Conducting an Effective Housing Survey to Inform Planning in the Royal Borough of Kingston

This project\u27s purpose was to conduct a survey of new housing developments in Kingston. The project group conducted a hybrid survey with post, web, and face-to-face components. The survey informed a variety of planning policies by gathering data on child yield, school enrollment, migration, car ownership, community facilities, and housing satisfaction. The group produced a catalogue of tables, graphs, and maps of the above data, a Microsoft Access project and manual, and a set of recommendations for conducting future surveys

H.E.A.T. - Home Energy Automation Technology

The purpose of this project is to explore residential household climate control systems and develop a viable product concept that integrates any and all heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) sources into an automated electronic control system. This project will incorporate a microcontroller-based modular system that provides multiple communication mediums to adapt to most household configurations. This system will utilize a web-based control server that implements efficient climate control algorithms, resulting in improved heating and cooling efficiency for residential and small-business consumers

Inelastic Response and Impact of Internal Cooling on Thermal Barrier Coatings via Synchrotron Study

The purpose of our experiment was to develop novel methods to obtain in situ internal strain data of thermal barrier coatings samples using synchrotron X-ray diffraction and to determine the behavior of the strains under realistic turbine simulation thermal gradient and mechanical loads

Cancer-Associated SF3B1 Hotspot Mutations Induce Cryptic 3′ Splice Site Selection through Use of a Different Branch Point

Recurrent mutations in the spliceosome are observed in several human cancers, but their functional and therapeutic significance remains elusive. SF3B1, the most frequently mutated component of the spliceosome in cancer, is involved in the recognition of the branch point sequence (BPS) during selection of the 3′ splice site (ss) in RNA splicing. Here, we report that common and tumor-specific splicing aberrations are induced by SF3B1 mutations and establish aberrant 3′ ss selection as the most frequent splicing defect. Strikingly, mutant SF3B1 utilizes a BPS that differs from that used by wild-type SF3B1 and requires the canonical 3′ ss to enable aberrant splicing during the second step. Approximately 50% of the aberrantly spliced mRNAs are subjected to nonsense-mediated decay resulting in downregulation of gene and protein expression. These findings ascribe functional significance to the consequences of SF3B1 mutations in cancer