What Is the Acheulean?

Aerosol emissions from human activities are extensive and changing rapidly over Asia. Model simulations and satellite observations indicate a dipole pattern in aerosol emissions and loading between South Asia and East Asia, two of the most heavily polluted regions of the world. We examine the previously unexplored diverging trends in the existing dipole pattern of aerosols between East and South Asia using the high quality, two-decade long ground-based time series of observations of aerosol properties from the Aerosol Robotic Network (AERONET), from satellites (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) and Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI)), and from model simulations (Modern-Era Retrospective Analysis for Research and Applications, version 2 (MERRA-2). The data cover the period since 2001 for Kanpur (South Asia) and Beijing (East Asia), two locations taken as being broadly representative of the respective regions. Since 2010 a dipole in aerosol optical depth (AOD) is maintained, but the trend is reversed—the decrease in AOD over Beijing (East Asia) is rapid since 2010, being 17% less in current decade compared to first decade of twenty-first century, while the AOD over South Asia increased by 12% during the same period. Furthermore, we find that the aerosol composition is also changing over time. The single scattering albedo (SSA), a measure of aerosol’s absorption capacity and related to aerosol composition, is slightly higher over Beijing than Kanpur, and has increased from 0.91 in 2002 to 0.93 in 2017 over Beijing and from 0.89 to 0.92 during the same period over Kanpur, confirming that aerosols in this region have on an average become more scattering in nature. These changes have led to a notable decrease in aerosol-induced atmospheric heating rate (HR) over both regions between the two decades, decreasing considerably more over East Asia (− 31%) than over South Asia (− 9%). The annual mean HR is lower now, it is still large (≥ 0.6 K per day), which has significant climate implications. The seasonal trends in AOD, SSA and HR are more pronounced than their respective annual trends over both regions. The seasonal trends are caused mainly by the increase/decrease in anthropogenic aerosol emissions (sulfate, black carbon and organic carbon) while the natural aerosols (dust and sea salt) did not change significantly over South and East Asia during the last two decades. The MERRA-2 model is able to simulate the observed trends in AODs well but not the magnitude, while it also did not simulate the SSA values or trends well. These robust findings based on observations of key aerosol parameters and previously unrecognized diverging trends over South and East Asia need to be accounted for in current state-of-the-art climate models to ensure accurate quantification of the complex and evolving impact of aerosols on the regional climate over Asia.

Lip and oral cavity cancer (LOC) is a major public health challenge in Asia. Nevertheless, a critical gap remains in understanding the epidemiological burden of LOC among young people (15-44 years) in the region. This study aims to analyze the burden and risk factors of LOC in this age group across the four Global Burden of Disease (GBD) Asian regions from 1990 to 2021 and projects trends to 2030. Data on the incidence, deaths, disability-adjusted life years (DALYs), and risk factors of LOC from 1990 to 2021 were obtained from the GBD 2021 study for East, South, Southeast Asia, and High-income Asia Pacific. This study assessed the LOC burden among young people (15-44 years) through age- and sex-stratified analyses, evaluated temporal trends via joinpoint regression, examined risk factor contributions, and projected trends to 2030 using the Nordpred age-period-cohort model. From 1990 to 2021, the age-standardized incidence rate (ASIR) increased across all subregions, with the largest rise in East Asia. In contrast, age-standardized mortality rate (ASMR) and age-standardized DALYs rate declined everywhere except South Asia. In 2021, South Asia bore the heaviest LOC burden among young people in the four Asian subregions. India reported the highest incident cases, deaths, and DALYs in 2021, and Pakistan had the highest ASR for all three metrics. Taiwan (Province of China) showed the largest increase in ASRs over the period. In 2021, smoking had the highest contribution in East Asia, alcohol use in High-income Asia Pacific, and chewing tobacco in South Asia. Projections to 2030 indicate rising ASIR in East, South, and Southeast Asia but declines in High-income Asia Pacific; decreasing ASMR everywhere except South Asia; and increasing age-standardized DALYs rate in East and South Asia but decreases elsewhere. LOC imposes a substantial and growing burden on young people in South, East, and Southeast Asia, marked by rising ASIR since 1990 and projected increases through 2030. South Asia faces the most urgent challenge with concurrent rises in incidence, mortality, and DALYs-most notably in the 20-24 age group. Region-specific interventions targeting predominant risk factors are critically needed.

