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In recent decades, out-migration has become a key livelihood strategy for many rural households in the middle hills region of Nepal. In this region, rural communities are key actors in the management of local resources such as community forests. Analysis of the link between community forests and out-migration is largely missing in the literature, even though the demographic changes associated with out-migration affect forest resource use and management. This article discusses how rural communities and traditional landscapes in the middle hills are changing following out-migration and how this process has changed the management by rural communities of local forests (including community forests). Overall, the research found a reduced dependency by households on forest products (e.g. firewood, fodder and timber) sourced from community forests. Also, the reduced demand is being supplied increasingly from trees/forests grown on private farmland, including natural regenerated forests and trees planted on abandoned farmland. The declining need for forest products and the lack of an economic incentive for active forest management coupled with a decreasing sense of community has reduced the interest in community forests, leading to less intensive and infrequent forest management. Given the prevalence of out-migration and the changing socio-economic context in the middle hills, it appears time to reconsider the management of community forests beyond a narrow range of uses to enable greater commercialization and encourage ecosystem services to be harnessed so community forests better align with contemporary rural livelihoods and landscapes.

We offer a unified conceptual, behavioral, and econometric framework for optimal fundraising that deals with both synergies and discrepancies between approaches from Economics, Marketing, Psychology, and Sociology. The purpose is to offer a framework that can bridge differences and open a dialogue between disciplines in order to facilitate optimal fundraising design. The literature is extensive, and our purpose is to offer a brief background and perspective on each of the approaches, provide an integrated framework leading to new insights, and discuss areas of future research.

The described oxime-based library protocol provides detailed procedures for the linkage of aminooxy functionality with aldehyde building blocks that result in the generation of libraries of multidentate inhibitors. Synthesis of inhibitors for protein tyrosine phosphatases (PTPs) and antagonists directed against the human tumor susceptibility gene 101 (TSG101) are shown as examples. Three steps are involved: (i) the design and synthesis of aminooxy platforms; (ii) tethering with aldehydes to form oxime-based linkages with sufficient purity; and (iii) direct in vitro biological evaluation of oxime products without purification. Each coupling reaction is (i) performed in capped microtubes at room temperature (20-23 °C); (ii) diluted for inhibitory evaluation; and (iii) screened with targets in microplates to provide IC(50) or K(d) values. The synthesis of the aminooxy platforms takes 3-5 d; tethering with the aldehydes takes 24 h; and inhibition assay of enzymes and protein-protein interactions takes 30 min and 2 h, respectively.

The subject of envelopes has been part of differential geometry from the beginning. This paper brings a modern perspective to the classical problem of envelopes of families of affine hyperplanes. In the process, the classical results are generalized and unified. A key step in this process is the use of “generalized immersions”. These have been described elsewhere but, briefly, every classical immersion defines a generalized immersion in a canonical way so that generalized immersions can be understood as ordinary immersions “with singularities.” Next, the concept of an envelope is given a modern definition, namely, an envelope is a generalized immersion solving the family that has a universal mapping property relative to all other full rank solutions. The beauty of this approach becomes apparent in the “Envelope Theorem”. With one mild assumption, namely that the associated family of linear hyperplanes is immersed, it is proven that a family of affine hyperplanes always has an envelope, and that envelope is essentially unique.

After a service failure and a poor recovery, what leads loyal customers to try to punish a firm even if there is no material gain for doing so? We propose and test a justice-based model that incorporates perceived betrayal as the means to understand customer retaliation and the “love becomes hate” effect. The results suggest that betrayal is a key motivational force that leads customers to restore fairness by all means possible, including retaliation. In contrast to the majority of findings in the service literature, we propose and find that relationship quality has unfavorable effects on a customer’s response to a service recovery. As a relationship gains in strength, a violation of the fairness norm was found to have a stronger effect on the sense of betrayal experienced by customers. The model was tested on a national sample of airline passengers who complained to a consumer agency after an unsuccessful recovery.

