An Institutional Approach to River Basin Management : Conflict Resolution in the U. S. and South Korea

We juxtapose river basin management practices in both the U.S. and South Korea to learn how multi-stakeholder conflicts are resolved under varying policy contexts. The cross-cultural comparison likewise enables an evaluation of conflict resolution as a means for producing socio-politically acceptable, economically sound, technologically feasible and environmentally viable delivery of safe drinking water. It is argued that conflict resolution enhances opportunities to achieve sustainability in river basin management despite very different policy and cultural circumstances. Two U.S. cases reviewed: the Delaware River Basin Commission (established in 1961) and the Susquehanna River Basin Commission (established in 1973). The two South Korean river basin cases under review are the Han and Nakdong Rivers

A blood atlas of COVID-19 defines hallmarks of disease severity and specificity.

Treatment of severe COVID-19 is currently limited by clinical heterogeneity and incomplete description of specific immune biomarkers. We present here a comprehensive multi-omic blood atlas for patients with varying COVID-19 severity in an integrated comparison with influenza and sepsis patients versus healthy volunteers. We identify immune signatures and correlates of host response. Hallmarks of disease severity involved cells, their inflammatory mediators and networks, including progenitor cells and specific myeloid and lymphocyte subsets, features of the immune repertoire, acute phase response, metabolism, and coagulation. Persisting immune activation involving AP-1/p38MAPK was a specific feature of COVID-19. The plasma proteome enabled sub-phenotyping into patient clusters, predictive of severity and outcome. Systems-based integrative analyses including tensor and matrix decomposition of all modalities revealed feature groupings linked with severity and specificity compared to influenza and sepsis. Our approach and blood atlas will support future drug development, clinical trial design, and personalized medicine approaches for COVID-19