Master of Science

thesisCreatine is necessary to transfer energy between cellular compartments. Creatine is converted to phosphocreatine by the creatine kinase reaction within mitochondria and phosphocreatine generates adenosine triphosphate (ATP) in the cytoplasm. ATP powers most of the energy consuming reactions in cells. Defects in creatine synthesis or transport disrupt this process and result in brain creatine deficiency syndromes. Affected patients have developmental delay, hypotonia, autism, seizures, and impaired motor skill development. Defects of creatine synthesis are caused by impaired activity of the enzymes guanidinoacetate methyltransferase (GAMT) and arginine:glycine amidinotransferase (AGAT), both transmitted as autosomal recessive traits, whereas defect in creatine transport (SLC6A8 Gene) are transmitted in an X-linked recessive manner. Patients with defects in creatine synthesis respond to creatine supplementation and dietary manipulations. This therapy is more effective if initiated before mental retardation is evident. For this reason, diagnosis should be accomplished as soon as possible with newborn screening. Here we report a reliable three-tier testing method for screening for GAMT and AGAT deficiency in newborns' v blood spots. Creatine and guanidinoacetate are detected in newborn screening blood spots by tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS). Secondtier testing using LC-MS/MS confirms more quantitatively low creatine and increased or decreased guanidinoacetate levels, while third-tier testing consists of DNA sequencing to identify mutations in the GAMT and AGAT Genes. This test can potentially identify newborns with GAMT and AGAT deficiencies with low false positive rate and could be applied to newborn screening nationwide

Give Them Some Slack - They\u27re Trying to Change! The Benefits of Excess Cash, Excess Employees, and Increased Human Capital in the Context of Strategic Change

[Excerpt] Human resource strategists perennially struggle with the issue of staffing levels, especially the difficult task of determining the number of people required to meet their units’ business goals. Should they go “lean and mean”, as the saying goes, or is it better to overstaff a bit – to build a little slack in the system? Theory suggests that the answer to this question is “it depends”. Units experiencing periods of stability with little change are advised to opt for the former approach in the interest of enhancing operational efficiency and minimizing labor costs. Those undergoing strategic change, however, would do better to build in some HR slack to allow for the allocation of talent to the exploration and early staffing of new initiatives without detracting from current operations. This notion of contingency has some empirical support with respect to financial slack, but to date there is no comparable research on HR slack. The study reported here fills this gap, while taking the additional step of exploring whether HR slack and financial slack have complementary effects on firm performance (see Figure 1 on page 2). Initially, the study examined whether the role of HR slack differed in firms that were and were not undergoing strategic change. Second, the analysis focused specifically on firms undergoing strategic transitions and explored two questions: (1) To what extent did the existence of financial slack affect the relationship between HR slack and firm performance? And (2) to what extent did it matter whether or not firms chose to allocate a significant portion of their financial slack to developing their human capital? To help answer these questions, the study relied on data provided by the Federal Deposit Insurance Company (FDIC) pertaining to 6,606 commercial banks covering a 12-year period between 2002 and 2014

Shaking Up Traditional Training With Lynda.com

Supporting the diverse technology training needs on campus while resources continue to dwindle is a challenge many of us continue to tackle. Institutions from small liberal arts campuses to large research universities are providing individualized training and application support 24/7 by subscribing to the lynda.com Online Training Library(r) and marketing the service to various combinations of faculty, staff and students. As a supplemental service on most of our campuses, lynda.com has allowed us to extend support to those unable to attend live lab-based training, those who want advanced level training, those who want training on specialized applications, and those who want to learn applications that are not in high demand. The service also provides cost effective professional development opportunities for everyone on campus, from our own trainers and technology staff who are developing new workshops, learning new software versions or picking up new areas of expertise from project management to programming, to administrative and support staff who are trying to improve their skills in an ever-tighter economic environment. On this panel discussion, you will hear about different licensing approaches, ways of raising awareness about lynda.com on our campuses, lessons learned through implementation, reporting capabilities, and advice we would give for other campuses looking to offer this service

Reduced food access due to a lack of money, inability to lift and lack of access to a car for food shopping : a multilevel study in Melbourne, Victoria

Objective: To describe associations between demographic and individual and arealevel socio-economic variables and restricted household food access due to lack of money, inability to lift groceries and lack of access to a car to do food shopping.Design: Multilevel study of three measures of restricted food access, i.e. running out of money to buy food, inability to lift groceries and lack of access to a car for food shopping. Multilevel logistic regression was conducted to examine the risk of each of these outcomes according to demographic and socio-economic variables.Setting: Random selection of households from fifty small areas in Melbourne, Australia, in 2003.Subjects: The main food shoppers in each household (n 2564).Results: A lack of money was significantly more likely among the young and in households with single adults. Difficultly lifting was more likely among the elderly and those born overseas. The youngest and highest age groups both reported reduced car access, as did those born overseas and single-adult households. All three factors were most likely among those with a lower individual or household socio-economic position. Increased levels of area disadvantage were independently associated with difficultly lifting and reduced car access.Conclusions: In Melbourne, households with lower individual socio-economic position and area disadvantage have restricted access to food because of a lack of money and/or having physical limitations due difficulty lifting or lack of access to a car for food shopping. Further research is required to explore the relationship between physical restrictions and food access.<br /

Fast food purchasing and access to fast food restaurants: a multilevel analysis of VicLANES

