A new randomization assay reveals Unexpected elements of sequence bias in model 'randomized' gene libraries:Implications for biopanning

Although techniques such as biopanning rely heavily upon the screening of randomized gene libraries, there is surprisingly little information available on the construction of those libraries. In general, it is based on the cloning of 'randomized' synthetic oligonucleotides, in which given position(s) contain an equal mixture of all four bases. Yet, many supposedly 'randomized' libraries contain significant elements of bias and/or omission. Here, we report the development and validation of a new, PCR-based assay that enables rapid examination of library composition both prior to and after cloning. By using our assay to analyse model libraries, we demonstrate that the cloning of a given distribution of sequences does not necessarily result in a similarly composed library of clones. Thus, while bias in randomized synthetic oligonucleotide mixtures can be virtually eliminated by using unequal ratios of the four phosphoramidites, the use of such mixtures does not ensure retrieval of a truly randomized library. We propose that in the absence of a technique to control cloning frequencies, the ability to analyse the composition of libraries after cloning will enhance significantly the quality of information derived from those libraries. (C) 2000 Published by Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

Public libraries, citizens and the post democracy

This essay explores the relationship between the development of public libraries in the context of an increasingly market-dominated economy and marketised society. It argues that although neo-liberalism as a policy goal and practice has taken different forms over time, there are common themes in terms of its emphasis on market values, privatisation, and the support of measures that reduce the role of public funding and the state in the provision of public services. This has led some commentators to express concerns that the meaning and practice of citizenship and democracy is being transformed, managed or otherwise diminished. These concerns are compounded by changes effected by new digital technology. Imbricated with this issue are debates surrounding the future of the public library, and attempts by librarians and others to reinvent and reimagine its purpose. With reference to some innovative initiatives in the USA and Scandinavia, it is suggested that public libraries, through their service and spatial rearticulation, can conceivably help strengthen and revitalise public democracy and the public sphere.

Public libraries and the right to the [smart] city

The future of public libraries has been threatened by funding cuts and new digital technologies which have led many people to question their traditional role and purpose. However, freedom of information, ready access to knowledge and information literacy in all its digital and analog guises are more important than ever. Thus, public libraries remain significant spaces and places where people can socially interact and learn. In many countries public libraries are reinventing themselves and part of this process has been the redesign of library services and the design and construction of new library building and facilities that articulate the values, purpose and role of what has been termed 'the next library'. Following discussion of new library developments in London, Birmingham and Worcester in the UK, Aarhus in Denmark and Helsinki in Finland, the article concludes that public libraries are now both social and media spaces as well as being important physical places that can help city dwellers decide what type of urban world they want to see.

[Review of] Ivo Mijnssen, The Quest for an Ideal Youth in Putin’s Russia I. Back to Our Future! History, Modernity and Patriotism According to Nashi, 2005–2012. Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society, Stuttgart: Ibidem Verlag, 2012, 202pp., e 34.90 p/b

