Search

This research paper investigates the evolving defense cooperation between India and Japan in the context of the strategic landscape in the Indo-Pacific region, particularly considering China's rise. The existing literature recognizes China's increasing influence as a significant factor in India-Japanese security cooperation, but tends to overlook the dynamics behind India's shifting stance. The study reveals that India initially hesitated to actively engage in anti-China security cooperation with Japan until the mid-2010s, but later adopted a more proactive partnership. An analysis of policy documents, political speeches, and government records attributes India's initial reluctance to its commitment to non-alignment and strategic autonomy, its desire to balance relations with both China and Japan, and its domestic political priorities favoring economic development over military expansion or strategic alliances. However, growing concerns over China's assertiveness, military modernization, a change in political leadership, and the Quad's development as a regional security platform have prompted India's attitude shift. The research's recommendations not only offer a roadmap for India, Japan, and other Indo-Pacific countries with deep economic ties to China, but also help combat China's military threats to contribute to regional stability and security, address common challenges, and foster a peaceful and prosperous Indo-Pacific region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A major hurdle in pediatric formulation development is the lack of safety and toxicity data on some of the commonly used excipients. While the maximum oral safe dose for several kinds of excipients is known in the adult population, the doses in pediatric patients, including preterm neonates, are not established yet due to the lack of evidence-based data. This paper consists of four parts: (1) country-specific perspectives in different parts of the world (current state, challenges in excipients, and ongoing efforts) for ensuring the use of safe excipients, (2) comparing and contrasting the country-specific perspectives, (3) past and ongoing collaborative efforts, and (4) future perspectives on excipients for pediatric formulation. The regulatory process for pharmaceutical excipients has been developed. However, there are gaps between each region where a lack of information and an insufficient regulation process was found. Ongoing efforts include raising issues on excipient exposure, building a region-specific database, and improving excipient regulation; however, there is a lack of evidence-based information on safety for the pediatric population. More progress on clear safety limits, quantitative information on excipients of concern in the pediatric population, and international harmonization of excipients' regulatory processes for the pediatric population are required. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Microplastics (MPs) are non-biodegradable substances that can sustain our environment for up to a century. What is more worrying is the incapability of modern technologies to annihilate MPs from om environment. One ramification of MPs is their impact on every kind of life form on this planet, which has been discussed ahead; that is why these substances are surfacing in everyday discussions of scholars and researchers. This paper discusses the overview of the global occurrence, abundance, analysis, and remediation techniques of MPs in the environment. This paper primarily reviews the event and abundance of MPs in coastal sediments and agricultural soil of three major Asian countries, India, China, and Japan. A significant concentration of MPs has been recorded from these countries, which affirms its strong presence and subsequent environmental impacts. Concentrations such as 73,100 MPs/kg in Indian coastal sediments and 42,960 particles/kg in the agricultural soil of China is a solid testimony to prove their massive outbreak in our environment and require urgent attention towards this issue. Conclusions show that human activities, rivers, and plastic mulching on agricultural fields have majorly acted as carriers of MPs towards coastal and terrestrial soil and sediments. Later, based on recorded concentrations and gaps, future research studies are recommended in the concerned domain; a dearth of studies on MPs influencing Indian agricultural soil make a whole sector and its consumer vulnerable to the adverse effects of this emerging contaminant. [Display omitted] • Film & fibre shaped microplastics (MPs) are more abundant in India, China and Japan. • Plastic mulching is the root cause of major MPs pollution in soil and sediment. • Estuarian soil/sediment are more prone to MPs pollution than terrestrial and coastal. • FT-IR is highly used for MPs identification; mass spectrometry & microscopy are least. • MPs work as a vector for metals, PPCPs, surfactants and antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The International Virtual Exchange Project (IVEProject) has been connecting students across multiple countries through asynchronous forums on a large scale since 2015. However, considering the variety of virtual exchange methods and the advantages they bring to the field of foreign language learning, there is an increased need to explore the pedagogical possibilities of combining asynchronous and synchronous modalities, particularly across multiple institutions and countries. This short article reports on a pedagogical innovation which involved adding synchronous sessions conducted over Zoom to the asynchronous IVEProject forums. The authors arranged eight weekly Zoom meetings in which students from China, India, Japan, Jordan, Palestine, Türkiye and Syria participated in May-July, 2021. After the final session, a survey was administered to participating students and their teachers to explore their experiences. The results show that the majority of students appreciated and benefitted from the opportunity to communicate synchronously with peers from other countries. The paper also reflects on the benefits and challenges of combining synchronous sessions alongside the asynchronous IVEProject forums, aiming to derive lessons learned from this project in the hope that this will aid future EFL instructors in creating engaging virtual exchange projects which involve participants from multiple cultures and countries.

Governance and regulation of the use of live animals in research and teaching is examined in Australia, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, China, Japan and India. A comparison of the systems in different countries will enable the determination of best practice and fit-forpurpose regulation. The most comprehensive government regulation of animal welfare in institutions covers a broad range of animals and institutions are required to have an Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee, whose membership is specified in guidelines or regulations. The work of the Committees is rigorously overseen by government and facilities that use live animals are audited externally. All countries examined have legislation governing the use of live animals in research, although only Australia and Malaysia have a fully equivalent mandated oversight of teaching. Teaching that uses live animals is partly covered in the Philippines, Japan, Singapore and Thailand This paper thus aims to review the regulation of animal use in different Asian jurisdictions in order to determine best practices that are appropriate to those settings. The most comprehensive oversight is provided in Australia and Malaysia that essentially use the same regulatory framework.

