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BCIT Citations Collection

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ABC region
Using a biophysical framework of analysis, this paper investigates the interconnections between the political, economic, social and environmental aspects of the de-industrialization of the ABC Region. Particular focus is given to the automobile sector and the responses of civil society and local government to the regional impacts of de-industrialization brought about by global forces. Questions about the role of social networks and the efficacy of government responses are addressed in the paper’s conclusion., Research paper, Published.
Accounting for greenhouse gas emissions of materials at the urban scale-relating existing process life cycle assessment studies to urban material and waste composition
Although many cities are engaged in efforts to calculate and reduce their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, most are accounting for "scope one" emissions i.e., GHGs produced within urban boundaries (for example, following the protocol of the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives). Cities should also account for the emissions associated with goods, services and materials consumed within their boundaries, "scope three" emissions. The emissions related to urban consumption patterns and choices greatly influence overall emissions that can be associated with an urban area. However, data constraints and GHG accounting complexity present challenges. In this paper we propose one approach that cities can take to measure the GHG emissions of their material consumption: the solid waste life cycle assessment (LCA) based approach. We used this approach to identify a set of materials commonly consumed within cities, and reviewed published life cycle assessment data to determine the GHG emissions associated with production of each. Our review reveals that among fourteen commonly consumed materials, textiles and aluminum are associated with the highest GHG emissions per tonne of production. Paper and plastics have relatively lower production emissions, but a potentially higher impact on overall emissions owing to their large proportions, by weight, in the consumption stream., Peer-reviewed article, Published. Received November 9th, 2012; revised December 10th, 2012; accepted January 5th, 2013.
Accounting for the ecological footprint of materials in consumer goods at the urban scale
Ecological footprint analysis (EFA) can be used by cities to account for their on-going demands on global renewable resources. To date, EFA has not been fully implemented as an urban policy and planning tool in part due to limitations of local data availability. In this paper we focus on the material consumption component of the urban ecological footprint and identify the ‘component, solid waste life cycle assessment approach’ as one that overcomes data limitations by using data many cities regularly collect: municipal, solid waste composition data which serves as a proxy for material consumption. The approach requires energy use and/or carbon dioxide emissions data from process LCA studies as well as agricultural and forest land data for calculation of a material’s ecological footprint conversion value. We reviewed the process LCA literature for twelve materials commonly consumed in cities and determined ecological footprint conversion values for each. We found a limited number of original LCA studies but were able to generate a range of values for each material. Our set of values highlights the importance for cities to identify both the quantities consumed and per unit production impacts of a material. Some materials like textiles and aluminum have high ecological footprints but make up relatively smaller proportions of urban waste streams than products like paper and diapers. Local government use of the solid waste LCA approach helps to clearly identify the ecological loads associated with the waste they manage on behalf of their residents. This direct connection can be used to communicate to citizens about stewardship, recycling and ecologically responsible consumption choices that contribute to urban sustainability., Peer-reviewed article, Published. Received: 6 February 2013 ; Revised: 13 April 2013 ; Accepted: 26 April 2013 ; Published: 2 May 2013.
Accuracy, precision, and reliability of chemical measurements in natural products research
Natural products chemistry is the discipline that lies at the heart of modern pharmacognosy. The field encompasses qualitative and quantitative analytical tools that range from spectroscopy and spectrometry to chromatography. Among other things, modern research on crude botanicals is engaged in the discovery of the phytochemical constituents necessary for therapeutic efficacy, including the synergistic effects of components of complex mixtures in the botanical matrix. In the phytomedicine field, these botanicals and their contained mixtures are considered the active pharmaceutical ingredient (API), and pharmacognosists are increasingly called upon to supplement their molecular discovery work by assisting in the development and utilization of analytical tools for assessing the quality and safety of these products. Unlike single-chemical entity APIs, botanical raw materials and their derived products are highly variable because their chemistry and morphology depend on the genotypic and phenotypic variation, geographical origin and weather exposure, harvesting practices, and processing conditions of the source material. Unless controlled, this inherent variability in the raw material stream can result in inconsistent finished products that are under-potent, over-potent, and/or contaminated. Over the decades, natural product chemists have routinely developed quantitative analytical methods for phytochemicals of interest. Quantitative methods for the determination of product quality bear the weight of regulatory scrutiny. These methods must be accurate, precise, and reproducible. Accordingly, this review discusses the principles of accuracy (relationship between experimental and true value), precision (distribution of data values), and reliability in the quantitation of phytochemicals in natural products., Peer-reviewed article, Published. Received 6 July 2010; Revised 14 September 2010; Available online 25 September 2010.
An action description language for iterated belief change
Proceedings of the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI-07), Hyderabad, India, 2007. We are interested in the belief change that occurs due to a sequence of ontic actions and epistemic actions. In order to represent such problems, we extend an existing epistemic action language to allow erroneous initial beliefs. We define a non-Markovian semantics for our action language that explicitly respects the interaction between ontic actions and epistemic actions. Further, we illustrate how to solve epistemic projection problems in our new language by translating action descriptions into extended logic programs. We conclude with some remarks about a prototype implementation of our work., Conference paper, Published.
Active-arm passive-leg exercise improves cardiovascular function in spinal cord injury
In a 43-yr-old male subject with a chronic T3 AIS A spinal cord injury, the acute cardiorespiratory responses to active upper-extremity exercise alone and combined active-arm passive-leg exercise (AAPLE) were investigated, along with the cardiorespiratory, cardiac, vascular, and body composition responses to a 6-wk AAPLE interval training intervention. AAPLE elicited superior acute maximal cardiorespiratory responses compared with upper-extremity exercise alone. In response to a 6-wk interval training regimen, AAPLE caused a 25% increase in peak oxygen uptake, a 10% increase in resting stroke volume, and a 4-fold increase in brachial artery blood flow. Conversely, there were no changes in femoral arterial function, body composition, or bone mineral density in response to training. As a potential clinical intervention, AAPLE may be advantageous over other forms of currently available exercise, owing to the minimal setup time and cost involved and the nonreliance on specialized equipment that is required for other exercise modalities., Case reports, Published.