THE YOUTH MOVEMENT NASHI (OURS) WAS FOUNDED IN THE SPRING of 2005 against the backdrop of Ukraine’s ‘Orange Revolution’. Its aim was to stabilise Russia’s political system and take back the streets from opposition demonstrators. Personally loyal to Putin and taking its ideological orientation from Surkov’s concept of ‘sovereign democracy’, Nashi has sought to turn the tide on ‘defeatism’ and develop Russian youth into a patriotic new elite that ‘believes in the future of Russia’ (p. 15). Combining a wealth of empirical detail and the application of insights from discourse theory, Ivo Mijnssen analyses the organisation’s development between 2005 and 2012. His analysis focuses on three key moments—the organisation’s foundation, the apogee of its mobilisation around the Bronze Soldier dispute with Estonia, and the 2010 Seliger youth camp—to help understand Nashi’s organisation, purpose and ideational outlook as well as the limitations and challenges it faces. As such,the book is insightful both for those with an interest in post-Soviet Russian youth culture, and for scholars seeking a rounded understanding of the Kremlin’s initiatives to return a sense of identity and purpose to Russian national life.The first chapter, ‘Background and Context’, outlines the conceptual toolkit provided by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe to help make sense of developments on the terrain of identity politics. In their terms, since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia has experienced acute dislocation of its identity. With the tangible loss of great power status, Russian realities have become unfixed from a discourse enabling national life to be constructed, albeit inherently contingently, as meaningful. The lack of a Gramscian hegemonic discourse to provide a unifying national idea was securitised as an existential threat demanding special measures. Accordingly, the identification of those who are ‘notUs’ has been a recurrent theme of Nashi’s discourse and activity. With the victory in World War II held up as a foundational moment, a constitutive other is found in the notion of ‘unusual fascists’. This notion includes not just neo-Nazis, but reflects a chain of equivalence that expands to include a range of perceived enemies of Putin’s consolidation project such as oligarchs and pro-Western liberals.The empirical background is provided by the second chapter, ‘Russia’s Youth, the Orange Revolution, and Nashi’, which traces the emergence of Nashi amid the climate of political instability of 2004 and 2005. A particularly note-worthy aspect of Mijnssen’s work is the inclusion of citations from his interviews with Nashicommissars; the youth movement’s cadres. Although relatively few in number, such insider conversations provide insight into the ethos of Nashi’s organisation and the outlook of those who have pledged their involvement. Besides the discussion of Nashi’s manifesto, the reader thus gains insight into the motivations of some participants and behind-the-scenes details of Nashi’s activities in response to the perceived threat of anti-government protests. The third chapter, ‘Nashi’s Bronze Soldier’, charts Nashi’s role in elevating the removal of a World War II monument from downtown Tallinn into an international dispute over the interpretation of history. The events subsequent to this securitisation of memory are charted in detail, concluding that Nashi’s activities were ultimately unsuccessful as their demands received little official support.The fourth chapter, ‘Seliger: The Foundry of Modernisation’, presents a distinctive feature of Mijnssen’s study, namely his ethnographic account as a participant observer in the Youth International Forum at Seliger. In the early years of the camp (2005–2007), Russian participants received extensive training, including master classes in ‘methods of forestalling mass unrest’ (p. 131), and the camp served to foster a sense of group identity and purpose among activists. After 2009 the event was no longer officially run as a Nashi camp, and its role became that of a forum for the exchange of ideas about innovation, although camp spirit remained a central feature. In 2010 the camp welcomed international attendees for the first time. As one of about 700 international participants in that year the author provides a fascinating account based on fieldwork diaries.Despite the polemical nature of the topic, Mijnssen’s analysis remains even-handed, exemplified in his balanced assessment of the Seliger experience. While he details the frustrations and disappointments of the international participants with regard to the unaccustomed strict camp discipline, organisational and communication failures, and the controlled format of many discussions,he does not neglect to note the camp’s successes in generating a gratifying collective dynamic between the participants, even among the international attendees who spent only a week there.In addition to the useful bibliography, the book is back-ended by two appendices, which provide the reader with important Russian-language primary source materials. The first is Nashi’s ‘Unusual Fascism’ (Neobyknovennyi fashizm) brochure, and the second is the booklet entitled ‘Some Uncomfortable Questions to the Russian Authorities’ (Neskol’ko neudobnykh voprosov rossiiskoivlasti) which was provided to the Seliger 2010 instructors to guide them in responding to probing questions from foreign participants. Given that these are not readily publicly available even now, they constitute a useful resource from the historical perspective.

The analysis of the resort timesharing industry in order to determine the industry's familiarity with timesharing and the industry's conception of the present and future effects of timesharing

The purpose of the study is to examine the impactof the timesharing concept on the resort industry in order to determine the industry's familiarity with timesharing and the industry's conception of the present and future effects of timesharing. The study utilizes two methods of research, primarydata and secondary data, to examine the concept of timesharing. This section includes information on the different forms of timesharing, the legal aspects, the marketing, management, finance and future of timesharing in order to educate the public about the concept. The primary data takes the form of a survey thatquestions hotel/motel operators in the Fort Lauderdale Beach area to determine their attitudes towards the impact of timesharing on the resort industy.

The state of the nations:current and future developments in technology enhanced learning

Right across Europe technology is playing a vital part in enhancing learning for an increasingly diverse population of learners. Learning is increasingly flexible, social and mobile and supported by high quality multi-media resources. Institutional VLEs are seeing a shift towards open source products and these core systems are supplemented by a range of social and collaborative learning tools based on web 2.0 technologies. Learners undertaking field studies and those in the workplace are coming to expect that these off-campus experiences will also be technology-rich whether supported by institutional or user-owned devices. As well as keeping European businesses competitive, learning is seen as a means of increasing social mobility and supporting an agenda of social justice. For a number of years the EUNIS E-Learning Task Force (ELTF) has conducted snapshot surveys of e-learning across member institutions, collected case studies of good practice in e-learning see (Hayes, et al., 2009) in references, supported a group looking at the future of e-learning, and showcased the best of innovation in its e-learning Award. Now for the first time the ELTF membership has come together to undertake an analysis of developments in the member states and to assess what this might mean for the future. The group applied the techniques of World Café conversation and Scenario Thinking to develop its thoughts. The analysis is unashamedly qualitative and draws on expertise from leading universities across eight of the EUNIS member states. What emerges is interesting in terms of the common trends in developments in all of the nations and similarities in hopes and concerns about the future development of learning.