This research examines the effects of relationship quality (RQ) on customers' desires to retaliate after service failures. We posit that the effects of RQ are contingent upon the attributions customers make about the firm's controllability over a service failure. Two competing hypotheses are examined and reconciled. The "love is blind" hypothesis posits that when low controllability is inferred, high RQ customers experience a lesser desire for retaliation than low RQ customers. On the other hand, the "love becomes hate" hypothesis specifies that when high controllability is inferred, high RQ customers experience a greater desire for retaliation than low RQ customers. The hypotheses are tested with a survey- based design and a partial least squares (PLS) model that incorporates a multiplicative latent construct.

The ETS family of transcription factors consists of a group of proteins that share a highly conserved 85 amino acid DNA-binding domain (DBD). This family recognizes a consensus sequence rich in purine bases with a central GGAA motif. A comparison of the published three-dimensional structures of the DBD/DNA complexes of ETS1 by NMR [Werner et al. (1995) Cell, 83, 761–771] and the related Pu.1 by X-ray crystallography [Kodandapani et al. (1996) Nature, 380, 456–460] reveals an apparent discrepancy in which the protein domains bind with opposite polarity to their target sequences. This surprising and highly unlikely result prompted us to reexamine our NMR structure. Additional NMR experiments now reveal an error in the original interpretation of the spectra defining the orientation of the ETS1-DBD on DNA. It was originally reported that the ETS1-DBD bound to DNA with a bipartite motif involving major groove recognition via a helix–turn–helix element and minor groove recognition via protein side-chain intercalation. The presence of intercalation was deduced on the basis of numerous NOEs between several amino acids in the protein and a resonance at 12.33 ppm originally assigned to a DNA imino proton. New NMR experiments now conclusively demonstrate that this resonance, which is located within the DNA imino proton region of the spectrum, arises from the hydroxyl proton of Tyr86. Realization of this error necessitated reanalysis of the intermolecular NOEs. This revealed that the orientation of the ETS1-DBD in the complex is opposite to that originally reported and that a tryptophan residue does not intercalate into the DNA. The calculation of a new ensemble of structures based on the corrected data indicates that the structure of the ETS1-DBD/DNA complex is indeed similar to the X-ray structure of the Pu.1-DBD/DNA complex.

Many manufacturing techniques to produce nano-materials via a “bottom-up” approach are currently being developed and evaluated. The PureNanoTM platform technology developed by Microfluidics International Corporation (MFIC) has proven to be both an effective and energy efficient method to produce nano-scale entities including emulsions in addition to suspensions. This nano-manufacturing platform utilizes crystallization, precipitation and chemical reaction methods that produce nano-particles with specified size distributions and a desired morphology. The solids formed can be either amorphous or crystalline, which may exist in numerous polymorphs. In many cases the ability to obtain a specific composition (single species or mixture) is possible via careful selection and implementation of key processing conditions. The methods are based on controlling the local degree of super-saturation (SS) and/or stoichiometry during their formation and subsequent configuration and growth, when appropriate. To accomplish this, operational strategies and innovative processing techniques are coupled with qualitative insight into the basic mechanisms involved with these processes. Validation of the technology at the bench scale for crystallization, emulsions/cargo loading, and multi-phase reactions (interfacial and homogeneous) provided the justification to develop commercial scale systems. Examples are given here for crystallization of drugs for the pharmaceutical industry, a catalyst formed by deposition of metallic crystals on a carbon substrate, production of fine chemicals via emulsion formation for multi-phase reactions, and a homogeneous substitution reaction forming an insoluble product. Nano-materials with median particle size as low as 50 nm were produced. With respect to the drug particles, they were highly crystalline, of a single polymorph and pure. In all cases, results indicate both process performance enhancement and product quality/functionality improvements compared to materials produced with conventional methods, with at least 1-2 order of magnitude increases in surface/interfacial area and reduced energy needs. Furthermore, the technology is suitable for current Good Manufacturing Practices (cGMP) manufacturing.