The Utilization of Polymerase Chain Reaction, DNA Barcoding and Bioinformatics in Identifying Plant Species

Bioinformatics and DNA barcoding is a process used to identify plants, animals, and fungi. DNA barcoding in plants utilizes a key variable region in the genome, the RuBisCo large subunit (RbcL) on Chloroplast DNA. Once the DNA is extracted, Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) amplifies that region and that sample is sent off for sequencing. Bioinformatics and DNA barcoding helps taxonomists determine the sequence of the RbcL gene as well as obtain a unique barcode that can be used to identify plants. Several plant species from our local campus were sequenced and identified using the previously described methods

State and trends of carbon pricing 2015

Introduction Reflecting the growing momentum for carbon pricing worldwide, the 2015 edition of the State and Trends of Carbon Pricing report targets a wider audience of public and private stakeholders who are engaged in carbon pricing design and implementation. This report also provides critical input for the negotiations leading up to the Conference of the Parties (COP) in Paris. As in the previous editions, the report provides an up-to-date overview of existing and emerging carbon pricing instruments around the world, including national and subnational initiatives. Furthermore, it gives an overview of current corporate carbon pricing instruments. To better reflect the plethora of topics being considered in the climate dialogue, the report also analyzes competitiveness and carbon leakage, and their impact on the development of carbon pricing instruments. The task team responsible for this report intends to select new relevant topics to be explored in future editions. These topics could include, for example, the effectiveness of existing and emerging carbon pricing instruments, and how to measure it. Finally, this year’s report gives the audience a forward-looking assessment of the advantages of international cooperation in reaching stringent global mitigation targets. A review of existing modeling work provides a qualitative and quantitative assessment of cost saving potentials and the magnitude of financial flows inherent to international cooperation aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions to a level consistent with the 2°C climate stabilization goal

More than a Game: Understanding Gendered Discourse in Online Video Game Communities

Using discourse analysis guided by Connell’s Relational Gender Theory and the concept of Hegemonic Masculinity, this research focused on the gendered discourse of online communities for the video game “Overwatch”. The overall aim of this study was to explore the discourse about gender in online communities dedicated to gaming to see how gender norms are reproduced, challenged, or both. Seeking answers to two research questions, 1), How does discourse about gender develop from images and text in conversations within digital communities?, 2), What forms does gendered discourse take in the images and text users post to their individual blogs?, data in the form of text and image social media posts were collected from one focus community on Reddit and one focus community on Tumblr over a three-month period. Two main themes were identified on Reddit: Promotion of Men as Gamers and Traditional Gaming Behaviours. These themes provided evidence of gender norms being reproduced, with men being seen as the superior gender in gaming spaces maintaining the belief that gaming is an activity reserved for men and boys. Two main themes were also identified on Tumblr: Critiquing the Heroes and Taking Pride in the Game. These themes demonstrated gender norms are being challenged in the selected community on Tumblr. A prominent LGBTQ+ community largely rejected heteronormativity as users critiqued the design of the game’s characters. Overall, the findings suggest there is potential to disrupt the established gender hierarchy in gaming that assumes men are superior to every other gender, but there is still a long way to go before this change becomes widespread

Review of Lisa Yoneyama, \u3cem\u3eHiroshima Traces: Time, Space, and the Dialectics of Memory\u3c/em\u3e

This is a sensitive study of the ways that the atomic bombing of Hiroshima has been remembered, by survivors, urban leaders, ethnic Koreans, women\u27s groups, and others. It is a compelling resource for the growing number of historians of science interested in politics of commemoration. It is also relevant to historians of technology or science who recognize that consumers of end users of technology are part of the history of any machine. For many military technologies, of course, the ultimate consumers are those who experience the bodily injury or physical disruption that the machine is intended to produce

Review of Evelyn Fox Keller, \u3cem\u3eRefiguring Life: Metaphors of Twentieth-Century Biology\u3c/em\u3e

Moleuclar biology has attracted historical attention in recent years, prompted perhaps by the Human Genome Project, the rise of the biotechnology industry, or the exuberant participant-histories of the 1970s and 1980s. A satisfactory explanation of this scientific field and its cultural and political moorings has yet to appear but much new work is on the way

The American Career of Jane Marcet\u27s \u3cem\u3eConversations on Chemistry\u3c/em\u3e, 1806-1853

Jane Haldimand Marcet\u27s Conversations on Chemistry has traditionally claimed historical attention for its effects on the young bookbinder Michael Faraday, who was converted to a life of science while binding and reading it. Marcet inspired Faraday with a love of science and blazed for him that road in chemical and physical experimentation which led to such marvelous results, in H.J. Mozans\u27s romantic account. Or, as Eva Armstrong put it, Marcet led Faraday to dedicate himself to a science in which his name became immortal.

Voices of the Dead: James Neel\u27s Amerindian Studies

During his 1967 fieldwork, James V. Neel, professor of human genetics at the University of Michigan, spent a good deal of time collecting chicken dung. He scraped up dirt and chicken waste from the ground around the Yanomamö villages. He sought out dirt from the floors of the Yanomamö houses, where parrots were kept as free-roaming pets. He crawled under chicken coops, filling seventy-five labeled plastic bags with samples, using a fresh plastic spoon for each sample, and he worried about getting this soil and bird waste safely back to Atlanta, Georgia, for testing at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).

Scientific Outsiders and the Human Genome Project. Review of Timothy F. Murphy and Marc A. Lappé, \u3cem\u3eJustice and the Human Genome Project\u3c/em\u3e; Robert F. Weir, Susan S. Lawrence, and Evan Fales, \u3cem\u3eGenes and Human Self-Knowledge: Historical and Philosophical Reflections on Modern Genetics\u3c/em\u3e; Tom Wilkie, \u3cem\u3ePerilous Knowledge: The Human Genome Project and Its Implications\u3c/em\u3e

The Human Genome Project, the international effort to map and sequence the genetic material of Homo sapiens, has by now generated a mass of information about DNA sequences. It has also generated an independent, but related, mass of texts exploring the philosophical, historical, sociological, and legal implications for medical care, human identity, law, politics, and reproduction that the project raises. Indeed, the Human Genome Project is perhaps most noteworthy for its status as the first and only scientific project to fund independent studies of its own social implications. The genome project budget in the United States, which is divided among several federal agencies including the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Energy, includes a generous amount set aside for bioethicists, policy planners, historians, philosophers, and other scholars. Of the three books reviewed here, only one (Justice and the Human Genome Project) has any connection to this funding mechanism. But all reflect the popular and political interest that the genome project has provoked. Few of those commenting on the genome project in these studies are laboratory molecular biologists familiar with polymerase chain reaction, in situ hybridization, or any of the other technologies for manipulating DNA that have been so important to the project. They are, instead, scientific outsiders who are expected to shed light on the long-term social implications of the access to hereditary information that the genome project promises to make possible