One future or many? November 14, 15, and 16, 2002

This repository item contains a single issue of the Pardee Conference Series, a publication series that began publishing in 2006 by the Boston University Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future. This was the Center's 2nd annual Conference that took place during November 14, 15, and 16, 2002.The conference brought together some 30 experts from various disciplines to discuss whether the trajectories of the future will be ‘global’ or ‘regional’ in nature. Different panels looks at the future trajectories for Europe, the Western Hemisphere, Central Asia and the Former Soviet Union, and on Asia and in each case the discussion looked at the relative importance of the regional and of global dynamics on teh forces shaping the future of these regions.Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affair

Singular Points of Reactive Distillation Systems

For the conceptual design of countercurrently operated reactive distillation columns, fast methods are needed to estimate potential top and bottom products. The possible column bottom product composition can be determined from the stable singular points of a batch reactive reboiler. In a similar manner the top product composition can be obtained from the stable singular points of a batch reactive condenser. Geometrically, the singular points of both batch processes are located on a common potential singular point surface (PSPS) whose trajectory depends on the reaction stoichiometry and the phase equilibria. At the singular points, the PSPS intersects a reaction kinetic surface that is dependent on the reaction rate expression and the phase equilibrium of a reference component. Based on the singularity analysis, a single-feed reactive distillation column can be designed. Several hypothetical and real reaction systems are analyzed to illustrate the singularity analysis and the design procedure. Copyright © 1999–2013 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All Rights Reserved. [accessed 2013 August 15th

Economic development, human development, and the pursuit of happiness, April 1, 2, and 3, 2004

This repository item contains a single issue of the Pardee Conference Series, a publication series that began publishing in 2006 by the Boston University Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future. This was the Center's spring conference, which took place during April 1, 2, and 3, 2004.The conference asks the questions, how can we make sure that the benefits of economic growth flow into health, education, welfare, and other aspects of human development; and what is the relationship between human development and economic development? Speakers and participants discuss the role that culture, legal and political institutions, the UN Developmental Goals, the level of decision-making, and ethics, play in development

Looking ahead: forecasting and planning for the longer-range future, April 1, 2, and 3, 2005

This repository item contains a single issue of the Pardee Conference Series, a publication series that began publishing in 2006 by the Boston University Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future. This was the Center's spring Conference that took place during April 1, 2, and 3, 2005.The conference allowed for many highly esteemed scholars and professionals from a broad range of fields to come together to discuss strategies designed for the 21st century and beyond. The speakers and discussants covered a broad range of subjects including: long-term policy analysis, forecasting for business and investment, the National Intelligence Council Global Trends 2020 report, Europe’s transition from the Marshal plan to the EU, forecasting global transitions, foreign policy planning, and forecasting for defense

Mental health literacy: a cross-cultural approach to knowledge and beliefs about depression, schizophrenia and generalized anxiety disorder

Many families worldwide have at least one member with a behavioral or mental disorder, and yet the majority of the public fails to correctly recognize symptoms of mental illness. Previous research has found that Mental Health Literacy (MHL)—the knowledge and positive beliefs about mental disorders—tends to be higher in European and North American cultures, compared to Asian and African cultures. Nonetheless quantitative research examining the variables that explain this cultural difference remains limited. The purpose of our study was fourfold: (a) to validate measures of MHL cross-culturally, (b) to examine the MHL model quantitatively, (c) to investigate cultural differences in the MHL model, and (d) to examine collectivism as a predictor of MHL. We validated measures of MHL in European American and Indian samples. The results lend strong quantitative support to the MHL model. Recognition of symptoms of mental illness was a central variable: greater recognition predicted greater endorsement of social causes of mental illness and endorsement of professional help-seeking as well as lesser endorsement of lay help-seeking. The MHL model also showed an overwhelming cultural difference; namely, lay help-seeking beliefs played a central role in the Indian sample, and a negligible role in the European American sample. Further, collectivism was positively associated with causal beliefs of mental illness in the European American sample, and with lay help-seeking beliefs in the Indian sample. These findings demonstrate the importance of understanding cultural differences in beliefs about mental illness, particularly in relation to help-seeking beliefs

Neogenin-mediated hemojuvelin shedding occurs after hemojuvelin traffics to the plamsa membrane

Hemochromatosis type 2 gene (HFE2) is highly expressed in skeletal muscle and liver hepatocytes. Its encoded protein, hemojuvelin (HJV), is a co-receptor for the bone morphogenetic proteins 2 and 4 (BMP2 and BMP4) and enhances the BMP-induced hepcidin expression. Hepcidin is a central iron regulatory hormone predominantly secreted from hepatocytes. HJV also binds neogenin, a membrane protein widely expressed in many tissues. Neogenin is required for the processing and release of HJV from cells. The role that neogenin plays in HJV trafficking was investigated, using HepG2 cells, a human hepatoma cell line. Knockdown of endogenous neogenin markedly suppresses HJV release, but has no evident effect on HJV trafficking to the plasma membrane. Addition of a soluble neogenin ectodomain to cells markedly inhibits HJV release, indicating that the HJV shedding is not processed before trafficking to the cell surface. At the plasma membrane it undergoes endocytosis in a dynamin-independent but cholesterol-dependent manner. The additional findings that HJV release is coupled to lysosomal degradation of neogenin, that HJV undergoes endocytosis, and that cholesterol depletion by filipin blocks both HJV endocytosis and HJV release, suggest that neogenin-mediated HJV release occurs after the HJV-neogenin complex is internalized from the cell surface

Tobacco use by Indian adolescents

Adolescents are the most vulnerable population to initiate tobacco use. It is now well established that most of the adult users of tobacco start tobacco use in childhood or adolescence. There has been a perceptible fall in smoking in the developed countries after realization of harmful effects of tobacco. The tobacco companies are now aggressively targeting their advertising strategies in the developing countries like India. Adolescents often get attracted to tobacco products because of such propaganda. There has been a rapid increase in trade and use of smokeless tobacco products in recent years in the country, which is a matter of serious concern to the health planners. It is important to understand various factors that influence and encourage young teenagers to start smoking or to use other tobacco products. The age at first use of tobacco has been reduced considerably. However, law enforcing agencies have also taken some punitive measures in recent years to curtail the use of tobacco products. This paper focuses on various tobacco products available in India, the extent of their use in adolescents, factors leading to initiation of their use, and the preventive strategies, which could be used to deal with this menace

Cardiac Potassium Channels: Physiological Insights for Targeted Therapy.

The development of novel drugs specifically directed at the ion channels underlying particular features of cardiac action potential (AP) initiation, recovery, and refractoriness would contribute to an optimized approach to antiarrhythmic therapy that minimizes potential cardiac and extracardiac toxicity. Of these, K(+) channels contribute numerous and diverse currents with specific actions on different phases in the time course of AP repolarization. These features and their site-specific distribution make particular K(+) channel types attractive therapeutic targets for the development of pharmacological agents attempting antiarrhythmic therapy in conditions such as atrial fibrillation. However, progress in the development of such temporally and spatially selective antiarrhythmic drugs against particular ion channels has been relatively limited, particularly in view of our incomplete understanding of the complex physiological roles and interactions of the various ionic currents. This review summarizes the physiological properties of the main cardiac potassium channels and the way in which they modulate cardiac electrical activity and then critiques a number of available potential antiarrhythmic drugs directed at them