The Human Serum Metabolome

Continuing improvements in analytical technology along with an increased interest in performing comprehensive, quantitative metabolic profiling, is leading to increased interest pressures within the metabolomics community to develop centralized metabolite reference resources for certain clinically important biofluids, such as cerebrospinal fluid, urine and blood. As part of an ongoing effort to systematically characterize the human metabolome through the Human Metabolome Project, we have undertaken the task of characterizing the human serum metabolome. In doing so, we have combined targeted and non-targeted NMR, GC-MS and LC-MS methods with computer-aided literature mining to identify and quantify a comprehensive, if not absolutely complete, set of metabolites commonly detected and quantified (with today's technology) in the human serum metabolome. Our use of multiple metabolomics platforms and technologies allowed us to substantially enhance the level of metabolome coverage while critically assessing the relative strengths and weaknesses of these platforms or technologies. Tables containing the complete set of 4229 confirmed and highly probable human serum compounds, their concentrations, related literature references and links to their known disease associations are freely available at http://www.serummetabolome.ca

Exploring group identity on advisors' strategic behaviour in client-advisor relationship: a lab experiment

The financial industry for retail financial products such as insurance plans is filled with information asymmetries. Financial advisors are likely to know their financial products and its suitability better than their clients and this information asymmetry presents an opportunity for deception. Using a 2 x 2 experimental design, we investigated the effect of group identity and pledge-taking on honesty and cooperation in advice-giving. Participants completed the financial advisory task, which is an adapted sender-receiver game, advisors recommended investment portfolios and clients chose to reject or accept the recommendation, in groups. We found that pledge-taking significantly increased honesty in first advisors’ recommendation and pledge only worked better at promoting honesty and cooperation when the second advisors are in homogenous than heterogeneous groups. The findings from this experiment provided more insights on how an organisational factor, group identity, affects the behaviour of advisors in a financial advisory setting.Bachelor of Arts in Economic

Trust no one

Trust No One follows a desperate graduate seeking to get his money back from a job scam, only to be led on by a bank officer and be condemned by everyone as the offender.Bachelor of Communication Studie

Trajectories of cognitive decline after incident stroke -a COSMIC Collaboration Study

International audienc