老挝政治展望

尽管老挝从20世纪80年代以来就逐渐迈向经济改革,但是,执政的老挝人民革命党一直保留以共产主义为中心的本色,老挝继续成为社会主义国家.马克思列宁主义仍然是老挝革命党的指导思想.然而,老挝自20世纪70年代末以来,已经逐渐从较强硬的思想立场发生转变,因此,不能说老挝在追随着原始的马克思列宁主义路线.从某种程度看,这反映领导者采取了务实态度,在保持政治稳定之后,老挝人民革命党的合法性在一定程度上取决于能否满足人们的经济需要,正如他的兄弟国家越南一样.虽然老挝在过去的15年里已经开展了经济改革,但是丝毫没有把政治改革提到政策日程上来.政治多元化的思想没有得到老挝人民革命党的接受.除了老挝人民革命党以外的政党在法定上均被禁止.依据老挝宪法第一章,老挝人民革命党是老挝政治体制的"领导核心".     

The Microbial Rosetta Stone database: A common structure for microbial biosecurity threat agents

Infectious microorganisms are important to multiple communities engaged in biodefense and biosecurity, including the agencies responsible for health, defense, law enforcement, agriculture, and drug and food safety. Many agencies have created lists of high priority infectious microorganisms to prioritize research efforts or to formally control the possession and distribution of specific organisms or toxins. However, the biological classification of infectious microorganisms is often complex and ambiguous, leading to uncertainty and confusion for scientists involved in biosecurity work. To address this problem, we created a database, known as the Microbial Rosetta Stone, which resolves many of these ambiguities and includes links to additional information on the microbes, such as gene sequence data and scientific literature. Here we discuss the efforts to coordinate organism names from pathogen lists from various governmental agencies according to biological relatedness and show the overlap of high-priority organisms from multiple agencies. To our knowledge, this is the first comprehensive coordination of pathogens, synonyms, and correct taxonomic names. The organized tables and visual aids are freely available at http://www.microbialrosettastone.com. This website provides a single location where access to information on a broad range of disease-causing organisms and toxins is available to members of the biosecurity community.