Corporatism or cop-out? The impact of social partnership on union-member relations

This article presents empirical data on the perceptions of national level social partnership in Ireland. It looks at the impact of the Irish social partnership process on the union-member relationship and the implications of the different views at workplace level of national partnership agreements

What have we learned about primary liver transplantation under tacrolimus immunosuppression? - Long-term follow-up of the first 1000 patients

Objective: To summarize the long-term efficacy and safety of tacrolimus in orthotopic liver transplant (OLT) recipients, as well as to examine the factors that influence long-term morbidity and mortality rates. Background: Tacrolimus (FK506, Prograf) was introduced as primary immunosuppression for primary liver transplantation in 1989; many subsquent trials have verified the association of tacrolimus with decreased rates of acute rejection and steroid-resistant rejection after OLT. Cumulative experience with tacrolimus has also defined its short- and intermediate-term toxicity. Methods: One thousand consecutive patients undergoing primary OLT at a single center from August 1989 to December 1992, under tacrolimus immunosuppression, were followed until January 1999. Patients were categorized by age. Mean follow-up was 93.4 ± 11 months after OLT. Patient survival, graft survival (with corresponding causes of death and retransplantation), and rejection rates (and corresponding doses of immunosuppression) were examined as efficacy parameters. Hypertension, renal function, incidence of malignancies, incidence of diabetes, and other toxicities were examined as safety parameters. Results: Actual 6-year overall patient survival rate was 68.1% and graft survival rate was 62.5%, with significant differences in the patterns of survival among the different age groups. After the first post-OLT year, infection, recurrence of disease, de novo malignancies, and cardiovascular events were the main causes of graft loss and death during the long-term follow-up. Graft loss related to either acute or chronic rejection was rare. The rate of acute rejection beyond 2 years was approximately 3% per year, and most were steroid-responsive. Approximately 70% of the patients were receiving tacrolimus monotherapy beyond year 1; at the latest follow-up, 74.2% were maintained on tacrolimus alone. In 6.1% of the survivors, end- stage renal disease developed during the follow-up period, requiring either dialysis or kidney transplantation. Hyperkalemia and hypertension was observed in approximately one third of the patients. Insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus (including patients who had diabetes before the transplant) was observed in 14% in year 1, dropping to 11% in year 7. In 82 patients, de novo malignancies developed; in 41 patients, lymphoproliferative disorders developed during the entire follow-up period. Conclusions: Long-term patient and graft survival rates are excellent under tacrolimus immunosuppression. Pediatric patients have a better long-term outcome than adults, in part because of the limited recurrence of the original disease, which was the most common cause of late graft loss (other than patient death, most commonly the result of late de novo malignancies and cardiovascular events). Graft loss from late rejection was rare

A Simple Calculation in Service of Constraining the Rate of FU Orionis Outburst Events from Photometric Monitoring Surveys

An enigmatic and rare type of young stellar object is the FU Orionis class. The members are interpreted as "outbursting," that is, currently in a state of enhanced accretion by several orders of magnitude relative to the more modest disk-to-star accretion rates measured in typical T Tauri stars. They are key to our understanding of the history of stellar mass assembly and pre-main sequence evolution, as well as critical to consider in the chemical and physical evolution of the circumstellar environment -- where planets form. A common supposition is that *all* T Tauri stars undergo repeated such outbursts, more frequently in their earlier evolutionary stages when the disks are more massive, so as to build up the requisite amount of stellar mass on the required time scale. However, the actual data supporting this traditional picture of episodically enhanced disk accretion are limited, and the observational properties of the known sample of FU Ori objects quite diverse. To improve our understanding of these rare objects, we outline the logic for meaningfully constraining the rate of FU Ori outbursts and present numbers to guide parameter choices in the analysis of time domain surveys.Comment: accepted for publication in Ap

Ascaroside Expression in Caenorhabditis elegans Is Strongly Dependent on Diet and Developmental Stage

Background: The ascarosides form a family of small molecules that have been isolated from cultures of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans. They are often referred to as “dauer pheromones” because most of them induce formation of long-lived and highly stress resistant dauer larvae. More recent studies have shown that ascarosides serve additional functions as social signals and mating pheromones. Thus, ascarosides have multiple functions. Until now, it has been generally assumed that ascarosides are constitutively expressed during nematode development. Methodology/Principal Findings: Cultures of C. elegans were developmentally synchronized on controlled diets. Ascarosides released into the media, as well as stored internally, were quantified by LC/MS. We found that ascaroside biosynthesis and release were strongly dependent on developmental stage and diet. The male attracting pheromone was verified to be a blend of at least four ascarosides, and peak production of the two most potent mating pheromone components, ascr#3 and asc#8 immediately preceded or coincided with the temporal window for mating. The concentration of ascr#2 increased under starvation conditions and peaked during dauer formation, strongly supporting ascr#2 as the main population density signal (dauer pheromone). After dauer formation, ascaroside production largely ceased and dauer larvae did not release any ascarosides. These findings show that both total ascaroside production and the relative proportions of individual ascarosides strongly correlate with these compounds' stage-specific biological functions. Conclusions/Significance: Ascaroside expression changes with development and environmental conditions. This is consistent with multiple functions of these signaling molecules. Knowledge of such differential regulation will make it possible to associate ascaroside production to gene expression profiles (transcript, protein or enzyme activity) and help to determine genetic pathways that control ascaroside biosynthesis. In conjunction with findings from previous studies, our results show that the pheromone system of C. elegans mimics that of insects in many ways, suggesting that pheromone signaling in C. elegans may exhibit functional homology also at the sensory level. In addition, our results provide a strong foundation for future behavioral modeling studies