The Community Earth System Model is used to study the aerosol climate effects during the 1980s and 1990s in which the anthropogenic SO2 emissions decreased in North America and Western Europe and increased in East and South Asia. From the 100 year simulations, aerosol forcing results in cooler (−0.13 K) and drier (−0.01 mm/day) atmosphere with less shortwave radiation flux at the surface (−0.37 W/m2). The clear‐sky shortwave radiation flux decreased over East Asia (−0.81 W/m2) and South Asia (−1.09 W/m2), but increased over Western Europe (+1.16 W/m2) and North America (+0.39 W/m2), consistent with aerosol loading changes. While changes in spatial distributions of all‐sky shortwave radiation and surface temperature are closely related to cloud changes, the changes in wind and precipitation do not correspond to aerosol loading changes, indicating the complexity of aerosol‐cloud circulation interactions. The East and South Asia monsoons were generally weakened due mainly to southward shift of the 200 hPa East Asia Jet (EAJ) and decrease in 850 hPa winds; annual precipitation decreased by 2% in South Asia but increased by 2% in Yangtze‐Huai River Valley over East Asia. The uncertainties associated with aerosol climate effects are addressed within the context of model variability and the global warming effect. For the latter, while the aerosol effects decrease the greenhouse warming on the global mean, the regional responses are different. Nevertheless, the characteristics of aerosol climate effects, including the southward 200 hPa EAJ and weakened South Asia monsoon, still persist when the climate becomes warmer, although the strength and the geographical distribution are slightly modulated.

Abstract. Limited availability of atmospheric ammonia (NH3) observations limits our understanding of controls on its spatial and temporal variability and its interactions with the ecosystem. Here we used the Model for Ozone and Related chemical Tracers version 4 (MOZART-4) global chemistry transport model and the Hemispheric Transport of Air Pollution version 2 (HTAP-v2) emission inventory to simulate global NH3 distribution for the year 2010. We presented a first comparison of the model with monthly averaged satellite distributions and limited ground-based observations available across South Asia. The MOZART-4 simulations over South Asia and East Asia were evaluated with the NH3 retrievals obtained from the Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer (IASI) satellite and 69 ground-based monitoring stations for air quality across South Asia and 32 ground-based monitoring stations from the Nationwide Nitrogen Deposition Monitoring Network (NNDMN) of China. We identified the northern region of India (Indo-Gangetic Plain, IGP) as a hotspot for NH3 in Asia, both using the model and satellite observations. In general, a close agreement was found between yearly averaged NH3 total columns simulated by the model and IASI satellite measurements over the IGP, South Asia (r=0.81), and the North China Plain (NCP), East Asia (r=0.90). However, the MOZART-4-simulated NH3 column was substantially higher over South Asia than East Asia, as compared with the IASI retrievals, which show smaller differences. Model-simulated surface NH3 concentrations indicated smaller concentrations in all seasons than surface NH3 measured by the ground-based observations over South and East Asia, although uncertainties remain in the available surface NH3 measurements. Overall, the comparison of East Asia and South Asia using both MOZART-4 model and satellite observations showed smaller NH3 columns in East Asia compared with South Asia for comparable emissions, indicating rapid dissipation of NH3 due to secondary aerosol formation, which can be explained by larger emissions of acidic precursor gases in East Asia.

