Ecologies of green finance: Green sukuk and development of green Islamic finance in Malaysia

In this paper, we analyse the recent development of green sukuk (often referred to as an Islamic green bond) since its issuance in Malaysia in 2017, and critically evaluate whether it addresses some of the existing contradictions of green finance. Using a financial ecologies approach, we examine Malaysia's configuration of green sukuk as drawing from the existing international green bond regime, partnership with the World Bank, and Malaysia's own experience and expertise in Islamic finance, with the objective of building Kuala Lumpur's competitiveness as a global Islamic financial centre. Through documents analysis and interviews with key market actors in Kuala Lumpur and other financial centres, our findings point to the emergent international adoption of green sukuk. While this achieves Malaysia's state-building objectives, specifically through expanding Malaysia's sukuk market and advancing its status as a frontier of Islamic financial innovations, the potential for improving the current green bond regime has been more doubtful. A key limitation is the incorporation of existing Green Bond Principles, which enables not only green sukuk's international acceptance but also renders it susceptible to greenwashing. By examining the intersection of different ecologies of green and Islamic finance, we reveal the contradictions and limitations of green sukuk in contributing to Malaysian state-building and climate action

Psychometric properties of the goniometric assessment of the Dart Thrower’s Motion

Introduction: The Dart Thrower’s Motion is an important movement for hand function. A goniometric clinical measure on Dart Thrower’s Motion has been developed. However, its validity and reliability in people with wrist and hand injury is not known. This study investigated the inter-rater and test–retest reliability and criterion validity of the Dart Thrower’s Motion measure. Methods: A cross-sectional design was used. Thirty-five participants with hand or wrist injury completed the goniometric assessment of the Dart Thrower’s Motion and goniometric wrist active range of motion assessment three times in a hand clinic. Two assessors and a reader to record the results were involved. Participants also completed the patient-rated wrist and hand evaluation. Results: The intraclass correlation coefficients were 0.70–0.83 and 0.91–0.92, respectively for inter-rater and test–retest reliability in the injured hands indicated moderate to high reliability. The Pearson correlation coefficients between the Dart Thrower’s Motion measure and wrist active range of motion assessment ranged from 0.45 to 0.73, and with patient-rated wrist and hand evaluation ranged from −0.36 to −0.53. The results indicate that goniometric assessment of the Dart Thrower’s Motion has acceptable criterion validity. Conclusion: The goniometric assessment of Dart Thrower’s Motion can be considered a valid and reliable clinical measure for measuring the impact of the injury to one’s hand and wrist range of motion and function. It shows its clinical utility in people with hand and wrist injury. It is hoped this simple measure can be eventually implemented in clinical settings, allowing for an increased understanding of an individual’s functional use of the hand and wrist

Spreading of Heterochromatin Is Limited to Specific Families of Maize Retrotransposons

Steven R. Eichten is with University of Minnesota, Nathanael A. Ellis is with University of Georgia, Irina Makarevitch is with Hamline University, Cheng-Ting Yeh is with Iowa State University, Jonathan I. Gent is with University of Georgia, Lin Guo is with University of Georgia, Karen M. McGinnis is with Florida State University, Xiaoyu Zhang is with University of Georgia, Patrick S. Schnable is with Iowa State University, Matthew W. Vaughn is with UT Austin, R. Kelly Dawe is with University of Georgia, Nathan M. Springer is with University of Minnesota.Transposable elements (TEs) have the potential to act as controlling elements to influence the expression of genes and are often subject to heterochromatic silencing. The current paradigm suggests that heterochromatic silencing can spread beyond the borders of TEs and influence the chromatin state of neighboring low-copy sequences. This would allow TEs to condition obligatory or facilitated epialleles and act as controlling elements. The maize genome contains numerous families of class I TEs (retrotransposons) that are present in moderate to high copy numbers, and many are found in regions near genes, which provides an opportunity to test whether the spreading of heterochromatin from retrotransposons is prevalent. We have investigated the extent of heterochromatin spreading into DNA flanking each family of retrotransposons by profiling DNA methylation and di-methylation of lysine 9 of histone 3 (H3K9me2) in low-copy regions of the maize genome. The effects of different retrotransposon families on local chromatin are highly variable. Some retrotransposon families exhibit enrichment of heterochromatic marks within 800–1,200 base pairs of insertion sites, while other families exhibit very little evidence for the spreading of heterochromatic marks. The analysis of chromatin state in genotypes that lack specific insertions suggests that the heterochromatin in low-copy DNA flanking retrotransposons often results from the spreading of silencing marks rather than insertion-site preferences. Genes located near TEs that exhibit spreading of heterochromatin tend to be expressed at lower levels than other genes. Our findings suggest that a subset of retrotransposon families may act as controlling elements influencing neighboring sequences, while the majority of retrotransposons have little effect on flanking sequences.The Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) at the University of Texas at Austin provided HPC and storage resources. The Minnesota Supercomputing Institute and Georgia Advanced Computing Resource Center provided access to computational resources and software for data analyses. The research was supported by grants from the National Science Foundation (DBI-0607123 and IOS-0922095). JIG is funded by an NIH fellowship (NIGMS F32GM095223). This work was created in part using resources or cyberinfrastructure provided by iPlant Collaborative. The iPlant Collaborative is funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation (#DBI-0735191) (www.iplantcollaborative.org). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC

p53 and metabolism

Although metabolic alterations have been observed in cancer for almost a century, only recently have the mechanisms underlying these changes been identified and the importance of metabolic transformation realized. p53 has been shown to respond to metabolic changes and to influence metabolic pathways through several mechanisms. The contributions of these activities to tumour suppression are complex and potentially rather surprising: some reflect the function of basal p53 levels that do not require overt activation and others might even promote, rather than inhibit, tumour progression