Does Increased Globalization Improve Citizens\u27 Quality of Life?

Countries are more open than ever to the outside world, however research is still undecided about what effects it will have on the country’s culture and way of life. In a world where many policy makers are worried about the expansion of free trade and cheaper foreign labor, we are not certain how a country’s strivings to reach this goal of more “open” economy will or will not give their citizens a better quality of life. I will attempt to gain insight into that question using the United Nation’s millennium goals; my research uses econometric techniques to tease out possible connections between economic exports and imports over GDP, “openness,” and the maximum, minimum, and average millennium development goals within a country utilizing data from 1965 until 2015. My work aims to pinpoint the factors present in a country such as political stability or population growth that are connected to the progress seen on increasing citizen’s quality of life. I hope my research will make it possible for policymakers to understand how their work to reach these millennium development goals might be improved

Le jardin communautaire: son impact sur les interactions sociales et sur les liens sociaux entre les participants

Ce travail propose une recherche sur l’impact que peut avoir un jardin communautaire sur l’interaction des personnes y participant. Pour ce faire, une rencontre avec des participants du jardin communautaire de l’association Arbre à palabres a été faite. La question de recherche de ce mémoire est la suivante : « Comment des jardins communautaires peuvent-ils favoriser l’interaction sociale ainsi que des liens sociaux entre des individus dans un milieu urbain aujourd’hui ? » Une première partie proposera un cadre théorique soulevant différentes notions importantes en lien avec la question de recherche et nécessaire à la compréhension du projet. En premier lieu, l’interaction sociale sera définie. Puis, le lien social sera mis en avant en proposant une définition de ce dernier. Son évolution y sera présentée et ce, en passant d’un lien social, à des liens sociaux, en faisant allusions aux sociétés de type mécanique ainsi que celles de type organique. Les différentes appartenances aux groupes et la notion d’individualisation seront définies en continuant par une proposition de quatre types de liens sociaux existants, ainsi que leur possibles apports à une reconnaissance sociale. Par la suite, une définition du groupe et de sa dynamique sera proposée. Les différents types de jardins et leurs histoires seront également étudiés. Une brève explication de la communauté sera faite afin de comprendre en quoi elle se différencie d’un simple groupe. Enfin, une tentative d’explication quant au changement de paradigme de la société sera proposée afin de faire un lien avec l’actualité

Enterococcus faecalis Endocarditis Severity in Rabbits Is Reduced by IgG Fabs Interfering with Aggregation Substance

Background: Enterococcus faecalis is a significant cause of infective endocarditis, an infection of the heart endothelium leading to vegetation formation (microbes, fibrin, platelets, and host cells attached to underlying endothelial tissue). Our previous research determined that enterococcal aggregation substance (AS) is an important virulence factor in causation of endocarditis, although endocarditis may occur in the absence of AS production. Production of AS by E. faecalis causes the organism to form aggregates through AS binding to enterococcal binding substance. In this study, we assessed the ability of IgGs and IgG Fabs against AS to provide protection against AS + E. faecalis endocarditis. Methodology/Principal Findings: When challenged with AS + E. faecalis, 10 rabbits actively immunized against AS + E. faecalis developed more significant vegetations than 9 animals immunized against AS 2 E. faecalis, and 9/10 succumbed compared to 2/9 (p,0.005), suggesting enhanced aggregation by IgG contributes significantly to disease. IgG antibodies against AS also enhanced enterococcal aggregation as tested in vitro. In contrast, Fab fragments of IgG from rabbits immunized against purified AS, when passively administered to rabbits (6/group) immediately before challenge with AS + E. faecalis, reduced total vegetation (endocarditis lesion) microbial counts (7.9610 6 versus 2.0610 5, p = 0.02) and size (40 mg versus 10, p = 0.05). In vitro, the Fabs prevented enterococcal aggregation. Conclusions/Significance: The data confirm the role of AS in infective endocarditis formation and suggest that use of Fab

Variation of electric shielding on virtual Frisch-grid detectors

Because of the low mobility of holes, CdZnTe (CZT) detectors operate as electron-transport-only type devices whose particular geometrical parameters and contacts configurations are specially chosen to minimize the contribution of uncollected holes into the output signal amplitudes (induction effect). Several detector configurations have been proposed to address this problem. One of them employs a large geometrical aspect ratio, parallelepiped-shaped crystal with two planar contacts on the top and bottom surfaces (anode and cathode) and an additional shielding electrode placed on a crystal\u27s side to create the virtual Frisch-grid effect. We studied the effect of the shielding electrode length, as well as its location, on the responses of 6 x 6 x 15 mm(3) virtual Frisch-grid detectors. We found that the length of the shielding electrode placed next to the anode can be reduced to 5 mm with no adverse effects on the device performance. Meanwhile, this allows for charge loss correction by reading the cathode signal

Arl13b in Primary Cilia Regulates the Migration and Placement of Interneurons in the Developing Cerebral Cortex

