Review of geographical stocks of tropical dolphins (Stenella spp. and Delphinus delphis) in the eastern Pacific

Information on geographical variation is reviewed for Stenella attenuata, S. longirostris, S. coeruleoalba, and Delphinus delphis in the eastern tropical Pacific, and boundaries for potential management units are proposed. National Marine Fisheries Service and Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission sighting records made from 1979 to 1983 which were outside boundaries used in a 1979 assessment were examined for validity. Tagging returns and morphological data were also analyzed. Several stock ranges are expanded or combined. Three management units are proposed for S. attenuata: the coastal, northern offshore, and southern offshore spoiled dolphins. Four management units are proposed for S. longirostris: the Costa Rican, eastern, northern whitebelly, and southern whitebelly spinner dolphins. Two provisional management units are proposed for S. coeruleoalba: the northern and southern striped dolphins. Five management units (two of which are provisional) are proposed for D. delphis: the Baja neritic, northern, central, southern, and Guerrero common dolphins. Division into management units was based on morphological stock differences and distributional breaks. (PDF file contains 34 pages.

Para-infectious brain injury in COVID-19 persists at follow-up despite attenuated cytokine and autoantibody responses

To understand neurological complications of COVID-19 better both acutely and for recovery, we measured markers of brain injury, inflammatory mediators, and autoantibodies in 203 hospitalised participants; 111 with acute sera (1–11 days post-admission) and 92 convalescent sera (56 with COVID-19-associated neurological diagnoses). Here we show that compared to 60 uninfected controls, tTau, GFAP, NfL, and UCH-L1 are increased with COVID-19 infection at acute timepoints and NfL and GFAP are significantly higher in participants with neurological complications. Inflammatory mediators (IL-6, IL-12p40, HGF, M-CSF, CCL2, and IL-1RA) are associated with both altered consciousness and markers of brain injury. Autoantibodies are more common in COVID-19 than controls and some (including against MYL7, UCH-L1, and GRIN3B) are more frequent with altered consciousness. Additionally, convalescent participants with neurological complications show elevated GFAP and NfL, unrelated to attenuated systemic inflammatory mediators and to autoantibody responses. Overall, neurological complications of COVID-19 are associated with evidence of neuroglial injury in both acute and late disease and these correlate with dysregulated innate and adaptive immune responses acutely

The Superiority of an Ideal Consumption Tax over an Ideal Income Tax

This paper considers the arguments regarding the choice between an ideal income tax and an ideal consumption tax, focusing on an argument made by Atkinson and Stiglitz regarding neutral taxation of commodities. The argument shows that a properly designed consumption tax is Pareto superior to an income tax: it is more efficient and at least as good at redistribution. The major exception to the Atkinson and Stiglitz result is if individuals with equal wages have different propensities to save. In that event, a consumption tax may no longer be Pareto superior to an income tax. A consumption tax will continue, however, to be more desirable than an income tax. It will be strictly more efficient than an income tax, and under reasonable assumptions, better at redistributing from those who are better off to those who are worse off. This result holds true even if one heavily weights the welfare of the poor

Left, Right, and Center: Strategic Information Acquisition and Diversity in Judicial Panels

In the last fifteen years, a number of empirical studies of multi-member judicial panels have documented a phenomenon popularly known as "panel effects. " Two principal findings of this literature are: (1) the inclusion (non-pivotal) members from outside the dominant ideology on the panel predicts higher reversal rates of administrative agencies that are “like minded ” with the panel’s median voter; and (2) when mixed panels do not reverse, they frequently issue unanimous decisions. These apparently moderating effects of mixed panel composition pose a challenge to conven-tional median voter theory. In the face of this challenge, many scholars have offered their own explanation for panel effects (including collegial-ity; deliberation effects, whistle-blowing, and others). In this paper, we propose a general model that (among other things) predicts panel effects as a byproduct of strategic information acquisition. The kernel of our argument is that (non-pivotal) minority members of mixed panels have incentives to engage in costly searches for information in cases where the majority members would rationally choose not to do so. As a result, the inclusion of ideologically diverse members may induce more information production in a way that increases the likelihood that a mixed panel will overturn ideologically allied agency actors. Our informational account — if true — has normative implications for the composition of judicial panels in particular, and for deliberative groups more generally