Labor Market Dynamics and Development

We build a dataset of harmonized rotating panel labor force surveys covering 42 countries across a wide range of development and document three new empirical findings on labor market dynamics. First, labor market flows (job-finding rates, employment-exit rates, and job-to-job transition rates) are two to three times higher in the poorest as compared with the richest countries. Second, employment hazards in poorer countries decline more sharply with tenure; much of their high turnover can be attributed to high separation rates among workers with low tenure. Third, wage-tenure profiles are much steeper in poorer countries, despite the fact that wage-experience profiles are flatter. We show that these facts are consistent with theories with endogenous separation, particularly job ladder and learning models. We disaggregate our results and investigate possible driving forces that may explain why separation operates different in rich and poor countries

Syntheses of quinolines as neural protective reagents and progress towards total synthesis of (+) - myriceric acid A

Doctor of PhilosophyDepartment of ChemistryDuy H. HuaThe first chapter of this dissertation introduces and discusses the syntheses of a series of substituted quinolines as glycogen synthase kinase-3[beta] (GSK-3[beta]) inhibitors. GSK-3[beta] is highly associated with Alzheimer’s disease (AD), and it is suggested that inhibition of this enzyme could alleviate the symptoms of AD. Total 16 novel substituted quinolines were designed and synthesized, and their bio-activities were evaluated on MC65 cell protection assay. Four of the most active compounds were selected to test their enzyme inhibitory activities on GSK-3[beta] and protein kinase C assays. Among these compounds, 4-{[6-methoxy-4-methyl-5-(3-(trifluoromethyl)phenoxy)quinolin-8-ylamino]methyl} phenol (1.5) shows the highest MC65 cell protection and GSK-3[beta] enzyme inhibitory activities and potential enzyme specificity. Structure-activity relationship (SAR) was built as well, and the binding mode was simulated via computational method to interpret the observed SAR. Although additional bio-evaluation is needed, compound 1.5 is a promising lead compound for the development of more active and less toxic drug for the conteraction of AD. The second chapter introduces the progress on the total synthesis of myriceric acid A. Myriceric acid A is a triterpene-type natural product which was isolated from the young twigs of Myrica cerifera. It is a non-peptide endotheline-1 (ET-1) receptor antagonist. The total synthesis of this natural product started from the stereoselective synthesis of bicyclic intermediate (R)-5,8a-dimethyl-3,4,8,8a-tetrahydronaphthalene-1,6(2H,7H)-dione [(-)-2.28]. Then a new method was developed to enatioselectively synthesize the tricyclic intermediate (4aR,8R,8aR)-8-(tertbutyldimethylsilyloxy)-1,4a,8a-trimethyl-4,4a,4b,5,6,7,8,8a,9,10-decahydro phenanthren-2(3H)-one [(+)-2.72] which used the synthesized optically-pure (4aR,5R)-5-(tertbutyldimethylsilyloxy)-1,4a-dimethyl-4,4a,5,6,7,8-hexahydronaphthalen-2(3H)-one [(-)-2.53] derived from (-)-2.28 and [alpha]-trimethylsilylvinyl ethyl ketone via a cascade reductive Michael addition – aldol condensation reaction. After functional group inter-conversion, the desired tricyclic intermediate (4a'S,8a'R)-1',1',4a',8a'-tetramethyldecahydro-1'H-spiro[[1,3]dioxolane-2,2'-phenanthren]-8'(3'H)-one [(-)-2.33] was synthesized. An intramolecular cascade Michael addition-aldol condensation reaction was designed to construct the triterpene-skeleton of myriceric acid A, and the desired starting material for this reaction was prepared with the trimethyl{(4a'R,8a'R)-1',1',4a',8a'-tetramethyl-3',4',4a',4b',5',6',8a',9',10',10a'-decahydro-1'Hspiro[(1,3)dioxolane-2,2'-phenanthrene]-8'-yloxy}silane [(-)-2.81] and 3,3-dimethyl-7-oxooctanal (2.46) via Mukaiyama aldol condensation reaction. The resulting pentacyclic compound was further transformed to the desired ester (6a'R,8a'R,12a'S,12b'R,14b'R)-ethyl 4',4',6a',11',11',14b'-hexamethyl-8'-oxo-2',4',4a',5',6',6a',8',8a',9',10',11',12',12a',12b',13',14',14a',14b'-octadecahydro-1'H-spiro[(1,3) dioxolane - 2, 3 '- picene]-8a'-carboxylate (-)-2.106. The further investigation on total synthesis of myriceric acid A will be pursued in future

