12 March 2015 , Volume 91, Number 2

12 March 2015 , Volume 91, Number 2

Members Event

Event participants

Professor Joseph S Nye, University Distinguished Service Professor, Harvard Kennedy School of Government
Chair: Gideon Rachman, Chief Foreign Affairs Commentator, Financial Times

Research Event

Event participants

Charlie Parton, Counsellor, Political Section, Beijing Delegation, European External Action Service
Chair: Roderic Wye, Assciate Fellow, Asia Programme, Chatham House

30 September 2015

Members Event

Event participants

Professor Kerry Brown, Director, Lau China Institute, King's College London; Associate Fellow, Asia Programme, Chatham House
Chair: Isabel Hilton OBE, Founder and Editor, Chinadialogue

17 May 2016

4 July 2016

Invitation Only Research Event

Event participants

Professor Philippe Sands QC, Barrister, Matrix Chambers
Chris Whomersley, Deputy Legal Adviser, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (2002-14)
Professor Julia Xue, Academy Senior Fellow, International Law Programme, Chatham House
Chair: Elizabeth Wilmshurst, Distinguished Fellow, International Law Programme, Chatham House

14 July 2016

♥..Nomyens..♥ posted a photo:

Custom faceup

Angel Philia TS.

www.nomyens.com

♥..Nomyens..♥ posted a photo:

Custom faceup

Angel Philia TS.

www.nomyens.com

captain_j03 posted a photo:

Wish me a happy mother's day and I'll slit your guts like a ripe melon.

My mood is not the best today - my sister woke me at 6 AM for said reason. On a sunday. And guess what - I am not even a mother.

Toy Project Day 1746

Reiterlied posted a photo:

A tribute to Pirates I made last year when winter was coming to an end.

(You can find the blog post I wrote last year at Stuck in Plastic: www.stuckinplastic.com/2019/04/week-17-ching-shih/)

Ousted vaccine expert Rick Bright said he is "frustrated at our inability to be heard as scientists."

Elizabeth Spiers wrote about an incident where Jared Kushner used the memorial of an employee to congratulate himself for success.

Some Buckeyes are not comfortable being told by a "woman in power" to quarantine, one expert said.

Whenever Americans see videos of police brutality against black men and women, the first thing they do is assume they deserved their executionWhat skin color are the bad guys in America’s fantasies of vigilantism? When the proverbial “fellas” get together to drink beers and talk about their newest guns and who they’d take down, what race are the “criminals” in the theater of their minds?When Greg McMichael and his son, Travis, got the call from their neighbor that a “burglar” was running through their Brunswick, Georgia neighborhood that chilly February day, what color man do you think they imagined as they locked, loaded, and embarked on their “mission”?Ahmaud Arbery is dead today because when Americans dream of vigilante justice, black men are the villains of their imaginations.We as a nation are so comfortable with this baseline bigotry that our first assumption whenever we see videos of police brutality against or shootings of black men and women, the first thing we do is assume that the victims must have done something wrong to earn their own public execution.This assumption is both a function of white America having a completely different experience with police officers than black America as well as the hundreds of years of vilifying blackness in media and American culture.I will never forget the biggest and most uproarious applause during the theater debut of the lackluster 2007 vigilante film, Brave One, came when the protagonist Jodi Foster got her first vigilante kills of the movie – two threatening and scary black men. That theater filled with men the same age range as Greg and Travis McMichael erupted as if at that moment, all that they had ever imagined had been fulfilled on the big screen. Needless to say, I left that theater before the credits rolled.Across the country, our political leaders hold these same bigoted beliefs which inevitably lead to policies that directly assume criminality based on skin color.During his tenure as mayor of New York City, billionaire Michael Bloomberg made it explicitly clear why it was that he sent police officers into black and brown communities to “throw them” up against the wall. In his 2015 Aspen Institute speech he stated:“People say, ‘Oh my God, you are arresting kids for marijuana who are all minorities.’ Yes, that’s true. Why? Because we put all the cops in the minority neighborhoods. Yes, that’s true. Why’d we do it? Because that’s where all the crime is. And the way you should get the guns out of the kids’ hands is throw them against the wall and frisk them.”And it is for this reason that I do not distinguish between the violence committed by American citizens acting as vigilantes and the violence committed by so-called officers of the law when, in both cases, the working assumption and driving force behind that violence is the deeply bigoted and firmly American association between blackness and criminality.For Ahmaud, that association not only led to his brutal killing, but it also initially meant his killer not being arrested. It took more than two months for the father and son duo to be arrested. When explaining why they were not charged immediately the district attorney, George Barnhill, immediately stated that the victim, Ahmaud Arbery, was, in fact, the “criminal suspect”.“It appears that [Greg and Travis McMichael’s] intent was to stop and hold this criminal suspect until law enforcement arrived. Under Georgia Law [sic] this is perfectly legal.”Even after viewing the video and with no evidence beyond Ahmaud’s skin color, the top cop in the institution designed to bring equal justice under the law concluded that Ahmaud was a criminal suspect when he was simply a black man taking a jog.What are black Americans to do when justice is delayed or outright denied because of the assignment of innocence to vigilantes and police officers?What are black Americans to do when the assumption of guilt because of our skin color is as American as the guns they use to kill us?What are we to do when in our neighbors’ dreams and fantasies of cop-and-robber, the skin color of the bad guy matches our own?The very first thing we are going to do is defend ourselves as if our lives depend on it because when Americans fantasize about killing, those fantasies become our living nightmares. * Benjamin Dixon is the host of the Benjamin Dixon show.

