54 research outputs found
Beyond Borders
Is it possible to look out over the Ural Mountains and see Appalachia? To find the character of the American West in the vast open space of Siberia? To smell the citrus and feel the warm sun of the Black Sea coast and be struck with a sense of Florida?
This book is based on just such an idea: that we can look beyond our borders and discover fundamental realities about places that transcend differences of culture, language, and politics. Five American and four Russian geographers wrote this book to provide glimpses of understanding about the United States and Russia. Despite the size and power of our two nations and more than seventy years of cold war, we seem to have a meager comprehension of each other, perhaps because each country is so often viewed as a monolith and we emphasize our differences, rather than similarities.
The authors of this book worked together in the hopes of overcoming some misimpressions of the past. Beyond Borders became an experiment - an attempt to compare the United States and Russia by pairing up and analyzing eleven regions. We have therefore taken the rather risky step of suggesting similarities between New England and Novgorod, between Odessa and New Orleans, between Moscow and New York. But perhaps the time has never been more appropriate for such a new approach to geography because so many people seem adrift on the changing world map. In an era when establishes states are breaking up, new alliances are forming, and the very idea of state sovereignty is being transformed, we may begin to question whether all these lines on the map actually mean anything to people. Is there an underlying real geography which can provide an anchor
Future therapeutic targets in rheumatoid arthritis?
Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a chronic inflammatory disease characterized by persistent joint inflammation. Without adequate treatment, patients with RA will develop joint deformity and progressive functional impairment. With the implementation of treat-to-target strategies and availability of biologic therapies, the outcomes for patients with RA have significantly improved. However, the unmet need in the treatment of RA remains high as some patients do not respond sufficiently to the currently available agents, remission is not always achieved and refractory disease is not uncommon. With better understanding of the pathophysiology of RA, new therapeutic approaches are emerging. Apart from more selective Janus kinase inhibition, there is a great interest in the granulocyte macrophage-colony stimulating factor pathway, Bruton's tyrosine kinase pathway, phosphoinositide-3-kinase pathway, neural stimulation and dendritic cell-based therapeutics. In this review, we will discuss the therapeutic potential of these novel approaches
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