Sustainable Development in the New Economy: Risk, Vulnerability, and Eco-Social Justice

Sustainable development continues to be a key concept for social scientists and planners concerned with eco-friendly development. We argue that sustainable development should be conceptualized as the progressive development of social processes that promote reflexive, radical democracy and the equitable sharing of ecological, economic and social costs and benefits, rather than as a technocratic solution, end-state or equilibrium. In the context of the New Economy and the increasing dominance of internet-based information, new kinds of risk are produced. In our view, information and communication technologies (ICT) and growing gaps in terms of digital access, application, and control are significant new generators of risk for digitally disenfranchised populations. This includes the risks associated with accessing information that is not well suited to local circumstances, sensibilities and development aspirations. The digital divide is a source of vulnerabilities that are distributed unevenly and an important axis of inequality that restructures social relations at the individual, household, community, and societal levels. A more insightful sociology of risk is required to support the development of a more adequate sociology of development and more serviceable approaches to sustainability. Sustainable development must address the construction and distribution of risk, and deal with both new and old sources of inequality

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead

Sustainable Development in the New Economy: Risk, Vulnerability and Eco-Social Justice

Sustainable development continues to be a key concept for social scientists and planners concerned with eco-friendly development. We argue that sustainable development should be conceptualized as the progressive development of social processes that promote reflexive, radical democracy and the equitable sharing of ecological, economic and social costs and benefits, rather than as a technocratic solution, end-state or equilibrium. In the context of the New Economy and the increasing dominance of internet-based information, new kinds of risk are produced. In our view, information and communication technologies (ICT) and growing gaps in terms of digital access, application, and control are significant new generators of risk for digitally disenfranchised populations. This includes the risks associated with accessing information that is not well suited to local circumstances, sensibilities and development aspirations. The digital divide is a source of vulnerabilities that are distributed unevenly and an important axis of inequality that restructures social relations at the individual, household, community, and societal levels. A more insightful sociology of risk is required to support the development of a more adequate sociology of development and more serviceable approaches to sustainability. Sustainable development must address the construction and distribution of risk, and deal with both new and old sources of inequality

BEYOND BEEF AND BARLEY: ORGANIZATIONAL INNOVATION AND SOCIAL FACTORS IN FARMING DIVERSIFICATION AND SUSTAINABILITY

Institutional and Behavioral Economics,