Foamed in place ceramic refractory insulating material Patent

Characteristics of foamed-in-place ceramic refractory insulating material and method of fabricatio

Ecometrics for life cycle management: A conflict between sustainable development and family values?

Metrics are a prerequisite for the successful monitoring and management of progress toward goals. Within the context of sustainable development these "values” are stakeholder dependent with the interests of the individual, society, the environmental infrastructure and intergenerational liability differing significantly. These stakeholder priorities may also be mutually inconsistent or simultaneously unattainable. Therefore, a set of scale- and value-specific indicators will he required to represent the priorities of individuals, religious organizations, political and public interest groups, non-government organizations, firms and industry associations, as well as national and international institutions. Restricting the number of ecometrics, or creating aggregated sustainability indicators, risks disenfranchisement and ivalidation respectively. Over the past three decades a series ofmicroecometrics have been developed to account for the impact of human activity, technology or products over regional, national, and sub-continental scales. These include life cycle energy consumption, dematerialization, waste minimization, as well as design for environment and eco-efficiency indicators, the latter two combining technological or economic aspects respectively with environmental factors.Metrics which evaluate the impact of a service, or the utility provided by a product, are lacking. A series of global measures, or macroecometrics have also been defined and include the average annual temperature as well as atmospheric compositions and concentrations, sea level, and earth based resources such as topsoil quantities. The validity of microecometrics as measures of global phenomena can be established through life cycle impact assessments which evaluate the "system's” response to effects of products or services throughout their life cycle. However, the link between microecometrics and macroecometrics, their validity as indicators of sustainability, the subjectivity of sustainable developmentper se as a value, and the relationship of metrics and sustainable development with family values has not extensively been addressed. This paper summarizes recently proposed ecometrics, calls for the recognition of the subjectivity of indicators, the distinction between ecometrics used for internal corporate reporting and external decision making, and the establishment of a representative multistakeholder debat

Life cycle profit optimization a business opportunity

Life Cycle Profitability combines financial data, and forecasts, with market research to guide pricing decisions and to evaluate the cash flow consequences of goods and services. The ratio of direct and indirect costs, as well as the premium customers are willing to pay for "green” products, provide a quantitative means to identify business and environmental opportunities. Life Cycle Profitability is developed to fit into existing organizational structures permitting firms to protect asset value, reduce legal defense and liability costs, quantify make-or-buy decisions, and aid in ecodesign and new product introduction. It aims at the interface between accounting, legal, marketing, production and EHS divisions. This paper develops "Life Cycle Profitability” as a tool based on measurables which exist within organizations. In this sense, Life Cycle Profitability is an evolutionary means to conduct business practice under scenarios where envirotechnical imperatives compliment short term financial necessities and strategic planning initiatives. The author aims to demonstrate that Life Cycle Profitability is a more meaningful method, and indicator, than non-cost based ecometrics and can compliment the qualitative continuous improvement accounting methods advocated by EMS and ISO 14000 standards, as well as by the Integrated Product Policy initiativ

Benzodiazepines, the Story of the Antagonist Flumazenil and of the Partial Agonist Bretazenil

The story of flumazenil and bretazenil is a typical example of a serendipitious drug discovery. In 1979 benzodiazepine antagonists were unknown. No one was looking for them, but they were discovered nevertheless. Ro 15-1788 was selected for clinical trial. Today 'this compound has the generic name flumazenil, the trade name Anexate, and is registered in 70 countries. It is the first specific benzodiazepine receptor antagonist for clinical use. Minor structural modifications of benzodiazepine antagonists led to partial agonists, compounds with powerful anxiolytic and anticonvulsant properties. Compared with full agonists they have markedly reduced sedative and alcohol-potentiating effects. Bretazenil is in clinical trial; it exhibits promising anxiolytic activity especially in patients with panic attacks. In open clinical studies it has shown remarkable antipsychotic activity. Structure-activity relationships and spin-offs are discussed

The dynamic organization of fungal acetyl-CoA carboxylase

Acetyl-CoA carboxylases (ACCs) catalyse the committed step in fatty-acid biosynthesis: the ATP-dependent carboxylation of acetyl-CoA to malonyl-CoA. They are important regulatory hubs for metabolic control and relevant drug targets for the treatment of the metabolic syndrome and cancer. Eukaryotic ACCs are single-chain multienzymes characterized by a large, non-catalytic central domain (CD), whose role in ACC regulation remains poorly characterized. Here we report the crystal structure of the yeast ACC CD, revealing a unique four-domain organization. A regulatory loop, which is phosphorylated at the key functional phosphorylation site of fungal ACC, wedges into a crevice between two domains of CD. Combining the yeast CD structure with intermediate and low-resolution data of larger fragments up to intact ACCs provides a comprehensive characterization of the dynamic fungal ACC architecture. In contrast to related carboxylases, large-scale conformational changes are required for substrate turnover, and are mediated by the CD under phosphorylation control