Safeguarding and rejuvenating the identity of a river city

Banjarmasin (Kalimantan) is famous for its floating markets and was once widely known as the Venice of the East Indies. Today, this river city is facing rapid modernization and road centred urbanization. How can Banjarmasin maintain its unique water-based identity and revitalize its historic riverside kampongs? This was the focus of a HUL Quick Scan workshop organized by the municipality of Banjarmasin, Heritage Hands-On, IPB University, Trisakti University, and the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands (RCE). Following the principles of the HUL approach, students and young professionals from several cities in Indonesia as well as local stakeholders worked on proposals covering issues ranging from heritage preservation, public transport, housing and cultural tourism to waste management

NAVIGATING RESILIENCE: ANALYZING GOVERNMENT POLICIES FOR FOSTERING SUSTAINABLE MSME GROWTH IN INDIA

The Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprise (MSME) sector stands as a pivotal pillar within the Indian economy, contributing to 48% of the nation's production output and providing employment to a staggering 110 million individuals. The pervasive impact of the pandemic has inevitably reverberated across the economic landscape, although its full extent remains shrouded in uncertainty. Particularly, the small-scale enterprises that play a crucial role in India's manufacturing and service domains have borne the brunt of this impact. The year 2020 witnessed an unprecedented deceleration in revenue, with the MSME sector grappling with severe challenges in maintaining operational continuity. In response to this crisis, the government took affirmative action aimed at rejuvenating the beleaguered sector, offering targeted support to MSMEs. This concerted intervention proved to be a significant impetus, infusing hope and vitality into these enterprises. Consequently, a comprehensive evaluation of the barriers encountered, a candid exposition of these hurdles, and the formulation of a robust strategy to surmount the pandemic-induced turmoil have become imperative. In light of this exigency, the researcher undertakes a rigorous analytical investigation into the government's policies crafted to ensure the sustainable growth of MSMEs in India. By distilling insights from diverse sources, a holistic understanding of the challenges faced by MSMEs and the efficacy of governmental interventions is pursued

Climate Justice and Women's Rights: A Guide to Supporting Grassroots Women's Action

This Guide emerged from a "Summit on Women and Climate" in Bali, Indonesia, and aims to increase timely and appropriate funding for worldwide climate action initiatives led by women and their communities. The Guide is not a comprehensive resource on climate change or women's rights. Instead, it addresses an urgent need within the funding community and offers concrete, practical guidance that: Orients grantmakers to the importance of funding at the intersection of climate justice and women's rights.Draws lessons from specific examples of funding for women's climate change initiatives.Provides guidance on how funders can collaborate to direct timely and appropriate funding to women and their communities.Advocates for bringing women's voices into climate change policy discussions.Highlights the strong impact that small (less than $10,000) to medium-sized ($10,000-$50,000) grants can make in women-organized efforts to address climate change at the community level, across geographic boundaries and in global climate policy. Grassroots women's climate activism is becoming increasingly critical to women's collective and individual rights, freedom and survival

Alchemical Gold and the pursuit of the Mercurial Elixir: An analysis of two alchemical treatises from the Tibetan Buddhist Canon

This article focuses on the analysis of two Tibetan treatises on iatrochemistry, The Treatise on the Mercurial Elixir (Dngul chu grub pa’i bstan bcos) and the Compendium on the Transmutation into Gold (Gser ’gyur bstan bcos bsdus pa). These texts belong to the rasaśāstra genre that were translated from Sanskrit into Tibetan by Orgyenpa Rinchenpel (O rgyan pa Rin chen dpal, 1229/30–1309) and integrated into the Tibetan Buddhist Canon of the Tengyur (Bstan ’gyur). The treatises deal with the processing of mercury, which is indispensable to convert metals into gold (gser ’gyur) and to accomplish the ‘mercurial elixir’ (dngul chu’i bcud len). The texts start with the description of a ‘pink-coloured’ (dmar skya mdog) compound, which is described as the amalgam of ‘moonlight-exposed tin’ (gsha’ tshe zla ba phyogs), gold, and copper. According to the texts, mercury has to be ‘amalgamated’ (sbyor ba) with ‘minerals that devour its poisons’ (za byed khams) and with ‘eight metals that bind it’ (’ching khams brgyad); at the same time, mercury is cooked with ‘red substances’ (dmar sde tshan) and other herbal extracts, types of urine and salts, and reduced to ashes. Starting with an outline of the earliest Tibetan medical sources on mercury, I analyse the two treatises with regard to their entire materia alchemica and the respective purification methods aimed at ‘obtaining essences’ (snying stobs), which are then to be absorbed by mercury. I argue that the two thirteenth-century treatises were particularly significant in the process of consolidating pharmaceutical practices based on mercury and the merging of alchemical and medical knowledge in Tibet

