Japan's green resources: Forest conservation and social values

Modern and historical Japanese societies are and were quite comfortable with a nature defined, designed, and dominated by humans. While contemporary Japanese are concerned about the environment, especially about non-timber (green) forest resources, conservation organizations are generally small and locally focused. Public forests, accounting for 40 percent of all Japan's forests, are intensively managed. At the national level, the timber program is operating below cost and there is increasing emphasis on non-timber management and rural economic development. A professional elite largely determines forest management goals and cultural barriers minimize broad public participation. Increasingly aware of the environmental impacts of their industrial society at home and abroad, the Japanese are becoming more environmentally concerned. Government agencies are especially proactive in enhancing environmental understanding among Japanese citizens and in sharing their resource management expertise with other Pacific Rim nations.     

Shatter cones at sierra madera, Texas

Shatter cones abound in the central uplift of Sierra Madera and they occur as far as 6.5 kilometers from the center. Apical angles average near 90 degrees. Whole cones and full cones represented by diversely oriented cone segments in any structural block show relatively uniform orientations of axes and a dominant direction of point. The cones predate faulting and folding in the central uplift, and, when beds are restored to horizontal, most cones point inward and upward, a pattern that supports the hypothesis of an impact origin.     

Phage lambda mutants deficient in r-II exclusion

The lambda gene responsible for r(II) exclusion is distinct from other lambda genes and lies between the N and C(I) genes on the genetic map.     

N-linked glycosylation in Campylobacter jejuni and its functional transfer into E. coli

N-linked protein glycosylation is the most abundant posttranslation modification of secretory proteins in eukaryotes. A wide range of functions are attributed to glycan structures covalently linked to asparagine residues within the asparagine-X-serine/threonine consensus sequence (Asn-Xaa-Ser/Thr). We found an N-linked glycosylation system in the bacterium Campylobacter jejuni and demonstrate that a functional N-linked glycosylation pathway could be transferred into Escherichia coli. Although the bacterial N-glycan differs structurally from its eukaryotic counterparts, the cloning of a universal N-linked glycosylation cassette in E. coli opens up the possibility of engineering permutations of recombinant glycan structures for research and industrial applications.