A neuroscientist's guide to lipidomics

Nerve cells mould the lipid fabric of their membranes to ease vesicle fusion, regulate ion fluxes and create specialized microenvironments that contribute to cellular communication. The chemical diversity of membrane lipids controls protein traffic, facilitates recognition between cells and leads to the production of hundreds of molecules that carry information both within and across cells. With so many roles, it is no wonder that lipids make up half of the human brain in dry weight. The objective of neural lipidomics is to understand how these molecules work together; this difficult task will greatly benefit from technical advances that might enable the testing of emerging hypotheses

The institutional and economic foundations of regional proto-federations

In the present paper we analyse the ancient Greek regional proto-federations of free-democratic city-states. We examine their political institutions and policies like common defence, representative federal bodies such as popular assemblies, parliament, state and regional organization, federal finance ministers as well as their economic institutions: common currency, federal budget and federal revenues. We address in more detail the case of the Aetolian League, or Federation, comparing it with some of today's federal states and the European Union and conclude that in some respects, the proto-federation was more advanced than the EU, and thus can serve as a benchmark in addressing current European integration issues