From the Vaults: Objects Relating to the Canadian Experience in Hong Kong

This article focuses on the material culture of Canadians’ experiences during and after the Battle of Hong Kong. Stories of combat, captivity, and the return home are told through this selection of personal objects now preserved in the collections of the Canadian War Museum. These artifacts highlight the particular circumstances and harsh conditions faced by prisoners of war and civilian detainees, and serve as entry points into the wider history of the battle, its aftermath and its lasting consequences. Cet article porte sur la culture matérielle des expériences des Canadiens et Canadiennes pendant et après la bataille de Hong Kong. Des histoires de combat, de captivité et de retour au pays sont racontées à travers cette sélection d’objets personnels maintenant conservés dans les collections du Musée canadien de la guerre. Ces artefacts mettent en lumière les circonstances particulières et les conditions difficiles auxquelles sont confrontés les prisonniers de guerre et les détenus civils. Ils servent aussi de points d’entrée dans l’histoire plus large de la bataille, ses répercussions et ses conséquences à long terme

An overview of automatic identification (Auto-Id) in the supply chain

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) has been in existence for decades.Extensive research, new innovation and initiatives anchored by MIT’s Auto-ID Centre as well as key advancements in the information communication technology (ICT) infrastructure, has set the stage for a phased adoption and eventually mass scale embracement of this technology, communally termed as Automatic Identification (Auto-ID).This is further reinforced by the fact that businesses have obtained extensive and concrete evidence that this technology will produce a high return on investment in the short and long term.This paper commences with an introduction to Auto-ID and proceeds to highlight the key forces that are driving the embracement of this technology. It will then discuss the architecture of Auto-ID that enables it to serve as the underpinning infrastructure and mechanism for dynamic information generation.Next, the discussion is framed around the key applications and advantages of Auto-ID within and external to the supply chain.Finally, an explanation on how Auto-ID is bridging the transition to the fourth information revolution is put forward, where through the use of dynamic information, supply chain efficiency will be amplified and organizational agility will be enhanced significantly

Blip glitches in Advanced LIGO data

Blip glitches are short noise transients present in data from ground-based gravitational-wave observatories. These glitches resemble the gravitational-wave signature of massive binary black hole mergers. Hence, the sensitivity of transient gravitational-wave searches to such high-mass systems and other potential short duration sources is degraded by the presence of blip glitches. The origin and rate of occurrence of this type of glitch have been largely unknown. In this paper we explore the population of blip glitches in Advanced LIGO during its first and second observing runs. On average, we find that Advanced LIGO data contains approximately two blip glitches per hour of data. We identify four subsets of blip glitches correlated with detector auxiliary or environmental sensor channels, however the physical causes of the majority of blips remain unclear

A Caenorhabditis elegans model of autosomal dominant adult-onset neuronal ceroid lipofuscinosis identifies ethosuximide as a potential therapeutic.

Autosomal dominant adult-onset neuronal ceroid lipofuscinosis (ANCL) is a rare neurodegenerative disorder characterised by progressive dementia and premature death. Four ANCL-causing mutations have been identified, all mapping to the DNAJC5 gene that encodes cysteine string protein α (CSPα). Here, using Caenorhabditis elegans, we describe an animal model of ANCL in which disease-causing mutations are introduced into their endogenous chromosomal locus, thereby mirroring the human genetic disorder. This was achieved through CRISPR/Cas9 mediated gene editing of dnj-14, the C. elegans ortholog of DNAJC5. The resultant homozygous ANCL mutant worms exhibited reduced lifespans and severely impaired chemotaxis, similar to isogenic dnj-14 null mutants. Importantly, these phenotypes were also seen in balanced heterozygotes carrying one wild-type and one ANCL mutant dnj-14 allele, mimicking the heterozygosity of ANCL patients. We observed a more severe chemotaxis phenotype in heterozygous ANCL mutant worms compared to haploinsufficient worms lacking one copy of CSP, consistent with a dominant-negative mechanism of action. Additionally, we provide evidence of CSP haploinsufficiency in longevity, as heterozygous null mutants exhibited significantly shorter lifespan than wild-type controls. The chemotaxis phenotype of dnj-14 null mutants was fully rescued by transgenic human CSPα, confirming the translational relevance of the worm model. Finally, a focused compound screen revealed that the anti-epileptic drug ethosuximide could restore chemotaxis in dnj-14 ANCL mutants to wild-type levels. This suggests that ethosuximide may have therapeutic potential for ANCL and demonstrates the utility of this C. elegans model for future larger-scale drug screening