Tissue and cell's trafficking: a byproduct of transplant activity's trash. The future is now. A Public Health problem

Transplantation is one of the most beautiful achievements for humanity in the last century and became the last hope to many patients. As other beautiful achievements, it has been used by criminals. The future of transplantation will be focused on tissue and cells transplantation. Trafficking of human beings to organ removal and trafficking of human organs are an early stage of trafficking on tissues and cells comparable with slaves trafficking in the 17th and 18th century. As 400 years ago, the motive for the crime is development, economy and profit. Transplant surgery is the modern “cotton gin” to this new commerce. Poverty exploitation, unprotected people, are always the victims. Even so, there are some differences since then. The paying buyers are the patients themselves and the “cotton” transplanted is not so harmless. Unsafe tissues and cells inappropriately collected and allocated can be so dangerous to the recipient and his family, that the dreamed transplant/implant becomes a nightmare. Beyond the trafficking crime, there is a most dangerous associated crime that is the crime of spreading dangerous infectious diseases.

The Process of Simulation Authoring/Creation by Chemistry Teachers: A Service Learning Experience

Two case studies are presented to describe the process of public school teachers authoring and creating chemistry simulations. They are part of the Virtual Didactic Laboratory for Chemistry, a project developed by the School of the Future of the University of Sao Paulo. the documental analysis of the material produced by two groups of teachers reflects different selection process for both themes and problem-situations when creating simulations. The study demonstrates the potential for chemistry learning with an approach that takes students' everyday lives into account and is based on collaborative work among teachers and researches. Also, from the teachers' perspectives, the possibilities of interaction that a simulation offers for classroom activities are considered.

New perspectives on the processing and release of public information

This article discusses issues related to the organization and reception of information in the context of services and public information systems driven by technology. It stems from the assumption that in a ""technologized"" society, the distance between users and information is almost always of cognitive and socio-cultural nature, a product of our effort to design communication. In this context, we favor the approach of the information sign, seeking to answer how a documentary message turns into information, i.e. a structure recognized as socially useful. Observing the structural, cognitive and communicative aspects of the documentary message, based on Documentary Linguistics, Terminology, as well as on Textual Linguistics, the policy of knowledge management and innovation of the Government of the State of Sao Paulo is analyzed, which authorizes the use of Web 2.0, also questioning to what extent this initiative represents innovation in the environment of libraries.

Experimental Verification of Decoherence-Free Subspaces

Using spontaneous parametric down-conversion, we produce polarization-entangled states of two photons and characterize them using two-photon tomography to measure the density matrix. A controllable decoherence is imposed on the states by passing the photons through thick, adjustable birefringent elements. When the system is subject to collective decoherence, one particular entangled state is seen to be decoherence-free, as predicted by theory. Such decoherence-free systems may have an important role for the future of quantum computation and information processing.

An analysis of why telehealth systems in Australia have not always succeeded

Telehealth programmes are rather similar to humans in the way that they are planned, develop, grow and ultimately die or disappear. To achieve good life expectancy for a telehealth programme there appear to be three major needs: nurturing, which includes the provision of money, ideas, education, training and innovation; experience, which involves an integrated management process, the achievement of long and wide patterns of usage, the development of updated policies and procedures and the involvement of multiple disciplines; success, which involves evidence of outcomes, evaluation and research, and, most important, the sharing of information through scientific and popular press publications, and conferences and collaborations with internal and external groups. The future of telehealth in Australia is at a watershed. There are now a substantial number of programmes, and there has been a large amount of financial and human investment in telehealth around the nation. There is, however, no forum for national leadership, no national association and little support at federal government level.

