Comparative CPTED Conference

The Sydney Institute of Criminology (University of Sydney) hosted a one-day Comparative CPTED Conference on 24 January 2012. This conference explored recent developments in CPTED practice and theory and brought together an exciting array of academics and practitioners from England, New Zealand, Western Australia, Victoria, Queensland and other locations. National trends and local case studies revealed different approaches and innovative developments in CPTED practice from numerous jurisdictions.SJB Urbi

Reproducibility of fluorescent expression from engineered biological constructs in E. coli

We present results of the first large-scale interlaboratory study carried out in synthetic biology, as part of the 2014 and 2015 International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) competitions. Participants at 88 institutions around the world measured fluorescence from three engineered constitutive constructs in E. coli. Few participants were able to measure absolute fluorescence, so data was analyzed in terms of ratios. Precision was strongly related to fluorescent strength, ranging from 1.54-fold standard deviation for the ratio between strong promoters to 5.75-fold for the ratio between the strongest and weakest promoter, and while host strain did not affect expression ratios, choice of instrument did. This result shows that high quantitative precision and reproducibility of results is possible, while at the same time indicating areas needing improved laboratory practices.Peer reviewe