Analyzing female labor supply: Evidence from a Dutch tax reform

This paper uses the exogenous variation caused by the Dutch tax reform of 2001 to investigate how married women react to financial incentives. Among OECD countries, the Netherlands has average female labor force participation, but by far the highest rate of part-time work. Our main conclusion is that the positive significant effect of the 2001 tax reform on labor force participation dominates the negative insignificant effect on working hours. Our preferred explanation is that women respond more to changes in tax allowances than to changes in marginal tax rates.

The Expected Perimeter in Eden and Related Growth Processes

Following Richardson and using results of Kesten on First-passage percolation, we obtain an upper bound on the expected perimeter in an Eden Growth Process. Using results of the author from a problem in Statistical Mechanics, we show that the average perimeter of the lattice animals resulting from a very natural family of "growth histories" does not obey a similar bound.Comment: 11 page

The influence of arginine supplementation on performance and metabolism in athletes

Objective: The aim of this review was to investigate the effects of supplementation with arginine, mainly in combination with aspartate and/or other potentially ergogenic amino acids, on metabolism of substrates, endocrine parameters and performance in endurance and resistance athletes. Data sources: The database PUBMED was consulted, using the following keywords "arginine", "aspartate", "performance" and "metabolism". The references in these articles were scanned for further relevant publications. Study section: Studies with oral or intravenous administration of arginine and/or aspartate alone or in combination with other amino acids were selected. Data extraction: Studies with at least six subjects and utilising a placebo-controlled design were analysed. Data synthesis: Seven studies with the combination of arginine aspartate and evaluation of the effect on performance in athletes were found and evaluated. In addition, further studies with arginine and combination with other amino acids were found and analysed in the same manner. Conclusions: No effect on selected parameters of metabolism or the endocrine system have been shown after oral or intravenous arginine, arginine aspartate or other combinations with arginine and aspartate. Neither were there any ergogenic effects in trained athletes after oral or intravenous arginine use, either alone or in combination with aspartate and/or other potentially ergogenic amino acids

FARM ADVISORY SERVICES AND PESTICIDE TOXICITY ON COTTON AND PEANUTS IN THE ALBEMARLE-PAMLICO WATERSHED

According to a Virginia-North Carolina watershed survey, farmers view advisory services as having the effect of decreasing pesticide use. However, analysis of pesticide use shows that hired staff, scouting personnel, and extension agents are associated with higher pesticide toxicity applied to cotton while chemical dealers and scouting personnel are associated with higher toxicity applied to peanuts.Crop Production/Industries, Environmental Economics and Policy,

High-energy emission from jet-cloud interactions in AGNs

Active galactic nuclei present continuum and line emission. The emission lines are originated by gas located close to the central super-massive black hole. Some of these lines are broad, and would be produced in a small region called broad-line region. This region could be formed by clouds surrounding the central black hole. In this work, we study the interaction of such clouds with the base of the jets in active galactic nuclei, and we compute the produced high-energy emission. We focus on sources with low luminosities in the inner jet regions, to avoid strong gamma-ray absorption. We find that the resulting high-energy radiation may be significant in Centaurus A. Also, this phenomenon might be behind the variable gamma-ray emission detected in M87, if very large dark clouds are present. The detection of jet-cloud interactions in active galactic nuclei would give information on the properties of the jet base and the very central regions.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures. To appear in the proceeding of the conference: "High Energy Phenomena in Relativistic Outflows (HEPRO) II", held in Buenos Aires, Argentina, October 26-30 2009

High-density SNP association study of the 17q21 chromosomal region linked to autism identifies CACNA1G as a novel candidate gene.

Chromosome 17q11-q21 is a region of the genome likely to harbor susceptibility to autism (MIM(209850)) based on earlier evidence of linkage to the disorder. This linkage is specific to multiplex pedigrees containing only male probands (MO) within the Autism Genetic Resource Exchange (AGRE). Earlier, Stone et al.(1) completed a high-density single nucleotide polymorphism association study of 13.7 Mb within this interval, but common variant association was not sufficient to account for the linkage signal. Here, we extend this single nucleotide polymorphism-based association study to complete the coverage of the two-LOD support interval around the chromosome 17q linkage peak by testing the majority of common alleles in 284 MO trios. Markers within an interval containing the gene, CACNA1G, were found to be associated with Autism Spectrum Disorder at a locally significant level (P=1.9 × 10(-5)). While establishing CACNA1G as a novel candidate gene for autism, these alleles do not contribute a sufficient genetic effect to explain the observed linkage, indicating that there is substantial genetic heterogeneity despite the clear linkage signal. The region thus likely harbors a combination of multiple common and rare alleles contributing to the genetic risk. These data, along with earlier studies of chromosomes 5 and 7q3, suggest few if any major common risk alleles account for Autism Spectrum Disorder risk under major linkage peaks in the AGRE sample. This provides important evidence for strategies to identify Autism Spectrum Disorder genes, suggesting that they should focus on identifying rare variants and common variants of small effect

Relative Riemann-Zariski spaces

In this paper we study relative Riemann-Zariski spaces attached to a morphism of schemes and generalizing the classical Riemann-Zariski space of a field. We prove that similarly to the classical RZ spaces, the relative ones can be described either as projective limits of schemes in the category of locally ringed spaces or as certain spaces of valuations. We apply these spaces to prove the following two new results: a strong version of stable modification theorem for relative curves; a decomposition theorem which asserts that any separated morphism between quasi-compact and quasi-separated schemes factors as a composition of an affine morphism and a proper morphism. (In particular, we obtain a new proof of Nagata's compactification theorem.)Comment: 30 pages, the final version, to appear in Israel J. of Mat