Edited and written by Harvard Medical School physicians Eric Chivian and Aaron Bernstein, Sustaining Life presents a comprehensive--and sobering--view of how human medicines, biomedical research, the emergence and spread of infectious diseases, and the production of food, both on land and in the oceans, depend on on the earth's disappearaing biodiversity. With a foreword by E.O. Wilson and a prologue by Kofi Annan, and more than 200 poignant color illustrations, Sustaining Life contributes essential perspective to the debate over how humans affect biodiversity and a compelling demonstration of the human health costs.

From the historical roots of AIDS activism in the struggle for African liberation to the everyday work of community education in Khayelitsha, Sustaining Life tells the story of how the rights-based South African AIDS movement successfully transformed public health institutions, enabled access to HIV/AIDS treatment, and sustained the lives of people living with the disease. Typical accounts of the South African epidemic have focused on the political conflict surrounding it, Theodore Powers observes, but have yet to examine the process by which the national HIV/AIDS treatment program achieved near-universal access. In Sustaining Life, Powers demonstrates the ways in which non-state actors, from caregivers to activists, worked within the state to transform policy and state-based institutions in order to improve health-based outcomes. He shows how advocates in the South African AIDS movement channeled the everyday experiences of poor and working-class people living with HIV/AIDS into tangible policy changes at varying institutional levels, revealing the primacy of local action for expanding treatment access. In his analysis of the transformation of the state health system, Powers addresses three key questions: How were the activists of the movement able to overcome an AIDS-dissident faction that was backed by government power? How were state health institutions and HIV/AIDS policy transformed to increase public sector access to treatment? Finally, how should the South African campaign for treatment access inform academic debates on social movements, transnationalism, and the state? Based on extended participant observation and in-depth interviews with members of the South African AIDS movement, Sustaining Life traces how the political principles of the anti-apartheid movement were leveraged to build a broad coalition that changed national HIV/AIDS policy norms and highlights how changes in state-society relations can be produced by local activism.

This major new work updates and significantly expands The Hastings Center's 1987 Guidelines on the Termination of Life-Sustaining Treatment and Care of the Dying. Like its predecessor, this second edition will shape the ethical and legal framework for decision-making on treatment and end-of-life care in the United States. This groundbreaking work incorporates 25 years of research and innovation in clinical care, law, and policy. It is written for physicians, nurses, and other health care professionals and is structured for easy reference in difficult clinical situations. It supports the work of clinical ethicists, ethics committee members, health lawyers, clinical educators, scholars, and policymakers. It includes extensive practical recommendations. Health care reform places a new set of challenges on decision-making and care near the end of life. The Hastings Center Guidelines are an essential resource.

The Earth's biodiversity-the rich variety of life on our planet-is disappearing at an alarming rate. And while many books have focused on the expected ecological consequences, or on the aesthetic, ethical, sociological, or economic dimensions of this loss, Sustaining Life is the first book to examine the full range of potential threats that diminishing biodiversity poses to human health. Edited and written by Harvard Medical School physicians Eric Chivian and Aaron Bernstein, along with more than 100 leading scientists who contributed to writing and reviewing the book, Sustaining Life presents a comprehensive--and sobering--view of how human medicines, biomedical research, the emergence and spread of infectious diseases, and the production of food, both on land and in the oceans, depend on biodiversity. The book's ten chapters cover everything from what biodiversity is and how human activity threatens it to how we as individuals can help conserve the world's richly varied biota. Seven groups of organisms, some of the most endangered on Earth, provide detailed case studies to illustrate the contributions they have already made to human medicine, and those they are expected to make if we do not drive them to extinction. Drawing on the latest research, but written in language a general reader can easily follow, Sustaining Life argues that we can no longer see ourselves as separate from the natural world, nor assume that we will not be harmed by its alteration. Our health, as the authors so vividly show, depends on the health of other species and on the vitality of natural ecosystems. With a foreword by E.O. Wilson and a prologue by Kofi Annan, and more than 200 poignant color illustrations, Sustaining Life contributes essential perspective to the debate over how humans affect biodiversity and a compelling demonstration of the human health costs. It is the winner of the Gerald L. Young Book Award in Human Ecology Best Sci-Tech Books of 2008 for Biology by Gregg Sapp of Library Journal

As global warming, famine, and environmental catastrophes have become daily news items, achieving a sustainable environment to maintain the future of life on Earth has become a global concern. Sustaining Life on Earth is an important contribution toward assessing such problems and making the Earth hospitable to life for generations to come. With an interdisciplinary team of international scholars, this masterfully edited collection approaches the problems facing sustainability from a perspective of global governance. To date, powerful economic forces have misguided decision-making processes in favor of short-term gain rather than long-term sustainability. As global awareness has increased and individual citizens have begun to alter their lifestyles to be more environmentally conscious, it is also necessary for governing bodies to take these concerns seriously. Sustaining Life on Earth makes the case that, for all the recent neo-liberal emphasis on the autonomous individual, humanity has collective problems, and it is only through collective action that solutions will be found. It shows that the global community is beginning to acknowledge the interdependencies among population, affluence, and technology. In the book, analysts from many disciplines advance solutions that could shift us away from growth-bound status quo development approaches toward more ecologically responsible and socially equitable ways of living. They suggest ways to move forward that would ensure health and well-being for all in both present and future generations. While success necessarily entails many changes at all levels, the book highlights one soft-law instrument that reflects many of the values and principles necessary to set humanity onto a sustainable path: The Earth Charter of 2002. Sustaining Life on Earth is a ground-breaking contribution to the burgeoning study of sustainability. Designed for a general non-specialist readership in the first year of university or beyond, this book will be of interest to anyone concerned with the impacts of global change on human well-being and the ecosphere, including people in environmental NGOs and those working in public policy.

