The Mix Between Pay-as-you-go and Funded Pensions and What Demography Has to Do with it

A model is presented that explains the mix between funded and unfunded pension systems. It turns out that total pension and the relative shares of the two systems may be explained and are determined by the population growth rate, technological growth, the time-preference discount rate, that relative risk aversion, the production function, and the political representation of the old. A fall in the population growth rate, even to negative values, will imply a reduction of the interest rate and an increase in the capital-output ratio. Whether the pension system will shift to more or less funding depends on the political weight of the elderly. If the elderly succeed in getting more weight in the political process if their population share increases, which is likely when the population shrinks, the accent on the PAYG- system will increase. A fall in the population growth rate will result in a reduction of average welfare. This reduction is more severe, the larger the political power of the elderly.old-age pensions, pay-as-you-go, intergenerational transfers, retirement benefits

The Mix Between Pay-as-you-go and Funded Pensions and What Demography Has to Do with it

A model is presented that explains the mix between funded and unfunded pension systems. It turns out that total pension and the relative shares of the two systems may be explained and are determined by the population growth rate, technological growth, the time-preference discount rate, that relative risk aversion, the production function, and the political representation of the old. A fall in the population growth rate, even to negative values, will imply a reduction of the interest rate and an increase in the capital-output ratio. Whether the pension system will shift to more or less funding depends on the political weight of the elderly. If the elderly succeed in getting more weight in the political process if their population share increases, which is likely when the population shrinks, the accent on the PAYG- system will increase. A fall in the population growth rate will result in a reduction of average welfare. This reduction is more severe, the larger the political power of the elderly

Biological and Molecular Characterization of Olive latent virus 1

Olive latent virus 1 (OLV-1) belongs to the Necrovirus genus, Tombusviridae family and is pathogenic to olive, citrus and tulip plants. It is easily mechanically transmissible to indicator plants causing necrotic lesions and can be transmitted through the soil into the plant roots in the absence of biological vectors. Infected cells contain virus aggregates, inclusions made up of excess of viral coded peptides and extensive vesiculation in the cytoplasm. The virions are isometric with ca. 30 nm, possess a monopartite single-stranded positive-sense RNA genome sized 3700 nt with 5 open reading frames (ORFs) and small inter cistronic regions. ORF 1 encodes a polypeptide with a molecular weight of 23 kDa and the read through of its amber stop codon results in ORF 1 RT that encodes the virus RNA dependent RNA polymerase with 82 kDa. ORF2 and ORF3 encode two small peptides, with 8 kDa and 6 kDa, respectively, which appear to be involved in the virus cell-to-cell movement. ORF 4 is located in the 3′-terminal and encodes a protein with 30 kDa identified as the viral coat protein. The complete genomic sequences of two well characterized OLV-1 isolates (obtained from citrus and olive) are similar, revealing an overall nucleotide sequence identity of 95%. The electrophoretic profile of the dsRNAs recovered from infected tissues exhibits three major species with ca. 3.7, 1.5, and 1.3 kbp. Application of molecular techniques based on PCR and on dot blot hybridization has been successfully used for routine diagnosis of OLV-1 infections

Multiplex RT-PCR for detection and identification of three necroviruses that infect olive trees

An optimized multiplex RT-PCR assay was developed to discriminate three necrovirus (Olive latent virus 1 (OLV-1), Tobacco necrosis virus D (TNV-D) and Olive mild mosaic virus (OMMV)) that infect olive trees. An olive orchard consisting of 54 trees of cv. "Galega vulgar" in the south of Portugal was surveyed. dsRNA fraction was used as template and revealed the 3 viruses, singly or in multiple infections, present in 17 out of 54 trees in the orchard. OMMV was the most frequent occurring in 15 trees, followed by OLV-1 in 12 and TNV-D in 4 plants. The results obtained showed that necrovirus- specific dsRNAs do exist in infected tissues in amounts below the resolution permitted by gel electrophoresis analysis and that the developed multiplex PCR based assay is of much higher sensitivity. The design of the specific primers described enabled, for the first time, to discriminate between OMMV and TNV-D by means of RT-PCR assays, an indispensable tool in identification, epidemiology and survey studie

Solitons of two-component Bose-Einstein condensates modulated in space and time

In this paper we present soliton solutions of two coupled nonlinear Schodinger equations modulated in the bspace and time. The approach allows us to obatin solitons with large variety of solutions depending on the nonlinearity and the potential profiles. As examples we show three cases with soliton solution in such system, one of them with potential varying between repulsive and attractive behavior and the others with nonlinearity localized and delocalized, respectively.Comment: 18 pages, 8 figure

