Sustainability principles: a review and directions

In 1987 the publication of Our Common Future by the United Nations’ World Commission on Environment and Development proposed the concept of sustainable development as an ideal for the global economy and corporations. In seeking sustainable economic growth and sustainability at the enterprise level, a number of “sustainability principles” or codes of conduct emerged. A great deal of intellectual effort, managerial resources, and publicity are devoted to these principles. While these principles have created some dialogue, and helped to lead some organizations in the direction of sustainability, their practical effectiveness remains uncertain. This paper provides an overview of sustainability principles within the context of evolving literature on sustainable development. It describes their purpose and content, the rationale for their creation, and who adopts them. We explore what functions these principles serve, and how they can be made more useful and compelling for businesses, governments, non-profit organizations, investors, and concerned people in general

Effect of global warming on monsoon:With reference to Chhattisgarh State

Global warming is increasing the average temperatures of the earth. A rise in earth’s temperatures can in turn root to other alternation of ecology including sea level and modifying the quantities and patterns of rain fall. This modification may boost the occurrence and concentration of severe climate events such as floods famines, heat waves tornados and twisters. Scientists all over the world are making prediction about the ill effect of global warming and connecting some of the events that have taken place in the Past few decades as an alarm of global warming. The Intergovernmental panel on climate change (IPCC) conclusion that increasing greenhouse gases concentration resulting from human activities such as fossils fuel burning and deforestation are responsible for most of the observed temperature increase since the middle of 20th century. As of June 2012, only the United State historically the world’s largest emitter of green house gases which is main cause of global warming has refused to rectify the KYOTO protocol treaty. In Chhattisgarh state gradual decrease in rain fall has been seen since last 50 years due to global warming. During the last 5 decades the average rainfall in Chhattisgarh state has fallen down from 1301 millimeter to 1150 millimeter .In Chhattisgarh state the arrival of monsoon every year has been noted the 2nd week of June and this year monsoon arrived on 5th June, 2012, this monsoon word is derived from Arabic word mousim. Recently the scientists have prepared a Visual ALTAS to know where the rain falls have occurred. This visual atlas has been prepared by international team led by National University of Australia

Efficient and Fair Multiparty Protocols using Blockchain and Trusted Hardware

In ACM CCS\u2717, Choudhuri et al. designed two fair public-ledger-based multi-party protocols (in the malicious model with dishonest majority) for computing an arbitrary function $f$. One of their protocols is based on a trusted hardware enclave $G$ (which can be implemented using Intel SGX-hardware) and a public ledger (which can be implemented using a blockchain platform, such as Ethereum). Subsequently, in NDSS\u2719, a stateless version of the protocol was published. This is the first time, (a certain definition of) fairness -- that guarantees either all parties learn the final output or nobody does -- is achieved without any monetary or computational penalties. However, these protocols are fair, if the underlying core MPC component guarantees both privacy and correctness. While privacy is easy to achieve (using a secret sharing scheme), correctness requires expensive operations (such as ZK proofs and commitment schemes). We improve on this work in three different directions: attack, design and performance. Our first major contribution is building practical attacks that demonstrate: if correctness is not satisfied then the fairness property of the aforementioned protocols collapse. Next, we design two new protocols -- stateful and stateless -- based on public ledger and trusted hardware that are: resistant against the aforementioned attacks, and made several orders of magnitude more efficient (related to both time and memory) than the existing ones by eliminating ZK proofs and commitment schemes in the design. Last but not the least, we implemented the core MPC part of our protocols using the SPDZ-2 framework to demonstrate the feasibility of its practical implementation

Wellbeing‐oriented organizations: Connecting human flourishing with ecological regeneration

Wellbeing is an organizing principle that ensures simultaneous flourishing of people and nature. It binds together an ethic of nature and ethics of people/community into a practical framework for creating integrated socio-ecological wellbeing. This paper discusses the theoretical and practical implications of this position and presents illustrative cases of innovative wellbeing-oriented organizations, both business and social. The paper explains why we need wellbeing organizations anchored in the wellbeing economy movement. A concept of resilient wellbeing organization is presented and illustrated with working models of existing organizations attempting to live up to the wellbeing values and practices. The paper ends with some thought on regulatory enabling of wellbeing organizations and makes practical implications for policy makers and managers, and suggestions for further research

Sustainable enterprises: Addressing management challenges in the 21st Century

Our world in the 21st Century is one of a “crisis society”. That is, we have reached a state where most of our major systems – economic, environmental, social – in are crisis and in need of restructuring. We can see this play out in the global financial, climate, social and identity crises we face. The underlying causes of these crises are our current systems of production and consumption. We suggest the solution lies in moving beyond addressing the crises individually and symptomatically towards developing sustainable enterprises, sustainable communities and sustainable lifestyles. From these perspectives, we can begin understand better the interrelationships creating this crisis society and more holistically address and repair the damage we done to the Earth and ourselves. We conclude by identifying areas of future research needed to facilitate this movement towards a sustainable society

A genome–wide screen to identify genes controlling the rate of entry into mitosis in fission yeast

