Poppies for Peace: Reforming Afghanistan's Opium Industry
Afghanistan, which could be slipping back into chaos, must turn the tables on the opium crisis. The international community should establish a pilot project and investigate a licensing scheme to legalize the production of medicines such as morphine and codeine from poppy crops to help it escape.
Airpower and the Environment: The Ecological Implications of Modern Air Warfare
Abstract : Twenty years ago the Norwegian prime minister, Gro Harlem Brundtland, stated, We are living in an historic transitional period in which awareness of the conflict between human activities and environmental constraints is literally exploding. We have come a long way in the subsequent two decades. Environmental responsibility now lies at the forefront of our Western world perspective and is constantly growing in importance. Ecological activism, which used to be a fringe movement, has now become mainstream. In 2007 Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change won the Nobel Peace Prize (and an Oscar!) for their efforts to raise environmental awareness. Greenpeace, which uses non-violent, creative confrontation to expose global environmental problems, alone has no fewer than 220,000 members in the United Kingdom and 2.8 million worldwide. Ecologists, environmentalists, activists, lobbyists, and of course strategists are already turning their attention to ecological aspects of modern warfare, including land mines, cluster ordnance, erosion and soil damage, air pollution, deforestation, nuclear testing and proliferation, oil spillage and fires, depleted uranium contamination, disposal of ordnance, and so forth. It seems likely that such concerns will also become increasingly mainstream. As a consequence, governments and their armed forces will be paying more attention to the serious ecological ramifications of conflict. Some already are. The Global Strategic Trends paper published by the British Ministry of Defence s Development, Concepts and Doctrine Centre (DCDC) illustrates the importance now being placed on these matters by some British strategists.
Comparative studies of α-Lactalbumin and lysozyme: Echidna lysozyme
Summaryα-Lactalbumin is a modifier protein for galactosyl transferase in the biosynthesis of lactose and lysozyme catalyses the cleavage of β(1–4) glycosidic linkages. It is now generally believed that α-lactalbumin and lysozyme have diverged from a common ancestor. Comparative studies of these proteins from several species are reported here.The presence of lactose and lactose synthetase activity is shown in mature milk samples from a variety of placental mammals (eutheria) and a pouch bearing mammal (marsupialia). The isolation of the α-lactalbumins involved and their properties are compared.The position is different in the milk samples of monotremes. The α-lactalbumin, lactose and lactose synthetase activity levels in the two platypus samples studied are very low. The levels of lactose and lactose synthetase activity in some echidna(Tachyglossus aculeatus) samples are low, but appreciable in others. No α-lactalbumin is present. The lysozyme activity is appreciable, some samples containing a different lysozyme from that present in others. One of these (designated echidna lysozyme I) is capable of lactose synthetase modifier activity in the presence of bovine “A protein”.The properties of this lysozyme are compared with those of lysozymes and α-lactalbumins from a variety of species and their significance is discussed.