Migration, Remittances and Children’s Schooling in Haiti

In this paper, we focus on the use of remittances to school children remaining in migrant communities in Haiti. After addressing the endogeneity of remittance receipt, we find that remittances raise school attendance for all children in some communities regardless of whether they have household members abroad or not; however, in other communities, we only observe this effect among children living in households that do not experience any family out-migration. Our finding underscores the simultaneous and opposing impacts of household out-migration and remittance receipt on children’s schooling. While the receipt of remittances by the household lifts budget constraints and raises the children’s likelihood of being schooled, the disruptive effect of household out-migration imposes an economic burden on the remaining household members and reduces their likelihood of being schooled. As such, remittances ameliorate the negative disruptive effect of household out-migration on children’s schooling and, given the substantial costs of schooling in Haiti, contribute to the accumulation of human capital in the midst of extreme poverty.migration, remittances, education, Haiti

Are Figs Always Keystone Resources for Tropical Frugivorous Vertebrates? A Test in Gabon

International audienceThis paper evaluates the suggestion of Terborgh (1986) that figs constitute "keystone plant resources" for frugivorous mammals and birds in African rain forests as they appear to do in South America and Asia. From studies of the diets of monkeys and other mammals and birds in Gabon, we show that figs are infrequently eaten by most species, and are always eaten in small amounts. Figs in Gabon occur at very low densities and have unpredictable fruiting patterns and relatively low crown production. Thus, fig fruits are not staple foods and cannot sustain most populations of frugivorous species during periods of low fruit availability. In Gabon, monkeys and large birds depend on the fruit of two species of Myristicaceae and of one species of Annonaceae. These regularly bear ripe fruit during the lean period and are abundantly consumed. Figs occur in such distant patches that they are mainly fed on by wide-ranging animals such as large frugivorous bats

First Report of the National Evaluation of RSVP Volunteers

In 2013, the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS) initiated a national evaluation of the Retired and Senior Volunteer Program (RSVP). The national evaluation was intended to collect the necessary information to better guide the RSVP program and to address three objectives: 1) describe the characteristics of RSVP volunteers, including how volunteers are distributed across CNCS’s performance measure categories, and how volunteers allocated their time to different service activities across the performance measure categories; 2) measure the relationship between volunteer characteristics, service activities, and volunteers’ psychosocial health; and 3) measure the impact of RSVP national service participation on volunteers’ psychosocial health compared to similar adult volunteers and non-volunteers in the Health and Retirement Study (HRS)... The current report focuses on the first objective, which is to describe the characteristics of RSVP volunteers, including how volunteers are distributed across CNCS’s performance measure categories, and how volunteers allocated their time to the service activities across the performance measure categories

Phospholipase D protects ECV304 cells against TNFα-induced apoptosis

AbstractTumor necrosis factor α (TNFα), a pleiotropic cytokine, activates both apoptotic and pro-survival signals depending on the cell model. Using ECV304 cells, which can be made TNFα-sensitive by cycloheximide (CHX) co-treatment, we evaluated the potential roles of ceramide and phospholipase D (PLD) in TNFα-induced apoptosis. TNFα/CHX induced a robust increase in ceramide levels after 16h of treatment when cell death was maximal. PLD activity was increased at early time point (1h) whereas both PLD activity and PLD1 protein were strongly decreased after 24h. TNFα/CHX-induced cell death was significantly lowered by exogenous bacterial PLD and phoshatidic acid, and in cells overexpressing PLD1. Conversely, cells depleted in PLD proteins by small interference RNA (siRNA) treatment exhibited higher susceptibility to apoptosis. These results show that PLD exerts a protective role against TNFα-induced cell death

Does nocturnal decrease of blood pressure predict left ventricular hypertrophy?

Peer reviewe

The cAMP-specific Phosphodiesterase PDE4D3 Is Regulated by Phosphatidic Acid Binding CONSEQUENCES FOR cAMP SIGNALING PATHWAY AND CHARACTERIZATION OF A PHOSPHATIDIC ACID BINDING SITE

Hormones and growth factors induce in many cell types the production of phosphatidic acid (PA), which has been proposed to play a role as a second messenger. We have previously shown in an acellular system that PA selectively stimulates certain isoforms of type 4 cAMP-phosphodiesterases (PDE4). Here we studied the effect of endogenous PA on PDE activity of transiently transfected MA10 cells overexpressing the PA-sensitive isoform PDE4D3. Cell treatment with inhibitors of PA degradation, including propranolol, induced an accumulation of endogenous PA accompanied by a stimulation of PDE activity and a significant decrease in both cAMP levels and protein kinase A activity. Furthermore, in FRTL5 cells, which natively express PDE4D3, pretreatment with compounds inducing PA accumulation prevented both cAMP increase and cAMP-responsive element-binding protein phosphorylation triggered by thyroid-stimulating hormone. To determine the mechanism of PDE stimulation by PA, endogenous phospholipids were labeled by preincubating MA10 cells overexpressing PDE4D3 with [(32)P]orthophosphate. Immuno- precipitation experiments showed that PA was specifically bound to PDE4D3, supporting the hypothesis that PDE4D3 activation occurs through direct binding of PA to the protein. PA binding site on PDE4D3 was characterized by engineering deletions of selected regions in the N-terminal regulatory domain of the enzyme. Deletion of amino acid residues 31-59 suppressed both PA-activating effect and PA binding, suggesting that this region rich in basic and hydrophobic residues contains the PA binding site. These observations strongly suggest that endogenous PA can modulate cAMP levels in intact cells, through a direct activation of PDE4D3

Coordination of a bifunctional ligand to a rhodium(III) dimethyl complex : Lewis acidity enhancement by chelation

The addition of the ambiphilic compound (Me2PCH2AlMe2)2 (1) to Cp*RhMe2(DMSO) (DMSO ) dimethylsulfoxide) (2) gives Cp*RhMe2(PMe2CH2AlMe2‚DMSO) (3‚DMSO). The addition of Lewis acids (LA) such as La(dbm)3 (dbm ) dibenzoylmethane) and AlMe3 to a solution of complex 3‚DMSO gives a competition reaction that results in the formation of LA‚DMSO and Cp*RhMe2(PMe2CH2AlMe2) (3). When heated to 40 °C, complex 3 ionizes to a putative zwitterionic species, Cp*Rh+Me(PMe2CH2AlMe3 -) (3′), which is converted to [Cp*Rh(Me)(µ2 -η2 -Me2PCH2)]2 (4) irreversibly. Spin saturation transfer experiments demonstrated that the rate of the methyl abstraction by the alane moiety was 0.76 ( 0.09 s-1 , while the rate of abstraction of the methyl in Cp*RhMe2(PMe3) by AlMe3 was 0.10 ( 0.02 s-1 . The zwitterionic species 3′ could be trapped in solution by addition of PMe3 to afford both Cp*Rh+Me(PMe3)(Me2- PCH2AlMe3 -) (5) and [Cp*Rh+Me(PMe3)(Me2PCH2AlMe2)]AlMe4 - (6). When compound 1 was added to complex 3′, the formation of the zwitterionic complex Cp*Rh+Me(η2 -Me2PCH2Al-Me2CH2PMe2) (7) was observed