Representative Michael McCaul, who has harshly criticized China in his position as the ranking member on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, disclosed that his family owns stock in a Chinese tech company he described as a threat to national security.An April 20 periodic transaction report showed that McCaul disclosed a February purchase of between $50,000 and $100,000 in shares of the Chinese firm Tencent Holdings, Politico reported.In November, several months before the shares were purchased, the Texas congressman said that Tencent Holdings is among the "Chinese companies that threaten America’s economic and national security."The tech conglomerate is "heavily involved" in the "social credit system, a dystopian system China has implemented to score its citizens’ behavior," McCaul said at the time, as well as an "integral part" of the Chinese Communist Party’s industrial policies and "one of four national champions for artificial intelligence."McCaul's lawyer, Elliot Berke, said that the shares are not owned personally by McCaul but by his wife, and the decision to invest in Tencent was made by a third party.“Congressman McCaul did not purchase any shares in China’s Tencent Holdings or any other Chinese company,” the attorney said. “Congressman McCaul’s wife has assets she solely owns and a third party manager made the purchase without her direction.”Rachel Walker, a spokeswoman for McCaul, emphasized that the revelation of the Tencent shares “highlights that many Americans unwittingly invest their money in Chinese owned companies."Federal employees are often unaware they own such investments because the federal government’s thrift savings plan program creates portfolios that include Tencent and other Chinese companies, Walker said. McCaul has argued that such retirement investment plans should not invest American dollars in such "shady" Chinese companies, often without the knowledge of the investor."Congressman McCaul has been a fierce critic of the brutal behavior of the Chinese Communist Party and will continue to fight to hold them accountable as the Chair of the China Task Force," Walker said. "This should be a wake-up call to us all that the CCP’s involvement in the U.S. economy is far more reaching than many Americans realize and that we need to change the way we do business with China, including our investments."Tencent owns the Chinese social media platform WeChat, which has more than one billion users and is suspected of monitoring the activities of users both inside and outside of China. Tencent is also associated with Chinese tech firm Huawei, which U.S. officials said can secretly access American cellular phone networks, giving it access to sensitive information.McCaul has taken a leading role in criticizing China's handling of the coronavirus pandemic as well, accusing Beijing of launching perhaps the "worst cover-up in human history."He was tapped on Thursday by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy as chairman of the China Task Force, the aim of which is to develop "legislative solutions to address the Chinese Communist Party’s malign global agenda."The task force will "develop new and enduring policy solutions that, among others, enhance our economic strength and create jobs, protect our national security, rethink our supply chains and grow our competitive edge in technology," McCaul said in a statement on his appointment.