A Comprehensive Study of Black Phosphorus-Graphite Composite Anodes and HEMM Synthesis Conditions for Improved Cycle Stability

Black phosphorus (BP) is a high capacity anode material and has been synthesized with different carbon materials to mitigate volume changes during lithiation/delithiation. There is a large discrepancy in cycle stability of phosphorus-carbon materials in the literature, and factors affecting cycle performance are not well elucidated. In this study, the electrochemical performance of a black phosphorus-graphite (BP-G) composite anode material with regards to (1) material composition, (2) electrolyte additive, (3) ballmilling synthesis conditions, and (4) electrode loading is thoroughly investigated. In particular, this study reveals how ballmilling synthesis conditions correlate to electrochemical performance. Results show that the main contributors to cycle stability of BP-G composites are material composition and electrode loading, while first cycle efficiency and reversible capacity are strongly dependent on ballmilling synthetic conditions. Composition control is the most effective way to mitigate the volume change-induced mechanical degradation of BP-G composites, while ballmilling processing optimization is the main contributor to BP activation in BP-G composites, improving reversible capacity and first cycle efficiency. We thereby propose an optimized, HEMM-based synthetic route for improved BP-G materials. This study provides a comprehensive understanding of BP-G electrochemical performance and the correlation to HEMM synthesis conditions

Cardiac Specific Overexpression of Mitochondrial Omi/HtrA2 Induces Myocardial Apoptosis and Cardiac Dysfunction.

Myocardial apoptosis is a significant problem underlying ischemic heart disease. We previously reported significantly elevated expression of cytoplasmic Omi/HtrA2, triggers cardiomyocytes apoptosis. However, whether increased Omi/HtrA2 within mitochondria itself influences myocardial survival in vivo is unknown. We aim to observe the effects of mitochondria-specific, not cytoplasmic, Omi/HtrA2 on myocardial apoptosis and cardiac function. Transgenic mice overexpressing cardiac-specific mitochondrial Omi/HtrA2 were generated and they had increased myocardial apoptosis, decreased systolic and diastolic function, and decreased left ventricular remodeling. Transiently or stably overexpression of mitochondria Omi/HtrA2 in H9C2 cells enhance apoptosis as evidenced by elevated caspase-3, -9 activity and TUNEL staining, which was completely blocked by Ucf-101, a specific Omi/HtrA2 inhibitor. Mechanistic studies revealed mitochondrial Omi/HtrA2 overexpression degraded the mitochondrial anti-apoptotic protein HAX-1, an effect attenuated by Ucf-101. Additionally, transfected cells overexpressing mitochondrial Omi/HtrA2 were more sensitive to hypoxia and reoxygenation (H/R) induced apoptosis. Cyclosporine A (CsA), a mitochondrial permeability transition inhibitor, blocked translocation of Omi/HtrA2 from mitochondrial to cytoplasm, and protected transfected cells incompletely against H/R-induced caspase-3 activation. We report in vitro and in vivo overexpression of mitochondrial Omi/HtrA2 induces cardiac apoptosis and dysfunction. Thus, strategies to directly inhibit Omi/HtrA2 or its cytosolic translocation from mitochondria may protect against heart injury

Enhancing Cross-task Black-Box Transferability of Adversarial Examples with Dispersion Reduction

Neural networks are known to be vulnerable to carefully crafted adversarial examples, and these malicious samples often transfer, i.e., they remain adversarial even against other models. Although great efforts have been delved into the transferability across models, surprisingly, less attention has been paid to the cross-task transferability, which represents the real-world cybercriminal's situation, where an ensemble of different defense/detection mechanisms need to be evaded all at once. In this paper, we investigate the transferability of adversarial examples across a wide range of real-world computer vision tasks, including image classification, object detection, semantic segmentation, explicit content detection, and text detection. Our proposed attack minimizes the ``dispersion'' of the internal feature map, which overcomes existing attacks' limitation of requiring task-specific loss functions and/or probing a target model. We conduct evaluation on open source detection and segmentation models as well as four different computer vision tasks provided by Google Cloud Vision (GCV) APIs, to show how our approach outperforms existing attacks by degrading performance of multiple CV tasks by a large margin with only modest perturbations linf=16.Comment: arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1905.0333

Colorectal cancer screening with fecal occult blood test: A 22-year cohort study.

