Economic and Employment Impacts of Small Modular Nuclear Reactors

Global energy demand is growing and, while fossil fuels will continue to play an important role in supplying future energy requirements, the role of nuclear power may increase significantly as rising energy demand is balanced with the need to effectively address issues such as climate change, domestic energy security, and electricity access and utilization by developing economies. While nuclear power is likely to be a major provider of future energy needs, the structure of the commercial nuclear power industry may change. In the U.S., the commercial development of nuclear energy during the 1970s was characterized by large power plants designed to generate electricity. Although the construction of new nuclear power plants experienced a hiatus in the U.S. over recent decades, the continued development of large nuclear plants of approximately 1,000 megawatts (MW)1 and higher continued elsewhere and demonstrated advances in safety, performance, and efficiency. While advances in large nuclear power facilities continue, the recent resurgence of interest in nuclear power in the U.S. has also led to increased attention and statements of Administration support for the development and licensing of new technologies such as smaller-scale reactor systems, including the creation of an office within the Department of Energy to aid in these activities (Chu, 2010; Black, 2010)

Toward a global space exploration program: a stepping stone approach

In response to the growing importance of space exploration in future planning, the Committee on Space Research (COSPAR) Panel on Exploration (PEX) was chartered to provide independent scientific advice to support the development of exploration programs and to safeguard the potential scientific assets of solar system objects. In this report, PEX elaborates a stepwise approach to achieve a new level of space cooperation that can help develop world-wide capabilities in space science and exploration and support a transition that will lead to a global space exploration program. The proposed stepping stones are intended to transcend cross-cultural barriers, leading to the development of technical interfaces and shared legal frameworks and fostering coordination and cooperation on a broad front. Input for this report was drawn from expertise provided by COSPAR Associates within the international community and via the contacts they maintain in various scientific entities. The report provides a summary and synthesis of science roadmaps and recommendations for planetary exploration produced by many national and international working groups, aiming to encourage and exploit synergies among similar programs. While science and technology represent the core and, often, the drivers for space exploration, several other disciplines and their stakeholders (Earth science, space law, and others) should be more robustly interlinked and involved than they have been to date. The report argues that a shared vision is crucial to this linkage, and to providing a direction that enables new countries and stakeholders to join and engage in the overall space exploration effort. Building a basic space technology capacity within a wider range of countries, ensuring new actors in space act responsibly, and increasing public awareness and engagement are concrete steps that can provide a broader interest in space exploration, worldwide, and build a solid basis for program sustainability. By engaging developing countries and emerging space nations in an international space exploration program, it will be possible to create a critical bottom-up support structure to support program continuity in the development and execution of future global space exploration frameworks. With a focus on stepping stones, COSPAR can support a global space exploration program that stimulates scientists in current and emerging spacefaring nations, and that will invite those in developing countries to participate—pursuing research aimed at answering outstanding questions about the origins and evolution of our solar system and life on Earth (and possibly elsewhere). COSPAR, in cooperation with national and international science foundations and space-related organizations, will advocate this stepping stone approach to enhance future cooperative space exploration efforts

PAP Inhibitor with In Vivo Efficacy Identified by Candida albicans Genetic Profiling of Natural Products

SummaryNatural products provide an unparalleled source of chemical scaffolds with diverse biological activities and have profoundly impacted antimicrobial drug discovery. To further explore the full potential of their chemical diversity, we survey natural products for antifungal, target-specific inhibitors by using a chemical-genetic approach adapted to the human fungal pathogen Candida albicans and demonstrate that natural-product fermentation extracts can be mechanistically annotated according to heterozygote strain responses. Applying this approach, we report the discovery and characterization of a natural product, parnafungin, which we demonstrate, by both biochemical and genetic means, to inhibit poly(A) polymerase. Parnafungin displays potent and broad spectrum activity against diverse, clinically relevant fungal pathogens and reduces fungal burden in a murine model of disseminated candidiasis. Thus, mechanism-of-action determination of crude fermentation extracts by chemical-genetic profiling brings a powerful strategy to natural-product-based drug discovery

FIGURE 1 in LepNet: The Lepidoptera of North America Network

FIGURE 1. Geographic distribution of the 27 partner institutions in LepNet and their digitization targets for specimen label data (blue) and specimen images (red)