Reviews

Managing Change in Higher Education: A Learning Environment Architecture by Peter Ford and eight other authors, Buckingham: Society for Research into Higher Education and the Open University Press, 1996. ISBN 0–335–19791–4. 161 pages, paperback. No price indicated

The Annotated Accessible Canada Act - Excerpt

An accessible MS Word version of this document is available for download at the bottom of this screen under Additional files . The Act to ensure a barrier-free Canada, S.C. 2019, c. 10, which is commonly known as the Accessible Canada Act (ACA) came into force on July 11, 2019. It is Canada’s first piece of federal legislation focusing on accessibility for persons with disabilities. As a piece of federal legislation, the ACA regulates accessibility for those sectors of the economy that fall under federal jurisdiction pursuant to s. 91 of the Constitution Act, 1867. This includes federal works and undertakings, businesses and organizations such as banks, airlines, railways, marine and other interprovincial transportation carriers, the Canadian Forces, parliamentary entities such as the Senate and the House of Commons, and most Crown corporations such as Canada Post. The underlying philosophy of the Act is to remove existing disabling barriers and to prevent the creation of new barriers for people with disabilities within the federal sphere. The Act provides a structure for the creation of accessibility standards through regulations. These standards would then apply to the regulated entities that are subject to the Act. The ACA also sets up an elaborate and innovative system of compliance and enforcement which requires regulated entities to create accessibility plans, provide feedback processes to hear about barriers encountered by their users, and to implement steps to address and remove these barriers. Compliance and enforcement of the ACA are led by the Accessibility Commissioner, which is a unique office that does not exist in any of the provinces that have created accessibility legislation to date. The ACA aims to achieve a “Canada without barriers” by January 1, 2040. However, the Act itself has a number of exemptions which lead to a patchwork approach to its application across federally regulated entities. These exemptions appear most explicitly with respect to transportation, telecommunications and broadcasting. For example, as regards transportation, the Canadian Transportation Agency, on approval of the Governor in Council (Cabinet), may make regulations regarding accessibility plans and the process of feedback by users regarding disabling barriers (s. 63). The standards would therefore be made by the Canadian Transportation Agency instead of through the process designed in the ACA for the development of standards by the Canadian Accessibility Standards Development Organization (CASDO), and the establishment of those standards into regulations by Cabinet. The Accessible Canada Act has twelve parts. In this book, we cover the most significant parts of the Act from the perspective of members of the public who may use it: people with disabilities, advocates and lawyers, as well as disability rights researchers and scholars– that is, this resource discusses the ACA from the beginning of the statute up to and including Part 9. A brief summary of each Part of the entire ACA may be found on the Department of Justice website. In 2017, Statistics Canada reported that 22% of the population of Canada aged 15 years or older identify as people with disabilities. With a population in Canada of approximately 38 million, those with disabilities comprise over 7 million people. We hope that this resource will help interested individuals, especially people with disabilities in Canada, to unravel, interpret and examine the implications of the Accessible Canada Act, and to know their rights within it

Thermodynamic framework to assess low abundance DNA mutation detection by hybridization

The knowledge of genomic DNA variations in patient samples has a high and increasing value for human diagnostics in its broadest sense. Although many methods and sensors to detect or quantify these variations are available or under development, the number of underlying physico-chemical detection principles is limited. One of these principles is the hybridization of sample target DNA versus nucleic acid probes. We introduce a novel thermodynamics approach and develop a framework to exploit the specific detection capabilities of nucleic acid hybridization, using generic principles applicable to any platform. As a case study, we detect point mutations in the KRAS oncogene on a microarray platform. For the given platform and hybridization conditions, we demonstrate the multiplex detection capability of hybridization and assess the detection limit using thermodynamic considerations; DNA containing point mutations in a background of wild type sequences can be identified down to at least 1% relative concentration. In order to show the clinical relevance, the detection capabilities are confirmed on challenging formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded clinical tumor samples. This enzyme-free detection framework contains the accuracy and efficiency to screen for hundreds of mutations in a single run with many potential applications in molecular diagnostics and the field of personalised medicine

