The Rise or Fall of World Inequality Big Issue or Apparent Controversy?

In the age of globalization, the question whether inequality in the world rose or fell down, is a hot topic. Leading scholars in the field of economic inequality measurement developed methods to estimate empirically the distribution of welfare (income) amongst world citizens. Despite their similar methodologies, they do not seem to agree about the conclusion. In the present paper we pinpoint down what drives the two extreme positions apart. Sala-i-Martin (2002a,b), who claims that there can be no doubt that world inequality went down between the late seventies and the late nineties, has in fact calculated population weighted inequality between countries. Milanovic (2002a,b,c) does not deny this, but illustrates the empirical importance of divergent tendencies at the sub-national level (especially urban versus rural regions) for assessing true world inequality and comes to the reverse conclusion. Nevertheless, there seems to be unanimity, especially amongst the contributions quoted here, about the inequality measure(s) to be used for assessing world income distributions. We show that at least for international inequality, there is empirical evidence for rank reversals among the class of generalized entropy measures and expect the same to be true of world inequality. However, the normative debate about which inequality measure to use for assessing true world inequality has not yet begun.

The Effects of Gender and Race on Physician Treatment of Patient Emotion.

This study established theoretical and empirical foundations for the investigation into how physicians deal with (treat) patient emotion. The questions posed, Do physicians employ specific strategies to treat patient emotion? and What are the effects of physician-patient social characteristics (gender and race) on emotion treatment? Coalescing two seemingly incongruent perspectives (social constructionism and Kemper\u27s social relational theory), I clarified the conceptual basis for the emotion management of other people. From these perspectives, I developed a three stage theory to describe and explain the physician treatment of patient emotion (triaging, diagnosing, and treatment), as well as appreciate the effects of social characteristics on this process. Regarding the first research question, survey data collected from 225 practicing physicians supported the twenty-two proposed strategies to treat patient emotion. Considering the second question, analyses produced some support for the predicted effects of gender and race. For physician gender, female physicians were, in general, more likely to treat patient emotion than their male colleagues. However, physician gender was only significant when the physicians\u27 type of medical practice (general vs. specialized) and practice setting (private vs. institutional) were controlled in the analysis model, suggesting that physician gender differences were more complex than those based exclusively on sex. For patient gender and race, analysis indicated that physicians randomly assigned black patient vignettes had significantly higher scores on measures of emotion evading and lower scores for emotion importance than physicians with white patients. This suggests that a patient\u27s social characteristics do influence physician treatment of patient emotion. Overall, my research demonstrates a growing ideological acceptance and consideration for the role of emotion in medicine, whether this is occurring in actual practice remains unknown

Retrograde Nailing for Treating Femoral Shaft Fractures: A Review

Rigid intramedullary nailing is an effective procedure for treating fractures of the femoral shaft. Although antegrade nailing is the traditionally used technique, retrograde nailing offers various advantages. A companion article published in the seventh volume of The University of New Mexico Orthopaedics Research Journal addressed antegrade femoral nailing. This review will describe retrograde nailing of femoral shaft fractures, including a brief history, indications, detailed technique, outcomes, advice (or “pearls”), and common failures (or “pitfalls”). Retrograde nailing for treating femoral shaft fractures can provide successful results similar to those of antegrade nailing in general and advantages in particular situations such as more distal shaft, bilateral, and certain associated fractures

Diluted manganese on the bond-centered site in germanium

The functional properties of Mn-doped Ge depend to large extent on the lattice location of the Mn impurities. Here, we present a lattice location study of implanted diluted Mn by means of electron emission channeling. Surprisingly, in addition to the expected substitutional lattice position, a large fraction of the Mn impurities occupies the bond-centered site. Corroborated by ab initio calculations, the bond-centered Mn is related to Mn-vacancy complexes. These unexpected results call for a reassessment of the theoretical studies on the electrical and magnetic behavior of Mn-doped Ge, hereby including the possible role of Mn-vacancy complexes

Sex-specific fundamental and formant frequency patterns in a cross-sectional study

