Memorandum on a new financial architecture and new regulations

The financial crisis is global and is deeply rooted in a decade-long misuse of the financial market for rent-seeking. The financial industry has largely abandoned its role as a service industry, supposedly charging reasonable fees for the services of spreading risk and allocating capital and credit. Instead it provides a market for corporate control –mergers and acquisitions– and a casino for betting on or hedging practically any kind of risk –the derivatives market–.Publisher's Versio

Indoor air quality in a restaurant kitchen using margarine for deep-frying

Indoor air quality has a great impact on human health. Cooking, in particular frying, is one of the most important sources of indoor air pollution. Indoor air CO, CO2, particulate matter (PM), and volatile organic compound (VOC) concentrations, including aldehydes, were measured in the kitchen of a small establishment where a special deep-frying margarine was used. The objective was to assess occupational exposure concentrations for cooks of such restaurants. While individual VOC and PM2.5 concentrations were measured before, during, and after frying events using active sampling, TVOC, PM10, CO, CO2, temperature, and relative humidity were continuously monitored through the whole period. VOC and aldehyde concentrations did not increase to considerable levels with deep-frying compared to the background and public indoor environment levels, whereas PM10 increased significantly (1.85 to 6.6 folds). The average PM2.5 concentration of the whole period ranged between 76 and 249 μg/m3. Hence, considerable PM exposures could occur during deep-frying with the special margarine, which might be sufficiently high to cause health effects on cooks considering their chronic occupational exposures.Dokuz Eylul University (BAP-2011.KB.SAG.017

AI is a viable alternative to high throughput screening: a 318-target study

: High throughput screening (HTS) is routinely used to identify bioactive small molecules. This requires physical compounds, which limits coverage of accessible chemical space. Computational approaches combined with vast on-demand chemical libraries can access far greater chemical space, provided that the predictive accuracy is sufficient to identify useful molecules. Through the largest and most diverse virtual HTS campaign reported to date, comprising 318 individual projects, we demonstrate that our AtomNet® convolutional neural network successfully finds novel hits across every major therapeutic area and protein class. We address historical limitations of computational screening by demonstrating success for target proteins without known binders, high-quality X-ray crystal structures, or manual cherry-picking of compounds. We show that the molecules selected by the AtomNet® model are novel drug-like scaffolds rather than minor modifications to known bioactive compounds. Our empirical results suggest that computational methods can substantially replace HTS as the first step of small-molecule drug discovery

FEMALE DUAL LABOUR MARKETS AND EMPLOYEE BENEFITS

The American workforce and the role of employee benefits have changed dramatically since the 1980s when economists seriously considered dual labour market models to describe pay and employment patterns. Then, dual labour market models described men's labour markets, but not women's and the tests applied to wages and salaries, not total compensation including employee benefits. Applying a switching regression technique using the 2000 Current Population Survey and including women workers and employee benefits, we find that the dual labour market hypothesis is consistent with both female and male labour market structures, especially when total compensation is considered. Copyright (c) Scottish Economic Society 2005.