AMS SolePower Station Improvement : The EnerCycle Machine

Disclaimer: “UBC SEEDS provides students with the opportunity to share the findings of their studies, as well as their opinions, conclusions and recommendations with the UBC community. The reader should bear in mind that this is a student project/report and is not an official document of UBC. Furthermore readers should bear in mind that these reports may not reflect the current status of activities at UBC. We urge you to contact the research persons mentioned in a report or the SEEDS Coordinator about the current status of the subject matter of a project/report.”Applied Science, Faculty ofMechanical Engineering, Department ofUnreviewedUndergraduat

An investigation into UBC sustainable swag

In previous years, the UBC Sustainability Initiative (USI) has participated in various campus-wide events such as Imagine Day, wherein various campus organizations promote themselves to students. One of the typical marketing strategies at these events is the act of handing out swag, a practice the USI participated in. However, concern was raised as to whether the swag being used by the USI was appropriate for the message of the organization, as previously used swag items were either overly expensive or lacking clarity with respect to the environmental impact of their fabrication. In light of this issue, the USI requested student groups of the APSC 262 course to perform an investigative analysis of sustainable swag. It was requested that this analysis remain primarily focused on literature, as the USI was conducting its own conversation with various swag providers and wished to avoid possible misunderstandings should the student groups contact the same companies by mistake. The desired end result of this analysis was to produce a method to quickly evaluate potential swag items with respect to Triple Bottom Line (TBL) accounting and a recommendation for potential swag items or marketing techniques the USI could use in the future. To address these issues and arrive at potential solutions, the team performed a literature review on the separate topics of the effectiveness of swag as marketing, the sustainability practices of suppliers, and various decision making processes. From this research, the team was able to develop a framework for swag TBL assessment, which evaluates items based on the labour practices in the country of manufacture, the carbon impact of the materials used, and the per-unit cost of the item. The team also came up with three potential swag item recommendations for the USI, and would recommend the USI to consider alternative marketing methods in addition to the use of swag. Disclaimer: “UBC SEEDS provides students with the opportunity to share the findings of their studies, as well as their opinions, conclusions and recommendations with the UBC community. The reader should bear in mind that this is a student project/report and is not an official document of UBC. Furthermore readers should bear in mind that these reports may not reflect the current status of activities at UBC. We urge you to contact the research persons mentioned in a report or the SEEDS Coordinator about the current status of the subject matter of a project/report.”Applied Science, Faculty ofUnreviewedUndergraduat

Structural and functional analysis of the human CD45 gene (PTPRC) upstream region: evidence for a functional promoter within the first intron of the gene

Expression of the leucocyte common antigen (CD45) in mammals is restricted to the nucleated lineages of haematopoietic cells. It appears in early progenitors in the bone marrow and is expressed at the surface of these cells throughout their differentiation. However, at least in T cells, the pattern of expression switches between different isoforms during the successive stages of differentiation in the thymus and after activation in the periphery. In order to understand the mechanisms controlling the transcription of the human CD45 gene, 2·7 kbp of the 5′-flanking region were sequenced and analysed for their ability to direct expression of a reporter gene. The only region with promoter activity was localized within the first intron of the gene. This promoter shows no tissue specificity but could be enhanced by a heterologous enhancer. Mobility shift assays showed complex but specific protein binding. The sequence in this region lacks similarity with known promoters or initiators but is highly conserved in evolution. No transcription initiation could be detected within or downstream of this region, suggesting that this might be a new type of RNA polymerase II promoter able to drive transcription from an upstream sequence. An additional exon was also found upstream of exon 1. The two exons 1 (1a and 1b) are mutually exclusive and both are spliced to exon 2. This makes the structure of the 5′ region of the human CD45 gene identical to its mouse homologue