Estimating the Effects of Small-Scale Broiler Poultry Farming on Increasing Rwandan Meat Protein Consumption

This research centers on the USAID TI program in Rwanda aimed at increasing Rwandan meat consumption. The first chapter of this thesis pertains to the survey utilized in the project, and mean differences over time. Mean difference comparisons in this chapter show statistically significant impacts made on meat consumption by age, average monthly income, gender, household education levels, number of school aged children living in a household, a household working in the agriculture sector, and chicken ownership. These factors are utilized in the second chapter to determine statistical differences over the project’s life thus far via Poisson regressions and difference-in-difference modeling. Poisson regressions are performed for the years 2017 and 2018 in this chapter and utilize the variables sex, chicken ownership, education level, household agricultural work, average monthly income, school aged children, and program participation. According to results, statistically significant levels of impact across both years are made by education level and average monthly income. These variables are used again in difference-in-difference modeling to determine statistical differences across the individual years and overall. Results from these analyses show a P-value of 0.025 and statistical significance at the 95% confidence level indicating that the TI Program has significantly impacted meat consumption levels throughout its life. Probit analysis of asset purchases and income indicates that the program has also had an impact on the purchasing power of Rwandans. Analysis of 155 TI Program participants indicated that increasing educational status is the prime statistically significant factor to increasing income, which in turn will increase purchases from several product groups. Hopefully, continued efforts of the program and annual evaluations will continue to provide additional evidence of the success of this program in improving access to meat for Rwandans

Lessons From the Assessment for Learning Project: Strategies for Building an Authentic Learning Community

This article explores findings from an evaluation of the Assessment for Learning Project, a grantee engagement strategy led by the Center for Innovation in Education focused on creating a learning community founded in continuous reflection and safety for risk-taking. The article shares the project’s model and approach, grounded in the core design elements of a field-facing learning agenda, grantmaking that leads with learning, and collective leadership. This article highlights the Assessment for Learning Project’s practices, such as a Request for Learning rather than traditional Request for Proposals; a requirement that grantees provide formative feedback to each other; and public demonstrations of learning in lieu of traditional reporting. And it explores how the project’s design helps flip the script on expertise by encouraging grantees to draw on one another for support and how it promotes a culture of experimentation that deepens learning relationships. Finally, this article points to the role of the project’s leadership team in modeling reflection and vulnerability, co-designing with grantees to bolster their leadership, and expanding its network by strategically connecting grantees to the broader field via a common learning agenda

Sir2 regulates stability of repetitive domains differentially in the human fungal pathogen Candida albicans

DNA repeats, found at the ribosomal DNA locus, telomeres and subtelomeric regions, are unstable sites of eukaryotic genomes. A fine balance between genetic variability and genomic stability tunes plasticity of these chromosomal regions. This tuning mechanism is particularly important for organisms such as microbial pathogens that utilise genome plasticity as a strategy for adaptation. For the first time, we analyse mechanisms promoting genome stability at the rDNA locus and subtelomeric regions in the most common human fungal pathogen: Candida albicans In this organism, the histone deacetylase Sir2, the master regulator of heterochromatin, has acquired novel functions in regulating genome stability. Contrary to any other systems analysed, C. albicans Sir2 is largely dispensable for repressing recombination at the rDNA locus. We demonstrate that recombination at subtelomeric regions is controlled by a novel DNA element, the TLO Recombination Element, TRE, and by Sir2. While the TRE element promotes high levels of recombination, Sir2 represses this recombination rate. Finally, we demonstrate that, in C. albicans, mechanisms regulating genome stability are plastic as different environmental stress conditions lead to general genome instability and mask the Sir2-mediated recombination control at subtelomeres. Our data highlight how mechanisms regulating genome stability are rewired in C. albican

Protein Delivery of an Artificial Transcription Factor Restores Widespread Ube3a Expression in an Angelman Syndrome Mouse Brain.

