Population, globalization and urbanization: Trends and underlying prosesses

Third World hinterlands provide most of the settings in which the quality of human life has improved the least over the decade since Our Common Future was published. This low quality of life promotes a desire for large number of offspring, fuelling population growth and an exodus to the urban centres of the Third World, Enhancing the quality of life of these people in ways compatible with the health of their environments is therefore the most significant of the challenges from the perspective of sustainable development. Human quality of life may be viewed in terms of access to goods, services and a satisfying social role. The ongoing processes of globalization are enhancing flows of goods worldwide, but these hardly reach the poor of Third World countrysides. But processes of globalization have also vastly improved everybody's access to Information, and there are excellent opportunities of putting this to good use to enhance the quality of life of the people of Third World countrysides through better access to education and health. More importantly, better access to information could promote a more satisfying social role through strengthening grass-roots involvement in development planning and management of natural resources. I illustrate these possibilities with the help of a series of concrete experiences form the south Indian state of Kerala. Such an effort does not call for large-scare material inputs, rather it calls for a culture of inform-and-share in place place of the prevalent culture of control-and-command. It calls for openness and transparency in transactions involving government agencies, NGOs, and national and transnational business enterprises. It calls for acceptance of accountability by such agencies.

Report on the IUTAM Symposium on Mobile Particulate Systems: Kinematics, Rheology, and Complex Phenomena, Bangalore, India, 2012

This report summarizes the presentations and discussions conducted during the symposium, which was held under the aegis of the International Union of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics during 23-27 January 2012 in Bangalore, India. (C) 2013 AIP Publishing LLC.

Creating a specialist protein resource network: a meeting report for the protein bioinformatics and community resources retreat

During 11-12 August 2014, a Protein Bioinformatics and Community Resources Retreat was held at the Wellcome Trust Genome Campus in Hinxton, UK. This meeting brought together the principal investigators of several specialized protein resources (such as CAZy, TCDB and MEROPS) as well as those from protein databases from the large Bioinformatics centres (including UniProt and RefSeq). The retreat was divided into five sessions: (1) key challenges, (2) the databases represented, (3) best practices for maintenance and curation, (4) information flow to and from large data centers and (5) communication and funding. An important outcome of this meeting was the creation of a Specialist Protein Resource Network that we believe will improve coordination of the activities of its member resources. We invite further protein database resources to join the network and continue the dialogue.

A new synthesis of Entacapone and report on related studies

A new synthesis of the catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) inhibitor, entacapone (E-isomer) has been achieved under mild conditions by amine-mediated demethylation of the precursor 2-Cyano-3-(3- hydroxy-4-methoxy-5-nitrophenyl) prop-2-eneamide, wherein the methoxyl group adjacent to a nitro group gets demethylated under nucleophilic attack. Similar demethylation was achieved on ethyl 2-cyano-3-(3, 4-dimethoxy-5-nitrophenyl) prop-2-enoate, 2-cyano-3-(3,4-dimethoxy-5-nitrophenyl)-N,N-diethylprop-2-enamide, ethyl 2-cyano-3-(3-hydroxy-4-methoxy-5-nitrophenyl) prop-2-enoate and ethyl 2-cyano-3-(4-methoxy-3-nitrophenyl) prop-2-enoate. The scope of demethylation has been studied. Analogues of ethyl 2-cyano-3-(3, 4-dimethoxy-5-nitrophenyl) prop-2-enoate wherein a methoxyl group is not adjacent to a NO (2) group are unaffected and phenolic derivatives yield the amine salts. Entacapone has been converted to salts with organic bases. The crystal structure of the isomer of entacapone (Z-isomer), a significant human metabolite of E-isomer has been established. NMR methods for deriving E and Z geometry and other similar molecules have been successfully established, mainly by studying the proton coupled C-13 spectra. Preliminary studies reveal in vitro activity for some compounds against tuberculosis (TB) and dengue.