The White House has halted talks with Congress over any further coronavirus stimulus package as it waits for more information about how U.S. state reopenings affect the economy, White House top economic adviser Larry Kudlow told reporters on Friday. The Senate and House of Representatives have already passed four major bills to address the novel coronavirus outbreak, including three aimed at stabilizing the economy as most Americans have sheltered in place and unemployment has soared.

China's National Health Commission reported 14 new confirmed coronavirus cases on May 9, the highest number since April 28, including the first for more than a month in the city of Wuhan where the outbreak was first detected late last year. While China had officially designated all areas of the country as low-risk last Thursday, the new cases according to data published on Sunday represent a jump from the single case reported for the day before. The new Wuhan case, the first reported in the epicentre of China's outbreak since April 3, was previously asymptomatic, according to the health commission.

Shelling of Tripoli's Mitiga airport early on Saturday, part of an intensified barrage of artillery fire on the capital in recent days, hit fuel tanks and damaged passenger planes, the Transport Ministry said in a statement. Mitiga is the last functioning airport in the Libyan capital, though civilian flights stopped in March because of repeated shelling even before the country imposed a lockdown over the coronavirus pandemic. Brega Petroleum Marketing Company, part of the National Oil Corporation, said its jet fuel tanks at Mitiga caught fire after coming under attack and firemen were working to control the blaze.

Travel blogger and photographer Andy Luten drove 4,200 miles across six states to see the grounded jets, detailing the shocking state of aviation.

Inter-α-inhibitor is a proteoglycan essential for mammalian reproduction and also plays a less well-characterized role in inflammation. It comprises two homologous “heavy chains” (HC1 and HC2) covalently attached to chondroitin sulfate on the bikunin core protein. Before ovulation, HCs are transferred onto the polysaccharide hyaluronan (HA) to form covalent HC·HA complexes, thereby stabilizing an extracellular matrix around the oocyte required for fertilization. Additionally, such complexes form during inflammatory processes and mediate leukocyte adhesion in the synovial fluids of arthritis patients and protect against sepsis. Here using X-ray crystallography, we show that human HC1 has a structure similar to integrin β-chains, with a von Willebrand factor A domain containing a functional metal ion-dependent adhesion site (MIDAS) and an associated hybrid domain. A comparison of the WT protein and a variant with an impaired MIDAS (but otherwise structurally identical) by small-angle X-ray scattering and analytical ultracentrifugation revealed that HC1 self-associates in a cation-dependent manner, providing a mechanism for HC·HA cross-linking and matrix stabilization. Surprisingly, unlike integrins, HC1 interacted with RGD-containing ligands, such as fibronectin, vitronectin, and the latency-associated peptides of transforming growth factor β, in a MIDAS/cation-independent manner. However, HC1 utilizes its MIDAS motif to bind to and inhibit the cleavage of complement C3, and small-angle X-ray scattering–based modeling indicates that this occurs through the inhibition of the alternative pathway C3 convertase. These findings provide detailed structural and functional insights into HC1 as a regulator of innate immunity and further elucidate the role of HC·HA complexes in inflammation and ovulation.

The dextransucrase DSR-OK from the Gram-positive bacterium Oenococcus kitaharae DSM17330 produces a dextran of the highest molar mass reported to date (∼109 g/mol). In this study, we selected a recombinant form, DSR-OKΔ1, to identify molecular determinants involved in the sugar polymerization mechanism and that confer its ability to produce a very-high-molar-mass polymer. In domain V of DSR-OK, we identified seven putative sugar-binding pockets characteristic of glycoside hydrolase 70 (GH70) glucansucrases that are known to be involved in glucan binding. We investigated their role in polymer synthesis through several approaches, including monitoring of dextran synthesis, affinity assays, sugar binding pocket deletions, site-directed mutagenesis, and construction of chimeric enzymes. Substitution of only two stacking aromatic residues in two consecutive sugar-binding pockets (variant DSR-OKΔ1-Y1162A-F1228A) induced quasi-complete loss of very-high-molar-mass dextran synthesis, resulting in production of only 10–13 kg/mol polymers. Moreover, the double mutation completely switched the semiprocessive mode of DSR-OKΔ1 toward a distributive one, highlighting the strong influence of these pockets on enzyme processivity. Finally, the position of each pocket relative to the active site also appeared to be important for polymer elongation. We propose that sugar-binding pockets spatially closer to the catalytic domain play a major role in the control of processivity. A deep structural characterization, if possible with large-molar-mass sugar ligands, would allow confirming this hypothesis.

