Planning and development in fragmented city-regions : a case study of Saskatoon's Willows Residential Development (1992-2004)

This thesis examines a protracted planning process in the Saskatoon city-region. More specifically, it examines the planning process which occurred between 1992 and 2004 regarding a residential housing development on The Willows Golf Course. This thesis reveals that the protracted planning process was the result of several factors including: the fragmented character of governance; the planning and development policies and decision-making process in the Saskatoon city-region; the multiplicity of actors; and the political dynamics that arose in an intermunicipal conflict between the City of Saskatoon and the Rural Municipality of Corman Park. The thesis concludes that this case study provides some important lessons for both governments and planners in the Saskatoon city-region as well as other city-regions on opportunities and obstacles for improving planning processes. The first major lesson is that problems emerge when an innovative proposal lands in the context of an antiquated policy framework that cannot adequately deal with it. The second major lesson is that the current regional planning mechanisms are not conducive to comprehensive long-term planning for the city-region. The third lesson is that in some cases the opposition is to changes to the traditional decision-making processes as much as it is to the proposed project. The fourth major lesson is that timely and effective communication is very important for determining character of the political dynamics surrounding a development proposal. Miscommunication can create problematic political dynamics. The fifth major lesson is that economic considerations are inextricably tied to the politics of planning and development.This study concludes with two major recommendations. The first recommendation is that in order to overcome the negative outcomes of fragmented governance systems, formal structures and protocols must be improved to ensure that municipalities continue to communicate effectively with one another in difficult circumstances created by increasing development pressure, especially when they are likely to disagree on a particular development proposal. The second recommendation is that given that there is no guarantee that neighbouring municipal governments can always reach agreement between them, legitimate and efficient dispute settlement mechanisms are required both at the regional level and at the provincial level

The Engagement of Philanthropic Foundations in Canadian Public Policy

This dissertation elucidates the policy roles of foundations in Canadian public policy by comparing three case studies at the federal and inter-provincial levels, and across three policy domains, i.e., in fiscal, post-secondary education, and health-research policy. The research method is a comparative, qualitative review of these recent cases informed by semi-structured interviews of over 40 people conducted over 36 months, and document analysis. The three case studies are explored in this research span a period of approximately 30 years, from 1987-2016. The first case considered concerns a tax incentive for donations of capital to charities that was piloted by the federal Liberal government in 1997. Private philanthropic foundations were excluded as qualified recipients for this tax exemption until 2007. Consideration for further extension to the capital gains tax exemption were still underway in 2016 based on the ideas of the original policy entrepreneurs noted in this case. Second, between 1987 and 1998, Crown foundations for provincial universities, including the University of Saskatchewan (U of S), were established across nine provinces in order to take advantage of unique tax structures for this organizational type. Third, in 2006 a partnership between the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (the Gates Foundation) in support of the Canadian HIV Vaccine Initiative (CHVI) was formalized in a memorandum of understanding and publicized at the 16th International AIDS Conference in Toronto. The partnership concluded in 2016, but did not necessarily meet the ambitious objectives that were originally set out. Each of these cases establishes that foundation and third sector policy entrepreneurs use collaborative strategies to increase their policy influence. These research findings indicate that foundations are also increasingly active in Canadian public policy. Across each case, foundations’ roles varied at different stages of the policy cycles. Foundations’ access to government processes was consistently higher at the problem-definition and agenda-setting stages of the cycle. Also in each case, foundations’ impacts on Canadian public policy waned at the policy implementation and evaluation stages. In the Canadian context, foundations’ varying degrees of influence across stages of policy cycles can be attributed to the particular character of the Canadian public and third sectors. Canada’s parliamentary system, the closed fiscal policy regime, and the fragmented nature of oversight and regulation of charities constrain outsider access at the latter stages of policy cycles, thus impeding successful implementation of foundations’ policy agendas. That said, as a result of their entrepreneurialism, foundations’ engagement in Canadian public policy is increasing. The theoretical starting point for this dissertation is John W. Kingdon’s (1995) concept of policy entrepreneurship, although his original conceptualization is expanded to cover the entire policy cycle, rather than just agenda setting. The policy-cycles framework is used to organize the case study materials into straightforward chronological narratives. The main concepts of policy entrepreneurship and the policy-cycles framework are also supplemented with institutionalism. Institutionalism helps to account for the potential differences reported in the existing literature on United States (US) and Canadian think tanks and foundations.

