In this session of the Shorenstein APARC Corporate Affiliate Visiting Fellows Research Presentations, the following will be presented:

Minoru Aosaki, "Banking System and Sovereign Risk in Japan"

After the financial crisis of 2008, European financial markets have experienced sharp increases of sovereign risk. This adversely affected the solvency of banking institutions as they suffered losses from their sovereign holdings and deterioration in their funding conditions. Meanwhile, Japan's sovereign market remained stable, but market participants were cautious as the country’s debt-to-GDP ratio is the highest in the world, and its banking sector holds as much as 44% of domestic sovereign debt. The question is how Japanese policy makers should address the sovereign risk in the banking system. In pursuit of this question, Aosaki compares the market environment in Japan and the Euro Area, examining the reasons banks hold sovereign bonds and the channels that connect sovereign risk with the banking system.

Prashant Pandya, "Cell-based Therapies -- Current Trends and Future Prospects"

Stem cells have been the subject of considerable excitement and debate over the last decade. Stem cell therapy is emerging as a potentially revolutionary new way to treat disease and injury, with wide-ranging medical benefits. Stem cell research provides the opportunity to advance our understanding of human biology and treatment of various diseases. In Pandya’s research, he shares his experience about major challenges related to the commercial development of stem cell therapies and key technology drivers. This research is based on consultations with several prestigious regulatory agencies—including the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, European Medicines Agency, and Therapeutic Goods Administration of Australia—as well as interviews with 45 CEOs and senior scientists of large and small biotech companies and professors from leading universities across five countries. Pandya’s research reveals that there are many intriguing aspects of stem cells still remaining to be elucidated. Stem cells have the potential to treat an enormous range of diseases and conditions that plague millions of people and offer exciting promise for future therapies. But significant technical hurdles remain that will only be overcome through years of intensive research, and successful commercialization of cell-based therapies requires more than proving safety and efficacy to regulators. Ultimately the therapy must be commercially viable.

Ramnath Ramanathan, "Designing Toxicology Studies for Small Interfering Ribo Nucleic Acid"

The field of medicine has improved drastically over the period of time. Medical treatment has evolved from using plant extracts to chemical drugs to stem cell and gene therapies. Discovery of small interfering Ribo Nucleic Acid (siRNA) was one of the most important recent breakthroughs in the field of medicine. This was due to siRNA’s capability of posttranscriptional gene silencing by destruction of mRNA and thereby reducing the protein synthesis. Though the efficacy studies conducted in vitro and in animal models are promising, there have also been circumstances where there were adverse effects including mortality of animals treated with siRNA. Since RNA interference is a relatively new technique, it is very important to understand the toxicity involved before using it as a therapy. For this purpose, toxicology studies have to be designed in order to address all questions on the safety aspects of siRNA. In addition to the traditional toxicity studies, several other tests will have to be conducted. These additional studies will have to address issues specific to siRNA therapy such as immune activation, formation of tetraplex DNA, down regulation of non-target mRNA, interaction with cellular proteins, etc. Through Ramanathan’s work, he has designed a battery of toxicology studies to understand the side effects so that only relatively safe therapy is tried on humans during clinical trials. Ramanathan will present his findings.

In 2011 Yingluck Shinawatra became the 1st female prime minister of Thailand,  the 3^rd member of her family to become prime minister, and the 13th member of her extended family to gain a seat in parliament.  Scholarship on family politics in advanced democracies has been scarce, perhaps because family politics are quasi-aristocratic and therefore do not align with the egalitarianism that informs democratic principles.  What literature does exist tends to treat family politics in terms of political inheritance or occupational following, and as a legacy of the past that is certain to wane with modernization.  When it comes to new democracies, in contrast, scholarship has been more abundant and has treated family politics in terms of corruption, “bossism,” hybridism, and closed games.  Professor Ockey will discuss these differences and present some preliminary findings on the scope and nature of family politics in Thailand, drawing on a database of elected members of parliament since the overthrow of the absolute monarchy in 1932.

Jim Ockey is associate professor (reader) and coordinator in the Department of Political Science at the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand.  He is an expert on Southeast Asian politics, with a particular focus on democratization in Thailand.

Infectious diseases, especially those transmitted from person to person through the respiratory route, continue to pose a threat to the global community. Public health surveillance systems and the International Health Regulations are intended to facilitate the recognition of and rapid response to infectious diseases that pose the risk of developing into a pandemic, but the response to the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic illustrates the continuing challenges to implementing appropriate prevention and control measures. The response to the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic will be discussed and its implications examined.

Speaker biography:

The Program on Human Rights Collaboratory Series is an interdisciplinary investigation of human rights in the humanities. It is funded under the Stanford Presidential Fund for Innovation in International Studies as the third in a sequence of pursuing peace and security, improving governance and advancing we

Maxine Burkett is an Associate Professor of Law at the William S. Richardson School of Law, University of Hawai‘i and serves as the inaugural Director of the Center for Island Climate Adaptation and Policy (ICAP), at the University of Hawai‘i Sea Grant College Program.

Professor Burkett’s courses include Climate Change Law and Policy, Torts, Environmental Law, Race and American Law, and International Development. She has written in the area of Race, Reparations, and Environmental Justice. Currently, her work focuses on "Climate Justice," writing on the disparate impact of climate change on vulnerable communities, in the United States and globally. Her March 2007 conference "The Climate of Environmental Justice," at the University of Colorado, brought together leading academics, activists, and legal practitioners in the Environmental Justice field to consider the emerging interplay between race, poverty, and global warming.

Professor Burkett has presented her research on Climate Justice throughout the United States and in West Africa, Asia, Europe and the Caribbean. She most recently served as the Wayne Morse Chair of Law and Politics at the Wayne Morse Center, University of Oregon, as the Fall 2010 scholar for the Center’s “Climate Ethics and Climate Equity” theme of inquiry. She is the youngest scholar to hold the Wayne Morse Chair.

As the Director of ICAP, she leads projects to address climate change law, policy, and planning for island communities in Hawai‘i, the Pacific region, and beyond. In its first eighteen months, ICAP has completed several climate change adaptation related policy documents for Hawai‘i and other Pacific Island nations, specifically the Federated States of Micronesia. It has also hosted numerous outreach and education programs on island resiliency and climate change and engaged planning agencies in all four counties in Hawai‘i and seven state agencies and offices, as well as several federal entities and many state legislators. Most notably, ICAP has partnered with the Hawai‘i State Office of Planning to conduct early planning and assessment for a statewide Climate Change Adaptation Plan.

Professor Burkett attended Williams College and Exeter College, Oxford University, and received her law degree from Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California, Berkeley. She has worked in private practice in Honolulu with Davis, Levin, Livingston and Paul, Johnson, Park & Niles, and served as a law clerk with The Honorable Susan Illston of the United States District Court, Northern District of California. Prior to her appointment at the University of Hawai‘i, Professor Burkett taught at the University of Colorado Law School. Professor Burkett is from the island of Jamaica, and now she and her husband raise their two young children on the island of O‘ahu, Hawai‘i.