Complete nucleotide sequence of an Olive latent virus 1 isolate from olive trees

Olive latent virus 1 (OLV-1) is a necrovirus belonging to the familyTombusviridae. It is a small icosahedral plant virus, which encapsidates a single stranded positivesense RNA. This virus was first isolated from symptomless olive trees in Italy [7] and afterwards in Jordan and Portugal [10, 4]. OLV-1 was also isolated from symptomatic hosts, such as citrus trees in Turkey [11] and tulips in Japan [9]. Up to now, only one complete genome sequence of an OLV-1 citrus isolate has been determined [8]. This report describes the first full genomic sequence of an OLV-1 isolated from olive trees

Electromagnetically induced transparency in multi-level cascade scheme of cold rubidium atoms

We report an experimental investigation of electromagnetically induced transparency in a multi-level cascade system of cold atoms. The absorption spectral profiles of the probe light in the multi-level cascade system were observed in cold Rb-85 atoms confined in a magneto-optical trap, and the dependence of the spectral profile on the intensity of the coupling laser was investigated. The experimental measurements agree with the theoretical calculations based on the density matrix equations of the rubidium cascade system.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figure

Identification of phenolic constituents of cytisus multiflorus

The phenolic composition of the ethanolic extract obtained from the flowers of the medicinal plant Cytisus multiflorus has been elucidated by high performance liquid chromatography, electrospray mass spectrometry and nuclear magnetic resonance analysis. The extract was mainly composed of flavones, including the common chrysin, orientin, luteolin-5-O-glucoside, luteolin-7-O-glucoside, apigenin and apigenin-7-O-glucoside, which appeared as minor components. The major flavone in the extract was chrysin-7-O-B-D-glucopyranoside, and it also contained moderate amounts of a dihydroxyflavone isomer of chrysin, as well as of 2''-O-pentosyl-6-C-hexosyl-luteolin, 2''-O-pentosyl-8-C-hexosyl-luteolin and 6''- O-(3-hydroxy-3-methylglutaroyl)-2''-O-pentosyl-C-hexosyl-apigenin, which are not commonly found in the Fabaceae family. Other novel phenolic compounds found in the ethanolic extract of C. multiflorus comprised the flavones 2''-O-pentosyl-6-C-hexosyl-apigenin, 2''-O-pentosyl-8-C-hexosyl-apigenin and 6''-O-(3-hydroxy-3-methylglutaroyl)-200-O-pentosyl-C-hexosyl-luteolin. The assessment of the biological activities of the main compounds of this extract are now keen, in order to determine their relevance in the beneficial properties of the plant

First characterization of infectious cDNA clones of Olive mild mosaic virus

Full-length cDNA clones of an Olive mild mosaic virus (OMMV) isolate were constructed in order to find infectious cDNA clones. The sequencing of three individual full-length clones revealed some differences between them. In vitro transcription of these clones was performed and the effect of spontaneous mutations in the biological behaviour of the in vitro transcripts was evaluated by symptomatology, RNA accumulation and virus replication in inoculated plants. In vitro synthesized RNA from one of these clones was found to mimic the wild-type OMMV, making it useful in future studies on protein structure and function by site directed mutagenesis of individual genes. This is the first report on constructing full-length cDNA clones of OMMV from which infectious RNAs can be transcribed in vitro

BB flavour tagging using charm decays at the LHCb experiment

An algorithm is described for tagging the flavour content at production of neutral $B$ mesons in the LHCb experiment. The algorithm exploits the correlation of the flavour of a $B$ meson with the charge of a reconstructed secondary charm hadron from the decay of the other $b$ hadron produced in the proton-proton collision. Charm hadron candidates are identified in a number of fully or partially reconstructed Cabibbo-favoured decay modes. The algorithm is calibrated on the self-tagged decay modes $B^+ \to J/\psi \, K^+$ and $B^0 \to J/\psi \, K^{*0}$ using $3.0\mathrm{\,fb}^{-1}$ of data collected by the LHCb experiment at $pp$ centre-of-mass energies of $7\mathrm{\,TeV}$ and $8\mathrm{\,TeV}$. Its tagging power on these samples of $B \to J/\psi \, X$ decays is $(0.30 \pm 0.01 \pm 0.01) \%$.Comment: All figures and tables, along with any supplementary material and additional information, are available at http://lhcbproject.web.cern.ch/lhcbproject/Publications/LHCbProjectPublic/LHCb-PAPER-2015-027.htm