This chapter focused on implicit theories regarding political apologies. Political apologies differ from individual apologies in that they generally are concerned not only with wrongful acts but also with a distinct political quality of wrongful acts committed under the mantel of the nation. Participants from Western Europe, Russia and the Balkan Peninsula, the Middle East, Africa, Latin America, South and Southeast Asia, East Asia, and the UK/Anglo regions gave qualitative responses regarding the effectiveness of one nation’s apology for reconciliation between two countries, as well as what actions would need to be taken to achieve true reconciliation. Overwhelmingly, participants across all regions – developed versus developing country, Eastern versus Western, or colonized versus colonizer – stated that an apology could help the reconciliation process in one way or another. Participants in South and Southeast Asia, Africa, East Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East offered frequent responses indicating an apology could lead to reconciliation, while Africa and the UK/Anglo regions indicated an apology could lead to healing. The most frequent responses from Russia and the Balkans, East Asia, the Middle East, South and Southeast Asia, and Africa said an apology was a necessary component of reconciliation. In regard to the steps that were needed to make an apology effective, a high proportion of response (84–97 %) indicated that reconciliation is achievable following an apology if certain steps are taken. For instance, participants from East Asia and Western Europe noted that the sincerity of the apology was most important. Africa and Russia and the Balkans had more responses indicating that recognition of wrongdoing was important, while the Middle East and Russia and the Balkans had frequent responses favoring a state sanctioned diplomatic response or treaty. Interestingly, Africa and South and Southeast Asia were most in favor of monetary aid as a step toward reconciliation, perhaps reflecting the more recent experiences of those countries with colonization, war/conflict, and widespread poverty.

Aerosols continue to contribute the largest uncertainty in quantifying Earth’s climate change. The uncertainty associated with aerosol radiative forcing is found to be higher over Asia. The simulation and future projection of aerosol impact on climate may not be highly accurate over Asia due to rapid changes in aerosol emissions, limitations in simulating the observed aerosol trends, and the non-availability of regional distribution of columnar aerosol parameters based on high-quality observational datasets on a seasonal scale. For the first time, this comprehensive study examines the spatial and regional variations of aerosol columnar optical and physical properties (aerosol optical depth (AOD), fine mode fraction (FMF), and single scattering albedo (SSA)) and their associated radiative effects (aerosol radiative forcing (ARF) and heating rate (HR)) using high-quality Aerosol Robotic Network (AERONET) datasets on seasonal and annual scales over Asia. This study is performed over a total of 44 selected AERONET observational sites covering different regions of Asia, e.g., Central, South, South-East, and East Asia. AOD, ARF at the surface and in the atmosphere, and aerosol-induced atmospheric HR are observed to be the highest over South Asia, followed by South-East, East, and Central Asia in each season. SSA is found to be lower over South and Central Asia compared to South-East and East Asia. The combined influence of both fine anthropogenic aerosol emissions (e.g., carbonaceous aerosols) from biomass burning and fossil fuel combustion, and coarse mode dust aerosols from seasonal transport lead to higher AOD (0.6) and lower SSA (0.90), which overall result in higher ARF (~−70 Wm-2 at surface and 40 Wm-2 in atmosphere) and HR (0.80 Kday-1) over South Asia. South-East and East Asia are dominated by fine aerosols (higher FMF) due to higher contributions from forest fire and anthropogenic emissions, respectively, and relatively less dominance of dust aerosols compared to Central and South Asia. In addition, the seasonal aerosol optical and radiative parameters over Asia are also compared and contrasted with other regions of the globe, e.g., North America, South America, Europe, Africa, and Australia, where aerosol emissions are significantly different and mostly lower than in Asia. These findings provide observational constraints that are crucial for the improvement in model simulations for accurately assessing the radiative and climatic impacts of aerosols over a global aerosol hotspot region, Asia, where the uncertainty associated with aerosol radiative forcing is found to be higher. Details of the spatiotemporal variations in aerosol characteristics over Asia will be presented, compared and contrasted with the rest of the world, and inferences will be drawn. 

To assess changes in insulin resistance and β-cell function in a multiethnic cohort of women in Oslo, Norway, from early to 28 weeks' gestation and 3 months post partum and relate the findings to gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM). Population-based cohort study of 695 healthy pregnant women from Western Europe (41%), South Asia (25%), Middle East (15%), East Asia (6%) and elsewhere (13%). Blood samples and demographics were recorded at mean 15 (V1) and 28 (V2) weeks' gestation and 3 months post partum (V3). Universal screening was by 75 g oral glucose tolerance test at V2, GDM with modified IADPSG criteria (no 1-h measurement): fasting plasma glucose (PG) ≥5.1 or 2-h PG ≥8.5 mmol/l. Homeostatic model assessment (HOMA)-β (β-cell function) and HOMA-IR (insulin resistance) were calculated from fasting glucose and C-peptide. Characteristics were comparable across ethnic groups, except age (South Asians: younger, P<0.001) and prepregnant BMI (East Asians: lower, P=0.040). East and South Asians were more insulin resistant than Western Europeans at V1. From V1 to V2, the increase in insulin resistance was similar across the ethnic groups, but the increase in β-cell function was significantly lower for the East and South Asians compared with Western Europeans. GDM women compared with non-GDM women were more insulin resistant at V1; from V1 to V2, their β-cell function increased significantly less and the percentage increase in β-cell function did not match the change in insulin resistance. Pregnant women from East Asia and South Asia were more insulin resistant and showed poorer HOMA-β-cell function than Western Europeans.