Coordinated migration and placement of interneurons and projection neurons lead to functional connectivity in the cerebral cortex; defective neuronal migration and the resultant connectivity changes underlie the cognitive defects in a spectrum of neurological disorders. Here we show that primary cilia play a guiding role in the migration and placement of postmitotic interneurons in the developing cerebral cortex, and that this process requires the ciliary protein, Arl13b. Through live imaging of interneuronal cilia we show migrating interneurons display highly dynamic primary cilia and we correlate cilia dynamics with the interneuron’s migratory state. We demonstrate that the guidance cue receptors essential for interneuronal migration localize to interneuronal primary cilia, but their concentration and dynamics are altered in the absence of Arl13b. Expression of Arl13b variants known to cause Joubert syndrome induce defective interneuronal migration, suggesting that defects in cilia-dependent interneuron migration may underlie the neurological defects in Joubert syndrome patients

Identification of d -arabinan-degrading enzymes in mycobacteria

Bacterial cell growth and division require the coordinated action of enzymes that synthesize and degrade cell wall polymers. Here, we identify enzymes that cleave the D-arabinan core of arabinogalactan, an unusual component of the cell wall of Mycobacterium tuberculosis and other mycobacteria. We screened 14 human gut-derived Bacteroidetes for arabinogalactan-degrading activities and identified four families of glycoside hydrolases with activity against the D-arabinan or D-galactan components of arabinogalactan. Using one of these isolates with exo-D-galactofuranosidase activity, we generated enriched D-arabinan and used it to identify a strain of Dysgonomonas gadei as a D-arabinan degrader. This enabled the discovery of endo- and exo-acting enzymes that cleave D-arabinan, including members of the DUF2961 family (GH172) and a family of glycoside hydrolases (DUF4185/GH183) that display endo-D-arabinofuranase activity and are conserved in mycobacteria and other microbes. Mycobacterial genomes encode two conserved endo-D-arabinanases with different preferences for the D-arabinan-containing cell wall components arabinogalactan and lipoarabinomannan, suggesting they are important for cell wall modification and/or degradation. The discovery of these enzymes will support future studies into the structure and function of the mycobacterial cell wall

Phase transformation of superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles via thermal annealing: implications for hyperthermia applications

Magnetic hyperthermia has the potential to play an important role in cancer therapy and its efficacy relies on the nanomaterials selected. Superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles (SPIONs) are excellent candidates due to the ability of producing enough heat to kill tumor cells by thermal ablation. However, their heating properties depend strongly on crystalline structure and size, which may not be controlled and tuned during the synthetic process; therefore, a postprocessing is needed. We show how thermal annealing can be simultaneously coupled with ligand exchange to stabilize the SPIONs in polar solvents and to modify their crystal structure, which improves hyperthermia behavior. Using high-resolution transmission electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction, Mössbauer spectroscopy, vibrating sample magnetometry, and lock-in thermography, we systematically investigate the impact of size and ligand exchange procedure on crystallinity, their magnetism, and heating ability. We describe a valid and simple approach to optimize SPIONs for hyperthermia by carefully controlling the size, colloidal stability, and crystallinity

Broadly sampled multigene analyses yield a well-resolved eukaryotic tree of life

Author Posting. © The Authors, 2010. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Oxford University Press for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Systematic Biology 59 (2010): 518-533, doi:10.1093/sysbio/syq037.An accurate reconstruction of the eukaryotic tree of life is essential to identify the innovations underlying the diversity of microbial and macroscopic (e.g. plants and animals) eukaryotes. Previous work has divided eukaryotic diversity into a small number of high-level ‘supergroups’, many of which receive strong support in phylogenomic analyses. However, the abundance of data in phylogenomic analyses can lead to highly supported but incorrect relationships due to systematic phylogenetic error. Further, the paucity of major eukaryotic lineages (19 or fewer) included in these genomic studies may exaggerate systematic error and reduces power to evaluate hypotheses. Here, we use a taxon-rich strategy to assess eukaryotic relationships. We show that analyses emphasizing broad taxonomic sampling (up to 451 taxa representing 72 major lineages) combined with a moderate number of genes yield a well-resolved eukaryotic tree of life. The consistency across analyses with varying numbers of taxa (88-451) and levels of missing data (17-69%) supports the accuracy of the resulting topologies. The resulting stable topology emerges without the removal of rapidly evolving genes or taxa, a practice common to phylogenomic analyses. Several major groups are stable and strongly supported in these analyses (e.g. SAR, Rhizaria, Excavata), while the proposed supergroup ‘Chromalveolata’ is rejected. Further, extensive instability among photosynthetic lineages suggests the presence of systematic biases including endosymbiotic gene transfer from symbiont (nucleus or plastid) to host. Our analyses demonstrate that stable topologies of ancient evolutionary relationships can be achieved with broad taxonomic sampling and a moderate number of genes. Finally, taxonrich analyses such as presented here provide a method for testing the accuracy of relationships that receive high bootstrap support in phylogenomic analyses and enable placement of the multitude of lineages that lack genome scale data