Global risks of intensive animal farming and the wildlife trade

This commentary discusses two issues highlighted by Wiebers & Feigin in the context of the current and future global health crisis: the wildlife trade and factory farming. Both are instances of globalized animal cruelty – in China as well as worldwide -- that require global solutions for the well-being of both humans and nonhumans

TRANSLATION AS A CATALYST IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF MODERN CHINESE LEGAL LANGUAGE

This paper focuses translation of legal language and the development of modern Chinese legal language as a translated legal language. It first describes the historical contexts in which China underwent enormous and unprecedented social and political changes including changes to law in the late 1800s and early 1900s. It then discusses how translation played an important catalyst role in introducing Western law, legal practices, legal concepts and terminology in the emerging modern Chinese legal language as we know it today, and in the process, lent a helping hand in negotiating China’s transition to modernity through translation and creating a new legal language and legal system. It also considers the issues in translingual and cross-cultural communication and understanding translated Chinese legal language. &nbsp

LSE Festival 2021: to avoid more pandemics, we need to stop eating wild and factory-farmed animals

Eating wild and intensively-farmed animals is a recipe for more pandemics. Deborah Cao (Griffith University, Australia) says factory farming and the consumption of wild animals needs to end, and China – and the rest of the world – should embrace its long culinary tradition of vegetarianism

The role of alcohol response phenotypes in the risk for alcohol use disorder

Heavy alcohol use is pervasive and one of our most significant global health burdens. Early theories posited that certain alcohol response phenotypes, notably low sensitivity to alcohol (‘low-level response’) imparts risk for alcohol use disorder (AUD). However, other theories, and newer measures of subjective alcohol responses, have challenged that contention and argued that high sensitivity to some alcohol effects are equally important for AUD risk. This study presents results of a unique longitudinal study in 294 young adult non-dependent drinkers examined with alcohol and placebo testing in the laboratory at initial enrolment and repeated 5 years later, with regular follow-up intervals assessing AUD (trial registration: http://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT00961792). Findings showed that alcohol sedation was negatively correlated with stimulation across the breath alcohol curve and at initial and re-examination testing. A higher rather than lower alcohol response phenotype was predictive of future AUD. The findings underscore a new understanding of factors increasing vulnerability to AUD

Leadership and Race: How to Develop and Support Leadership that Contributes to Racial Justice

This report explores the ways in which our current thinking about leadership often contributes to producing and maintaining racialized dynamics, and identifies a set of core competencies associated with racial justice leadership. Recommendations are included for helping leadership programs develop and support leadership that furthers racial justice in organizations, communities, and the broader society

On the challenges of legal translation

This short commentary focuses on language and law and legal translation. It stresses the importance of language used in legal texts in the legal context and the complexities when more than one language is involved in interlingual and cross-cultural communication in law. There are age old challenges in legal translation as well as new ones in the digital age with the increasing use of machine translation systems. It is imperative today that human legal translators are familiar with machine translation tools and aware of how computer aided translation technologies process information and their strengths and weaknesses. To be able to effectively use machine translation systems should become a compulsory part of the digital literacy and skill sets of legal translators in the twenty-first century.

Translating solid state organic synthesis from a mixer mill to a continuous twin screw extruder

YesA study on the translation of a solid-state synthetic reaction from a mechanochemical mixer-mill to a continuous twin-screw extruder is discussed herein. The study highlights some considerations to be made and parameters to be tested in the context of a model fluorination reaction, which is the first organic fluorination to be attempted using extrusion. Upon optimization, which features the first use of grinding auxiliary solids to enable effective synthetic extrusion, the difluorination reaction was successfully translated to the extruder, leading to a 100-fold improvement in Space Time Yield (STY); 29 kg m−3 day−1 in a mixer mill to 3395 kg m−3 day−1 in a twin screw extruder.D. L. B is grateful to the EPSRC for a First Grant (D. L. B. EP/P002951/1), CRD for a studentship award to J. L. H., Queen’s University Belfast for a Visiting Research Fellowship and the School of Chemistry at Cardiff University for generous support. S. L. J. is grateful to EPSRC for support (EP/L019655/1)

Structure and electron-transfer pathway of the human methionine sulfoxide reductase MsrB3

Introduction: The post-translational oxidation of methionine to methionine sulfoxide is a reversible process, enabling repair of oxidative damage to proteins and the use of sulfoxidation as a regulatory switch. Methionine sulfoxide reductases catalyze the stereospecific reduction of methionine sulfoxide. One of the mammalian methionine sulfoxide reductases, MsrB3, has a signal sequence for entry into the endoplasmic reticulum (ER). In the ER, MsrB3 is expected to encounter a distinct redox environment compared to its paralogs in the cytosol, nucleus, and mitochondria. Aims: We sought to determine the location and arrangement of MsrB3 redox-active cysteines, which may couple MsrB3 activity to other redox events in the ER. Results: We determined the human MsrB3 structure using X-ray crystallography. The structure revealed that a disulfide bond near the protein amino terminus is distant in space from the active site. Nevertheless, biochemical assays showed that these amino-terminal cysteines are oxidized by the MsrB3 active site after its reaction with methionine sulfoxide. Innovation: This study reveals a mechanism to shuttle oxidizing equivalents from the primary MsrB3 active site toward the enzyme surface, where they would be available for further dithiol-disulfide exchange reactions. Conclusion: Conformational changes must occur during the MsrB3 catalytic cycle to transfer oxidizing equivalents from the active site to the amino-terminal redox-active disulfide. The accessibility of this exposed disulfide may help couple MsrB3 activity to other dithiol/disulfide redox events in the secretory pathway