Adding modal operators to the action language A
Proceedings of the International Workshop on Non-Monotonic Reasoning (NMR-04) in Whistler, BC, 2004. The action language A is a simple high-level language for describing transition systems. In this paper, we extend the action language A by allowing a unary modal operator in the underlying propositional logic. The extended language requires very little new machinery, and it is suitable for describing transitions between Kripke structures. We consider some formal restrictions on action descriptions that preserve natural classes of Kripke structures, and we prove that the modal epistemic extension of A naturally subsumes related approaches to reasoning about knowledge. We conclude with some plans for future work. Introduction The action language A is a simple high-level language for reasoning about the effects of actions (Gelfond & Lifschitz 1993). The basic language is suitable only for simple action domains, but it has been extended several times to address a wide range of problems (Baral & Gelfond 1997; Baral, Gelfond, & Provetti 1997). In this paper, we suggest that it is possible to increase the representational power of A without changing the action language itself. Instead, we look at extending the underlying propositional logic by adding modal operators. We consider the expressive power of the modal extension, and compare the framework with related work on epistemic extensions of A., Conference paper, Published.
The Additional sex combs gene of Drosophila encodes a chromatin protein that binds to shared and unique Polycomb group sites on polytene chromosomes
The Additional sex combs (Asx) gene of Drosophila is a member of the Polycomb group of genes, which are required for maintenance of stable repression of homeotic and other loci. Asx is unusual among the Polycomb group because: (1) one Asx allele exhibits both anterior and posterior transformations; (2) Asx mutations enhance anterior transformations of trx mutations; (3) Asx mutations exhibit segmentation phenotypes in addition to homeotic phenotypes; (4) Asx is an Enhancer of position-effect variegation and (5) Asx displays tissue-specific derepression of target genes. Asx was cloned by transposon tagging and encodes a protein of 1668 amino acids containing an unusual cysteine cluster at the carboxy terminus. The protein is ubiquitously expressed during development. We show that Asx is required in the central nervous system to regulate Ultrabithorax. ASX binds to multiple sites on polytene chromosomes, 70% of which overlap those of Polycomb, polyhomeotic and Polycomblike, and 30% of which are unique. The differences in target site recognition may account for some of the differences in Asx phenotypes relative to other members of the Polycomb group., Peer-reviewed article, Published.
Algal morphogenesis
Semi-cell morphogenesis in unicellular desmid algae of the genus Micrasterias generates a stellar shape by repeated dichotomous branching of growing tips of the cell surface. The numerous species of the genus display variations of the branching pattern that differ markedly in number of branchings, lobe width and lobe length. We have modelled this morphogenesis, following previous work by D. M. Harrison and M. Kolar (1988), on the assumptions that patterning occurs by chemical reaction-diffusion activity within the plasma membrane, leading to morphological expression by patterned catalysis of the extension of the cell surface. The latter has been simulated in simplified form by two-dimensional computations. Our results indicate that for generation of repeated branchings and for the control of diverse species-specific shapes, the loss of patterning activity and of rapid growth in regions separating the active growing tips is an essential feature. We believe this conclusion to be much more general than the specific details of our model. We discuss the limitations of the model especially in terms of what extra features might be addressed in three-dimensional computation., Peer-reviewed article, Published.
Analysis of pattern precision shows that Drosophila segmentation develops substantial independence from gradients of maternal gene products
We analyze the relation between maternal gradients and segmentation in Drosophila, by quantifying spatial precision in protein patterns. Segmentation is first seen in the striped expression patterns of the pair-rule genes, such as even-skipped (eve). We compare positional precision between Eve and the maternal gradients of Bicoid (Bcd) and Caudal (Cad) proteins, showing that Eve position could be initially specified by the maternal protein concentrations but that these do not have the precision to specify the mature striped pattern of Eve. By using spatial trends, we avoid possible complications in measuring single boundary precision (e.g., gap gene patterns) and can follow how precision changes in time. During nuclear cleavage cycles 13 and 14, we find that Eve becomes increasingly correlated with egg length, whereas Bcd does not. This finding suggests that the change in precision is part of a separation of segmentation from an absolute spatial measure, established by the maternal gradients, to one precise in relative (percent egg length) units., Peer-reviewed article, Published.
AOAC SMPR® 2016.003
AOAC SMPRs describe the minimum recommended performance characteristics to be used during the evaluation of a method. The evaluation may be an on-site verification, a single-laboratory validation, or a multi-site collaborative study. SMPRs are written and adopted by AOAC stakeholder panels composed of representatives from the industry, regulatory organizations, contract laboratories, test kit manufacturers, and academic institutions. AOAC SMPRs are used by AOAC expert review panels in their evaluation of validation study data for method being considered for Performance Tested MethodsSM or AOAC Official Methods of AnalysisSM, and can be used as acceptance criteria for verification at user laboratories., Peer-reviewed article, Published.
AOAC SMPR® 2016.013
AOAC SMPR® 2016.013 Standard Method Performance Requirements (SMPRs) for Identification and Quantitation of Animal-Derived Proteins in Dietary Supplements. The article presents a study that determines the standard method performance requirements (SMPRs) for identifying and quantifying animal-derived proteins in dietary supplements. It offers overview of the purpose, applicability, and definitions involved in the study. It also outlines the result of the system suitability, validation guidance and potential reference of the study., Peer-reviewed article, Published.

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