Structure and evolution of the mitochondrial DNA complete control region in the Lizard Lacerta dugesii (Lacertidae, Sauria)

We sequenced the complete control region (CR) and adjacent tRNAs, partial 12S rRNA, and cytochrome b (over 3100 bp) from eight individuals of Madeiran wall lizards, Lacerta dugesii, from four distinct island populations. The tRNAs exhibit a high degree of intraspecific polymorphisms compared to other vertebrates. All CR sequences include a minisatellite that varies in length between populations but is apparently fixed within them. Variation in minisatellite length appears between populations separated by apparently very short evolutionary time spans. Many motifs identified in the CR of other vertebrates are not highly conserved, although conserved blocks are identifiable between the few published reptile CR sequences. Overall there are extensive differences in the internal organization of the reptile CR compared to the more widely studied mammals and birds. Variability in the CR is lower than in cytochrome b, but higher than in 12S rRNA. Phylogenetic analysis of these sequences produces a well-resolved estimate of relationships between populations.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Zygomycetes, Microsporidia, and the Evolutionary Ancestry of Sex Determination

Zygomycetes and their alleged sister taxon, the microsporidia, exclusively share the presence of a cluster of three genes encoding a sugar transporter, a high mobility group (HMG)-type transcription factor, and an RNA helicase. In zygomycetes, the HMG-type transcription factor acts as the sole sex determinant. This intimately ties the evolutionary history of this gene cluster to the evolution of sex determination. Here, we have unraveled the relationships of the two gene clusters by vicariously analyzing the sugar transporters and the RNA helicases. We show that if the two gene clusters share a common ancestry, it dates back to the early days of eukaryotic evolution. As a consequence, the zygomycete MAT locus would be old enough to represent the archetype of fungal and animal sex determination. However, the evolutionary scenario that has to be invoked is complex. An independent assembly of the two clusters deserves therefore consideration. In either case, shared ancestry or convergent evolution, the presence of the gene cluster in microsporidia and in zygomycetes represents at best a plesiomorphy. Hence, it is not phylogenetically informative. A further genome-wide reanalysis of gene order conservation reveals that gene order is not significantly more similar between microsporidia and zygomycetes than between microsporidia and any other fungal taxon or even humans. Consequently, the phylogenetic placement of microsporidia as sister to the zygomycetes needs to be reconsidered

A broad distribution of the alternative oxidase in microsporidian parasites

Microsporidia are a group of obligate intracellular parasitic eukaryotes that were considered to be amitochondriate until the recent discovery of highly reduced mitochondrial organelles called mitosomes. Analysis of the complete genome of Encephalitozoon cuniculi revealed a highly reduced set of proteins in the organelle, mostly related to the assembly of ironsulphur clusters. Oxidative phosphorylation and the Krebs cycle proteins were absent, in keeping with the notion that the microsporidia and their mitosomes are anaerobic, as is the case for other mitosome bearing eukaryotes, such as Giardia. Here we provide evidence opening the possibility that mitosomes in a number of microsporidian lineages are not completely anaerobic. Specifically, we have identified and characterized a gene encoding the alternative oxidase (AOX), a typically mitochondrial terminal oxidase in eukaryotes, in the genomes of several distantly related microsporidian species, even though this gene is absent from the complete genome of E. cuniculi. In order to confirm that these genes encode functional proteins, AOX genes from both A. locustae and T. hominis were over-expressed in E. coli and AOX activity measured spectrophotometrically using ubiquinol-1 (UQ-1) as substrate. Both A. locustae and T. hominis AOX proteins reduced UQ-1 in a cyanide and antimycin-resistant manner that was sensitive to ascofuranone, a potent inhibitor of the trypanosomal AOX. The physiological role of AOX microsporidia may be to reoxidise reducing equivalents produced by glycolysis, in a manner comparable to that observed in trypanosome

Patterns of Genome Evolution among the Microsporidian Parasites Encephalitozoon cuniculi, Antonospora locustae and Enterocytozoon bieneusi

