The Dynamic Effects of Disinflation Policies.

This paper investigates the effects of disinflation policies on key macroeconomic variables. Using postwar US data and episode techniques, we identify disinflation shocks as shocks that drive the inflation rate to a lower level in the long-run. We find that in the immediate aftermath of a disinflation policy, the economy enters in a persistent recession. The inflation rate increases above its long-run level and exhibits a positive hump-shaped response. A similar pattern is found for the nominal interest rate, which responds even more strongly in the short-run. We then show that the standard new Keynesian model fails to account for macroeconomic dynamics in disinflationary times. On the contrary a deep habit version of the model successfully accounts for the effects of disinflation policies.Disinflation policies ; Deep Habits ; New Keynesian Models.

Birds and people in Europe

At a regional scale, species richness and human population size are frequently positively correlated across space. Such patterns may arise because both species richness and human density increase with energy availability. If the species-energy relationship is generated through the 'more individuals' hypothesis, then the prediction is that areas with high human densities will also support greater numbers of individuals from other taxa. We use the unique data available for the breeding birds in Europe to test this prediction. Overall regional densities of bird species are higher in areas with more people; species of conservation concern exhibit the same pattern. Avian density also increases faster with human density than does avian biomass, indicating that areas with a higher human density have a higher proportion of small-bodied individuals. The analyses also underline the low numbers of breeding birds in Europe relative to humans, with a median of just three individual birds per person, and 4 g of bird for every kilogram of human

Glutamate Decarboxylases in Nonneural Cells of Rat Testis and Oviduct: Differential Expression of GAD 65 and GAD 67

Γ-Aminobutyric acid (GABA) and its synthetic enzyme, glutamate decarboxylase (GAD), are not limited to the nervous system but are also found in nonneural tissues. The mammalian brain contains at least two forms of GAD (GAD 67 and GAD 65 ), which differ from each other in size, sequence, immunoreactivity, and their interaction with the cofactor pyridoxal 5′-phosphate (PLP). We used cDNAs and antibodies specific to GAD 65 and GAD 67 to study the molecular identity of GADs in peripheral tissues. We detected GAD and GAD mRNAs in rat oviduct and testis. In oviduct, the size of GAD, its response to PLP, its immunoreactivity, and its hybridization to specific RNA and DNA probes all indicate the specific expression of the GAD 65 gene. In contrast, rat testis expresses the GAD 67 gene. The GAD in these two reproductive tissues is not in neurons but in nonneural cells. The localization of brain GAD and GAD mRNAs in the mucosal epithelial cells of the oviduct and in spermatocytes and spermatids of the testis shows that GAD is not limited to neurons and that GABA may have functions other than neurotransmission.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/66211/1/j.1471-4159.1992.tb09763.x.pd

From evidence to practice:development of web-based Dutch lipid reference values

Introduction: In the Netherlands, the total number of yearly measured lipid profiles exceeds 500,000. While lipid values are strongly affected by age and sex, until recently, no up-to-date age- and sex-specific lipid reference values were available. We describe the translation of big-cohort lipid data into accessible reference values, which can be easily incorporated in daily clinical practice. Methods: Lipid values (total cholesterol, LDL cholesterol, HDL cholesterol and triglycerides) from all healthy adults and children in the LifeLines cohort were used to generate age- and sex-specific percentiles. A combination of RStudio, Cascading Style Sheets and HyperText Markup Language was used to interactively display the percentiles in a responsive web layout. Results: After exclusion of subjects reporting cardiovascular disease or lipid-lowering therapy at baseline, 141,611 subjects were included. On the website, input fields were created for age, sex and all main plasma lipids. Upon input of these values, corresponding percentiles are calculated, and output is displayed in a table and an interactive graph for each lipid. The website has been made available in both Dutch and English and can be accessed at www.lipidtools.com. Conclusion: We constructed the first searchable, national lipid reference value tool with graphical display in the Netherlands to use in screening for dyslipidaemias and to reduce the underuse of lipid-lowering therapy in Dutch primary prevention. This study illustrates that data collected in big-cohort studies can be made easily accessible with modern digital techniques and preludes the digital health revolution yet to come

Charge Symmetry Breaking in 500 MeV Nucleon-Trinucleon Scattering

Elastic nucleon scattering from the 3He and 3H mirror nuclei is examined as a test of charge symmetry violation. The differential cross-sections are calculated at 500 MeV using a microsopic, momentum-space optical potential including the full coupling of two spin 1/2 particles and an exact treatment of the Coulomb force. The charge-symmetry-breaking effects investigated arise from a violation within the nuclear structure, from the p-nucleus Coulomb force, and from the mass-differences of the charge symmetric states. Measurements likely to reveal reliable information are noted.Comment: 5 page

