Community Development and Renaissance Social Humanism: Some Lessons for Systems Science

Starting from the crisis in our communities—research has indicated it to be widely spread—the author explores the scientific tradition preceding the rise of modernism in order to draw out a more humane way of thinking that may help our contemporary societies. He discerns between two types of Renaissance humanism, one characterised by its cleverness, the other by its compassion and desire to restore dignity to the lives of people struggling to escape the clutches of medievalism. The father of the latter is Erasmus of Rotterdam and we follow the development of his conception of a social humanism as it branches out, through the work of his successors, into every scientific discipline, both natural and human. These disciplines are united by an embracing systemic idea of philosophy that unites the mind with the heart and which Erasmus called “Philosophia Christi”. We examine the two main pillars upon which this philosophy is built, love for our neighbour and education as the only legitimate instrument to change society, and the extraordinary impact it had on science and on communities living in the seventeenth century. We contrast this with the idea of power, the chosen instrument of modernity to transform society, and trace some of its tragic outcomes. We conclude by discussing the incorporation of an Erasmian type of social humanism into systems education and the future development of such programmes.     

Hydroxyl radical electrochemically generated with water as the complete atom source and its environmental application

The most reactive hydroxyl radical （OH） was generated by electrochemical approach with safe water as the complete atom source. The direct evidence for OH formation was obtained by electron spin resonance method. The powerful OH electrochemically generated could effectively degrade organic pollutants and reduce the toxicity of wastewater. Electrochemical disinfection by OH was considerably efficient even without the aid of active chlorine. Bacteria inactivation of 99.99% was achieved for contact time of 30 min and current density of 5 mA·cm^-2, In comparison with active chlorine, OH is rather attractive as a promising environmentally benign disinfectant and opens a new route for microbial inactivation.     

An improved traitor tracing scheme based on bilinear map

T6 et al presented a bilinear-map-based traitor tracing scheme（TSZ scheme） with revocation, but it is a symmetric scheme because it does not provide non-repudiation. In this paper, an improved TSZ scheme was proposed by using oblivious polynomial evaluation （OPE） protocol and service parameters. Under the recondition of general sameness capabilities of both TSZ and improved TSZ scheme, the new scheme adds some advantages such as providing multi-service capability, user＇s non-repudiation and data provider＇s no-framing innocent users. Furthermore, it is also proved to be semantically secure under the decisional bilinear Diffie-Hellman （DBDH problem） assumption.     

New crystal structure of molecular complex 1-piperidine carboxylate-piperidinium-H<Subscript>2</Subscript>O studied by X-ray single crystal diffraction

Piperidine absorbs CO2 and H2O in air to form a molecular complex： piperidium-l-piperidinecarboxylate-H2O. The structure of the complex was characterized by X-ray single crystal diffraction. The crystal structure was determined to be triclinic, space group P1^-with a=0.648 6（8） nm, b=0.809 200） nm, c= 1.357 1（16） nm, a=96.96706）°, β =102.506（15）°,γ=104.202 05）°, Z=2. The complex is stabilized via five hydrogen bonds between the three components, N-O electrostatic interaction and O-O interaction （electron transfer） betweenl-piperidinecarboxylate and H2O. Due to electron transference of carbamate ion, the oxygen atom in water molecule is strongly negatively charged and the O-H bond is considerably shorter than that of the free molecule of water. The formation of the molecular complex is a reversible process and will decompose upon heating. The mechanism of formation and stabilization is further investigated herein.     

Erratum to: <Emphasis Type="Italic">In vitro</Emphasis> induction of mouse meningeal-derived iPS cells into neural-like cells

The authors report that incorrect figures were included as Figures 4 and 5 in the original publication of this paper. This error occurred during the figure editing process of the publishing company. This information should have been presented as follows:     

Serine/threonine protein phosphatases in DNA damage response

DNA damage response (DDR) is among the most important of the mechanisms that maintain genome stability which, when destabilized, predisposes organs to cancer. Reversible phosphorylation mediated by protein kinases and protein phosphatases regulates most, if not all, cellular activities, including DDR. Protein kinase inhibitors have become the main focus of targeted therapy and anticancer drug development. However, our limited knowledge of protein phosphatase function is compromising our capacity to develop therapeutic agents against phosphatases. In this review, we summarize the roles of serine/threonine protein phosphatases involved in DDR and propose that in situ dephosphorylation of phosphoproteins by protein phosphatases, instead of proteasome-mediated degradation of phosphoproteins, is mainly employed by cells.