Caribbean synthesis review and appraisal report in the context of the 15th anniversay of the adoptaton of the Beijing declaration and platform for action

The report is a summary based on information received by ECLAC from the eight English-speaking Caribbean countries of Barbados, Belize, the Cayman Islands, the Commonwealth of Dominica, Jamaica, Suriname, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and Trinidad and Tobago in response to the questionnaire to governments on the Implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (1995) and the Outcome of the Twenty-Third Special Session of the General Assembly (2000). The report is therefore set in the context of the regional review and appraisals of the fifteenth anniversary of the adoption of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action in 2010. This Executive Summary highlights the achievements and the challenges for the Caribbean subregion in the progress towards implementation of the Beijing Platform of Action.

Report on activities at the Caribbean subregional level relating to the Beijing + 5 review process for the CDCC meeting

Among the recommendations on institutional arrangements, the Beijing Platform for Action specifically mandates the regional commissions to promote and assist the pertinent national institutions in monitoring and implementing the global Platform for Action. In fulfilling this mandate and in contributing to the Beijing +5 review process, the ECLAC Subregional Headquarters for the Caribbean developed a “Beijing Five-Year Review” project which aimed at providing technical assistance to the governments in the subregion; research into the progress made towards gender mainstreaming and convening the Third Subregional Conference on Women.

Caribbean synthesis review and appraisal report on the implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action

The Caribbean sub-regional synthesis report, covering 12 countries, assesses progress towards the gender equality goals articulated in the 1995 World Conference on Women, which produced the Beijing Platform for Action (BPfA). The process leading to the preparation of the report has involved a series of national, regional and global consultations that will culminate in the Beijing + 20 Review. The process has also led to the formulation of the Caribbean Joint Statement on Gender Equality and the Post-2015, as well as the SIDS Agenda, both of which express Caribbean perspectives and expectations regarding gender equality.

"Pseudo-Beijing": evidence for convergent evolution in the direct repeat region of Mycobacterium tuberculosis

Background Mycobacterium tuberculosis has a global population structure consisting of six main phylogenetic lineages associated with specific geographic regions and human populations. One particular M. tuberculosis genotype known as “Beijing” has repeatedly been associated with drug resistance and has been emerging in some parts of the world. “Beijing” strains are traditionally defined based on a characteristic spoligotyping pattern. We used three alternative genotyping techniques to revisit the phylogenetic classification of M. tuberculosis complex (MTBC) strains exhibiting the typical “Beijing” spoligotyping pattern. Methods and Findings MTBC strains were obtained from an ongoing molecular epidemiological study in Switzerland and Nepal. MTBC genotyping was performed based on SNPs, genomic deletions, and 24-loci MIRU-VNTR. We identified three MTBC strains from patients originating from Tibet, Portugal and Nepal which exhibited a spoligotyping patterns identical to the classical Beijing signature. However, based on three alternative molecular markers, these strains were assigned to Lineage 3 (also known as Delhi/CAS) rather than to Lineage 2 (also known as East-Asian lineage). Sequencing of the RD207 in one of these strains showed that the deletion responsible for this “Pseudo-Beijing” spoligotype was about 1,000 base pairs smaller than the usual deletion of RD207 in classical “Beijing” strains, which is consistent with an evolutionarily independent deletion event in the direct repeat (DR) region of MTBC. Conclusions We provide an example of convergent evolution in the DR locus of MTBC, and highlight the limitation of using spoligotypes for strain classification. Our results indicate that a proportion of “Beijing” strains may have been misclassified in the past. Markers that are more phylogenetically robust should be used when exploring strain-specific differences in experimental or clinical phenotypes.

[The study of apoptosis factors released from laser injured cartilage inducing apoptosis of chondrocyte]

OBJECTIVE: To explore the role of pro-apoptotic signals following tissue injury and how these may promote a progression of further cell death. METHODS: Laser treated porcine articular cartilage disks were maintained in culture media. The collected media at various time periods (3, 6, 9, 12, 24 and 48 h), was called treated conditioned media (TCM). Non-laser treated cartilage disks were used to create control conditioned media (CCM). Each disk was subsequently maintained for 28 days and used in confocal microscopic assessment to document the progression of the damaged area. Isolated porcine chondrocytes were cultured in monolayer, and were exposed to TCM, CCM or normal culture medium (NM). As a positive inducer of apoptosis, the monolayer cells were exposed to UV radiation for 10 min and cultured in NM. Following 24 h exposure, the cells were harvested and stained with the appropriate combination of fluorescent dyes and processed via flow cytometry. RESULTS: All cultured cells exposed to TCM displayed a caspase-3 positive subpopulation, a loss of CMXRos, and with a reduced or lost NO signal. CCM exposure signals were comparable to the NM treatments with all having retained CMXRos, NO and without evidence of caspase-3 activity. UV treatment also induced a reduction in NO, but both CMXRos and caspase-3 positive, representing an earlier stage of apoptosis and suggesting that the mode of cell death via UV and TCM exposure are via different processes. The investigation of a dose (100%, 50%, 25% and 12.5%) and time (0.5, 1, 3, 9, 12 h) response to TCM exhibited that all treatments observed an increase in caspase-3 positive cells and a reduction in NO and CMXRos. CONCLUSION: The usefulness of FCM can be used in the study of cell viability and apoptosis. Such a system may be useful in the study of mechanisms of disease such as osteoarthritis, thus may be of practical use for the pharmaceutical industry for screening associated drugs.

Source apportionment of elemental carbon in Beijing, China: insights from radiocarbon and organic marker measurements

Elemental carbon (EC) or black carbon (BC) in the atmosphere has a strong influence on both climate and human health. In this study, radiocarbon (14C) based source apportionment is used to distinguish between fossil fuel and biomass burning sources of EC isolated from aerosol filter samples collected in Beijing from June 2010 to May 2011. The 14C results demonstrate that EC is consistently dominated by fossil-fuel combustion throughout the whole year with a mean contribution of 79% ± 6% (ranging from 70% to 91%), though EC has a higher mean and peak concentrations in the cold season. The seasonal molecular pattern of hopanes (i.e., a class of organic markers mainly emitted during the combustion of different fossil fuels) indicates that traffic-related emissions are the most important fossil source in the warm period and coal combustion emissions are significantly increased in the cold season. By combining 14C based source apportionment results and picene (i.e., an organic marker for coal emissions) concentrations, relative contributions from coal (mainly from residential bituminous coal) and vehicle to EC in the cold period were estimated as 25 ± 4% and 50 ± 7%, respectively, whereas the coal combustion contribution was negligible or very small in the warm period.