The purpose of this research is to examine the economic freedom (EF) along with its macroeconomic determinants impact on Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) inflow in South Asia, East Asia, Latin America, Middle East, and North Africa, Northern Europe, Southern Europe, Western Europe, Eastern Europe and Sub Saharan Africa. We use Heritage Foundation economic freedom index data over the period of 1999 to 2018 and employ the stepwise multi regression on variables of business freedom, government spending, tax burden, government integrity, property rights, investment freedom, trade freedom and monetary freedom. The results show that EF has a significant positive impact in South Asia, Latin America, East Asia, North Europe and West Europe. However, for the Middle East and North Africa, East European and South European economies EF has an insignificant influence on FDI inflow.

Historical Asia was an interconnected system of “open” world orders. This is a crucial theoretical takeaway for International Relations (IR) theory from historical Asia. In other words, there has never been one single order covering all of Asia or any of its subregions. There were multiple, unevenly overlapping orders in historical Asia. This perspective, which is rooted in the global historical approach to IR, challenges the Eurocentric notion of the “containerized” version of Asian regional worlds and world orders that only came into meaningful contact with each other because of the early modern European expansion. At the same time, this global and historical perspective also challenges all essentialist views of the East Asian past that characterize that part of the world as living in splendid Sinocentric isolation for thousands of years until China and East Asia were “opened up” by the West. Two crucial periods and processes of Asian history show the deep and transformative impact of the entanglements between South Asia and East Asia for Asian world orders: the Indic-Buddhist impact on China in the 1st millennium (and into the early centuries of the 2nd millennium), and the role of India in the so-called opening up of China by the West in the 19th and 20th centuries. These processes provide two crucial insights. First, historical East Asia was not a China-centered system for 2,000 years. The Buddhist impact on China had a profound impact on both the Chinese worldview and the world order(s) that existed in (East) Asia. More specifically, the Buddhist interconnections across Asia demonstrate that the “international” (or the global) was larger than East Asia, and that China and its eastern neighbors knew that too. Second, and relatedly, pre-European East Asia was not a “closed” system. While the expansion of Europe may have “opened up” China and East Asia in the 19th century, this represented the “opening up” of that part of the world for the West, and not because East Asia lived in Sinocentric isolation from the rest of Asia. Furthermore, Indian resources played a fundamental role in that Sino-Western encounter, thereby demonstrating the interconnectedness of the world orders of South and East Asia. Asia and its subregions defy singular and all-encompassing orders, and Asian history points toward a plurality of open and overlapping orders. Notably, the emerging regional orders in Asia are also pointing toward such a configuration. Asia is not one, but Asia is not disconnected either.

Economic integration of South Asia and East Asia has been growing steadily since the 1990s, fuelled by domestic reforms and the emergence of regional supply chains. Within South Asia, India emerged as the largest trading partner and investment destination for East Asian economies. With its new Act East Policy, India has been proactively looking at free trade agreements with Association of Southeast Asian Nation and East Asia, which has brought benefits to South Asia in terms of improved trade and increased investment. This paper assesses the experience of the economic integration of South Asia and East Asia by addressing questions such as the extent of trade integration achieved and impediments to deepening integration. It found that trade and investment linkages are growing as well as casually related. However, attaining the full potential of economic integration is constrained by the insufficient depth in the use of existing trade agreements, barriers to service trade, and poor infrastructure connectivity. Expansion of Regional Comprehensive Economic Cooperation would significantly enhance economic integration of South Asia, particularly India, and East Asia.