We have carried out a haploinsufficiency (HI) screen in fission yeast using heterozygous deletion diploid mutants of a genome-wide set of cell cycle genes to identify genes encoding products whose level determines the rate of progression through the cell cycle. Cell size at division was used as a measure of advancement or delay of the G2-M transition of rod-shaped fission yeast cells. We found that 13 mutants were significantly longer or shorter (greater than 10%) than control cells at cell division. These included mutants of the cdc2, cdc25, wee1 and pom1 genes, which have previously been shown to play a role in the timing of entry into mitosis, and which validate this approach. Seven of these genes are involved in regulation of the G2-M transition, 5 for nuclear transport and one for nucleotide metabolism. In addition we identified 4 more genes that were 8–10% longer or shorter than the control that also had roles in regulation of the G2-M transition or in nuclear transport. The genes identified here are all conserved in human cells, suggesting that this dataset will be useful as a basis for further studies to identify ratelimiting steps for progression through the cell cycle in other eukaryotes

BacMap: an interactive picture atlas of annotated bacterial genomes

BacMap is an interactive visual database containing fully labeled, zoomable and searchable chromosome maps from more than 170 bacterial (archaebacterial and eubacterial) species. It uses a recently developed visualization tool (CGView) to generate high-resolution circular genome maps from sequence feature information. Each map includes an interface that allows the image to be expanded and rotated. In the default view, identified genes are drawn to scale and colored according to coding directions. When a region of interest is expanded, gene labels are displayed. Each label is hyperlinked to a custom ‘gene card’ which provides several fields of information concerning the corresponding DNA and protein sequences. Each genome map is searchable via a local BLAST search and a gene name/synonym search. BacMap is freely available at http://wishart.biology.ualberta.ca/BacMap/

BASys: a web server for automated bacterial genome annotation

BASys (Bacterial Annotation System) is a web server that supports automated, in-depth annotation of bacterial genomic (chromosomal and plasmid) sequences. It accepts raw DNA sequence data and an optional list of gene identification information and provides extensive textual annotation and hyperlinked image output. BASys uses >30 programs to determine ∼60 annotation subfields for each gene, including gene/protein name, GO function, COG function, possible paralogues and orthologues, molecular weight, isoelectric point, operon structure, subcellular localization, signal peptides, transmembrane regions, secondary structure, 3D structure, reactions and pathways. The depth and detail of a BASys annotation matches or exceeds that found in a standard SwissProt entry. BASys also generates colorful, clickable and fully zoomable maps of each query chromosome to permit rapid navigation and detailed visual analysis of all resulting gene annotations. The textual annotations and images that are provided by BASys can be generated in ∼24 h for an average bacterial chromosome (5 Mb). BASys annotations may be viewed and downloaded anonymously or through a password protected access system. The BASys server and databases can also be downloaded and run locally. BASys is accessible at

DrugBank: a comprehensive resource for in silico drug discovery and exploration

DrugBank is a unique bioinformatics/cheminformatics resource that combines detailed drug (i.e. chemical) data with comprehensive drug target (i.e. protein) information. The database contains >4100 drug entries including >800 FDA approved small molecule and biotech drugs as well as >3200 experimental drugs. Additionally, >14 000 protein or drug target sequences are linked to these drug entries. Each DrugCard entry contains >80 data fields with half of the information being devoted to drug/chemical data and the other half devoted to drug target or protein data. Many data fields are hyperlinked to other databases (KEGG, PubChem, ChEBI, PDB, Swiss-Prot and GenBank) and a variety of structure viewing applets. The database is fully searchable supporting extensive text, sequence, chemical structure and relational query searches. Potential applications of DrugBank include in silico drug target discovery, drug design, drug docking or screening, drug metabolism prediction, drug interaction prediction and general pharmaceutical education. DrugBank is available at

Genomic sequence and activity of KS10, a transposable phage of the Burkholderia cepacia complex

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The <it>Burkholderia cepacia </it>complex (BCC) is a versatile group of Gram negative organisms that can be found throughout the environment in sources such as soil, water, and plants. While BCC bacteria can be involved in beneficial interactions with plants, they are also considered opportunistic pathogens, specifically in patients with cystic fibrosis and chronic granulomatous disease. These organisms also exhibit resistance to many antibiotics, making conventional treatment often unsuccessful. KS10 was isolated as a prophage of <it>B. cenocepacia </it>K56-2, a clinically relevant strain of the BCC. Our objective was to sequence the genome of this phage and also determine if this prophage encoded any virulence determinants.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>KS10 is a 37,635 base pairs (bp) transposable phage of the opportunistic pathogen <it>Burkholderia cenocepacia</it>. Genome sequence analysis and annotation of this phage reveals that KS10 shows the closest sequence homology to Mu and BcepMu. KS10 was found to be a prophage in three different strains of <it>B. cenocepacia</it>, including strains K56-2, J2315, and C5424, and seven tested clinical isolates of <it>B. cenocepacia</it>, but no other BCC species. A survey of 23 strains and 20 clinical isolates of the BCC revealed that KS10 is able to form plaques on lawns of <it>B. ambifaria </it>LMG 19467, <it>B. cenocepacia </it>PC184, and <it>B. stabilis </it>LMG 18870.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>KS10 is a novel phage with a genomic organization that differs from most phages in that its capsid genes are not aligned into one module but rather separated by approximately 11 kb, giving evidence of one or more prior genetic rearrangements. There were no potential virulence factors identified in KS10, though many hypothetical proteins were identified with no known function.</p