Reusable e-learning development: Case studies, practices and issues of awareness for knowledge-based organisations

Reusable e-learning development (RED) is defined as the cloning, modification and customisation of existing files or source codes for developing another website or another web-based application. RED does not imply just copying and changing existing files or source codes but rather, it provides a practical technique for time-saving, improving efficiency and maximising utility of existing resources for creating another website or another web-based application. RED is particularly useful for a large-scale web development, where there is an extremely high degree of overlapping of information, resources and web designs. Therefore, RED has been widely adopted by many knowledge-based organisations (KBO). In order to investigate the impacts of RED on KBO, various case studies, practices and issues of awareness for KBO are presented and analysed. This paper particularly focuses on studies and recommended practices from the University of Cambridge. Results from these case studies reveal a number of outcomes

Automated robotic liquid handling assembly of modular DNA devices

Recent advances in modular DNA assembly techniques have enabled synthetic biologists to test significantly more of the available "design space" represented by "devices" created as combinations of individual genetic components. However, manual assembly of such large numbers of devices is time-intensive, error-prone, and costly. The increasing sophistication and scale of synthetic biology research necessitates an efficient, reproducible way to accommodate large-scale, complex, and high throughput device construction. Here, a DNA assembly protocol using the Type-IIS restriction endonuclease based Modular Cloning (MoClo) technique is automated on two liquid-handling robotic platforms. Automated liquid-handling robots require careful, often times tedious optimization of pipetting parameters for liquids of different viscosities (e.g. enzymes, DNA, water, buffers), as well as explicit programming to ensure correct aspiration and dispensing of DNA parts and reagents. This makes manual script writing for complex assemblies just as problematic as manual DNA assembly, and necessitates a software tool that can automate script generation. To this end, we have developed a web-based software tool, http://mocloassembly.com, for generating combinatorial DNA device libraries from basic DNA parts uploaded as Genbank files. We provide access to the tool, and an export file from our liquid handler software which includes optimized liquid classes, labware parameters, and deck layout. All DNA parts used are available through Addgene, and their digital maps can be accessed via the Boston University BDC ICE Registry. Together, these elements provide a foundation for other organizations to automate modular cloning experiments and similar protocols. The automated DNA assembly workflow presented here enables the repeatable, automated, high-throughput production of DNA devices, and reduces the risk of human error arising from repetitive manual pipetting. Sequencing data show the automated DNA assembly reactions generated from this workflow are ~95% correct and require as little as 4% as much hands-on time, compared to manual reaction preparation

Entanglement, Nonlocality, Superluminal Signaling and Cloning

The paper is a Chapter of a book. In it an exhaustive review of the proposals to send faster than light signals resorting to quantum nonlocality and the reduction process is presented, together with a critical analysis and rebuttal of all proposals. The most interesting part of the Chapter is the one in which the problem of quantum cloning is discussed. Actually, a proposal of superluminal signaling based on an hypothetical cloning machine has been presented by N. Herbert. The proposal does not work just because of the assumption that one can clone nonorthogonal states. The fact that such a machine is incompatible with quantum theory (i.e., the so-called No-Cloning Theorem) has been proved, for the first time, by the author of the present chapter in his referee's report to Herbert's paper. In the final part of the paper some recent (different but similarly not correct) proposals are analyzed and the reasons for which they are basically wrong are presented.Comment: 29 pages, 4 figures, Book Chapter of: Advances in Quantum Mechanics, P. Bracken, ed. INTECH, 2013 Note: after having submitted this paper to the arXives, I realized that there is a mistake in eq.(1). In the last expression at the r.h.s. the p_{i} under the sum should appear square

A novel adenovirus vector for easy cloning in the E3 region downstream of the CMV promoter

The construction of expression vectors derived from the human adenovirus type 5 (Ad5), usually based on homologous recombination, is time consuming as a shuttle plasmid has to be selected before recombination with the viral genome. Here, we describe a method allowing direct cloning of a transgene in the E3 region of the Ad5 genome already containing the immediate early CMV promoter upstream of three unique restriction sites. This allowed the construction of recombinant adenoviral genomes in just one step, reducing considerably the time of selection and, of course, production of the corresponding vectors. Using this vector, we produced recombinant adenoviruses, each giving high-level expression of the transgene in the transduced cells

Testing Quantum Dynamics using Signaling

We consider a physical system in which the description of states and measurements follow the usual quantum mechanical rules. We also assume that the dynamics is linear, but may not be fully quantum (i.e unitary). We show that in such a physical system, certain complementary evolutions, namely cloning and deleting operations that give a better fidelity than quantum mechanically allowed ones, in one (inaccessible) region, lead to signaling to a far-apart (accessible) region. To show such signaling, one requires certain two-party quantum correlated states shared between the two regions. Subsequent measurements are performed only in the accessible part to detect such phenomenon.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, RevTeX4; v2: published versio