Angelman syndrome (AS) is a neurological genetic disorder caused by loss of expression of the maternal copy of UBE3A in the brain. Due to brain-specific genetic imprinting at this locus, the paternal UBE3A is silenced by a long antisense transcript. Inhibition of the antisense transcript could lead to unsilencing of paternal UBE3A, thus providing a therapeutic approach for AS. However, widespread delivery of gene regulators to the brain remains challenging. Here, we report an engineered zinc finger-based artificial transcription factor (ATF) that, when injected i.p. or s.c., crossed the blood-brain barrier and increased Ube3a expression in the brain of an adult mouse model of AS. The factor displayed widespread distribution throughout the brain. Immunohistochemistry of both the hippocampus and cerebellum revealed an increase in Ube3a upon treatment. An ATF containing an alternative DNA-binding domain did not activate Ube3a. We believe this to be the first report of an injectable engineered zinc finger protein that can cause widespread activation of an endogenous gene in the brain. These observations have important implications for the study and treatment of AS and other neurological disorders

Potential Role of Mic60/Mitofilin in Parkinson’s Disease

There are currently no treatments that hinder or halt the inexorable progression of Parkinson’s disease (PD). While the etiology of PD remains elusive, evidence suggests that early dysfunction of mitochondrial respiration and homeostasis play a major role in PD pathogenesis. The mitochondrial structural protein Mic60, also known as mitofilin, is critical for maintaining mitochondrial architecture and function. Loss of Mic60 is associated with detrimental effects on mitochondrial homeostasis. Growing evidence now implicates Mic60 in the pathogenesis of PD. In this review, we discuss the data supporting a role of Mic60 and mitochondrial dysfunction in PD. We will also consider the potential of Mic60 as a therapeutic target for treating neurological disorders

The La-related protein 1-specific domain repurposes HEAT-like repeats to directly bind a 5′TOP sequence

La-related protein 1 (LARP1) regulates the stability of many mRNAs. These include 5′TOPs, mTOR-kinase responsive mRNAs with pyrimidine-rich 5′ UTRs, which encode ribosomal proteins and translation factors. We determined that the highly conserved LARP1-specific C-terminal DM15 region of human LARP1 directly binds a 5′TOP sequence. The crystal structure of this DM15 region refined to 1.86 Å resolution has three structurally related and evolutionarily conserved helix-turn-helix modules within each monomer. These motifs resemble HEAT repeats, ubiquitous helical protein-binding structures, but their sequences are inconsistent with consensus sequences of known HEAT modules, suggesting this structure has been repurposed for RNA interactions. A putative mTORC1-recognition sequence sits within a flexible loop C-terminal to these repeats. We also present modelling of pyrimidine-rich single-stranded RNA onto the highly conserved surface of the DM15 region. These studies lay the foundation necessary for proceeding toward a structural mechanism by which LARP1 links mTOR signaling to ribosome biogenesis

A scalable database model of RFI data for the MeerKAT radio telescope

In radio astronomy, radio frequency interference (RFI) refers to anysignal captured by a radio telescope that did not originate fromthe observed target in the sky. As RFI corrupts observational data and may damage radio telescope equipment, astronomers seek to store data on RFI, with the aim of mitigating or preventing future interference events. This is a concern for the MeerKAT telescope, a precursor to the planned powerful Square Kilometre Array telescope. Currently, RFI data atMeerKAT is collected in many different file formats that do not fit into traditional database models created to store data in a fixed schema. Here, we design a scalable database model for RFI storage, that supports many databases and many data models. The database is deployed in a Dockerized environment. Preliminary testing of our design shows linear scaling of data ingestion as data sizes increases, as well as fast query processing

Performance evaluation of an integrated RFI database for the MeerKAT/SKA radio telescope

For radio telescopes, radio frequency interference from terrestrial and other sources is a recognized problem that contaminates the signal (RFI) and must be tracked and ultimately removed. At the MeerKAT/SKA telescope, RFI is recorded with a variety of devices, including telescopes, sensors, and scanners; but the combination of data from these multiple sources to yield a unified view of RFI remains a challenging problem. Previously, we demonstrated that a scalable database model with an implementation based on the Polystore framework is a potential solution for RFI monitoring. Here we extend this work, implementing the database model in an integrated environment and evaluating its performance across a range of workloads with three data stores: SciDB, PSQL, and Accumulo. We find that SciDB and Accumulo scale better than PSQL under multi-user environments. Results show a minimal latency as low as 0.02 seconds, irrespective of the location, and data store type. Further, integrated APIs provide single notation and are 5% faster than third-party APIs. Our findings thus provide a guide to the proposed integrated RFI system at MeerKAT/SKA radio telescope