Evidence for late Quaternary surface rupture along the Leech River fault near Victoria, British Columbia

New surficial and bedrock mapping and paleoseismic trenching of the Leech River fault provide the first evidence for Quaternary surface-rupturing earthquakes in southwestern British Columbia, Canada. The Leech River fault extends ~60 km across southern Vancouver Island, from Victoria, British Columbia to the Pacific shoreline and is a terrane-bounding structure separating the Pacific Rim Terrane from basalts of the Eocene Crescent Terrane. The fault is not currently listed in the active fault catalogue for Canada, and post-Eocene-Oligocene slip had not been documented prior to this study. However, based on new field mapping aided by lidar topography, we identify >60 individual, sub-parallel, linear scarps, sags and swales occurring in semi-continuous, en echelon arrays that offset bedrock and late Pleistocene-Holocene deposits. Field observations of these scarps confirm that they are not the result of anthropogenic, glacial or landslide processes, and in several places the scarps are located above exposures of faulted bedrock with brittle fracture networks and gouge. At a site ~5 km west of Leechtown, British Columbia, we estimate ~6 m of dip-slip reverse displacement of a post-Last Glacial Maximum (<~15 ka) colluvial surface and ~4 m of displacement of intervening channels. Two paleoseismic trenches at this site reveal (1) Jurassic Leech River Schist in fault contact with latest Pleistocene loess and colluvium, and (2) latest Pleistocene till thrust over post-glacial colluvium. These trenches preserve a record of at least three, and possibly four, earthquakes since the Last Glacial Maximum, each with ~1 m vertical displacement. We interpret the active Leech River fault as a 500–1000 m-wide, steeply dipping fault zone that accommodates transpression across the northern Cascadia forearc. The onshore trace of the Leech River fault may continue offshore to the east, south of Victoria, and may be kinematically linked to active faults in western Washington (e.g., Devils Mountain and Southern Whidbey Island faults). The Leech River fault is likely one of several active crustal faults that should be considered in seismic hazard assessments for southern British Columbia and northwestern Washington

Cold uniform spherical collapse revisited

We report results of a study of the Newtonian dynamics of N self-gravitating particles which start in a quasi-uniform spherical configuration, without initial velocities. These initial conditions would lead to a density singularity at the origin at a finite time when N \rightarrow \infty, but this singularity is regulated at any finite N (by the associated density fluctuations). While previous studies have focussed on the behaviour as a function of N of the minimal size reached during the contracting phase, we examine in particular the size and energy of the virialized halo which results. We find the unexpected result that the structure decreases in size as N increases, scaling in proportion to N^{-1/3}, a behaviour which is associated with an ejection of kinetic energy during violent relaxation which grows in proportion to N^{1/3}. This latter scaling may be qualitatively understood, and if it represents the asymptotic behaviour in N implies that this ejected energy is unbounded above. We discuss also tests we have performed which indicate that this ejection is a mean-field phenomenon (i.e. a result of collisionless dynamics).Comment: 10 pages, 9 figures; proceedings of "Invisible Universe" conference, Paris, July 200

Energetic radiation and the sulfur chemistry of protostellar envelopes: Submillimeter interferometry of AFGL 2591

CONTEXT: The chemistry in the inner few thousand AU of accreting envelopes around young stellar objects is predicted to vary greatly with far-UV and X-ray irradiation by the central star. Aim We search for molecular tracers of high-energy irradiation by the protostar in the hot inner envelope. METHODS: The Submillimeter Array (SMA) has observed the high-mass star forming region AFGL 2591 in lines of CS, SO, HCN, HCN(v2=1), and HC15N with 0.6" resolution at 350 GHz probing radial scales of 600-3500 AU for an assumed distance of 1 kpc. The SMA observations are compared with the predictions of a chemical model fitted to previous single-dish observations. RESULTS: The CS and SO main peaks are extended in space at the FWHM level, as predicted in the model assuming protostellar X-rays. However, the main peak sizes are found smaller than modeled by nearly a factor of 2. On the other hand, the lines of CS, HCN, and HC15N, but not SO and HCN(v2=1), show pedestal emissions at radii of about 3500 AU that are not predicted. All lines except SO show a secondary peak within the approaching outflow cone. A dip or null in the visibilities caused by a sharp decrease in abundance with increasing radius is not observed in CS and only tentatively in SO. CONCLUSIONS: The emission of protostellar X-rays is supported by the good fit of the modeled SO and CS amplitude visibilities including an extended main peak in CS. The broad pedestals can be interpreted by far-UV irradiation in a spherically non-symmetric geometry, possibly comprising outflow walls on scales of 3500 -- 7000 AU. The extended CS and SO main peaks suggest sulfur evaporation near the 100 K temperature radius.Comment: Astronomy and Astrophysics, in pres