Microsporidia are intracellular parasites that are highly-derived relatives of fungi. They have compacted genomes and, despite a high rate of sequence evolution, distantly related species can share high levels of gene order conservation. To date, only two species have been analysed in detail, and data from one of these largely consists of short genomic fragments. It is therefore difficult to determine how conservation has been maintained through microsporidian evolution, and impossible to identify whether certain regions are more prone to genomic stasis.Here, we analyse three large fragments of the Enterocytozoon bieneusi genome (in total 429 kbp), a species of medical significance. A total of 296 ORFs were identified, annotated and their context compared with Encephalitozoon cuniculi and Antonospora locustae. Overall, a high degree of conservation was found between all three species, and interestingly the level of conservation was similar in all three pairwise comparisons, despite the fact that A. locustae is more distantly related to E. cuniculi and E. bieneusi than either are to each other.Any two genes that are found together in any pair of genomes are more likely to be conserved in the third genome as well, suggesting that a core of genes tends to be conserved across the entire group. The mechanisms of rearrangments identified among microsporidian genomes were consistent with a very slow evolution of their architecture, as opposed to the very rapid sequence evolution reported for these parasites

Phylogenetic and Preliminary Phenotypic Analysis of Yeast PAQR Receptors: Potential Antifungal Targets

Proteins belonging to the Progestin and AdipoQ Receptor (PAQR) superfamily of membrane bound receptors are ubiquitously found in fungi. Nearly, all fungi possess two evolutionarily distinct paralogs of PAQR protein, which we have called the PQRA and PQRB subtypes. In the model fungus Saccharomyces cerevisiae, these subtypes are represented by the Izh2p and Izh3p proteins, respectively. S. cerevisiae also possesses two additional PQRA-type receptors called Izh1p and Izh4p that are restricted to other species within the “Saccharomyces complex”. Izh2p has been the subject of several recent investigations and is of particular interest because it regulates fungal growth in response to proteins produced by plants and, as such, represents a new paradigm for interspecies communication. We demonstrate that IZH2 and IZH3 gene dosage affects resistance to polyene antifungal drugs. Moreover, we provide additional evidence that Izh2p and Izh3p negatively regulate fungal filamentation. These data suggest that agonists of these receptors might make antifungal therapeutics, either by inhibiting fungal development or by sensitizing fungi to the toxic effects of current antifungal therapies. This is particularly relevant for pathogenic fungi such as Candida glabrata that are closely related to S. cerevisiae and contain the same complement of PAQR receptors

Genomic survey of the non-cultivatable opportunistic human pathogen, Enterocytozoon bieneusi

© 2009 The Authors. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in PLoS Pathogens 5 (2009): e1000261, doi:10.1371/journal.ppat.1000261.Enterocytozoon bieneusi is the most common microsporidian associated with human disease, particularly in the immunocompromised population. In the setting of HIV infection, it is associated with diarrhea and wasting syndrome. Like all microsporidia, E. bieneusi is an obligate, intracellular parasite, but unlike others, it is in direct contact with the host cell cytoplasm. Studies of E. bieneusi have been greatly limited due to the absence of genomic data and lack of a robust cultivation system. Here, we present the first large-scale genomic dataset for E. bieneusi. Approximately 3.86 Mb of unique sequence was generated by paired end Sanger sequencing, representing about 64% of the estimated 6 Mb genome. A total of 3,804 genes were identified in E. bieneusi, of which 1,702 encode proteins with assigned functions. Of these, 653 are homologs of Encephalitozoon cuniculi proteins. Only one E. bieneusi protein with assigned function had no E. cuniculi homolog. The shared proteins were, in general, evenly distributed among the functional categories, with the exception of a dearth of genes encoding proteins associated with pathways for fatty acid and core carbon metabolism. Short intergenic regions, high gene density, and shortened protein-coding sequences were observed in the E. bieneusi genome, all traits consistent with genomic compaction. Our findings suggest that E. bieneusi is a likely model for extreme genome reduction and host dependence.This research was supported by National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants R21 AI064118 (DEA) and R21 AI52792 (ST). HGM was supported in part by NIH contracts HHSN266200400041C and HHSN2662004037C (Bioinformatics Resource Centers) and by the G. Unger Vetlesen Foundation