Cities are engines of economic growth, generating over 80% of the global gross domestic product. As centers of innovation and technological development, they play a crucial role in creating jobs, driving commerce, and providing social services.

Lead exposure remains a significant public health threat in Asia and the Pacific, especially in low- and middle-income countries. The global effort to address lead poisoning must focus on stricter regulations, enhanced healthcare capacity, and coordinated international action to protect vulnerable populations.

Extreme heat is an invisible but increasingly tangible climate risk. It varies by time and place and has wide-reaching but unequal impacts, particularly to women and vulnerable people. As global temperatures rise, extreme heat events (heat waves) are becoming more frequent and severe.

Overcoming poor market depth and liquidity is crucial for Asia's capital markets to grow and remain attractive to investors. A coordinated approach addressing regulatory frameworks, market infrastructure, and risk management is essential for building resilient, diverse, and efficient markets.

Inclusive sports can empower women with disabilities, and foster accessibility, social integration, and gender equality in the Pacific. Recent Paralympic milestones and policy examples illustrate the ongoing need for supportive infrastructures and greater representation to create equitable opportunities in sports.

These charts illustrate that despite the broader adoption of disaster risk reduction strategies, escalating greenhouse gas emissions and intensified disaster impacts underscore the urgent need for more robust climate action and support across the region.

Asia and the Pacific is central to global climate change efforts, but robust capital markets are needed to mobilize private climate finance. Sustainable finance frameworks, transition finance, and carbon markets can build deeper markets that empower climate action.

Elon Musk’s super PAC spent around $200 million to help elect Donald Trump, according to a person familiar with the group’s spending, funding an effort that set a new standard for how billionaires can influence elections.

This paper surveys the evolution of policy on private sector development in Indonesia post-independence.

Theoretical and empirical analyses of People's Republic of China's infrastructure and rural development.

To attract infrastructure investment to meet national goals for providing electricity to consumers, India needs continued macroeconomic stability as well as an improved policy and regulatory environment.

This paper examines the role of finance in development in the light of the experience of Township and Village Enterprises in the People's Republic of China.

Lack of access to good road networks is a major constraint on the incomes and welfare of the poor. Using household expenditure survey data for Lao PDR this paper models the causes of poverty and shows the impact on poverty levels of road improvements.

This paper analyses economic and social indicators across provinces in the People's Republic of China.

The proposed Facility will finance five small-scale activities to support preparation and implementation of transformative projects. The activities will include feasibility studies, detailed designs, preparation of safeguard documents, financial and economic analysis and operation and maintenance for ensuing projects, as well as pilot-testing of advanced technologies and management approaches, extending capacity building and implementation support, governance reform support and knowledge products.

The proposed TA will promote sustainable forest development for Papua New Guinea by (i) leveraging the effective management of existing Protected Areas and its expansion, (ii) promote low-emission loggings and timber legality standards for sustainable forest harvest, (iii) facilitate downstream processing and access to international market for timber and non-timber products, and (iv) exploring and piloting eco-tourism linked to a sustainable financing model for biodiversity and forest conservation.

The Government of Bangladesh (GOB) has recently launched the Bangladesh Climate and Development Partnership to drive climate actions at scale and with urgency. The BCDP is an example of country-led climate platform established to scale up implementation of climate actions and is being recognized as an important modality by the global community to deliver climate actions at scale.

The technical assistance (TA), which will be approved with the proposed Integrated Water Resources Management Project, will help the Ministry of Water Resources and Meteorology: (i) implement one of the activities of output 2 (para 6), (ii) inform rice farmers about and train them to implement innovative climate mitigative water management technology, and (iii) disseminate this innovative AWD technology to the entire country. The TA project's demonstration activities are expected to reduce emissions by 11,750 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent.

The transaction involves a loan of up to $10,000,000 (or the local currency equivalent) to Araz Supermarket LLC (Araz) for the Veyseloglu Modern Retail Expansion Project in Azerbaijan, and technical assistance (TA) of $500,000 for the Building the Capacity of Smallholder Fruit and Vegetable Farmers for Climate-Resilient Farming.

