State of the Bangladesh Economy in FY2008

Economic condition, bangladesh

CPD’S PRE-ELECTION POLICY BRIEFS: Results from the Identification Exercise

The paper documents various consultations conducted by CPD during the last quarter of the year 2000 to identify specific issues to be taken up for the purpose of preparing the pre-election policy briefs. The paper provides suggestions to improve the capacity of civil society to contribute to the policy debate and to formulate ideas for the national political process in the run-up to, and immediately after, the parliamentary elections due in 2001.Election, Policy Briefs, Bangladeshg

Corporate Responsibility Practices in Bangladesh: Results from a Benchmark Study

This paper aims to provide useful insights in understanding the overall corporate responsibility status in the corporate world of Bangladesh as well as to obtain perception of the relationship of corporations with civil society, workers and the consumers. The study, thereby, recognises the valuable views of the representatives of the civil society organisations on issues such as labour rights, community relations, workplace environment and sustainable development. A set of policy recommendations for addressing the major concerns of corporate responsibility has also been sketched out in the paper.Business Administration, Corporate responsibility, Bangladesh

State of the Bangladesh Economy and Budget Responses 2008

Budget, Bangladesh

Identifying the Molecular Signatures of Adaptive Evolution

Using both novel and established molecular evolutionary modelling techniques, we have investigated the evolution of primate lentiviruses and interactions with their hosts. Firstly, we studied SAMHD1, a restriction factor of HIV-1 which is neutralised by lentiviral proteins. SAMHD1 has previously been shown to be under positive selection in primates, ostensibly due to pressure to escape recognition by lentiviral antagonists. We show positive selection is not unique to primates but has occurred throughout chordate evolution. In mammals, we unexpectedly find SAMHD1 sites under positive selection are clustered in the domain controlling enzymatic activation. We hypothesise that positive selection is driven by undiscovered animal viruses and/or precise regulation of SAMHD1 activity. Secondly, we analysed the capsid proteins of pandemic HIV-1 and its chimpanzee progenitor, SIVcpz. We looked for sites evolving under different selective constraints with the aim of discovering host specific adaptation. We identify sites in the domain bound by host cofactors, which govern crucial events in virus replication and prevent immune sensing, suggesting host specific responses to cofactor interaction. Thirdly, we apply this same approach to pandemic HIV-1 and SIVcpz accessory proteins, which mitigate host immunity. Surprisingly, we identify sites in regions of nef and vpr involved in putatively conserved interactions with host proteins, suggesting unexpected host specific adaptation. In vpu, we identify sites involved in antagonism of the restriction factor tetherin - a function acquired by pandemic HIV-1 on adaptation to humans - together with sites which we hypothesise are similarly involved. Finally, lentiviruses and other organisms possess overlapping coding sequences, for which existing codon selection models are unsuitable. We propose a novel approach which models nucleotide substitution. In synthetic data tests, one of four candidate models was accurate and we developed a mixture model for identifying positive selection at codon sites, which we also tested with synthetic data

Breves de Política Pública

Los textos que se reproducen a continuación han sido publicados por el Centro de Políticas para el Desarrollo de la Facultad de Administración y Economía de la Universidad de Santiago de Chilecon el propósito de promover el debate sobre diversos asuntos de interés público

Breves de Política Pública

Los textos que se reproducen  a  continuación, han sido publicados  por  el Centro de Políticas  para  el Desarrollo (CPD) de  la Facultad  de  Administración  y  Economía  (FAE) de la Universidad  de Santiago  de  Chile,  con  el  propósito de promover  el  debate sobre diversos asuntos de interés público y no representa necesariamente la opinión de las autoridades de la Facultad, ni las de la Universidad

Holocene lake sediment core sequences from Lochnagar, Cairngorm Mts., Scotland - UK final report for CHILL-10,000

The CHILL 10,000 research objective at Lochnagar is to examine proxy data for temperature and climate conditions. Changes in lake sediment stratigraphical data can be used to reconstruct past conditions. These proxies include organic and minerogenic matter as a bulk proxy for catchment and within-lake productivity, chironomids as a proxy for air temperature, diatoms as an indicator for lake water pH, pollen as an indicator of catchment vegetation and finally biomarkers to help determine changes in proportions of organic source material within the lake mud

Teacher agency and professional learning communities; what can Learning Rounds in Scotland teach us?

Recently there has been growth in researching teacher agency. Some research has considered the relationship between teacher agency and professional learning. Similarly, there has been growing interest in professional learning communities as resources for professional learning. Connections have been made between professional learning communities and teacher agency, with professional learning communities seen as an affordance for the exercise of teacher agency. However, it has also been argued that there is little detailed evidence of what happens inside professional learning communities or of teacher agency in action. The research reported here focuses on a form of professional learning community from Scotland: Learning Rounds. It uses data from transcripts of post classroom observation conversations to consider the extent to which Learning Rounds provide an affordance for teacher agency and the extent to which that affordance is utilised. This research makes a contribution in three ways: adding to an empirical understanding of what happens in professional learning communities; understanding how teacher agency is (or is not) exercised in practice; considering what factors might affect the utilisation (or otherwise) of affordances for teacher agency. The paper concludes with several recommendations for developing effective professional learning communities as an affordance for teacher agency