Public Sector Reform in Macao After the Handover

In a situation where available resources are becoming scarce, governments in developed countries tend to face increasing public demand for improved government performance and accountability. Most of the literature on public sector reform has been based on the experience of Western democracies. Some have focused on examples from Asian and developing countries. This paper seeks to present public sector reform in Macao following the handover from Portugal to China in December 1999. Public sector..

Public Sector Reform in Macao After the Handover

In a situation where available resources are becoming scarce, governments in developed countries tend to face increasing public demand for improved government performance and accountability. Most of the literature on public sector reform has been based on the experience of Western democracies. Some have focused on examples from Asian and developing countries. This paper seeks to present public sector reform in Macao following the handover from Portugal to China in December 1999. Public sector..

Les hésitations de la réforme de la fonction publique à Macao

Dans une conjoncture de tarissement des ressources disponibles, l’ensemble des gouvernements des pays développés font face à une demande croissante du public qui exige davantage d’efficacité et de responsabilité de la part des fonctionnaires. De nombreux travaux ont été consacrés aux réformes entreprises par les démocraties occidentales pour moderniser leurs administrations dans ce contexte. Quelques analyses portent sur l’Asie et les pays en développement. Cet article se propose de présenter..

Analysis of the pore of the unusual major intrinsic protein channel, yeast Fps1p

Fps1p is a glycerol efflux channel from Saccharomyces cerevisiae. In this atypical major intrinsic protein neither of the signature NPA motifs of the family, which are part of the pore, is preserved. To understand the functional consequences of this feature, we analyzed the pseudo-NPA motifs of Fps1p by site-directed mutagenesis and assayed the resultant mutant proteins in vivo. In addition, we took advantage of the fact that the closest bacterial homolog of Fps1p, Escherichia coli GlpF, can be functionally expressed in yeast, thus enabling the analysis in yeast cells of mutations that make this typical major intrinsic protein more similar to Fps1p. We observed that mutations made in Fps1p to "restore" the signature NPA motifs did not substantially affect channel function. In contrast, when GlpF was mutated to resemble Fps1p, all mutants had reduced activity compared with wild type. We rationalized these data by constructing models of one GlpF mutant and of the transmembrane core of Fps1p. Our model predicts that the pore of Fps1p is more flexible than that of GlpF. We discuss the fact that this may accommodate the divergent NPA motifs of Fps1p and that the different pore structures of Fps1p and GlpF may reflect the physiological roles of the two glycerol facilitators

Expected population impacts of discontinued prostate‐specific antigen screening

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/109652/1/cncr28932-sup-0001-suppinfo.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/109652/2/cncr28932.pd

Investigation of East Asian emissions of CFC-11 using atmospheric observations in Taiwan

Recent findings of an unexpected slowdown in the decline of CFC-11 mixing ratios in the atmosphere have led to the conclusion that global CFC-11 emissions have increased over the past decade and have been attributed in part to eastern China. This study independently assesses these findings by evaluating enhancements of CFC-11 mixing ratios in air samples collected in Taiwan between 2014 and 2018. Using the NAME (Numerical Atmospheric Modeling Environment) particle dispersion model, we find the likely source of the enhanced CFC-11 observed in Taiwan to be East China. Other halogenated trace gases were also measured, and there were positive interspecies correlations between CFC-11 and CHCl3, CCl4, HCFC-141b, HCFC-142b, CH2Cl2, and HCFC-22, indicating co-location of the emissions of these compounds. These correlations in combination with published emission estimates of CH2Cl2 and HCFC-22 from China, and of CHCl3 and CCl4 from eastern China, are used to estimate CFC-11 emissions. Within the uncertainties, these estimates do not differ for eastern China and the whole of China, so we combine them to derive a mean estimate that we term as being from "(eastern) China". For 2014-2018, we estimate an emission of 19 ± 5 Gg year-1 (gigagrams per year) of CFC-11 from (eastern) China, approximately one-quarter of global emissions. Comparing this to previously reported CFC-11 emissions estimated for earlier years, we estimate CFC-11 emissions from (eastern) China to have increased by 7 ± 5 Gg year-1 from the 2008-2011 average to the 2014-2018 average, which is 50 ± 40% of the estimated increase in global CFC-11 emissions and is consistent with the emission increases attributed to this region in an earlier study

AI is a viable alternative to high throughput screening: a 318-target study

: High throughput screening (HTS) is routinely used to identify bioactive small molecules. This requires physical compounds, which limits coverage of accessible chemical space. Computational approaches combined with vast on-demand chemical libraries can access far greater chemical space, provided that the predictive accuracy is sufficient to identify useful molecules. Through the largest and most diverse virtual HTS campaign reported to date, comprising 318 individual projects, we demonstrate that our AtomNet® convolutional neural network successfully finds novel hits across every major therapeutic area and protein class. We address historical limitations of computational screening by demonstrating success for target proteins without known binders, high-quality X-ray crystal structures, or manual cherry-picking of compounds. We show that the molecules selected by the AtomNet® model are novel drug-like scaffolds rather than minor modifications to known bioactive compounds. Our empirical results suggest that computational methods can substantially replace HTS as the first step of small-molecule drug discovery