Reconsidering the Relationship between the State, Donors, and NGOs in Bangladesh

The growth in size and significance of NGOs and particularly of Grameen Bank and the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC) in Bangladesh challenges the idealtypical relationship between the state, donors and NGOs. Such an ideal envisions a clear demarcation of roles in which NGOs compete with other NGOs for resources from the state and/or donors and one in which NGO activities and programmes are regulated or held accountable by their respective funding sources. The emergence of large multitasking NGOs in a relatively small and weak state such as Bangladesh belies this ideal. Grameen and BRAC compete with government ministries for donor funding; statal institutions designed to regulate the activities of such NGOs are functionally ineffective; and international donors face insuperable hurdles in assessing accountability.

Templated deprotonative metalation of polyaryl systems : facile access to simple, previously inaccessible multi-iodoarenes

The development of new methodologies to affect non-ortho functionalization of arenes has emerged as a globally important arena for research, which is key to both fundamental studies and applied technologies. Here, a range of simple arene feedstocks (namely, biphenyl, meta-terphenyl, para-terphenyl, 1,3,5-triphenylbenzene and biphenylene) are transformed to hitherto unobtainable multi-iodoarenes via a s-block metal sodium magnesiate templated deprotonative approach. These iodoarenes have potential to be used in a whole host of high impact transformations, as precursors to key materials in the pharmaceutical, molecular electronic and nanomaterials industries. Proving the concept, we have transformed biphenyl to 3,5-bis(N-carbazolyl)-1,1’-biphenyl, a novel isomer of 4,4’-bis(N-carbazolyl)-1,1’-biphenyl (CPB) which is currently widely employed as a host material for organic light-emitting diodes, OLEDs

Surrogate: A Body-Dexterous Mobile Manipulation Robot with a Tracked Base

Robotics platforms in accordance with various embodiments of the invention can be utilized to implement highly dexterous robots capable of whole body motion. Robotics platforms in accordance with one embodiment of the invention include: a memory containing a whole body motion application; a spine, where the spine has seven degrees of freedom and comprises a spine actuator and three spine elbow joints that each include two spine joint actuators; at least one limb, where the at least one limb comprises a limb actuator and three limb elbow joints that each include two limb joint actuators; a tracked base; a connecting structure that connects the at least one limb to the spine; a second connecting structure that connects the spine to the tracked base; wherein the processor is configured by the whole body motion application to move the at least one limb and the spine to perform whole body motion

Determining the Quantitative Principles of T Cell Response to Antigenic Disparity in Stem Cell Transplantation

Alloreactivity compromising clinical outcomes in stem cell transplantation is observed despite HLA matching of donors and recipients. This has its origin in the variation between the exomes of the two, which provides the basis for minor histocompatibility antigens (mHA). The mHA presented on the HLA class I and II molecules and the ensuing T cell response to these antigens results in graft vs. host disease. In this paper, results of a whole exome sequencing study are presented, with resulting alloreactive polymorphic peptides and their HLA class I and HLA class II (DRB1) binding affinity quantified. Large libraries of potentially alloreactive recipient peptides binding both sets of molecules were identified, with HLA-DRB1 generally presenting a greater number of peptides. These results are used to develop a quantitative framework to understand the immunobiology of transplantation. A tensor-based approach is used to derive the equations needed to determine the alloreactive donor T cell response from the mHA-HLA binding affinity and protein expression data. This approach may be used in future studies to simulate the magnitude of expected donor T cell response and determine the risk for alloreactive complications in HLA matched or mismatched hematopoietic cell and solid organ transplantation