The Annotated Accessible Canada Act - Complete Text

An accessible MS Word version of this document as well as related tables are available for download at the bottom of this screen under Additional files . The Act to ensure a barrier-free Canada, S.C. 2019, c. 10, which is commonly known as the Accessible Canada Act (ACA) came into force on July 11, 2019. It is Canada’s first piece of federal legislation focusing on accessibility for persons with disabilities. As a piece of federal legislation, the ACA regulates accessibility for those sectors of the economy that fall under federal jurisdiction pursuant to s. 91 of the Constitution Act, 1867. This includes federal works and undertakings, businesses and organizations such as banks, airlines, railways, marine and other interprovincial transportation carriers, the Canadian Forces, parliamentary entities such as the Senate and the House of Commons, and most Crown corporations such as Canada Post. The underlying philosophy of the Act is to remove existing disabling barriers and to prevent the creation of new barriers for people with disabilities within the federal sphere. The Act provides a structure for the creation of accessibility standards through regulations. These standards would then apply to the regulated entities that are subject to the Act. The ACA also sets up an elaborate and innovative system of compliance and enforcement which requires regulated entities to create accessibility plans, provide feedback processes to hear about barriers encountered by their users, and to implement steps to address and remove these barriers. Compliance and enforcement of the ACA are led by the Accessibility Commissioner, which is a unique office that does not exist in any of the provinces that have created accessibility legislation to date. The ACA aims to achieve a “Canada without barriers” by January 1, 2040. However, the Act itself has a number of exemptions which lead to a patchwork approach to its application across federally regulated entities. These exemptions appear most explicitly with respect to transportation, telecommunications and broadcasting. For example, as regards transportation, the Canadian Transportation Agency, on approval of the Governor in Council (Cabinet), may make regulations regarding accessibility plans and the process of feedback by users regarding disabling barriers (s. 63). The standards would therefore be made by the Canadian Transportation Agency instead of through the process designed in the ACA for the development of standards by the Canadian Accessibility Standards Development Organization (CASDO), and the establishment of those standards into regulations by Cabinet. The Accessible Canada Act has twelve parts. In this book, we cover the most significant parts of the Act from the perspective of members of the public who may use it: people with disabilities, advocates and lawyers, as well as disability rights researchers and scholars– that is, this resource discusses the ACA from the beginning of the statute up to and including Part 9. A brief summary of each Part of the entire ACA may be found on the Department of Justice website. In 2017, Statistics Canada reported that 22% of the population of Canada aged 15 years or older identify as people with disabilities. With a population in Canada of approximately 38 million, those with disabilities comprise over 7 million people. We hope that this resource will help interested individuals, especially people with disabilities in Canada, to unravel, interpret and examine the implications of the Accessible Canada Act, and to know their rights within it

In vitro bioconversion of polyphenols from black tea and red wine/grape juice by human intestinal microbiota displays strong interindividual variability

Dietary polyphenols in tea and wine have been associated with beneficial health effects. After ingestion, most polyphenols are metabolized by the colonic microbiota. The current study aimed at exploring the interindividual variation of gut microbial polyphenol bioconversion from 10 healthy human subjects. In vitro fecal batch fermentations simulating conditions in the distal colon were performed using polyphenols from black tea and a mixture of red wine and grape juice. Microbial bioconversion was monitored by NMR- and GC-MS-based profiling of diverse metabolites and phenolics. The complex polyphenol mixtures were degraded to a limited number of key metabolites. Each subject displayed a specific metabolite profile differing in composition and time courses as well as levels of these metabolites. Moreover, clear differences depending on the polyphenol sources were observed. In conclusion, varying metabolite pathways among individuals result in different metabolome profiles and therefore related health effects are hypothesized to differ between subjects

Zika virus infection in the returning traveller: what every neurologist should know

Zika virus has been associated with a wide range of neurological complications. Neurologists in areas without current active transmission of the virus may be confronted with Zika-associated neurological disease, as a large number of returning travellers with Zika virus infection have been reported and the virus continues to spread to previously unaffected regions. This review provides an overview of Zika virus-associated neurological disease and aims to support neurologists who may encounter patients returning from endemic areas

A structured decision approach for integrating and analyzing community perspectives in re-use planning of vacant properties in Cleveland, Ohio

An integrated GIS-based, multi-attribute decision model deployed in a web-based platform is presented enabling an iterative, spatially explicit and collaborative analysis of relevant and available information for repurposing vacant land. The process incorporated traditional and novel aspects of decision science, beginning with an analysis of alternatives, building on this analysis with a workshop to elucidate opinions and concerns from key decision-makers relevant to the problem at hand, then expanded by extracting and compiling fundamental objectives from existing planning efforts and previously published long-term goals. The model was then constructed as an open-source, web-based software platform for use as a process for exploring, evaluating, comparing, and optimizing fundamental, strategic, and means objectives. The resulting beta model, MURL-CLE, is intended to allow all interested parties, from stakeholders to decision makers, to consider alternative options for reuse of vacant land in a neighborhood in Cleveland, OH and to do so in a deliberative, transparent, and defensible process. The beta model is intended to be a platform for growth as a decision science tool and to provide a reproducible mechanism for considering any complex decision that attempts to incorporate multiple competing objectives and to allow an iterative process, as opposed to a prescribed solution or ranking of alternatives, for community decision making