Population Aging and Intergenerational Transfers: Introducing Age into National Accounts

In all societies intergenerational transfers are large and have an important influence on inequality and growth. The development of each generation of youth depends on the resources that it receives from productive members of society for health, education, and sustenance. The well-being of the elderly depends on familial support and a variety of social programs. The National Transfer Accounts (NTA) system provides a comprehensive approach to measuring all reallocations of income across age and time at the aggregate level. It encompasses reallocations achieved through capital accumulation and transfers, distinguishing those mediated by public institutions from those relying on private institutions. This paper introduces the methodology and presents preliminary results emphasizing economic support systems in Taiwan and the United States. As the two economies differ in their demographic configuration, their level of development, and their old-age support systems, comparing them will shed light on the economic implications of population aging under alternative institutional arrangements.

Dietary Exposure to the Environmental Chemical, PFOS on the Diversity of Gut Microbiota, Associated With the Development of Metabolic Syndrome

The gut microbiome is a dynamic ecosystem formed by thousands of diverse bacterial species. This bacterial diversity is acquired early in life and shaped over time by a combination of multiple factors, including dietary exposure to distinct nutrients and xenobiotics. Alterations of the gut microbiota composition and associated metabolic activities in the gut are linked to various immune and metabolic diseases. The microbiota could potentially interact with xenobiotics in the gut environment as a result of their board enzymatic capacities and thereby affect the bioavailability and toxicity of the xenobiotics in enterohepatic circulation. Consequently, microbiome-xenobiotic interactions might affect host health. Here, we aimed to investigate the effects of dietary perfluorooctane sulfonic acid (PFOS) exposure on gut microbiota in adult mice and examine the induced changes in animal metabolic functions. In mice exposed to dietary PFOS for 7 weeks, body PFOS and lipid contents were measured, and to elucidate the effects of PFOS exposure, the metabolic functions of the animals were assessed using oral glucose-tolerance test and intraperitoneal insulin-tolerance and pyruvate-tolerance tests; moreover, on Day 50, cecal bacterial DNA was isolated and subject to 16S rDNA sequencing. Our results demonstrated that PFOS exposure caused metabolic disturbances in the animals, particularly in lipid and glucose metabolism, but did not substantially affect the diversity of gut bacterial species. However, marked modulations were detected in the abundance of metabolism-associated bacteria belonging to the phyla Firmicutes, Bacteroidetes, Proteobacteria, and Cyanobacteria, including, at different taxonomic levels, Turicibacteraceae, Turicibacterales, Turicibacter, Dehalobacteriaceae, Dehalobacterium, Allobaculum, Bacteroides acidifaciens, Alphaproteobacteria, and 4Cod-2/YS2. The results of PICRUSt analysis further indicated that PFOS exposure perturbed gut metabolism, inducing notable changes in the metabolism of amino acids (arginine, proline, lysine), methane, and a short-chain fatty acid (butanoate), all of which are metabolites widely recognized to be associated with inflammation and metabolic functions. Collectively, our study findings provide key information regarding the biological relevance of microbiome–xenobiotic interactions associated with the ecology of gut microbiota and animal energy metabolism

Characterization of pulmonary protein profiles in response to zinc oxide nanoparticles in mice: a 24-hour and 28-day follow-up study

Although zinc oxide nanoparticles (ZnONPs) are recognized to cause systemic disorders, little is known about the mechanisms that underlie the time-dependent differences that occur after exposure. The objective of this study was to investigate the mechanistic differences at 24 hours and 28 days after the exposure of BALB/c mice to ZnONPs via intratracheal instillation. An isobaric tag for the relative and absolute quantitation coupled with liquid chromatography/tandem mass spectrometry was used to identify the differential protein expression, biological processes, molecular functions, and pathways. A total of 18 and 14 proteins displayed significant changes in the lung tissues at 24 hours and 28 days after exposure, respectively, with the most striking changes being observed for S100-A9 protein. Metabolic processes and catalytic activity were the main biological processes and molecular functions, respectively, in the responses at the 24-hour and 28-day follow-up times. The glycolysis/gluconeogenesis pathway was continuously downregulated from 24 hours to 28 days, whereas detoxification pathways were activated at the 28-day time-point after exposure. A comprehensive understanding of the potential time-dependent effects of exposure to ZnONPs was provided, which highlights the metabolic mechanisms that may be important in the responses to ZnONP

The JCMT BISTRO Survey: Studying the Complex Magnetic Field of L43

We present observations of polarized dust emission at 850 μm from the L43 molecular cloud, which sits in the Ophiuchus cloud complex. The data were taken using SCUBA-2/POL-2 on the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope as a part of the BISTRO large program. L43 is a dense (NH 10 22 2 ~ –1023 cm−2) complex molecular cloud with a submillimeter-bright starless core and two protostellar sources. There appears to be an evolutionary gradient along the isolated filament that L43 is embedded within, with the most evolved source closest to the Sco OB2 association. One of the protostars drives a CO outflow that has created a cavity to the southeast. We see a magnetic field that appears to be aligned with the cavity walls of the outflow, suggesting interaction with the outflow. We also find a magnetic field strength of up to ∼160 ± 30 μG in the main starless core and up to ∼90 ± 40 μG in the more diffuse, extended region. These field strengths give magnetically super- and subcritical values, respectively, and both are found to be roughly trans-Alfvénic. We also present a new method of data reduction for these denser but fainter objects like starless cores

Robust estimation of bacterial cell count from optical density

Optical density (OD) is widely used to estimate the density of cells in liquid culture, but cannot be compared between instruments without a standardized calibration protocol and is challenging to relate to actual cell count. We address this with an interlaboratory study comparing three simple, low-cost, and highly accessible OD calibration protocols across 244 laboratories, applied to eight strains of constitutive GFP-expressing E. coli. Based on our results, we recommend calibrating OD to estimated cell count using serial dilution of silica microspheres, which produces highly precise calibration (95.5% of residuals <1.2-fold), is easily assessed for quality control, also assesses instrument effective linear range, and can be combined with fluorescence calibration to obtain units of Molecules of Equivalent Fluorescein (MEFL) per cell, allowing direct comparison and data fusion with flow cytometry measurements: in our study, fluorescence per cell measurements showed only a 1.07-fold mean difference between plate reader and flow cytometry data

Local Resistance in Early Medieval Chinese Historiography and the Problem of Religious Overinterpretation

Official Chinese historiography is a treasure trove of information on local resistance to the centralised empire in early medieval China (third to sixth century). Sinologists specialised in the study of Chinese religions commonly reconstruct the religious history of the era by interpreting some of these data. In the process, however, the primary purpose of the historiography of local resistance is often overlooked, and historical interpretation easily becomes ‘overinterpretation’—that is, ‘fabricating false intensity’ and ‘seeing intensity everywhere’, as French historian Paul Veyne proposed to define the term. Focusing on a cluster of historical anecdotes collected in the standard histories of the four centuries under consideration, this study discusses the supposedly ‘religious’ nature of some of the data they contain

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead