Suchergebnisse

With the rapid pace of globalisation, the internationalisation of think tanks (ITT) has been a growing concern. ITT can manifest in a myriad of ways, such as employing foreign staff, setting up overseas branches and forging cooperation with other countries' think tanks. Despite the research community's awareness of the development, there is no systematic analysis of ITT in the current literature. This article develops a "personnel-centred model" to investigate the internationalisation behaviours of think tanks. This conceptual framework attempts to explain the difficulties faced by China's think tanks in the process of internationalisation. The authors also propose several possible solutions to assist Chinese think tanks resolve the difficulties. (CIJ/GIGA)

In recent years, trafficking and abuse of hallucinogenic mushrooms have become a serious social problem. It is therefore imperative to identify hallucinogenic mushrooms of the genus Psilocybe for national drug control legislation. An internal transcribed spacer (ITS) is a DNA barcoding tool utilized for species identification. Many methods have been used to discriminate the ITS region, but they are often limited by having a low resolution. In this study, we sought to analyze the ITS and its fragments, ITS1 and ITS2, by using high-resolution melting (HRM) analysis, which is a rapid and sensitive method for evaluating sequence variation within PCR amplicons. The ITS HRM assay was tested for specificity, reproducibility, sensitivity, and the capacity to analyze mixture samples. It was shown that the melting temperatures of the ITS, ITS1, and ITS2 of Psilocybe cubensis were 83.72 ± 0.01, 80.98 ± 0.06, and 83.46 ± 0.08 °C, and for other species, we also obtained species-specific results. Finally, we performed ITS sequencing to validate the presumptive taxonomic identity of our samples, and the sequencing output significantly supported our HRM data. Taken together, these results indicate that the HRM method can quickly distinguish the DNA barcoding of Psilocybe cubensis and other fungi, which can be utilized for drug trafficking cases and forensic science.