Building Green

Building Green explores the experience of environmental architects in Mumbai, one of the world’s most populous and population-dense urban areas and a city iconic for its massive informal settlements, extreme wealth asymmetries, and ecological stresses. Under these conditions, what does it mean to learn, and try to practice, so-called green design? By tracing the training and professional experiences of environmental architects in India’s first graduate degree program in Environmental Architecture, Rademacher shows how environmental architects forged sustainability concepts and practices and sought to make them meaningful through engaged architectural practice. The book’s focus on practitioners offers insights into the many roles that converge to produce this emergent, critically important form of urban expertise. At once activists, scientists, and designers, the environmental architects profiled in Building Green act as key agents of urban change whose efforts in practice are shaped by a complex urban development economy, layered political power relations, and a calculus of when, and how, their expert skills might be operationalized in service of a global urban future

RA-PCR, a method for the generation of randomized promoter libraries

The purpose of this RFC is to provide instructions for the synthesis of promoters in mammalian cells that are active at a desired cellular condition (where a cellular condition is specified by the activity of a set of transcription factors of interest). The method generates a library of promoters putatively active under the desired condition. This RFC also provides instructions on how to screen the libraries generated by this method in order to obtain functional promoters. Description of promoters generated by this method can be found at http://2009.igem.org/Team:Heidelberg/Project_Synthetic_promoters

Gefäßversuch zur Wirkung von Biokohle-Substraten mit unterschiedlichen Kohlegehalten auf Eigenschaften ertragsschwacher Acker- und Kippböden der Lausitz

Mit dem vorliegenden Beitrag sollen die pflanzenbaulichen Effekte insbesondere die Düngewirkung der Biokohle-Substrate (BKS) auf ertragsschwache Böden aus der Lausitz aufgezeigt werden. In einem Versuch mit Mitscherlich-Gefäßen wurden einem Ackerboden (Z) (Bodenart Su3) und einem Kipprohboden (W) (Bodenart Sl2) stufenweise 30 bis 240 t TS ha-1 BKS mit einem Biokohle-Anteil von 15 (BKS15) bzw. 30 Vol.-% (BKS30) appliziert. Als Testkultur diente Knaulgras (Dactylis glomerata L.). Nach einer Versuchsdauer von einem Jahr wurden Bodenproben entnommen und auf ihre chemischen und physikalischen Eigenschaften untersucht. Der Einsatz der BKS führte teilweise zu einer Verbesserung des Wasser- und Nähr-stoffhaushaltes in Abhängigkeit von den Ausgangsbedingungen der verwendeten Böden

Cloning Standard for Mammalian BioBrick Parts and Devices

To introduce a common cloning standard for BioBrick parts that find application in mammalian cells

Möglichkeiten der bodenphysikalischen Verbesserung und pflanzenbaulichen Aufwertung von Böden durch den Einsatz des Humusersatzstoffes NOVIHUM®

Auf einer landwirtschaftlichen Rekultivie-rungsfläche des Braunkohletagebaus Welzow-Süd wurde ein Feldversuch zur Wirkung des Humusersatzstoffes (HES) NOVIHUM® auf die Bodenfruchtbarkeit, den Luft- und Wasserhaushalt sowie die Entwicklung der Ertragsfähigkeit eines Kipprohbodens durchgeführt. Dabei wurden Aufwandmengen von 7,5 bis 30 t NOVIHUM® ha-1 untersucht. Der mit dem HES behandelte Oberboden weist 16 Jahre nach Versuchsbeginn deutlich höhere Humusgehalte auf, als rein mineralisch gedüngter Boden. Zudem hat die Zugabe des HES zu einer signifikanten Verbesserung der nutzbaren Feldkapazität und damit zu einer besseren Wasserversorgung der Pflanzen geführt. Insgesamt betrachtet hat sich die NOVIHUM®-Anwendung nachhaltig positiv auf die Ertragsfähigkeit des Kipprohbodens ausgewirkt

Stereoselective synthesis of fluorinated galactopyranosides as potential molecular probes for galactophilic proteins : assessment of monofluorogalactoside–LecA interactions

The replacement of hydroxyl groups by fluorine atoms on hexopyranoside scaffolds may allow access to invaluable tools for studying various biochemical processes. As part of ongoing activities toward the preparation of fluorinated carbohydrates, a systematic investigation involving the synthesis and biological evaluation of a series of mono‐ and polyfluorinated galactopyranosides is described. Various monofluorogalactopyranosides, a trifluorinated, and a tetrafluorinated galactopyranoside have been prepared using a Chiron approach. Given the scarcity of these compounds in the literature, in addition to their synthesis, their biological profiles were evaluated. Firstly, the fluorinated compounds were investigated as antiproliferative agents using normal human and mouse cells in comparison with cancerous cells. Most of the fluorinated compounds showed no antiproliferative activity. Secondly, these carbohydrate probes were used as potential inhibitors of galactophilic lectins. The first transverse relaxation‐optimized spectroscopy (TROSY) NMR experiments were performed on these interactions, examining chemical shift perturbations of the backbone resonances of LecA, a virulence factor from Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Moreover, taking advantage of the fluorine atom, the 19F NMR resonances of the monofluorogalactopyranosides were directly monitored in the presence and absence of LecA to assess ligand binding. Lastly, these results were corroborated with the binding potencies of the monofluorinated galactopyranoside derivatives by isothermal titration calorimetry experiments. Analogues with fluorine atoms at C‐3 and C‐4 showed weaker affinities with LecA as compared to those with the fluorine atom at C‐2 or C‐6. This research has focused on the chemical synthesis of “drug‐like” low‐molecular‐weight inhibitors that circumvent drawbacks typically associated with natural oligosaccharides