The growing India-Japan engagements are not only focused on economic issues, but also cover a wide range of interests, including regional security, political, and maritime security concerns. Both countries are consolidating strategic partnerships to address the risks and vulnerabilities posed by the evolving regional balance of power. Through their embeddedness with China, both India and Japan form an intrinsic part of the Indo-Pacific geopolitical security architecture. The key transformation of relations between these two states in the region is in response to the geopolitical change brought about by China's rapid ascension. In this regard, the article further explains how both countries are systematically strengthening a strategic partnership and gradually reinforcing economic, political, security, and strategic cooperation against China. This article seeks to address how both states would restrain rising China's strategic maneuvering in the Indo-Pacific region through an analysis of the India-Japan alignment, with the main focus of this study being on analyzing how both India and Japan are now investing in a long-term strategy to balance China's hegemonic policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We aim to investigate the impact of environmental entrepreneurship and green innovations on CO2 emissions in highly polluting Asian economies. For empirical estimation, we have applied ARDL and NARDL models. In the short run, the linear estimates of environmental entrepreneurship are significant in China and India. The short-run non-linear estimates of environmental entrepreneurship are significant in the case of China, India, and Japan. Similarly, the short-run linear estimates of green innovations are significant in China, India, and Japan, whereas the non-linear estimated coefficients of green innovation appeared to be significant in India, Japan, and Russia. In the long run, the linear estimates of environmental entrepreneurship are negative and significant in three countries, namely China, Japan, and Russia. Similarly, the estimates of green innovations are negative and significant in China, India, Japan, and Russia. In the non-linear model, the estimated coefficients of positive shock in environmental entrepreneurship are significant and negative in the case of China, India, and Japan; while, the estimates of negative shock in environmental entrepreneurship are negative and significant in India only. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: it is widely assumed that individuals with Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) infection remain at lifelong risk of tuberculosis (TB) disease. However, there is substantial evidence that self-clearance of Mtb infection can occur. We infer a curve of self-clearance by time since infection and explore its implications for TB epidemiology. Methods and findings: data for self-clearance were inferred using post-mortem and tuberculin-skin-test reversion studies. A cohort model allowing for self-clearance was fitted in a Bayesian framework before estimating the lifetime risk of TB disease and the population infected with Mtb in India, China and Japan in 2019. We estimated that 24.4% (17.8–32.6%, 95% uncertainty interval (UI)) of individuals self-clear within 10 years of infection, and 73.1% (64.6–81.7%) over a lifetime. The lifetime risk of TB disease was 17.0% (10.9–22.5%), compared to 12.6% (10.1–15.0%) assuming lifelong infection. The population at risk of TB disease in India, China and Japan was 35–80% (95% UI) smaller in the self-clearance scenario. Conclusions: the population with a viable Mtb infection may be markedly smaller than generally assumed, with such individuals at greater risk of TB disease. The ability to identify these individuals could dramatically improve the targeting of preventive programmes and inform TB vaccine development, bringing TB elimination within reach of feasibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Non-syndromic rod-cone dystrophy (RCD) is the most common condition in inherited retinal diseases. The aim of this study was to evaluate the research output and productivity related to RCD genetics per countries as classified by the human development index (HDI), by analyzing publication frequency and citations, the choice of journals and publishers, since 2000 to date. We have also analyzed the use of next-generation sequencing (NGS) in publications originating from countries with different HDIs. One thousand four hundred articles focusing on non-syndromic RCD were downloaded and analyzed. Citations and published articles were adjusted per one million individuals. The research output is significantly higher in very high HDI countries (86% of the total publications and 95% of the citations) than countries with lower HDIs in all aspects. High and medium HDI countries published together 13.6% of the total articles worldwide and received 4.6% of the citations. On the publication level, the USA (26%), United Kingdom (10%), and Japan (7%) were the top 3 among very high HDI countries, while China (6%) and India (2%) ranked first in high and medium HDI countries respectively. On the citation level, similar profiles were found. Following adjustment for population size, Switzerland (~14%), Jordan (~ 1%) and Morocco (<0.2%) showed the highest rates of publications in very high, high and medium HDI countries respectively. Very high HDI countries published 71% of their papers in first quartile journals (first quartile in Scimago journal rank; Q1), and 23% in Q2 journals. High and medium HDI countries showed a similar profile in quartiles with ~ 40% of their papers published in Q1 journals and ~ 30% in Q2 journals. The first publication using NGS was issued in 2009 in very high HDI countries, while it appeared in 2012 in high HDI countries, and in 2017 in medium HDI countries, with a respective lag of 3 to 8 years compared to very high HDI countries. A profound gap exists between very high HDI countries and the rest of the world. To fill it in, we propose implementing NGS, supporting international collaborations, building capacities and infrastructures, improving accessibility of patients to services, and increasing national and international funding., (© 2022. The Author(s).)

The development of globalization has separated the production and consumption of products spatially, and the international trade of products has become a carrier of embodied carbon trade. This paper adopted the perspective of value-added trade to calculate the amount of embodied carbon trade of China from 2006 to 2015 and perform a structural decomposition analysis of the changes in China's embodied carbon trade. This study found that: (1) China's embodied carbon exports are much larger than its embodied carbon imports, and there are differences between countries. China imported the largest amount of embodied carbon from South Korea, and it exported the largest amount of embodied carbon to the United States. (2) The structural decomposition analysis shows that changes in the value-added carbon emission coefficient during the study period would have caused China's embodied carbon trade to decrease, and changes in value-added trade would have caused China's embodied carbon trade to increase. Therefore, countries trading with China need to strengthen their cooperation with China in energy conservation, emission reduction, and product trade. In order to accurately reflect China's embodied carbon trade, it is necessary to calculate embodied carbon trade from the perspective of value-added trade., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.