Strong government, weak government : classifying municipal structural change

iii, 29 p. ; 28 cm. Paper presented at the Canadian Urban Studies Conference hosted by the Institute of Urban Studies in August 1985

Differential Mechanisms of Nuclear Receptor Regulation by the Coactivator RAC3: A Dissertation

The steroid/thyroid hormone receptor superfamily is a large class of ligand-dependent transcription factors that plays a critical role in regulating the expression of genes involved in a broad range of physiological functions, including development, homeostasis, and reproduction. In the absence of cognate hormone, several receptors are able to repress transcription below the basal level via the recruitment of the nuclear receptor corepressors SMRT and NCoR. Upon hormone binding by the receptor, the corepressor complex is dissociated and a coactivator complex is subsequently recruited. This thesis details the mechanisms by which receptor-associated coactivator 3 (RAC3) interacts with nuclear receptors, particularly the vitamin D, estrogen, and retinoid receptors, and modulates their transcriptional activity. It was discovered that these receptors interact with different α-helical LXXLL motifs of RAC3 in vitro. Mutation of specific motifs differentially impairs the ability of RAC3 to enhance transcription by the receptors in vivo. In addition, the intrinsic transcriptional activation function of RAC3 was also characterized. Here, a single LXXLL motif, NR box v, was found to be essential to activation by serving as a binding surface for the general transcriptional integrator CBP/p300. Finally, the cofactor binding pocket of retinoid receptors was characterized. It was demonstrated that, to a large extent, the coactivator pocket of RARα overlaps with the corepressor pocket, with the exception of helix 12, which is required for coactivator, but not corepressor binding. Recruitment of RAC3 or SMRT also correlates directly with the ability of RARα to activate or repress transcription, respectively. Intriguingly, it was discovered that the AF-2 domain of RXRα inhibited cofactor binding to RXRα heterodimers, for deletion of this domain dramatically enhanced RAC3 and SMRT binding. In addition, it was demonstrated that the RXRα cofactor binding pocket contributed minimally to recruitment of cofactors. Conversely, the AF-2 domain of the partnering monomer and its cofactor pocket were required for these interactions. These findings suggest that the partner of RXRα is the primary docking point for cofactors at RXRα heterodimeric complexes. Taken together, this work contributes significantly to the field of nuclear receptor function in detailing the mechanisms by which the coactivator RAC3 is recruited to nuclear receptors and regulates their transcriptional activity

Looking Back Across the Years: Alumni Reflections on a Community Design Service Learning Experience

This paper examines the perceptions of alumni on a service learning experience they engaged in as graduate students. As students, they were enrolled in West Virginia University’s Master of Public Administration program and participated in the West Virginia Community Design Team. Since 1997, the Community Design Team (CDT) program has engaged the state’s rural communities through volunteer teams of faculty, professionals, and students who assist in community efforts to assess and envision their futures. Through a curricular-based approach of integration and reflection, students are able to incorporate their CDT experiences into their overall graduate education. After briefly describing how integration and reflection are pursued through portfolio and capstone requirements, the paper then focuses on alumni recollections of how they encountered small rural communities, their lasting lessons gained from the experience, their evaluations of the place of service learning in graduate education, and their advice to others seeking to engage communities through university outreach and service projects. Data was gathered for this paper through in-depth interviews with alumni who participated in the CDT program as students. The results also suggests that alumni perspective is important not only in assessing service learning experiences but in reinforcing lessons learned by revisiting the experience years later. The research also seeks to add to our understanding of service learning in graduate education. KEYWORDSservice learning; graduate education; community engagemen

Multi-level Governance: Getting the Job Done and Respecting Community Difference – Three Winnipeg Cases

Multi-level governance is seen by different commentators as addressing a varied array of concerns. Some see it as a means of fulfilling the norms of the new public management, and thereby of freeing the administration of government programs from the constraints imposed by centralized bureaucracy. Some assess it in terms of dealing with policy problems so complex that they can only be addressed by concerted and co-ordinated efforts of more than one level of government and, often, a variety of agencies. At the same time, multi-level governance is also associated with the attempt to introduce a greater degree of flexibility into federal policy-making, in order to ensure that federal policies respect the unique characteristics of different communities. In this study, we bring all of these concerns to bear on three case studies of the multi-level governance of federal properties in Winnipeg, the James A. Richardson International Airport, the Kapyong Barracks and The Forks. The three properties are all administered by agencies at least one step removed from direct government supervision. We posed two research questions: 1) Are the operations of these agencies, and the character of their relations with federal and municipal governments, appropriate to the ends they are meant to serve? 2) Do they respect community difference? In all three cases, we find that the objective of effective management is reasonably or very well served, but respect for community difference is much less evident

Photoelastic coupling in gallium arsenide optomechanical disk resonators

We analyze the magnitude of the radiation pressure and electrostrictive stresses exerted by light confined inside GaAs semiconductor WGM optomechanical disk resonators, through analytical and numerical means, and find the electrostrictive force to be of prime importance. We investigate the geometric and photoelastic optomechanical coupling resulting respectively from the deformation of the disk boundary and from the strain-induced refractive index changes in the material, for various mechanical modes of the disks. Photoelastic optomechanical coupling is shown to be a predominant coupling mechanism for certain disk dimensions and mechanical modes, leading to total coupling g$_{om}$ and g$_0$ reaching respectively 3 THz/nm and 4 MHz. Finally, we point towards ways to maximize the photoelastic coupling in GaAs disk resonators, and we provide some upper bounds for its value in various geometries