The microarray manual curation tool (MMCT): A Web server for microarray probe evaluations

Quality control of probe sequences is a major concern in microarray technology. The presence of poor quality probes has a negative impact on the microarray data analysis process. The Microarray Manual Curation Tool (MMCT) is a web server application that provides computational and visual means to investigate the quality of individual probes for oligo microarrays. The MMCT quality metrics assess the free energy of hybridization and the secondary structure of duplexes formed by selected targets and probes, which are specific to various microarray platforms

Les limites et les conséquences de l'aménagement linguistique au Nouveau-Brunswick : le cas du secteur privé

Une simple comparaison entre les champs d'intervention de la Charte de la langue française du Québec et ceux de la Loi sur les langues officielles du Nouveau-Brunswick nous permet de constater la grande faille que possède l'aménagement linguistique du Nouveau-Brunswick, soit la non-intervention dans les sphères d'activité du secteur privé. Les entreprises du secteur privé ont donc tous les droits d'établir, de manière consciente ou non, des situations de domination de l'anglais sur le français, et ce, au sein même des lieux de travail, au niveau de l'affichage ainsi qu'au niveau de la langue de service. À la lumière de ce constat, qu'est-ce que pensent les travailleurs du secteur privé de la possibilité de voir le gouvernement provincial intervenir afin de corriger les situations de domination linguistique qui y existent? Est-ce que la question d'étendre l'aménagement linguistique au secteur privé est encore d'actualité au Nouveau-Brunswick? Les résultats d'une recherche de terrain dans deux lieux de travail de la ville de Moncton nous permettent de constater que l'anglais domine sur le français, même au sein des entreprises qui exigent de leurs employés une connaissance de l'anglais et du français. Les frustrations exprimées par les employés interviewés viennent confirmer qu'il existe bel et bien des problèmes linguistiques dans le secteur privé qui méritent une attention particulière de la part des dirigeants politiques

Les facteurs influençant le choix de fréquenter un collège privé ou public [rapport final]

Rapport final d'un projet de recherche financé par l'Association des collèges privés du Québec (ACPQ) dans le cadre du programme de recherche et d’expérimentation pédagogique (PREP) et appuyé par la Fédération des établissements d'enseignement privé (FEEP)

Étude comparative des facteurs influençant les élèves du secondaire privé à choisir un collège privé ou public pour la suite de leurs études

Rapport final d'un projet de recherche financé par l'Association des collèges privés du Québec (ACPQ) dans le cadre du programme de recherche et d’expérimentation pédagogique (PREP) et appuyé par la Fédération des établissements d'enseignement privé (FEEP).Comprend des références bibliographiques

Making a case for cardiorespiratory fitness surveillance among children and youth

We review the evidence that supports cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) as an important indicator of current and future health among school-aged children and youth, independent of physical activity levels. We discuss the merit of CRF measurement for population health surveillance and propose the development of CRF guidelines to help support regional, national, and international surveillance efforts

RTM3, Which Controls Long-Distance Movement of Potyviruses, Is a Member of a New Plant Gene Family Encoding a Meprin and TRAF Homology Domain-Containing Protein

Restriction of long-distance movement of several potyviruses in Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) is controlled by at least three dominant restricted TEV movement (RTM) genes, named RTM1, RTM2, and RTM3. RTM1 encodes a protein belonging to the jacalin family, and RTM2 encodes a protein that has similarities to small heat shock proteins. In this article, we describe the positional cloning of RTM3, which encodes a protein belonging to an undescribed protein family of 29 members that has a meprin and TRAF homology (MATH) domain in its amino-terminal region and a coiled-coil domain at its carboxy-terminal end. Involvement in the RTM resistance system is the first biological function experimentally identified for a member of this new gene family in plants. Our analyses showed that the coiled-coil domain is not only highly conserved between RTM3- homologous MATH-containing proteins but also in proteins lacking a MATH domain. The cluster organization of the RTM3 homologs in the Arabidopsis genome suggests the role of duplication events in shaping the evolutionary history of this gene family, including the possibility of deletion or duplication of one or the other domain. Protein-protein interaction experiments revealed RTM3 self-interaction as well as an RTM1-RTM3 interaction. However, no interaction has been detected involving RTM2 or the potyviral coat protein previously shown to be the determinant necessary to overcome the RTM resistance. Taken together, these observations strongly suggest the RTM proteins might form a multiprotein complex in the resistance mechanism to block the long-distance movement of potyviruses.Copyrighted by the American Society of Plant Biologists

MetaboHunter: an automatic approach for identification of metabolites from 1H-NMR spectra of complex mixtures

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>One-dimensional ¹H-NMR spectroscopy is widely used for high-throughput characterization of metabolites in complex biological mixtures. However, the accurate identification of individual compounds is still a challenging task, particularly in spectral regions with higher peak densities. The need for automatic tools to facilitate and further improve the accuracy of such tasks, while using increasingly larger reference spectral libraries becomes a priority of current metabolomics research.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We introduce a web server application, called MetaboHunter, which can be used for automatic assignment of ¹H-NMR spectra of metabolites. MetaboHunter provides methods for automatic metabolite identification based on spectra or peak lists with three different search methods and with possibility for peak drift in a user defined spectral range. The assignment is performed using as reference libraries manually curated data from two major publicly available databases of NMR metabolite standard measurements (HMDB and MMCD). Tests using a variety of synthetic and experimental spectra of single and multi metabolite mixtures show that MetaboHunter is able to identify, in average, more than 80% of detectable metabolites from spectra of synthetic mixtures and more than 50% from spectra corresponding to experimental mixtures. This work also suggests that better scoring functions improve by more than 30% the performance of MetaboHunter's metabolite identification methods.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>MetaboHunter is a freely accessible, easy to use and user friendly ¹H-NMR-based web server application that provides efficient data input and pre-processing, flexible parameter settings, fast and automatic metabolite fingerprinting and results visualization via intuitive plotting and compound peak hit maps. Compared to other published and freely accessible metabolomics tools, MetaboHunter implements three efficient methods to search for metabolites in manually curated data from two reference libraries.</p> <p>Availability</p> <p><url>http://www.nrcbioinformatics.ca/metabohunter/</url></p