Introduction Promoting the Study of Modern Literatures Worldwide: The MLA and Its Conventions

Prediction of antibiotic sorption in soil with machine learning and analysis of global antibiotic resistance risk

60 A & Q Infrastructure as Method in Archipelagic Southeast Asia Elmo Gonzaga If connectivity is indeed the key engine of the global economy (Khanna 2016), then infrastructure has become one of the primary mechanisms for governments, businesses, citizens, and migrants to negotiate flows, interchanges, and transplantations of images, knowledge, technologies, and money. International and intraregional organizations like the G20 (Oxford Economics 2017) and the Asian Development Bank (2017) now emphasize infrastructure building as a catalyst for economic growth and social progress. Cities in South and Southeast Asia with a growing middle class, such as Manila, Jakarta, Lahore, Dhaka, Hanoi, and Ho Chi Minh City, are constructing or expanding mass transit systems with technical and financial aid from Japan and the PRC. Meant to facilitate the mobility of workers, goods, and materials throughout these cities, such transportation infrastructures generate sources of employment for residents but, more importantly, make their built environments more attractive to foreign companies, professionals, and investors. The messianic advocacy of infrastructure building in East and South Asia has contrasted with austerity policies plaguing North America and Western Europe, which have led to worsening underemployment and precarity. The importance of infrastructure for global economic and geopolitical expansion is exemplified by the PRC’s Belt and Road Initiative, which is developing maritime ports and railway networks to extend its transnational supply chains to traditionally marginalized areas in the Global South in exchange for investments and loans as well as leaseholds and repossessions. The civil unrest that spread across East Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East in 2019 was, in large part, in response to the struggle of ordinary citizens for greater democratic access to vital urban, political, and social infrastructure. Protests on the streets of Santiago, Quito, Bogot á, Port-­ au-­ Prince, Tehran, and Beirut erupted after abrupt increases in the fares for public transit, prices of subsidized fuel, and taxes on social media, which curtailed access to the means of transportation and communication for most of the population. Just as in Jakarta, Bangkok, Algiers, Cairo, Baghdad, and Hong Kong, demonstrations have focused on good governance, particularly the lack of administrative competence and political will to address issues of state corruption, water and power shortages, inadequate health care and waste disposal, and police A & Q 61 brutality, which have prevented the benefits of economic development from encompassing a larger majority of people. Through an array of collective actions, including sit-­ins, strikes, and riots, protesters have responded to the imperiousness of the established order by blocking, vandalizing, or destroying physical infrastructures—­ which, to them, symbolize its elitism and injustice—­ including streets, bridges, tunnels, government offices, shopping malls, gas stations, train stations, airports, banks, and ATMs. Infrastructure is commonly understood to refer to large-­ scale physical structures that facilitate the mobility and efficiency of networks of transportation, energy, and communication. The term could also refer to architectural frameworks (Easterling 2014) and symbolic configurations (Larkin 2013) that similarly enhance the mobility and efficiency of local and transnational flows through an array of trade agreements, credit facilities , data interfaces, and free ports. Demanding the right to participate in determining the form, scope, and usage of these infrastructures, global protest movements have been concerned with how to enable emergent modes of agency and collectivity to flourish. In this way, infrastructure could be seen to provide the staging ground for alternate lifeworlds beyond established systems and protocols. My own interest in the infrastructural entanglements of capitalist modernity, media urbanism, and social activism in Asian metropolises emergesfromthebroadscopeofmyresearchacrossfilmandvisualculture, critical theory, and the urban humanities in Southeast Asia and the Global South. Part of my research examines how physical infrastructures and infrastructural imaginaries shape the interaction, mobility, and impact of cultural flows of discourses, narratives, and iconographies in archipelagic East Asia. Because of its intraregional scope, Southeast Asian Cultural Studies requires a comparativist lens, looking beyond the exceptionality of national sovereignty and culture toward the indeterminacy of border crossings and connections. Pivoting away from frameworks developed with reference to Western Europe or North America, this interdisciplinary method also means multiplying points of reference across disparate marginalized areas, such that the locus of struggle shifts from the Pacific Ocean to the South China Sea (Chen 2010). Its geographic scope cannot be defined...

