Corruption, Income Inequality, and Poverty in the United States

In this study we analyze the effects of corruption on income inequality and poverty. Our analysis advances the existing literature in four ways. First, instead of using corruption indices assembled by various investment risk services, we use an objective measure of corruption: the number of public officials convicted in a state for crimes related to corruption. Second, we use all commonly used inequality and poverty measures including various Atkinson indexes, Gini index, standard deviation of the logarithms, relative mean deviation, coefficient of variation, and the poverty rate defined by the U.S. Census Bureau. Third, we minimize the problems which are likely to arise due to data incomparability by examining the differences in income inequality, and poverty across U.S. states. Finally, we exploit both time series and cross sectional variation in the data. We find robust evidence that an increase in corruption increases income inequality and poverty.Corruption, Income Inequality, Poverty

Autonomic Pervasive Applications Driven by Abstract Specifications

Conference in conjunction with ICAC 2012 (International Conference on Autonomic Computing)International audiencePervasive application architectures present stringent requirements that make their development especially hard. In particular, they need to be flexible in order to cope with dynamism in different forms (e.g. service and data providers and consumers). The current trend to build applications out of remote services makes the availability of constituent application components inherently dynamic. Developers can no longer assume that applications are static after development or at run time. Unfortunately, developing applications that are able to cope with dynamism is very complex.Existing development approaches do not provide explicit support for managing dynamism. In this paper we describe Rondo, a tool suite for designing pervasive applications. More specifically, we present our propositions in pervasive application specification, which borrows concepts from service-oriented component assembly, model-driven engineering (MDE) and continuous deployment, resulting in a more flexible approach than traditional application definitions. Then the capabilities of our application model are demonstrated with an example application scenario designed using our approach

Factors That Contribute to Individual and Sex Differences in Perspective Taking Performance

Previous research has demonstrated a sex difference favoring males in perspective taking ability (e.g. Eisenberg & Lennon, 1983; Fields & Shelton, 2006; Meneghetti, Pazzaglia, & De Beni, 2012). Factors that influence sex differences in perspective taking ability in favor of males have been under-explored, and no unified explanation of the extant sex differences in this ability exists currently. Task components (for example including a directional cue in an Spatial Orientation Test [SOT] array), social nature of the task (presence of a human figure in an array), or embodied nature of the task (ease of imaging self in task) may each shape perspective taking ability. Experiment 1 examined how perspective taking ability was influenced by both a social directional cue, and an abstract, non-human, directional cue. The social condition included a human avatar in the SOT array. The spatial condition included an arrow. Results indicated that females and males performed best in the social condition and no better in the spatial condition than the control condition, indicating that social task components are influential in this ability. Experiment 2 compared a replicated social condition to a different non-human directional cue (chair). Results showed that there was no significant difference between the avatar and the chair conditions for males and females. This suggests that the “social” effect found in Experiment 1 is nuanced, and that perspective taking ability may rather be influenced by ease of embodiment of the focal/central task object. This may indicate that prior evidence of sex differences in this ability have reflected task components rather than inherent ability

Profitability of brokerage houses in Turkey

This paper uses a direct measure of efficiency to examine the relationship between market structure and the performance of brokerage houses in Turkey. This methodology involves two stages: First, a stochastic translog cost frontier is specified to obtain a direct measure of efficiency. Second, this measure is included in a profitability equation along with market concentration and market share variables. These two equations are then estimated using quarterly data from 112 brokerage houses for the period 2008–2015. The results show that the efficiency of brokerage houses does not influence profitability when measured directly. Market share, on the other hand, is found to be one of the main determinants of profitability, providing support for the relative market power hypothesis

The Effects of Labor Market Reforms on the Labor Market Dynamics in Turkey

The global economic crisis of 2008 had great repercussions on labor markets around the world. In order to mitigate the adverse effects of the crisis on employment, Turkey introduced a number of measures in the last quarter of 2008 and during the first half of 2009, such as a general reduction of social security contributions, targeted reductions for hiring youth and women, an increase in unemployment insurance payments and a more active use of the short-time working compensation program. Using the Income and Living Conditions Survey panel data for 2006-2010, this study aims at examining the role of labor market reforms in shaping the labor market performance in Turkey. To this end, we compute the Markov transition probabilities of individuals moving across three different labor market states: employment, unemployment and not in labor force. The results of the study reveal that the policy measures, in general, helped in alleviating the adverse effects of the crisis on the Turkish labor markets. The measures specifically targeting youth and women were effective in promoting the employment of these disadvantaged groups, the beneficial effects being more pronounced for women. However, the results show that after the coverage of these measures was broadened to include all workers, the advantage of young and female workers disappeared. Finally, the transition probabilities calculated for different education groups reveal that the probability of remaining in employment increases significantly with education

