British Columbia Institute of Technology

About: British Columbia Institute of Technology is a education organization based out in Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Smart grid & Belief revision. The organization has 458 authors who have published 785 publications receiving 16140 citations.

Digital Learners in Higher Education: A Research Project Update

Abstract: This article provides an update of the Digital Learners in Higher Education Research project. In Phase 1 of the project, concluded that there is no empirically-sound basis for most of the claims that have been made about the net generation. It also found there are no meaningful differences between net generation and non-net generation students at this institution in terms of their use of technology, nor in their behavioural characteristics and learning preferences at one Canadian postsecondary institution. Phase 2 of the study will explore the “whys” of these findings, with the intention of informing teaching and learning practices.

Transcriptional bursting in Drosophila development: Stochastic dynamics of eve stripe 2 expression.

Abstract: Anterior-posterior (AP) body segmentation of the fruit fly (Drosophila) is first seen in the 7-stripe spatial expression patterns of the pair-rule genes, which regulate downstream genes determining specific segment identities. Regulation of pair-rule expression has been extensively studied for the even-skipped (eve) gene. Recent live imaging, of a reporter for the 2nd eve stripe, has demonstrated the stochastic nature of this process, with 'bursts' in the number of RNA transcripts being made over time. We developed a stochastic model of the spatial and temporal expression of eve stripe 2 (binding by transcriptional activators (Bicoid and Hunchback proteins) and repressors (Giant and Kruppel proteins), transcriptional initiation and termination; with all rate parameters constrained by features of the experimental data) in order to analyze the noisy experimental time series and test hypotheses for how eve transcription is regulated. These include whether eve transcription is simply OFF or ON, with a single ON rate, or whether it proceeds by a more complex mechanism, with multiple ON rates. We find that both mechanisms can produce long (multi-minute) RNA bursts, but that the short-time (minute-to-minute) statistics of the data is indicative of eve being transcribed with at least two distinct ON rates, consistent with data on the joint activation of eve by Bicoid and Hunchback. We also predict distinct statistical signatures for cases in which eve is repressed (e.g. along the edges of the stripe) vs. cases in which activation is reduced (e.g. by mutagenesis of transcription factor binding sites). Fundamental developmental processes such as gene transcription are intrinsically noisy; our approach presents a new way to quantify and analyze time series data during developmental patterning in order to understand regulatory mechanisms and how they propagate noise and impact embryonic robustness.

Water quality, chlorophyll, and periphyton responses to nutrient addition in the Kootenai River, Idaho

Abstract: During the past century, the Kootenai River, Idaho (USA), has experienced cultural oligotrophication following extensive levee construction, channelization, wetland drainage, and impoundment. A multiyear, whole-river nutrient-addition experiment was undertaken to mitigate these effects. The river was dosed with liquid agricultural-grade ammonium polyphosphate fertilizer (10-34-0) from June through September 2006–2010 to achieve an in-river total dissolved P (TDP) concentration of 3.0 µg/L. A fine-scale monitoring program included 8 sites over a 20-km reach (2 upstream control sites, one injection site, and 5 downstream treatment sites). Nutrient addition did not significantly increase N and P concentrations in the water column, but it significantly increased chlorophyll accrual rates and densities of edible green algae and diatoms. Nutrient addition significantly reduced NO3–+NO2– concentrations, atomic TN∶TP ratios, and densities of inedible cyanophytes. Mean NO3–+NO2– values decreased along a do...