Bacterial biofilms are cellular communities that produce an adherent matrix. Exopolysaccharides are key structural components of this matrix and are required for the assembly and architecture of biofilms produced by a wide variety of microorganisms. The human bacterial pathogens Escherichia coli and Salmonella enterica produce a biofilm matrix composed primarily of the exopolysaccharide phosphoethanolamine (pEtN) cellulose. Once thought to be composed of only underivatized cellulose, the pEtN modification present in these matrices has been implicated in the overall architecture and integrity of the biofilm. However, an understanding of the mechanism underlying pEtN derivatization of the cellulose exopolysaccharide remains elusive. The bacterial cellulose synthase subunit G (BcsG) is a predicted inner membrane–localized metalloenzyme that has been proposed to catalyze the transfer of the pEtN group from membrane phospholipids to cellulose. Here we present evidence that the C-terminal domain of BcsG from E. coli (EcBcsGΔN) functions as a phosphoethanolamine transferase in vitro with substrate preference for cellulosic materials. Structural characterization of EcBcsGΔN revealed that it belongs to the alkaline phosphatase superfamily, contains a Zn2+ ion at its active center, and is structurally similar to characterized enzymes that confer colistin resistance in Gram-negative bacteria. Informed by our structural studies, we present a functional complementation experiment in E. coli AR3110, indicating that the activity of the BcsG C-terminal domain is essential for integrity of the pellicular biofilm. Furthermore, our results established a similar but distinct active-site architecture and catalytic mechanism shared between BcsG and the colistin resistance enzymes.

Multidrug resistance (MDR) in cancer arises from cross-resistance to structurally- and functionally-divergent chemotherapeutic drugs. In particular, MDR is characterized by increased expression and activity of ATP-binding cassette (ABC) superfamily transporters. Sphingolipids are substrates of ABC proteins in cell signaling, membrane biosynthesis, and inflammation, for example, and their products can favor cancer progression. Glucosylceramide (GlcCer) is a ubiquitous glycosphingolipid (GSL) generated by glucosylceramide synthase, a key regulatory enzyme encoded by the UDP-glucose ceramide glucosyltransferase (UGCG) gene. Stressed cells increase de novo biosynthesis of ceramides, which return to sub-toxic levels after UGCG mediates incorporation into GlcCer. Given that cancer cells seem to mobilize UGCG and have increased GSL content for ceramide clearance, which ultimately contributes to chemotherapy failure, here we investigated how inhibition of GSL biosynthesis affects the MDR phenotype of chronic myeloid leukemias. We found that MDR is associated with higher UGCG expression and with a complex GSL profile. UGCG inhibition with the ceramide analog d-threo-1-(3,4,-ethylenedioxy)phenyl-2-palmitoylamino-3-pyrrolidino-1-propanol (EtDO-P4) greatly reduced GSL and monosialotetrahexosylganglioside levels, and co-treatment with standard chemotherapeutics sensitized cells to mitochondrial membrane potential loss and apoptosis. ABC subfamily B member 1 (ABCB1) expression was reduced, and ABCC-mediated efflux activity was modulated by competition with nonglycosylated ceramides. Consistently, inhibition of ABCC-mediated transport reduced the efflux of exogenous C6-ceramide. Overall, UGCG inhibition impaired the malignant glycophenotype of MDR leukemias, which typically overcomes drug resistance through distinct mechanisms. This work sheds light on the involvement of GSL in chemotherapy failure, and its findings suggest that targeted GSL modulation could help manage MDR leukemias.