This brief shows how mainstreaming blue finance hinges on developing a solid regulatory framework that drives investment toward bankable marine-based projects and analyzes how to expand the sector in the People’s Republic of China (PRC).

This report shares insights on economic corridor development (ECD) from the 2023 Regional Cooperation and Integration (RCI) Conference, discussing how ECD can help diversify trade, cut costs, and support regional growth.

Asia and the Pacific’s developing economies are projected to grow 5.0% this year on the back of resilient domestic demand and strong export growth, particularly in the electronics sector.

The proposed SMEDP2-Phase 2 will consist of a $100 million concessional loan from ADB's ordinary capital resources and an attached technical assistance of $950,000 in aggregate from TASF-7 and Financial Sector Development Partnership Special Fund. It will finance the continuation and expansion of activities financed under the SMEDP2 project by increasing the number and size of commercially viable cottage, micro, small and medium enterprises (CMSMEs), as well as supporting employment in the CMSME sector.

The project will support increased contributions of clean energy in Mongolia's energy mix while also supporting energy security, efficiency, and resilience. The project will finance the construction of a new 220 kilovolt (kV) transmission line to connect to the 90-megawatt (MW) Erdeneburen hydropower plant (HPP) to the existing grid network, which will increase supply in the Western Energy System (WES), eliminate costly and high-emission imports from the Russian Federation, and facilitate maximized utilization of wind and solar generating capacity.

The proposed Northern China Agriculture and Food Ecosystem Net Zero Transformation Project (project) will support the PRC to achieve its climate commitment through catalyzing financing and strengthening institutional capacity for net zero transformation in agriculture and food ecosystem.

The proposed project will undertake a long-term and strategic approach to deliver climate adaptive solutions for water resources management in the Amu Darya River Basins in Uzbekistan. Predicted climate change impacts include increased temperatures, increased frequency and severity of extreme events such as floods and droughts, and a reduction of water availability and increased variability of water flows in the major river basins. Decreasing availability and increased water requirements by different sectors are leading to a growing seasonal and absolute supply-demand gap.

The TA will provide implementation support to a series of ongoing and ensuing projects. It's objective will be to strengthen the quality of implementation of ongoing projects. The focus will be on procurement, contract management, DPP/TAPP approvals, project design and management.

The TA will focus on evaluating the wind potential of various site/s for government investment in wind energy. A feasibility analysis of viable wind sites will be carried out, which will inform the government on the scale of wind projects and how best to develop this potential. The TA will also fund the equipment for measuring wind speeds and directions to confirm site selection and build capacity for wind energy development in the EA.

See the incredible shots that have won this year's BMC Ecology and Evolution and BMC Zoology Image Competition

The Renaissance artist Michelangelo had carried out human dissections, which may have led him to include women with breast cancer in some of his pieces

A 2200-year-old burial ground in northern Italy includes people interred with dogs and horses, perhaps showing they had strong bonds with their animals

Title: Health Tip: If Your Child Develops Food Poisoning
Category: Health News
Created: 8/29/2012 8:05:00 AM
Last Editorial Review: 8/29/2012 12:00:00 AM

Title: Encouraging Your Baby's Babbling May Speed Language Development
Category: Health News
Created: 8/29/2014 9:36:00 AM
Last Editorial Review: 8/29/2014 12:00:00 AM

Title: Mixed Findings on Pot's Effect on the Developing Brain
Category: Health News
Created: 8/26/2015 12:00:00 AM
Last Editorial Review: 8/27/2015 12:00:00 AM

Title: Insurer Aetna's Envelopes Revealed Customers' HIV Status
Category: Health News
Created: 8/28/2017 12:00:00 AM
Last Editorial Review: 8/28/2017 12:00:00 AM

The neuronal nucleus houses a meticulously organized genome. Within this structure, genetic material is not simply compacted but arranged into a precise and functional 3D chromatin landscape essential for cellular regulation. This mini-review highlights the importance of this chromatin landscape in healthy neurodevelopment, as well as the diseases that occur with aberrant chromatin architecture. We discuss insights into the fundamental mechanistic relationship between histone modifications, DNA methylation, and genome organization. We then discuss findings that reveal how these epigenetic features change throughout normal neurodevelopment. Finally, we highlight single-gene neurodevelopmental disorders that illustrate the interdependence of epigenetic features, showing how disruptions in DNA methylation or genome architecture can ripple across the entire epigenome. As such, we emphasize the importance of measuring multiple chromatin architectural aspects, as the disruption of one mechanism can likely impact others in the intricate epigenetic network. This mini-review underscores the vast gaps in our understanding of chromatin structure in neurodevelopmental diseases and the substantial research needed to understand the interplay between chromatin features and neurodevelopment.