Can Christian faith sustain the life of the mind? This beautifully written essay by Richard Hughes counters the widespread perception of Christians as steeped in narrowness and dogmatism and provides a powerful argument that faith, properly pursued, in fact nourishes the openness and curiosity that make a life of the mind possible.

MILS-15 provides an up-to-date review of the metalloenzymes involved in the activation, production, and conversion of molecular oxygen as well as the functionalization of the chemically inert gases methane and ammonia. Found either in aerobes (humans, animals, plants, microorganisms) or in anaerobes (so-called “impossible bacteria”) these enzymes employ preferentially iron and copper at their active sites, in order to conserve energy by redox-driven proton pumps, to convert methane to methanol, or ammonia to hydroxylamine or other compounds. When it comes to the light-driven production of molecular oxygen, the tetranuclear manganese cluster of photosystem II must be regarded as the key player. However, dioxygen can also be produced in the dark, by heme iron-dependent dismutation of oxyanions. Metalloenzymes Mastering Dioxygen and Other Chewy Gases is a vibrant research area based mainly on structural and microbial biology, inorganic biological chemistry, and environmental biochemistry. All this is covered in an authoritative manner in 7 stimulating chapters, written by 21 internationally recognized experts, and supported by nearly 1100 references, informative tables, and over 140 illustrations (many in color). MILS-15 provides excellent information for teaching; it is also closely related to MILS-14, The Metal-Driven Biogeochemistry of Gaseous Compounds in the Environment. Peter M. H. Kroneck is a bioinorganic chemist who is exploring the role of transition metals in biology, with a focus on functional and structural aspects of microbial iron, copper, and molybdenum enzymes and their impact on the biogeochemical cyles of nitrogen and sulfur. Martha E. Sosa Torres is an inorganic chemist, with special interests in magnetic properties of newly synthesized transition metal complexes and their reactivity towards molecular oxygen, applying kinetic, electrochemical, and spectroscopic techniques.

An incisive look at the war for market share in the Asian life insurance market Although the life insurance industry in Asia has emerged from the financial crisis stronger than ever, it has not escaped unchanged. As the general focus of insurance companies across the continent moves towards profitability beyond growth, tightening regulatory measures, shifts in consumer preferences, and risk tolerance, battle lines have been drawn between local incumbents, attackers, and foreign players. Life Insurance in Asia: Winning in the Next Decade, Second Edition looks at the ways in which small local agencies and multinational companies alike are seizing control of as much of the market as they can by aggressively recruiting new agents, leveraging new channels, and selling new products to cash in on the explosive Asian markets. Thoroughly revised and updated, this new edition offers a comprehensive introduction to the booming Asian life insurance markets and outlines exactly what it takes to capture the opportunities that are emerging. Drawing on the research and experience of the McKinsey Asia financial services team, it includes everything you need to know about the battle for the life insurance market in Asia. Looks at how China and India are becoming increasingly important players on the international life insurance scene Goes behind the scenes of the Asian life insurance industry and the contentious battle for market share Outlines the steps to successfully entering, and prospering, in the Asian market The life insurance industry in Asia is changing like never before. What the future holds, no one knows, but with Life Insurance in Asia in hand, you'll have a clear idea of the factions in play and the rules of the game.

When 'Living and Sustaining a Creative Life' was published in 2013, it became an immediate sensation. Edited by Sharon Louden, the book brought together forty essays by working artists, each sharing their own story of how to sustain a creative practice that contributes to the ongoing dialogue in contemporary art. The book struck a nerve how do artists really make it in the world today? Louden took the book on a sixty-two-stop book tour, selling thousands of copies, and building a movement along the way. Now, Louden returns with a sequel: forty more essays from artists who have successfully expanded their practice beyond the studio and become change agents in their communities. There is a misconception that artists are invisible and hidden, but the essays here demonstrate the truth artists make a measurable and innovative economic impact in the non-profit sector, in education, and in corporate environments. The Artist as Culture Producer illustrates how today's contemporary artists add to creative economies through out-of-the-box thinking while also generously contributing to the well-being of others. By turns humorous, heartbreaking, and instructive, the testimonies of these forty diverse working artists will inspire and encourage every reader from the art student to the established artist.

Sustaining Loss explores the uncanny, traumatic weaving together of the living and the dead in art, and the morbid fascination it holds for modern philosophical aesthetics. Beginning with Kant, the author traces how aesthetic theory has been drawn back repeatedly to the moving power of the undead body of the work of art. He locates the most potent expressions of this philosophical compulsion in Hegel's thesis that art is a thing of the past, and in Freud's view that the work of art is the haunting of the present by the endless suffering of what is dead but still has claims over the living. The book asserts that modern aesthetics holds the key to unlocking the tortured relation of modernity to the past it is perpetually leaving behind. As the capacity to withstand the inescapable force of a past that is dead for us becomes the supreme test for a fully modern, fully secular philosophy, aesthetics moves to the center of philosophical reflection. But, the author argues, this secular philosophical orientation can be sustained only if aesthetic theory remains oriented by intimate contact with modernist works of art. Sustaining Loss examines not only Kant, Hegel, and Freud, but also the contemporary artists Gerhard Richter and Ilya Kabakov, whose art turns fruitfully against art's own past. To live as a modern, the author asserts, is to live with the dead past that modernist art ceaselessly disgorges. Overall, the book aims to articulate an aesthetic theory suitable to the task of living in a time when, in Flannery O'Connor's words, "The blind don't see and the lame don't walk, and what's dead stays that way."