Two competing models for selecting economic-stream immigrants are now prevalent in advanced industrialized economies: points-based and employer-led selection. Increasingly, however, hybrid selection systems are being created, implementing best practices from each selection process.

THE LAST two months have been two of the worst in the life of former national netball star Nichala Gibson. She lives in New York City, the epicentre for the COVID-19 virus in the United States. Gibson and her sister suffered, then recovered from...

For drummer Conroy Gordon, the hardest part of being locked away day after day in the narrow confines of a stranded cruise ship is his inability to tell his two daughters when Daddy will be home. For the past month, he has been battling this...

To say Judith-Miranda Townsend has a special love for children would not even begin to capture the essence of the Westmoreland supermom. Affectionately called ‘Mama Sweetie’ by foster children and members of the Holly Hill community in Darliston,...

This report finds that the 813,000 U.S. children under the age of 10 who have Black immigrant parents from Africa or the Caribbean generally fall in the middle of multiple well-being indicators, faring less well than Asian and white children but better than their native-born Black and Hispanic peers. Citizenship status, English proficiency, parental characteristics, poverty, housing, and access to social supports are examined.

Immigration from the Caribbean to the United States is a relatively recent phenomenon, beginning largely after 1965. This report provides a demographic profile of the 1.7 million Caribbean immigrants in the United States: their geographic settlement, education and workforce characteristics, earnings, modes of entry, and more.

This report focuses on the development of children of Black immigrants in the United States, comparing against the outcomes for their peers in native-born and other immigrant families. It also compares these U.S. children to those in the United Kingdom, where there is a large Black immigrant population but a notably different policy context of reception.

This report draws on a six-year longitudinal study of Palm Beach County, FL, examining parenting, child care enrollment, and other factors that encourage early school success. The authors find kindergarten-age children of Black immigrants have significantly higher odds of being ready for school than children of Latina immigrant or Black U.S.-born mothers.

Using a nationally representative U.S. birth-cohort study, this report examines levels of school readiness among young children by race/ethnicity and nativity. The authors identify the contextual factors — such as family circumstances, parenting practices, and enrollment in center-based child care — that encourage early school success.

The event discussion, which touched on the intersection of race and immigration, focused on the demographics of Black immigrants (both African and Caribbean) in the United States and their children, their educational success, and the implications of the recently released volume’s findings for research and public policy.

Book release event for MPI's volume on the Children of Black Immigrants, covering topics of education, health, and demographics, with U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Deputy Assistant Secretary for Human Services Policy Ajay Chaudry; Gerald D. Jaynes, Yale University Departments of Economics and African-American Studies; chapter authors Dylan Patricia Conger and Kevin Thomas; and volume editors MPI's Randy Capps and Michael Fix.

MPI’s National Center on Immigrant Integration Policy convened a major public policy research symposium focused on young children of immigrants in the U.S.

May 9 marked a very special day for all Russians as the day of the victory over Nazi Germany in the Great Patriotic war. At 00:16 hours on that day in 1945 Act of Military Surrender was signed by the German military leaders in Berlin. The...

Last Thursday morning, I went to visit my youngest grandchild, three-year-old Morgan. As she emerged from her bedroom with her tablet in hand and a scream on her lips then saw me and barged towards me, I knew that a full embrace was not going to...

Brutal. Horrific. Tragic. Choose your ­description. The April jobs report showed, in harrowing ­detail, just how terribly the coronavirus outbreak has pummelled the United States economy. Most obviously, there’s the 14.7 per cent unemployment rate...

Across the Atlantic, large-scale migration has brought about unprecedented levels of diversity, transforming communities in fundamental ways — with a resulting immigration backlash and criticism of "multiculturalism." This volume delivers recommendations on what policymakers must do to build and reinforce inclusiveness given the realities on each side of the Atlantic.

This interdisciplinary volume examines the health, well-being, school readiness, and academic achievement of children in Black immigrant families (most with parents from Africa and the Caribbean)—a population that has had little academic attention even as it represents an increasing share of the U.S. Black child population.