2020 was not a good year for the university. In a 10/19/20 letter to leaders of Congress, the president of the American Council on Education (ACE) Ted Mitchell writes that “American higher education faces an existential crisis.”1 The letter details the pandemic's impact on colleges and universities, relating that the combination of lost revenues and additional expenses has resulted in massive losses for institutions. Asking for $120 billion in federal support, ACE points out that US higher education serves over 25 million learners and employs over 3.8 million faculty and staff. As Mitchell points out, this makes the higher education industry larger than “the accommodation and airline industries combined.”Readers of The University and the Global Knowledge Society will be unsurprised by ACE's claims about the university”s scale and centrality. For Frank and Meyer, the university's growth should be central in any narrative of the formation of our modern and hyper-modern (post-1990) society. The global university has supplanted (or co-opted) many of the modern (post-1800) institutional sources of status and authority. Through the authors' lens, the hyper-modern university is the key actor in constructing our contemporary knowledge society. Education has even encroached on, or supplanted, the role of religious faith in explaining “the fundamental nature of being by interpreting local facts in light of transcendent truths” (3). Nowadays, when we think of the university, we often think of the many existential crises that the sector now faces. These crises include the pandemic-driven economic devastation that is resulting in wide-spread university layoffs and potential institutional closures. Before the pandemic, the university was living through the twin crises of public disinvestment and demographic headwinds, resulting in declining demand when tuition-revenues are increasingly essential to balance budgets.In The Merit Myth: How Our Colleges Favor the Rich, Carnevale and co-authors lay out the crisis of concentrated wealth and growing inequality across universities. These authors point out that two-thirds of selective private institutions have reduced the share of students they admit from the families in the bottom 40 percent of the income distribution over the past three decades. At the most selective colleges, 60 percent of students come from the most affluent families. This concentration of privilege is taken to its farthest extreme at “Ivy Plus” colleges (the eight members of the Ivy league plus Duke, MIT, the University of Chicago, and Stanford). At these schools, close to one-in-six students are the children of parents in the top one percent of the income distribution. The offspring of the most affluent parents, with incomes over $2.2 million annually (placing them in one-tenth of one percent), are 117 times more likely to attend these most elite universities than are those whose parents are in the bottom fifth of the income distribution.The authors of The University and the Global Knowledge Society acknowledge that the vast majority of the scholarship on higher education focuses on the differences between institutions, rather than understanding the university as either a unified idea or a singular institutional force. For Frank and Meyer, what is most interesting about the university is not the challenges that it may face (funding, demographic, etc.) or the stratification across its constituents, but instead the entirety of its global trajectory. Indeed, when we step back and view the university as a unified (or universal) entity, rather than a fractured ecosystem, its rise is astounding. The authors cite a 2015 study that counted 23,887 postsecondary institutions worldwide, with over 60 percent of these colleges and universities located outside North America and Europe. Compare this figure to the baseline of approximately 190 universities that were in existence between 1500 and 1800. This growth in the number of colleges and universities has been accompanied, or perhaps driven by the global increase in postsecondary students. This global growth in postsecondary students, both in numbers and as a proportion of the population, has been given the memorable name of the “massification” of higher education.2 In 1900, there were approximately 500,000 students enrolled in higher education institutions worldwide (representing less than 1 percent of all college-age people). By 1970, international enrollment had climbed to 32.6 million. Today, there are about 250 million students enrolled at colleges and universities across the world.Beyond the nearly exponential growth in institutions and students, Frank and Meyer marshal various evidence to demonstrate the university's expanding claim to knowledge. They observe that the professors' gaze now legitimately falls on every sphere of social, cultural, economic, and political life. This expansion of domains in which academia has laid claim to investigation and explanation has been accompanied by the university's organizational expansion, as represented in the ever-proliferating number of academic divisions and departments. The authors are at pains to point out this is a global phenomenon. In one particularly illustrative table (4.6, pp. 78–79), the range of major academic divisions at three universities (the Free University of Amsterdam, The University of Texas—Austin, and the University of Belgrade) is compared from 1895 and 2019. In 1895, each of these universities had three major academic divisions, with Law, Philosophy, Theology, Literature/Science/Art, Medicine, and Engineering distributed across the institutions. By 2019, the range of major academic divisions has dramatically expanded, with the University of Belgrade (98,000 students) having 30 major academic divisions, ranging from Agriculture to Veterinary Medicine.What might we make of The University and Global Knowledge Society when read during the depth of a global pandemic, one that threatens the economic viability of so many institutions? Further, can we have confidence in university-trained researchers' universal cultural legitimacy and university-based science when the highest level of government seeks to ignore and de-legitimize findings on topics as diverse as public health and climate change? The university may have helped create and become inseparable from a service-based knowledge economy, but its prospects in the West and Japan are in doubt. The combination of rapid population aging and declining public (state) support has put the viability of many smaller private institutions in jeopardy while making it more difficult for low-income and middle-class families to afford public institutions. However, the West and Japan might be the wrong place to look to in calibrating the future of the university. The number of students enrolled in colleges and universities worldwide is projected to increase to almost 600 million by 2040. Virtually all that growth will be outside of North America and Europe. By 2040, East Asia and Pacific regions will account for over 40 percent of all global university students, enrolling almost 260 million learners. South and West Asia will be next, accounting for 160 million university students or 27 percent of all global students. Latin America will grow to over 65 million students, while the Arab States and Sub-Saharan Africa will combine for over 40 million students. This compares to a projected 44 million university students in 2040 for all of North America and Western Europe, equaling just over 7 percent of the world's share (Calderon, 2018). The university's story is no longer a Western story, but an Asian, Latin American, and Arab, and African narrative.As Frank and Meyer point out in the introduction, “Education, and especially university education, is a foremost means of producing—symbolically, and to some extent in reality—this dramatically empowered individual being” (p. 7). For the authors, explanations of the university's growth that rely on demographic causes (such as population growth) or economic drivers (employment training) are incomplete. In this telling, the university has emerged as the primary institution in which individuals find and make meaning. Universities, and university degreed and certified professionals, are the new arbiters of beliefs and behaviors, replacing other authorities such as religious representatives and hereditary elites. Extending the arguments of The University and the Global Knowledge Society forward requires us to conclude that the university's cultural impact is set to expand. In the decades to come, these empowered university-educated humans will live predominantly in the world's emerging economies. Today, China (44 million students) and India (32 million students) dominate global enrollment rankings. Looking back from 2040, these current numbers from East and South Asia will seem nearly as minuscule as the pre-high-modern period (post-1945) in the West.The question of a university education's impact on individual identity and society-wide social relations (from the labor market to marriage markets) in the massified Asian, African, and Latin American context remains unaddressed by Frank and Meyer. If the university both made and reflected the rationalized knowledge society of the West during its rapid growth in the now rich world, shouldn't the university have the same impact in the world's emerging economies as they come to dominate the postsecondary ecosystem? The University and the Global Knowledge Society will prove helpful to scholars of higher education, as the authors provide a framework to build hypotheses around the shape and impact of the global twenty-first-century university.