The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) has developed a robust CMC (Chemistry, Manufacturing, and Controls) Framework to enhance the likelihood of successful vaccine development. This Framework serves as a comprehensive guide, aiding developers in building effective strategies to overcome the challenges posed by the different phases of vaccine development, including the ones often referred to as the "valleys of death". The Framework lists stage-appropriate deliverables, categorized and refined, spanning five key areas: manufacturing process, formulation and stability, analytics, supply chain, and compliance. By emphasizing the critical aspects of CMC development, CEPI's objective is to expedite the progression of vaccine candidates from research to deployment, reducing delays, mitigating risks, and optimizing the overall development process, all while upholding uncompromising quality standards, ultimately increasing the probability of success.

For clean-room technologies such as isolators and restricted access barrier systems (RABS), decontamination using hydrogen peroxide (H₂O₂) is increasingly attractive to fulfill regulatory requirements. Several approaches are currently used, ranging from manual wipe disinfection to vapor phase hydrogen peroxide (VPHP) or automated nebulization sanitization. Although the residual airborne H₂O₂ concentration can be easily monitored, detection of trace H₂O₂ residues in filled products is rather challenging. To simulate the filling process in a specific clean room, technical runs with water for injection (WfI) are popular. Thus, the ability to detect traces of H₂O₂ in water is an important prerequisite to ensure a safe and reliable use of H₂O₂ for isolator or clean room decontamination. The objective of this study was to provide a validated quantitative, fluorometric Amplex UltraRed assay, which satisfies the analytical target profile of quantifying H₂O₂ in WfI at low nanomolar to low micromolar concentrations (ppb range) with high accuracy and high precision. The Amplex UltraRed technology provides a solid basis for this purpose; however, no commercial assay kit that fulfills these requirements is available. Therefore, a customized Amplex UltraRed assay was developed, optimized, and validated. This approach resulted in an assay that is capable of quantifying H₂O₂ in WfI selectively, sensitively, accurately, precisely, and robustly. This assay is used in process development and qualification approaches using WfI in H₂O₂-decontaminated clean rooms and isolators.

Vault RNAs (vtRNAs) are evolutionarily conserved small noncoding RNAs transcribed by RNA polymerase III. Vault RNAs were initially described as components of the vault particle, but have since been assigned multiple vault-independent functions, including regulation of PKR activity, apoptosis, autophagy, lysosome biogenesis, and viral particle trafficking. The full-length transcript has also been described as a noncanonical source of miRNAs, which are processed in a DICER-dependent manner. As central molecules in vault-dependent and independent processes, vtRNAs have been attributed numerous biological roles, including regulation of cell proliferation and survival, response to viral infections, drug resistance, and animal development. Yet, their impact to mammalian physiology remains largely unexplored. To study vault RNAs in vivo, we generated a mouse line with a conditional Vaultrc5 loss-of-function allele. Because Vaultrc5 is the sole murine vtRNA, this allele enables the characterization of the physiological requirements of this conserved class of small regulatory RNAs in mammals. Using this strain, we show that mice constitutively null for Vaultrc5 are viable and histologically normal but have a slight reduction in platelet counts, pointing to a potential role for vtRNAs in hematopoiesis. This work paves the way for further in vivo characterizations of this abundant but mysterious RNA molecule. Specifically, it enables the study of the biological consequences of constitutive or lineage-specific Vaultrc5 deletion and of the physiological requirements for an intact Vaultrc5 during normal hematopoiesis or in response to cellular stresses such as oncogene expression, viral infection, or drug treatment.