The Changing World of Work: What Should We Ask of Higher Education?

There is a pervasive anxiety in America about the future of higher education. Spiraling costs combined with seismic changes in the American workplace raise questions about whether a bachelor's degree is still worth the cost. In a recent cover story, Newsweek magazine asked: "Is College a Lousy Investment?" For a growing number of Americans, the answer appears to be yes.Today's students accumulate an average of almost $30,000 in debt by the time they graduate. They will go into a job market that looks especially bleak for young people. Many college graduates are unemployed or working minimum-wage jobs. Still more are working in jobs that don't require a college credential.Some of the troubles facing new graduates can be attributed to the post-recession economy. But there are larger forces at work that are transforming the nature of employment in America -- forces that colleges and universities have been slow to recognize, much less respond to

Doing Democracy: How a Network of Grassroots Organizations Is Strengthening Community, Building Capacity, and Shaping a New Kind of Civic Education

This Kettering Foundation report examines a burgeoning network of organizations that is inventing new forms of community renewal and citizenship education. Their names vary -- some call themselves public policy institutes, others centers for civic life -- yet they share a common methodology, one aimed at tackling tough public issues, strengthening communities, and nurturing people's capacities to participate and make common cause.Today, there are more than 50 of these centers operating in almost every state in the union, most of them affiliated with institutions of higher learning. Except for a handful that are freestanding, the centers combine the best of what colleges and universities provide -- civics courses, leadership development, service-learning programs, community-based research -- with the kinds of hands-on, collaborative problem solving traditionally done by nongovernmental organizations. Because they operate at the intersection of the campus and the community, their impact extends to both: they nurture and sustain public life while at the same time enriching higher education

Investing In Public Life

At the end of the 20th century, civil investing emerged as one of the most important developments in American philanthropy. Not quite a philosophy, not quite a grantmaking strategy, and not quite a type of grant, civil investing can be broadly defined as the use of philanthropic resources for building community and strengthening public life. This is a report of the 2003 -- 2004 Dialogues on Civil Investing, which brought together foundation executives, community leaders, and nonprofit directors to identify common concerns and develop joint strategies for a new and different kind of grantmaking

Climate Choices: How Should We Meet the Challenges of a Warming Planet?

This issue guide was prepared for the National Issues Forums Institute in collaboration with the Kettering Foundation and the North American Association for Environmental Education. The Environment and Society Series is designed to promote meaningful, productive deliberation, convened locally and online, about difficult issues that affect the environment and communities.All around is evidence that the climate is changing. Summers are starting earlier and lasting longer. Heat waves are becoming more frequent and intense. Dry regions are getting drier and wet regions are seeing heavier rains. Record cold and snowfalls blanket some parts of the country, while record fires ravage forests across the West.The effects are being felt across many parts of the United States. Farmworkers in California's Central Valley, snow-weary New England business owners, crab fishermen in Alaska, and cattle ranchers across the Great Plains have all seen uncommon and extreme weather. Occasional odd weather and weather cycles are nothing unusual.But the more extreme and unpredictable weather being experienced around the world points to dramatic changes in climate -- the conditions that take place over years, decades, and longer.Climate disruptions have some people worried about their health, their children, their homes, their livelihoods, their communities, and even their personal safety. They wonder about the future of the natural areas they enjoy and the wild animals and plants that live there. In addition, there are growing concerns about our national security and how climate change might affect scarce resources around the planet and increase global tensions

Creating Citizens Through Public Deliberation

The case studies provided in this Kettering Foundation report describe how nongovernmental organizations in 10 countries -- Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Guatemala, Hungary, Puerto Rico, Romania, Russia, South Africa, and Tajikistan -- are using public deliberation to help citizens think of themselves as political actors who can change the course of their communities

Improved Quantum Hard-Sphere Ground-State Equations of State

The London ground-state energy formula as a function of number density for a system of identical boson hard spheres, corrected for the reduced mass of a pair of particles in a sphere-of-influence picture, and generalized to fermion hard-sphere systems with two and four intrinsic degrees of freedom, has a double-pole at the ultimate \textit{regular} (or periodic, e.g., face-centered-cubic) close-packing density usually associated with a crystalline branch. Improved fluid branches are contructed based upon exact, field-theoretic perturbation-theory low-density expansions for many-boson and many-fermion systems, appropriately extrapolated to intermediate densities, but whose ultimate density is irregular or \textit{random} closest close-packing as suggested in studies of a classical system of hard spheres. Results show substantially improved agreement with the best available Green-function Monte Carlo and diffusion Monte Carlo simulations for bosons, as well as with ladder, variational Fermi hypernetted chain, and so-called L-expansion data for two-component fermions.Comment: 15 pages and 7 figure

Keith Taylor MEP for the South East of England

Summary We have major areas of concern in relation to the core definition and approach to Sustainable Development within the NPPF document. This is the fundamental basis of our representation and we follow with detailed concerns regarding the impact of the policy on protected sites and the natural environment, air quality, water quality and renewable energy generation, with particular relevance to existing EU legislation covering the UK. This is important as the Government has included reform of the planning system in its report for the first European Semester (Europe 2020: UK National Reform Programme 2011) suggesting it as a way to better facilitate appropriate sustainable development. We also have deep rooted concerns about the ability of citizens to influence and challenge decisions within the proposed framework. Whilst we appreciate that there are some opportunities for increased neighbourhood involvement in plan-making, these are outweighed by our concerns regarding the resources available for citizens to establish their own plan and the 'pro growth' stranglehold of the NPPF policy on communities. There are opportunities within the framework for the delivery of new housing, community and employment needs, however this must be placed within a stronger and 'fit for purpose' national planning framework and spatial plan. Only then will national policy provide the necessary leadership to ensure that the UK meets the challenges of climate change, harm to natural resources and deepening inequalities in health and well-being. Sustainable Development Office of the Green MEPs, CAN Mezzanine, 49-51 East Road, Old Street, London N1 6AH phone: 0207250 841

Structural studies of the PARP-1 BRCT domain

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase-1 (PARP-1) is one of the first proteins localized to foci of DNA damage. Upon activation by encountering nicked DNA, the PARP-1 mediated trans-poly(ADP-ribosyl)ation of DNA binding proteins occurs, facilitating access and accumulation of DNA repair factors. PARP-1 also auto-(ADP-ribosyl)ates its central BRCT-containing domain forming part of an interaction site for the DNA repair scaffolding protein X-ray cross complementing group 1 protein (XRCC1). The co-localization of XRCC1, as well as bound DNA repair factors, to sites of DNA damage is important for cell survival and genomic integrity.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Here we present the solution structure and biophysical characterization of the BRCT domain of rat PARP-1. The PARP-1 BRCT domain has the globular α/β fold characteristic of BRCT domains and has a thermal melting transition of 43.0°C. In contrast to a previous characterization of this domain, we demonstrate that it is monomeric in solution using both gel-filtration chromatography and small-angle X-ray scattering. Additionally, we report that the first BRCT domain of XRCC1 does not interact significantly with the PARP-1 BRCT domain in the absence of ADP-ribosylation. Moreover, none of the interactions with other longer PARP-1 constructs which previously had been demonstrated in a pull-down assay of mammalian cell extracts were detected.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The PARP-1 BRCT domain has the conserved BRCT fold that is known to be an important protein:protein interaction module in DNA repair and cell signalling pathways. Data indicating no significant protein:protein interactions between PARP-1 and XRCC1 likely results from the absence of poly(ADP-ribose) in one or both binding partners, and further implicates a poly(ADP-ribose)-dependent mechanism for localization of XRCC1 to sites of DNA damage.</p