The Effects of Labor Market Reforms on the Labor Market Dynamics in Turkey

The global economic crisis of 2008 had great repercussions on labor markets around the world. In order to mitigate the adverse effects of the crisis on employment, Turkey introduced a number of measures in the last quarter of 2008 and during the first half of 2009, such as a general reduction of social security contributions, targeted reductions for hiring youth and women, an increase in unemployment insurance payments and a more active use of the short-time working compensation program. Using the Income and Living Conditions Survey panel data for 2006-2010, this study aims at examining the role of labor market reforms in shaping the labor market performance in Turkey. To this end, we compute the Markov transition probabilities of individuals moving across three different labor market states: employment, unemployment and not in labor force. The results of the study reveal that the policy measures, in general, helped in alleviating the adverse effects of the crisis on the Turkish labor markets. The measures specifically targeting youth and women were effective in promoting the employment of these disadvantaged groups, the beneficial effects being more pronounced for women. However, the results show that after the coverage of these measures was broadened to include all workers, the advantage of young and female workers disappeared. Finally, the transition probabilities calculated for different education groups reveal that the probability of remaining in employment increases significantly with education

TRAIL promotes the polarization of human macrophages toward a proinflammatory M1 phenotype and is associated with increased survival in cancer patients with high tumor macrophage content

BackgroundTNF-related apoptosis-inducing ligand (TRAIL) is a member of the TNF superfamily that can either induce cell death or activate survival pathways after binding to death receptors (DRs) DR4 or DR5. TRAIL is investigated as a therapeutic agent in clinical trials due to its selective toxicity to transformed cells. Macrophages can be polarized into pro-inflammatory/tumor-fighting M1 macrophages or anti-inflammatory/tumor-supportive M2 macrophages and an imbalance between M1 and M2 macrophages can promote diseases. Therefore, identifying modulators that regulate macrophage polarization is important to design effective macrophage-targeted immunotherapies. The impact of TRAIL on macrophage polarization is not known.MethodsPrimary human monocyte-derived macrophages were pre-treated with either TRAIL or with DR4 or DR5-specific ligands and then polarized into M1, M2a, or M2c phenotypes in vitro. The expression of M1 and M2 markers in macrophage subtypes was analyzed by RNA sequencing, qPCR, ELISA, and flow cytometry. Furthermore, the cytotoxicity of the macrophages against U937 AML tumor targets was assessed by flow cytometry. TCGA datasets were also analyzed to correlate TRAIL with M1/M2 markers, and the overall survival of cancer patients.ResultsTRAIL increased the expression of M1 markers at both mRNA and protein levels while decreasing the expression of M2 markers at the mRNA level in human macrophages. TRAIL also shifted M2 macrophages towards an M1 phenotype. Our data showed that both DR4 and DR5 death receptors play a role in macrophage polarization. Furthermore, TRAIL enhanced the cytotoxicity of macrophages against the AML cancer cells in vitro. Finally, TRAIL expression was positively correlated with increased expression of M1 markers in the tumors from ovarian and sarcoma cancer patients and longer overall survival in cases with high, but not low, tumor macrophage content.ConclusionsTRAIL promotes the polarization of human macrophages toward a proinflammatory M1 phenotype via both DR4 and DR5. Our study defines TRAIL as a new regulator of macrophage polarization and suggests that targeting DRs can enhance the anti-tumorigenic response of macrophages in the tumor microenvironment by increasing M1 polarization

Evaluation of reference values of standard semen parameters in fertile Egyptian men

The reference values of human semen, published in the WHO’s latest edition in 2010, were lower than those previously reported. The objective of this study was to evaluate reference values of standard semen parameters in fertile Egyptian men. This cross-sectional study included 240 fertile men. Men were considered fertile when their wives had recent spontaneous pregnancies with time to pregnancy (TTP) ≤12 months. The mean age of fertile men was 33.8 ± 0.5 years (range 20–55 years). The 5th percentiles (95% confidence interval) of macroscopic semen parameters were 1.5 ml for volume and 7.2 for pH. The 5th percentiles of microscopic parameters were 15 million/ ml for sperm concentration, 30 million per ejaculate for total sperm count, 50% for total motility, 40% for progressive motility, 62% for vitality, 4% for normal sperm forms and 0.1 million/ml for seminal leucocyte counts. In conclusion, fertile Egyptian men had higher reference values of sperm total motility, progressive motility and vitality, and lower reference values for total sperm counts as compared to those determined by the latest edition of the WHO laboratory manual in 2010. Other semen parameters were identical to those defined by the WHO 2010 manual

Infertility and the provision of infertility medical services in developing countries

developing countrie