Toward establishing a universal basic health norm.

Vast improvements in human health have been made during the past century. Indeed, gains in increased life expectancy and reduced physical impediments for much of the population were greater than in any previous century. Yet the gains were not uniform across the world or even within individual countries. The variations in health status among people cannot for the most part be explained through genetic differences. Instead, in most instances the variations in the last century and at the turn of the current century correspond to the variations in the distribution of control over material resources.</jats:p

A comparative analysis of 21 literature search engines

With increasing number of bibliographic software, scientists and health professionals either make a subjective choice of tool(s) that could suit their needs or face a challenge of analyzing multiple features of a plethora of search programs. There is an urgent need for a thorough comparative analysis of the available bio-literature scanning tools, from the user&#x2019;s perspective. We report results of the first time semi-quantitative comparison of 21 programs, which can search published (partial or full text) documents in life science areas. The observations can assist life science researchers and medical professionals to make an informed selection among the programs, depending on their search objectives. &#xd;&#xa;Some of the important findings are: &#xd;&#xa;1. Most of the hits obtained from Scopus, ReleMed, EBImed, CiteXplore, and HighWire Press were usually relevant (i.e. these tools show a better precision than other tools). &#xd;&#xa;2. But a very high number of relevant citations were retrieved by HighWire Press, Google Scholar, CiteXplore and Pubmed Central (they had better recall). &#xd;&#xa;3. HWP and CiteXplore seemed to have a good balance of precision and recall efficiencies. &#xd;&#xa;4. PubMed Central, PubMed and Scopus provided the most useful query systems. &#xd;&#xa;5. GoPubMed, BioAsk, EBIMed, ClusterMed could be more useful among the tools that can automatically process the retrieved citations for further scanning of bio-entities such as proteins, diseases, tissues, molecular interactions, etc. &#xd;&#xa;The authors suggest the use of PubMed, Scopus, Google Scholar and HighWire Press - for better coverage, and GoPubMed - to view the hits categorized based on the MeSH and gene ontology terms. The article is relavant to all life science subjects.&#xd;&#xa

Cost of doing a research: comparing participatory and conventional silviculture research in Nepal

Participatory forestry known as community forestry is now widely adopted as a means to develop sustainable rural livelihoods. It is focused on forest management and improved access to multiple forest products. The diverse needs of communities living in different climatic and ecological zones and under different socio-economic conditions have imposed a pattern of a multitude of localized forestry research studies in Nepal. The increasing demand for forestry products can only be met through the development, adoption and implementation of innovative technologies in managing forest resources. Thus, forestry research in Nepal has the responsibility for providing useful and updated information for the management of declining forest resources both to local users and to centrally located policy makers. The traditional research has largely failed to provide this information and respond to the challenges of sustainable forestry development in Nepal and has largely been constrained with the lack of financial resources. The Department of Forest Research and Survey under the Ministry of Forest and Soil Conservation has initiated participatory research approach in mid 90's with a view to develop methodologies suitable to address multiple demands of people living in heterogeneous conditions. The vision is of an effective and powerful partnership of civil and government stakeholders agreeing a research programme, providing resources, executing and evaluating it continuously and effectively. The paper presents the costs evaluation of two research sites on forest silviculture and management for a period of 6 years from two research sites. The first study is a conventional silviculture research established by the department seeking appropriate management options for Sal (Shorea robusta) forest. Similarly, the focus of the second plot is to explore the management potential of Sal forests in the mid hills of Nepal. The second research is a participatory carried out in partnerships with a forest user group in a community forests. The paper analyses nature of the costs, magnitude, structure, and temporal behaviors of the costs at various stages of research planning and management process. In addition, nature and share of these costs among the department and the participant forest users group is compared. There is considerable variation in the structure and magnitude of the costs in participatory and conventional research. The result clearly provides evidences that participatory research is significantly cheaper compared to conventional forestry research. The research establishment, protection and maintenance costs are drastically lower in participatory research. The information provides evidences for research manager to justify its existence by providing the results and answers required by its clients in the fight against poverty, forest degradation and environmental deterioration. The cost evaluation and adoption of participatory research can justify the use of scarce resources and demonstrate researchers ability to provide the information needed by clients and make the research institution effective and functional

Sptlc1 is essential for myeloid differentiation and hematopoietic homeostasis

Serine palmitoyltransferase (SPT) long-chain base subunit 1 (SPTLC1) is 1 of the 2 main catalytic subunits of the SPT complex, which catalyzes the first and rate-limiting step of sphingolipid biosynthesis. Here, we show that Sptlc1 deletion in adult bone marrow (BM) cells results in defective myeloid differentiation. In chimeric mice from noncompetitive BM transplant assays, there was an expansion of the Lin- c-Kit+ Sca-1+ compartment due to increased multipotent progenitor production, but myeloid differentiation was severely compromised. We also show that defective biogenesis of sphingolipids in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) leads to ER stress that affects myeloid differentiation. Furthermore, we demonstrate that transient accumulation of fatty acid, a substrate for sphingolipid biosynthesis, could be partially responsible for the ER stress. Independently, we find that ER stress in general, such as that induced by the chemical thapsigargin or the fatty acid palmitic acid, compromises myeloid differentiation in culture. These results identify perturbed sphingolipid metabolism as a source of ER stress, which may produce diverse pathological effects related to differential cell-type sensitivity

Type IIA Orientifold Limit of M-Theory on Compact Joyce 8-Manifold of Spin(7)-Holonomy

We show that M-theory compactified on a compact Joyce 8-manifold of $Spin(7)$-holonomy, which yields an effective theory in $D = 3$ with $\N$ = 1 supersymmetry, admits at some special points in it moduli space a description in terms of type IIA theory on an orientifold of compact Joyce 7-manifold of $G_2$-holonomy. We find the evidence in favour of this duality by computing the massless spectra on both M-thory side and type IIA side. For the latter, we compute the massless spectra by going to the orbifold limit of the Joyce 7-manifold.Comment: 26 pages, 2 eps figures, Latex file, two references and one footnote added, corrected some typo

Kahler Independence of the G2-MSSM

The G2-MSSM is a model of particle physics coupled to moduli fields with interesting phenomenology both for colliders and astrophysical experiments. In this paper we consider a more general model - whose moduli Kahler potential is a completely arbitrary G2-holonomy Kahler potential and whose matter Kahler potential is also more general. We prove that the vacuum structure and spectrum of BSM particles is largely unchanged in this much more general class of theories. In particular, gaugino masses are still supressed relative to the gravitino mass and moduli masses. We also consider the effects of higher order corrections to the matter Kahler potential and find a connection between the nature of the LSP and flavor effects.Comment: Final version, matches the version published in JHE

The Supreme Court and the 117th Congress

If the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s successor is confirmed before the 2020 presidential election or in the post-election lame-duck period, and if Democrats come to have unified control of government on January 20, 2021, how can they respond legislatively to the Court’s new 6-3 conservative ideological balance? This Essay frames a hypothetical 117th Congress’s options, discusses its four simplest legislative responses—expand the Court, limit its certiorari discretion, restrict its jurisdiction, or reroute its jurisdiction—and offers model statutory language for enacting those responses