Foraging by the endangered black-breasted button-quail (Turnix melanogaster) within fragmented rainforest of an agricultural landscape

We studied the foraging habitat of the endangered black-breasted button-quail (Turnix melanogaster) in 13 rainforest patches of an agricultural landscape (23.4 km(2)) in eastern Australia to assess its use of fragmented habitats outside conservation reserves. The species foraged only in the three largest patches (17.4, 40.0, 63.8 ha in size), all of which were connected to open eucalypt forest, and in intact rainforest. Occurrence of birds was greatest in the largest patch. The maximum number of individuals within the study area was estimated to be 22. Radio-tracking of nine birds revealed that three were resident in the largest patch for periods of over 100 days; no movements between patches were detected. Three radio-tagged birds were taken by avian and mammalian predators. Our results indicated that the long-term future of the species in agricultural landscapes is bleak and that management action is urgently needed to arrest its decline in these ecosystems, (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

A spongin-boring alpha-proteobacterium is the etiological agent of disease in the Great Barrier Reef sponge Rhopaloeides odorabile

High levels of mortality in the Mediterranean bath sponge industry have raised concerns for the future of sponge farms. Healthy sponges feed predominantly on bacteria, and many harbour a wide diversity of inter- and extra-cellular symbiotic bacteria. Here we describe the first isolation and description of a pathogenic bacterium from an infected marine sponge. Microbiological examination of tissue necrosis in the Great Barrier Reef sponge Rhopaloeides odorabile resulted in isolation of the bacterial strain NW4327. Sponges infected with strain NW4327 exhibited high levels of external tissue necrosis, and the strain was re-isolated from infected sponges. A single morphotype, which had burrowed through the collagenous spongin fibres causing severe necrosis, was observed microscopically. Strain NW4327 was capable of degrading commercial preparations of azo-collagen, providing further evidence of its involvement in spongin fibre necrosis, Strain NW4327 disrupted the microbial community associated with R. odorabile and was able to infect and kill healthy sponge tissue. 16S rRNA sequence analysis revealed that strain NW4327 is a novel member of the alpha-proteobacteria.

Nutrient dynamics in Queensland savannas: Implications for the sustainability of land clearing for pasture production

Eucalyptus savannas on low nutrient soils are being extensively cleared in Queensland. In this paper we provide background information relevant to understanding nutrient (particularly nitrogen) dynamics in sub/tropical savanna, and review the available evidence relevant to understanding the potential impact of clearing Eucalyptus savanna on nutrient relations. The limited evidence presently available can be used to argue for the extreme positions that: (i) woody vegetation competes with grasses Cor resources. and tree/shrub clearing improves pasture production, (ii) woody vegetation benefits pasture production. At present, the lack of fundamental knowledge about Australian savanna nutrient relations makes accurate predictions about medium- and long-term effects of clearing on nutrient relations in low nutrient savannas difficult. The future of cleared savannas will differ if herbaceous species maintain all functions that woody vegetation has previously held, or if woody species have functions distinct from those of herbaceous vegetation. Research suggests that savanna soils are susceptible to nitrate leaching, and that trees improve the nutrient status of savanna soils in some situations. The nitrogen capital of cleared savanna is at risk if mobile ions are not captured efficiently by the vegetation. and nitrogen input via N-2 fixation from vegetation and microbiotic crusts is reduced. In order to predict clearing effects on savanna nutrient relations, research should be directed to answering (i) how open or closed nutrient cycles are in natural and cleared savanna, (ii) which functions are performed by savanna constituents such as woody and herbaceous vegetation, native and exotic plant species. termites, and microbiotic 7 crusts in relation to nutrient cycles. In the absence of detailed knowledge about savanna functioning, clearing carries the risk of promoting continuous nutrient depiction.

Green microfinance: the case of the Cresol System in Southern Brazil

Climate change which until recently seemed a luxury for the microfinance sector, now appears to be crucial for the future of the sector. Due to their low adaptive capacity, the millions of MF clients worldwide happen to be the most vulnerable to a changing climate. Adapting previous analysis conducted in Nepal and Bangladesh by Agrawala and Maëlis (2010) to the Brazilian context, in this inductive qualitative study we aim to assess potential synergies between MF and CC actions and what strategies can be harnessed to better respond to CC vulnerabilities at client/MF level. To do so, we investigated the case of the second largest rural microcredit programme in Brazil, Sistema Cresol de Cooperativas de Crédito Rural com Interação Solidária. Albeit important overlaps between Cresol's product envelope and CC strategies exist, there is still room to realise synergies to both mitigate a new potential source of risk to Cresol's portfolio and to increase clients' adaptive capacity.