The Ongoing WTO Negotiations on Agriculture: Issues and Options for Bangladesh

The negotiation on Agriculture is one of the vital components of WTO negotiation process which involved interests of the LDCs, including Bangladesh. The paper identified the interests of Bangladesh. The objective is to stimulate a discussion in turn assisting those responsible for decisions about Bangladesh’s evolving negotiating positions and strategy.WTO, Agriculture, Bangladesh

DISCUSSION: PROGRESS WITH HARMONIZATION/ CONVERGENCE/COMPATIBILITY: U.S. AND CANADIAN GRAIN MARKETING SYSTEMS

International Relations/Trade, Marketing,

AGRICULTURE, TRADE AND STRUCTURAL POLICY UNDER NAFTA AND WTO

International Relations/Trade,

A method for developing in-silico protein homologs

Computational methods for identifying and screening the most promising drug receptor candidates in the human genome are of great interest to drug discovery researchers. Successful methods will accurately identify and narrow the field of potential drug receptor candidates. This study details one such method. The method described here begins with the assumption that novel drug receptors have high sequence similarity to established drug receptors. The similarity search program FASTA3 aligns translated sequences of the human genome to known drug receptor sequences and ranks these alignments by measuring their statistical significance. Query results returned by FASTA3 are assembled into in-silico proteins or artificially generated homologs of known drug receptors. A second similarity search program, BLASTP, aligns in-silico proteins with a protein database, and also ranks alignments based on statistical significance. A potentially valuable in-silico protein identifies its generating drug receptor as the top-ranking result returned from the BLASTP search, and may represent a new family member of a particular group of drug receptors

Evaluation of Antiviral Agents in Two Mouse Models of RNA Virus Infections

The first model we are evaluating is human influenza virus in mice. Influenza virus is a negative sense RNA virus, which the CDC estimates causes between 9.2 million and 35.6 million illnesses each year in the United States.[1] In the current influenza season, H3N2 viruses have been the predominant subclade of influenza A virus in circulation.[2] Development of a mouse model for influenza H3N2 virus infection has been difficult. In these studies, we endeavored to mouse-adapt influenza A/Hong Kong/4801/2014 H3N2 virus by serial passaging in AG129 mice. This virus strain was chosen as it overlaps in serotype with the current influenza H3N2 virus in circulation.[2] Initial passaging was unsuccessful, with no detectable increase in virus titer. However, when we used Mannan, an innate immune suppressant, as an aid in adapting the virus to mice, we observed an increase in virus titers in the lung between passage 1 to passage 3. The second model we are evaluating is mouse Norovirus as a model for Human Norovirus infections. Human Norovirus is a positive sense RNA virus responsible for approximately 685 million cases every year across the world.[3] Therefore identification of antiviral agents for treatment of human norovirus is a priority. We screened potential antiviral compounds in vitro utilizing a mouse macrophage cell line. rupintrivir, favipiravir, carbodine, and anicomycin were all observed to have antiviral effects in vitro. In vivo screening of carbodine will be completed in the mouse model as there is no human norovirus model in vivo

An Epistemic Epidemic: The Role of Risk in the Crisis of Scientific Authority

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College

CHALLENGES IN QUANTITATIVE ECONOMIC ANALYSIS IN SUPPORT OF MULTILATERAL TRADE NEGOTIATIONS

International Relations/Trade,

Exosomes regulate neurogenesis and circuit assembly.

Exosomes are thought to be released by all cells in the body and to be involved in intercellular communication. We tested whether neural exosomes can regulate the development of neural circuits. We show that exosome treatment increases proliferation in developing neural cultures and in vivo in dentate gyrus of P4 mouse brain. We compared the protein cargo and signaling bioactivity of exosomes released by hiPSC-derived neural cultures lacking MECP2, a model of the neurodevelopmental disorder Rett syndrome, with exosomes released by isogenic rescue control neural cultures. Quantitative proteomic analysis indicates that control exosomes contain multiple functional signaling networks known to be important for neuronal circuit development. Treating MECP2-knockdown human primary neural cultures with control exosomes rescues deficits in neuronal proliferation, differentiation, synaptogenesis, and synchronized firing, whereas exosomes from MECP2-deficient hiPSC neural cultures lack this capability. These data indicate that exosomes carry signaling information required to regulate neural circuit development

Nine quick tips for efficient bioinformatics curriculum development and training.

Biomedical research is becoming increasingly data driven. New technologies that generate large-scale, complex data are continually emerging and evolving. As a result, there is a concurrent need for training researchers to use and understand new computational tools. Here we describe an efficient and effective approach to developing curriculum materials that can be deployed in a research environment to meet this need