This study investigated heavy metal contamination in drinking water in five Asian regions (East, Southeast, South, Central, and West Asia) with an interest in inorganic arsenic (iAs), lead (Pb), mercury (Hg), cadmium (Cd), chromium (Cr) and nickel (Ni). Human exposure, risks, and the disease burdens in terms of loss of disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) were analyzed. Concentrations of heavy metals and risks in different regions were variable. Hazard index (HI), cancer risk (CR) and DALYs were used as the health metrics. The total cancer risk was highest in Southeast Asia (2.18 × 10−4) followed by South Asia (1.61 × 10−4), West Asia (1.04 × 10−4), Central Asia (8.85 × 10−5) and East Asia (3.94 × 10−5). Cancer risks exceeding 1 × 10−4 (1 in 10,000) were considered higher risk while Southeast Asia had the highest risk. In terms of population-adjusted DALY, South Asia had the highest (1.95 × 105) followed by Southeast Asia (8.66 × 104), East Asia (2.34 × 104), West Asia (1.91 × 104) and Central Asia (4.60 × 103). Lung cancer emerged as the main outcome in all regions, accounting for 85% and 94% of cancer risks, and DALYs respectively. The findings highlight regional disparities, requiring intervention strategies in a few regions. The actions may include implementing regulations, treatment technologies and establishing monitoring systems to ensure water quality.