The aim of the present study was to investigate the efficacy of colorectal cancer (CRC) screening with a three-tier fecal occult blood test (FOBT) in the Chinese population. The study was performed between 1987 and 2008 at the Beijing Military General Hospital, in a cohort of army service males and females aged >50 years. Between 1987 and 2005, a three-tier screening program, comprising guaiac-based FOBTs (gFOBTs), followed by immunochemical FOBTs for positive guaiac test samples and then colonoscopy for positive immunochemical test subjects, was performed annually. The cohort was followed up until 2008. The cohort included 5,104 subjects, of which, 3,863 subjects participated in screening (screening group) and 1,241 did not (non-screening group). The two groups did not differ in age, gender or other major risk factors for colon cancer. Overall, 36 CRCs occurred in the screening group and 21 in the non-screening group. Compared with the non-screening group, the relative risk for the incidence and mortality of CRC was 0.51 [95% confidence interval (CI), 0.30-0.87] and 0.36 (95% CI, 0.18-0.71), respectively, in the screening group. The general sensitivity of this three-tier FOBT was 80.6% (95% CI, 65.3-91.1). Thus, annual screening using the three-tier FOBT program may reduce the CRC incidence and mortality rate

Raw frozen Antarctic krill (Euphausia superba) as an alternative feed source for cuttlefish Sepiella japonica in artificial breeding systems

The study aims to evaluate the feasibility of completely replacing raw frozen shrimp Palaemon gravieri diets with raw frozen Antarctic krill (Euphausia superba) in the diets of cuttlefish Sepiella japonica. To address the knowledge gap, we conducted a 60‐day feeding trial. At the end of the experiment (day 60), the cuttlefish Sepiella japonica eating Palaemon gravieri (SJP) grew significantly faster than those eating Euphausia superba (SJE), with the specific growth rate (SGR)SJP (7.92%) > (SGR)SJE (7.09%). Approximately 33.3% and 20.0% mortality was observed in the SJE and SJP, during the course of the experiment respectively. Some important fatty acids (i.e. n‐3 and n‐6 PUFAs) were elevated in SJE with respect to SJP. Replacement of Antarctic krill increased the diversity of the gut microbiome composition in the SJE group. Fluoride accumulated in the ink sac and cuttlebone of cuttlefish in SJE. Overall, these findings imply that PUFA‐rich Antarctic krill could replace P. gravieri shrimp for feeding cuttlefish S. japonica

Synthesis and anti-norovirus activity of pyranobenzopyrone compounds

During the last decade, noroviruses have gained media attention as the cause of large scale outbreaks of gastroenteritis on cruise ships, dormitories, nursing homes, etc. Although noroviruses do not multiply in food or water, they can cause large outbreaks because approximately 10–100 virions are sufficient to cause illness in a healthy adult. Recently, it was shown that the activity of acyl-coenzyme A:cholesterol acyltransferase-1 (ACAT1) enzyme may be important in norovirus infection. In search of anti-noroviral agents based on the inhibition of ACAT1, we synthesized and evaluated the inhibitory activities of a class of pyranobenzopyrone molecules containing amino, pyridine, substituted quinolines, or 7,8-benzoquinoline nucleus. Three of the sixteen evaluated compounds possess ED[subscript]5[subscript]0 values in the low micrometer range. 2-Quinolylmethyl derivative 3A and 4-quinolylmethyl derivative 4A showed ED[subscript]5[subscript]0 values of 3.4 and 2.4 [mu]M and TD[subscript]5[subscript]0 values of >200 and 96.4 [mu]M, respectively. The identified active compounds are suitable for further modification for the development of anti-norovirus agents