Background : While previous research on fast food access and purchasing has not found evidence of an association, these studies have had methodological problems including aggregation error, lack of specificity between the exposures and outcomes, and lack of adjustment for potential confounding. In this paper we attempt to address these methodological problems using data from the Victorian Lifestyle and Neighbourhood Environments Study (VicLANES) &ndash; a cross-sectional multilevel study conducted within metropolitan Melbourne, Australia in 2003.Methods : The VicLANES data used in this analysis included 2547 participants from 49 census collector districts in metropolitan Melbourne, Australia. The outcome of interest was the total frequency of fast food purchased for consumption at home within the previous month (never, monthly and weekly) from five major fast food chains (Red Rooster, McDonalds, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Hungry Jacks and Pizza Hut). Three measures of fast food access were created: density and variety, defined as the number of fast food restaurants and the number of different fast food chains within 3 kilometres of road network distance respectively, and proximity defined as the road network distance to the closest fast food restaurant. Multilevel multinomial models were used to estimate the associations between fast food restaurant access and purchasing with never purchased as the reference category. Models were adjusted for confounders including determinants of demand (attitudes and tastes that influence food purchasing decisions) as well as individual and area socio-economic characteristics.Results : Purchasing fast food on a monthly basis was related to the variety of fast food restaurants (odds ratio 1.13; 95% confidence interval 1.02 &ndash; 1.25) after adjusting for individual and area characteristics. Density and proximity were not found to be significant predictors of fast food purchasing after adjustment for individual socio-economic predictors.Conclusion : Although we found an independent association between fast food purchasing and access to a wider variety of fast food restaurant, density and proximity were not significant predictors. The methods used in our study are an advance on previous analyses.<br /

LEDs to Replace Fluorescent Tubes for Growth of Cultured Algae

Fluorescent bulbs are widely used for algal culture stocks and production in aquaculture operations. Metal halide lamps are also used for production tanks with significant electricity demand and heat production. LED technology promises lower operational costs with less energy waste as heat for equivalent light energy production. Re-tooling algal production facilities with new LED fixtures incurs significant expense that must be recaptured in savings over time. The initial cost, added to concerns over the unknown response of algae to LED light sources may both be factors inhibiting incorporation of this new technology. LED replacement tubes are available to retrofit fluorescent tube fixtures and may offset some conversion costs to replacing light sources. Concerns about the ability of LEDs to provide adequate algae production for hatchery operations led us to run side by side comparison of growth dynamics for four commonly used algae strains using fluorescent light and LED replacement tubes. We also implemented a tunable red and blue LED unit for mass algae production in tanks

Area-level unemployment and perceived job insecurity: evidence from a longitudinal survey conducted in the Australian working-age population

Research significance: Job insecurity, the subjective individual anticipation of involuntary job loss, negatively affects employees&rsquo; health and their engagement. Although the relationship between job insecurity and health has been extensively studied, job insecurity as an &lsquo;exposure&rsquo; has received far less attention, with little known about the upstream determinants of job insecurity in particular. This research sought to identify the relationship between self-rated job insecurity and area-level unemployment using a longitudinal, nationally representative study of Australian households. Methods: Mixed-effect multi-level regression models were used to assess the relationship between area-based unemployment rates and self-reported job insecurity using data from a longitudinal, nationally representative survey running since 2001. Interaction terms were included to test the hypotheses that the relationship between area-level unemployment and job insecurity differed between occupational skill-level groups and by employment arrangement. Marginal effects were computed to visually depict differences in job insecurity across areas with different levels of unemployment. Results: Results indicated that areas with the lowest unemployment rates had significantly lower job insecurity (predicted value 2.74; 95% confidence interval (CI) 2.71&ndash;2.78, P &lt; 0.001) than areas with higher unemployment (predicted value 2.81; 95% CI 2.79&ndash;2.84, P &lt; 0.001). There was a stronger relationship between area-level unemployment and job insecurity among precariously and fixed-term employed workers than permanent workers. Conclusion: These findings demonstrate the independent influences of prevailing economic conditions, individual- and job-level factors on job insecurity. Persons working on a casual basis or on a fixed-term contract in areas with higher levels of unemployment are more susceptible to feelings of job insecurity than those working permanently

Sickness absence and psychosocial job quality: an analysis from a longitudinal survey of working Australians, 2005-2012

Sickness absence is associated with adverse health, organizational, and societal outcomes. Using data from a longitudinal cohort study of working Australians (the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey), we examined the relationship between changes in individuals' overall psychosocial job quality and variation in sickness absence. The outcome variables were paid sickness absence (yes/no) and number of days of paid sickness absence in the past year (2005-2012). The main exposure variable was psychosocial job quality, measured using a psychosocial job quality index (levels of job control, demands and complexity, insecurity, and perceptions of unfair pay). Analysis was conducted using longitudinal fixed-effects logistic regression models and negative binomial regression models. There was a dose-response relationship between the number of psychosocial job stressors reported by an individual and the odds of paid sickness absence (1 adversity: odds ratio (OR) = 1.26, 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.09, 1.45 (P = 0.002); 2 adversities: OR = 1.28, 95% CI: 1.09, 1.51 (P = 0.002); â‰13 adversities: OR = 1.58, 95% CI: 1.29, 1.94 (P < 0.001)). The negative binomial regression models also indicated that respondents reported a greater number of days of sickness absence in response to worsening psychosocial job quality. These results suggest that workplace interventions aiming to improve the quality of work could help reduce sickness absence