2,104 research outputs found

    International trade arrangements after Brexit: Establishing the facts

    Get PDF
    International trade arrangements after Brexit: Establishing the fact

    A briefing on the UK's choice of trade arrangements outside of the EU

    Get PDF
    This briefing note, prepared by Loughborough University for the ESRC UK in a Changing Europe Initiative, reviews the choices for UK trade arrangements after Brexit. It draws on public domain research by leading UK trade researchers and on the presentations and discussions at a conference, hosted by Loughborough University at our Queen Elizabeth Park, Stratford, London Campus, on Dec 9th, 2016. It reviews the economics arguments for free trade, the institutional arrangements that support free-trade and summarises some key statistics about UK external trade. It also argues that the presentation of Brexit as a binary choice between ‘soft’ (retaining current trade arrangements with the EU) and ‘hard’ (jettisoning all existing trade arrangements in order to start out afresh) is a dangerous oversimplification. This ignores the realities of negotiation with the EU and other trade partners (the choice is not all or nothing, there is opportunity in negotiation to agree anything across a wide range of potential outcomes). The key policy challenge is choosing between a slow and managed Brexit, extended over a period of five to seven years, ensuring low costs of trade between the UK and the EU and avoiding substantial economic costs, or a rapid Brexit which is likely to reduce GDP by between 5 and 8 percent

    Annotated checklist of brachyuran crabs (Crustacea, Decapoda) of the Iberian Peninsula (SW Europe)

    Get PDF
    Almost 50 years have passed since a group of reputed carcinologists (viz. Lipke B. Holthuis, Isabella Gordon and Jacques Forest) finished the posthumous work of Ricardo Zariquiey Álvarez (1968) on decapod crustaceans of the Iberian Peninsula. No lists of decapod fauna specifically covering this area have been published since then, and an update is needed. The current list of brachyuran crabs of the Iberian Peninsula comprises 140 species, which is 35 species more than the 105 valid species listed in Zariquiey Álvarez (1968). Systematic changes have affected the original classification, so now there are 20 superfamilies, 36 families and 77 genera. Additional species have been recorded in Iberian waters due to natural range expansions from nearby areas (Mediterranean and Atlantic), introductions by anthropogenic activities, and description of new taxa. Also, two species were synonymized. Several of these changes, based on evidence from larval morphology and/or molecular data, are detailed in this review. Although descriptions of crab species new to science are not expected to occur at a significant rate, an increase in the number of species in the Iberian Peninsula is expected to result from the introduction of alien species

    Defending the 'Negro Race': Lamine Senghor and Black Internationalism in Interwar France

    Get PDF
    This article examines the career of Lamine Senghor, a Senegalese veteran of the First World War, who emerged in the mid 1920s as the most influential black anti-colonial activist of the period. Senghor combined a communist-inspired critique of empire with an attempt to forge a transnational sense of black identity. Many of the questions facing Senghor remain relevant today: should the black community seek equality through its own independent pressure groups or through strategic alliances with mainstream political parties? And how does one engage with issues of racial (or religious) equality within the terms of the purportedly colour-blind and secular Republic

    High-Throughput Screening Platform To Identify Inhibitors of Protein Synthesis with Potential for the Treatment of Malaria

    Get PDF
    Artemisinin-based combination therapies have been crucial in driving down the global burden of malaria, the world’s largest parasitic killer. However, their efficacy is now threatened by the emergence of resistance in Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. Thus, there is a pressing need to develop new antimalarials with diverse mechanisms of action. One area of Plasmodium metabolism that has recently proven rich in exploitable antimalarial targets is protein synthesis, with a compound targeting elongation factor 2 now in clinical development and inhibitors of several aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases in lead optimization. Given the promise of these components of translation as viable drug targets, we rationalized that an assay containing all functional components of translation would be a valuable tool for antimalarial screening and drug discovery. Here, we report the development and validation of an assay platform that enables specific inhibitors of Plasmodium falciparum translation (PfIVT) to be identified. The primary assay in this platform monitors the translation of a luciferase reporter in a P. falciparum lysate-based expression system. Hits identified in this primary assay are assessed in a counterscreen assay that enables false positives that directly interfere with the luciferase to be triaged. The remaining hit compounds are then assessed in an equivalent human IVT assay. This platform of assays was used to screen MMV’s Pandemic and Pathogen Box libraries, identifying several selective inhibitors of protein synthesis. We believe this new high-throughput screening platform has the potential to greatly expedite the discovery of antimalarials that act via this highly desirable mechanism of action

    Cuadernos de Historia natural

    Get PDF
    T.I.Zoología. -- T.II. Botánica. -- T.III.MineralogíaCopia digital. Madrid : Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte, 201

    In search of phylogenetic congruence between molecular and morphological data in bryozoans with extreme adult skeletal heteromorphy

    Get PDF
    peerreview_statement: The publishing and review policy for this title is described in its Aims & Scope. aims_and_scope_url: http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?show=aimsScope&journalCode=tsab20© Crown Copyright 2015. This document is the author's final accepted/submitted version of the journal article. You are advised to consult the publisher's version if you wish to cite from it

    A General Framework for Formal Tests of Interaction after Exhaustive Search Methods with Applications to MDR and MDR-PDT

    Get PDF
    The initial presentation of multifactor dimensionality reduction (MDR) featured cross-validation to mitigate over-fitting, computationally efficient searches of the epistatic model space, and variable construction with constructive induction to alleviate the curse of dimensionality. However, the method was unable to differentiate association signals arising from true interactions from those due to independent main effects at individual loci. This issue leads to problems in inference and interpretability for the results from MDR and the family-based compliment the MDR-pedigree disequilibrium test (PDT). A suggestion from previous work was to fit regression models post hoc to specifically evaluate the null hypothesis of no interaction for MDR or MDR-PDT models. We demonstrate with simulation that fitting a regression model on the same data as that analyzed by MDR or MDR-PDT is not a valid test of interaction. This is likely to be true for any other procedure that searches for models, and then performs an uncorrected test for interaction. We also show with simulation that when strong main effects are present and the null hypothesis of no interaction is true, that MDR and MDR-PDT reject at far greater than the nominal rate. We also provide a valid regression-based permutation test procedure that specifically tests the null hypothesis of no interaction, and does not reject the null when only main effects are present. The regression-based permutation test implemented here conducts a valid test of interaction after a search for multilocus models, and can be applied to any method that conducts a search to find a multilocus model representing an interaction
    corecore