Revolutionships: Experiences of Queer Women of Color Maintaining Romantic Relationships while Engaging in Contemporary Movements for Liberation

Queer women of color (QWOC) organizing in resistance to the increasingly hostile contemporary political context of the United States of America are at immediate risk for threats to survival. Nevertheless, some maintain romantic relationships that fall outside of the hegemonic frameworks of romance. While simultaneously resisting a settler colonial state that sanctions violence, environmental racism, and homophobia, QWOC are cultivating love in the face of oppressions they seek to dismantle daily. I used a Black Feminist grounded theory framework to explore the experiences of QWOC in romantic relationships who were also organizing in the contemporary radical political movements – an experience I termed “Revolutionships”. Using a Black Feminist grounded theory framework, I interviewed six dynamic QWOC activist couples and unearthed four main components of “revolutionships”. Each of these components, including unique strengths and challenges these couples face, will be explored. Additionally, the clinical approach for couples therapy with QWOC I developed through conducting the six interviews, the P.O.W.E.R. model, will also be detailed. This study developed a grounded theory approach for couples therapy with QWOC couples, highlighting the impacts of political activism on couple relationships, and contributes to the dearth of literature on QWOC

Amethyst, apotropaia, and the Eye of Re

Two specific aspects of Middle Kingdom Egyptian apotropaia, amethyst amulets and inscribed ivory wands, are connected by their religious, magical, and mythological connotations. The shared significance of these objects is made clear by iconographic similarities and textual references. The wands in particular are shown to represent a particular mythological moment, the return of the Solar Eye of Re to Egypt. Both amethyst objects and ivory wands reference this important mythological event in ways that illustrate the multi-level importance of the myth in the cultural landscape of the Middle Kingdom Egyptians

Current Status and Future Prospects of Genome-Scale Metabolic Modeling to Optimize the Use of Mesenchymal Stem Cells in Regenerative Medicine.

To access publisher's full text version of this article, please click on the hyperlink in Additional Links field or click on the hyperlink at the top of the page marked DownloadMesenchymal stem cells are a promising source for externally grown tissue replacements and patient-specific immunomodulatory treatments. This promise has not yet been fulfilled in part due to production scaling issues and the need to maintain the correct phenotype after re-implantation. One aspect of extracorporeal growth that may be manipulated to optimize cell growth and differentiation is metabolism. The metabolism of MSCs changes during and in response to differentiation and immunomodulatory changes. MSC metabolism may be linked to functional differences but how this occurs and influences MSC function remains unclear. Understanding how MSC metabolism relates to cell function is however important as metabolite availability and environmental circumstances in the body may affect the success of implantation. Genome-scale constraint based metabolic modeling can be used as a tool to fill gaps in knowledge of MSC metabolism, acting as a framework to integrate and understand various data types (e.g., genomic, transcriptomic and metabolomic). These approaches have long been used to optimize the growth and productivity of bacterial production systems and are being increasingly used to provide insights into human health research. Production of tissue for implantation using MSCs requires both optimized production of cell mass and the understanding of the patient and phenotype specific metabolic situation. This review considers the current knowledge of MSC metabolism and how it may be optimized along with the current and future uses of genome scale constraint based metabolic modeling to further this aim.Icelandic Research Fund Institute for Systems Biology's Translational Research Fellows Progra