Assessing preferences for attributes of city information points: Results from a choice experiment

A choice experiment has been carried out to assess the preferred attributes of information points (called totems) to be installed in the city of Bolzano. Totems allow the acquisition, exchange and query of data in real time, as well as provide other services such as electricity or water supply. These infrastructures could be useful for both inhabitants and tourists in need of parking spaces, information about events or charging stations for vehicles. To design them in a cost-effective way, it is important to understand potential users\u2019 preferences. For this reason, field surveys using stated preferences are important sources of information to tailor these totem effectively. In order to facilitate the interpretation of results for policy making, estimations are carried out in willingness-to-pay space and by means of a random parameters logit model. Results indicate that the preferred attributes are the presence of Wi-Fi \u201chot spots\u201d, charging stations for electric cars and bikes and real-time information about available car parks

"Split-and-Click" sgRNA

CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing is dependent on a programmable single guide RNA (sgRNA) that directs Cas9 endonuclease activity. This RNA is often generated by enzymatic reactions, however the process becomes time-consuming as the number of sgRNAs increases and does not allow the incorporation of chemical modifications that can improve or expand the functionality of CRISPR. Solid-phase RNA synthesis can overcome these issues, but highly pure full-length sgRNA remains at the limits of current synthetic methods. Here, we demonstrate a "split-and-click" approach that separates the sgRNA into its two smaller components - a DNA-targeting ~20-mer RNA and a constant Cas9-binding 79-mer RNA - and chemically ligates them together to generate a biologically active sgRNA. The benefits of our approach lie in the stringent purification of the DNA-targeting 20-mer, the reduced synthesis of the constant 79-mer each time a new sgRNA is required, and the rapid access it provides to custom libraries of sgRNAs