An extensive developmental acoustic study of the speech patterns of children and adults was reported by Lee and colleagues [Lee et al., J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 105, 1455-1468 (1999)]. This paper presents a reexamination of selected fundamental frequency and formant frequency data presented in their report for 10 monophthongs by investigating sex-specific and developmental patterns using two different approaches. The first of these includes the investigation of age- and sex-specific formant frequency patterns in the monophthongs. The second, the investigation of fundamental frequency and formant frequency data using the critical band rate (bark) scale and a number of acoustic-phonetic dimensions of the monophthongs from an age- and sex-specific perspective. These acoustic-phonetic dimensions include: vowel spaces and distances from speaker centroids; frequency differences between the formant frequencies of males and females; vowel openness/closeness and frontness/backness; the degree of vocal effort; and formant frequency ranges. Both approaches reveal both age- and sex-specific development patterns which also appear to be dependent on whether vowels are peripheral or non-peripheral. The developmental emergence of these sex-specific differences are discussed with reference to anatomical, physiological, sociophonetic and culturally determined factors. Some directions for further investigation into the age-linked sex differences in speech across the lifespan are also proposed

Biochemical Characterization of the Axolemmal Mitogen for Cultured Schwann Cells

The molecule(s) involved at the axon plasma membrane (axolemma) which causes Schwann cells to proliferate has been investigated by three biochemical techniques: 1) Alkaline extraction of axolemma resulted in recovery of 95% of the mitogenic activity and 50% of the protein in the membrane-bound portion of the axolemma. 2) The axonal mitogen for Schwann cells may be associated with heparan sulfate proteoglycans at the axonal surface. Treatment of axolemma with heparitinase, which cleaves the glycosidic bonds of sulfated glycosaminoglycans, allowed mitogenic activity to be solubilized. 3) Treatment of axolemma with heparin, a highly sulfated glycosaminoglycan analogous to heparan sulfate, resulted in a soluble mitogenic extract which had a higher specific mitogenic activity than the starting material. The results of these biochemical treatments support the model of an axonal mitogen for Schwann cells which is positively charged and bound to the negatively charged portion of heparan sulfate proteoglycans. A monoclonal antibody (1A5-2G3) was raised against the soluble mitogenic heparin extract of axolemma. The monoclonal antibody inhibited the mitogenicity of heparin extract as well as the mitogenicity of the starting axolemmal membrane. Non-specific monoclonal antibodies did not inhibit mitogenicity to as great an extent as 1A5-2G3. Mitogenic heparin extract was incubated with 1A5-2G3-coupled or non-specific antibody-coupled Sepharose. Sepharose coupled with 1A5-2G3 removed significantly more mitogenic activity from the heparin extract than did nonspecific antibodies. Using immunoaffinity techniques with the monoclonal antibody and the soluble heparin extract should permit separation of the axolemmal mitogen from other components of the axon plasma membrane

Direct observation of substitutional Ga after ion implantation in Ge by means of extended x-ray absorption fine structure

We present an experimental lattice location study of Ga atoms in Ge after ion implantation at elevated temperature (250°C). Using extended x-rayabsorption fine structure (EXAFS) experiments and a dedicated sample preparation method, we have studied the lattice location of Ga atoms in Ge with a concentration ranging from 0.5 at. % down to 0.005 at. %. At Ga concentrations ≤0.05 at.%, all Ga dopants are substitutional directly after ion implantation, without the need for post-implantation thermal annealing. At higher Ga concentrations, a reduction in the EXAFS amplitude is observed, indicating that a fraction of the Ga atoms is located in a defective environment. The local strain induced by the Ga atoms in the Ge matrix is independent of the Ga concentration and extends only to the first nearest neighbor Ge shell, where a 1% contraction in bond length has been measured, in agreement with density functional theory calculations.We acknowledge the support from the Research Foundation Flanders, the epi-team from imec, the KU Leuven GOA 09/06 project, the IUAP program P6/42 and the Australian Research Council. S.C. acknowledges support from OCAS NV by an OCAS-endowed chair at Ghent University