Prospectus, November 22, 1989

https://spark.parkland.edu/prospectus_1989/1029/thumbnail.jp

Pressure sensor drifts in Argo and their impacts

In recent years, autonomous profiling floats have become the prime component of the in situ ocean observing system through the implementation of the Argo program. These data are now the dominant input to estimates of the evolution of the global ocean heat content and associated thermosteric sea level rise. The Autonomous Profiling Explorer (APEX) is the dominant type of Argo float (~62%), and a large portion of these floats report pressure measurements that are uncorrected for sensor drift, the size and source of which are described herein. The remaining Argo float types are designed to automatically self-correct for any pressure drift. Only about 57% of the APEX float profiles (or ~38% Argo profiles) can be corrected, but this typically has not been done by the data centers that distribute the data (as of January 2009). A pressure correction method for APEX floats is described and applied to the Argo dataset. A comparison between estimates using the corrected Argo dataset and the publically available uncorrected dataset (as of January 2009) reveals that the pressure corrections remove significant regional errors from ocean temperature, salinity, and thermosteric sea level fields. In the global mean, 43% of uncorrectable APEX float profiles (or ~28% Argo profiles) appear to largely offset the effect of the correctable APEX float profiles with positive pressure drifts. While about half of the uncorrectable APEX profiles can, in principle, be recovered in the near future (after inclusion of technical information that allows for corrections), the other half have negative pressure drifts truncated to zero (resulting from firmware limitations), which do not allow for corrections. Therefore, any Argo pressure profile that cannot be corrected for biases should be excluded from global change research. This study underscores the ongoing need for careful analyses to detect and remove subtle but systematic errors in ocean observations

Proximity labelling reveals effects of disease-causing mutation on the DNAJC5/cysteine string protein α interactome.

Cysteine string protein α (CSPα), also known as DNAJC5, is a member of the DnaJ/Hsp40 family of co-chaperones. The name derives from a cysteine-rich domain, palmitoylation of which enables localization to intracellular membranes, notably neuronal synaptic vesicles. Mutations in the DNAJC5 gene that encodes CSPα cause autosomal dominant, adult-onset neuronal ceroid lipofuscinosis (ANCL), a rare neurodegenerative disease. As null mutations in CSP-encoding genes in flies, worms and mice similarly result in neurodegeneration, CSP is evidently an evolutionarily conserved neuroprotective protein. However, the client proteins that CSP chaperones to prevent neurodegeneration remain unclear. Traditional methods for identifying protein-protein interactions such as yeast 2-hybrid and affinity purification approaches are poorly suited to CSP, due to its requirement for membrane anchoring and its tendency to aggregate after cell lysis. Therefore, we employed proximity labelling, which enables identification of interacting proteins in situ in living cells via biotinylation. Neuroendocrine PC12 cell lines stably expressing wild type or L115R ANCL mutant CSP constructs fused to miniTurbo were generated; then the biotinylated proteomes were analysed by liquid chromatographymass spectrometry (LCMS) and validated by western blotting. This confirmed several known CSP-interacting proteins, such as Hsc70 and SNAP-25, but also revealed novel binding proteins, including STXBP1/Munc18-1. Interestingly, some protein interactions (such as Hsc70) were unaffected by the L115R mutation, whereas others (including SNAP-25 and STXBP1/Munc18-1) were inhibited. These results define the CSP interactome in a neuronal model cell line and reveal interactions that are affected by ANCL mutation and hence may contribute to the neurodegeneration seen in patients