Behavioral Modernity and the Cultural Transmission of Structured Information: The Semantic Axelrod Model

Cultural transmission models are coming to the fore in explaining increases in the Paleolithic toolkit richness and diversity. During the later Paleolithic, technologies increase not only in terms of diversity but also in their complexity and interdependence. As Mesoudi and O'Brien (2008) have shown, selection broadly favors social learning of information that is hierarchical and structured, and multiple studies have demonstrated that teaching within a social learning environment can increase fitness. We believe that teaching also provides the scaffolding for transmission of more complex cultural traits. Here, we introduce an extension of the Axelrod (1997} model of cultural differentiation in which traits have prerequisite relationships, and where social learning is dependent upon the ordering of those prerequisites. We examine the resulting structure of cultural repertoires as learning environments range from largely unstructured imitation, to structured teaching of necessary prerequisites, and we find that in combination with individual learning and innovation, high probabilities of teaching prerequisites leads to richer cultural repertoires. Our results point to ways in which we can build more comprehensive explanations of the archaeological record of the Paleolithic as well as other cases of technological change.Comment: 24 pages, 7 figures. Submitted to "Learning Strategies and Cultural Evolution during the Paleolithic", edited by Kenichi Aoki and Alex Mesoudi, and presented at the 79th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, Austin TX. Revised 5/14/1

The impact of ocean acidification and warming on the skeletal mechanical properties of the sea urchin Paracentrotus lividus from laboratory and field observations

Increased atmospheric CO2 concentration is leading to changes in the carbonate chemistry and the temperature of the ocean. The impact of these processes on marine organisms will depend on their ability to cope with those changes, particularly the maintenance of calcium carbonate structures. Both a laboratory experiment (long-term exposure to decreased pH and increased temperature) and collections of individuals from natural environments characterized by low pH levels (individuals from intertidal pools and around a CO2 seep) were here coupled to comprehensively study the impact of near-future conditions of pH and temperature on the mechanical properties of the skeleton of the euechinoid sea urchin Paracentrotus lividus. To assess skeletal mechanical properties, we characterized the fracture force, Young's modulus, second moment of area, material nanohardness, and specific Young's modulus of sea urchin test plates. None of these parameters were significantly affected by low pH and/or increased temperature in the laboratory experiment and by low pH only in the individuals chronically exposed to lowered pH from the CO2 seeps. In tidal pools, the fracture force was higher and the Young's modulus lower in ambital plates of individuals from the rock pool characterized by the largest pH variations but also a dominance of calcifying algae, which might explain some of the variation. Thus, decreases of pH to levels expected for 2100 did not directly alter the mechanical properties of the test of P. lividus. Since the maintenance of test integrity is a question of survival for sea urchins and since weakened tests would increase the sea urchins' risk of predation, our findings indicate that the decreasing seawater pH and increasing seawater temperature expected for the end of the century should not represent an immediate threat to sea urchins vulnerability

Impact of interface traps on charge noise, mobility and percolation density in Ge/SiGe heterostructures

Hole spins in Ge/SiGe heterostructure quantum dots have emerged as promising qubits for quantum computation. The strong spin-orbit coupling (SOC), characteristic of heavy-hole states in Ge, enables fast and all-electrical qubit control. However, SOC also increases the susceptibility of spin qubits to charge noise. While qubit coherence can be significantly improved by operating at sweet spots with reduced hyperfine or charge noise sensitivity, the latter ultimately limits coherence, underlining the importance of understanding and reducing charge noise at its source. In this work, we study the voltage-induced hysteresis commonly observed in SiGe-based quantum devices and show that the dominant charge fluctuators are localized at the semiconductor-oxide interface. By applying increasingly negative gate voltages to Hall bar and quantum dot devices, we investigate how the hysteretic filling of interface traps impacts transport metrics and charge noise. We find that the gate-induced accumulation and trapping of charge at the SiGe-oxide interface leads to an increased electrostatic disorder, as probed by transport measurements, as well as the activation of low-frequency relaxation dynamics, resulting in slow drifts and increased charge noise levels. Our results highlight the importance of a conservative device tuning strategy and reveal the critical role of the semiconductor-oxide interface in SiGe heterostructures for spin qubit applications