership & resource and continuous improvement. The second part of the paper will discuss the performance indicators of R&D activities particularly in the context of public university. The review of International literatures stressed that the performance of R&D activities have to be measured. The current issue related to research performance at university is the level the research output that can be transferred to the stakeholders. Therefore, this study will use technology transfer framework to measure research performance such as publication, patents, royalty and Spin-off Company. Finally, this paper will conceptually develop a model that would show the relationship between the TQM practices in the area of research and the level of technology transfer

CNVannotator: A Comprehensive Annotation Server for Copy Number Variation in the Human Genome

<div><p>Copy number variation (CNV) is one of the most prevalent genetic variations in the genome, leading to an abnormal number of copies of moderate to large genomic regions. High-throughput technologies such as next-generation sequencing often identify thousands of CNVs involved in biological or pathological processes. Despite the growing demand to filter and classify CNVs by factors such as frequency in population, biological features, and function, surprisingly, no online web server for CNV annotations has been made available to the research community. Here, we present CNVannotator, a web server that accepts an input set of human genomic positions in a user-friendly tabular format. CNVannotator can perform genomic overlaps of the input coordinates using various functional features, including a list of the reported 356,817 common CNVs, 181,261 disease CNVs, as well as, 140,342 SNPs from genome-wide association studies. In addition, CNVannotator incorporates 2,211,468 genomic features, including ENCODE regulatory elements, cytoband, segmental duplication, genome fragile site, pseudogene, promoter, enhancer, CpG island, and methylation site. For cancer research community users, CNVannotator can apply various filters to retrieve a subgroup of CNVs pinpointed in hundreds of tumor suppressor genes and oncogenes. In total, 5,277,234 unique genomic coordinates with functional features are available to generate an output in a plain text format that is free to download. In summary, we provide a comprehensive web resource for human CNVs. The annotated results along with the server can be accessed at <a href="http://bioinfo.mc.vanderbilt.edu/CNVannotator/" target="_blank">http://bioinfo.mc.vanderbilt.edu/CNVannotator/</a>.</p></div

Additional file 2: Table S2. of Concordance of copy number loss and down-regulation of tumor suppressor genes: a pan-cancer study

The enriched pathways and interactors for the 207 tumor suppress genes (TSGs) with frequent copy number loss (CNL). (XLSX 11 kb

Additional file 1: Table S1. of Concordance of copy number loss and down-regulation of tumor suppressor genes: a pan-cancer study

The 207 tumor suppress genes (TSGs) with frequent copy number losses (CNLs). (XLSX 18 kb

The input, annotation categories, and output of CNVannotator.

<p>The input, annotation categories, and output of CNVannotator.</p

The genomic region-based query viewer in CNVannotator.

<p>(A) The access to various analytic tools for numerous functional annotation modules. (B) The web interface to input a list of CNVs for annotation. In the drop-down menu, users can choose the most relevant annotation option.</p

Additional file 5: Table S5. of Concordance of copy number loss and down-regulation of tumor suppressor genes: a pan-cancer study

The CNV frequency of 81 tumor suppress genes (TSGs) with decreased gene expression potentially induced by copy number losses (CNLs) in multiple cancers. (XLSX 12 kb

Additional file 3: Table S3. of Concordance of copy number loss and down-regulation of tumor suppressor genes: a pan-cancer study

The 81 tumor suppress genes (TSGs) with decreased gene expression potentially induced by copy number losses (CNLs). (XLSX 15 kb

Additional file 4: Table S4. of Concordance of copy number loss and down-regulation of tumor suppressor genes: a pan-cancer study

Functional enrichment results of 81 tumor suppress genes (TSGs) with decreased gene expression potentially induced by copy number losses (CNLs). (XLSX 24 kb

All the annotations in CNVannotator web server.

a<p>Two numbers represent the unique genomic regions for the fusion gene pairs.</p