Teaching Students About The Financial Crisis Through Best-Selling Books

The 2007-2009 financial crisis was such a momentous time that entire business courses could be devoted to its study.  While some schools may undertake that task, this paper discusses ways in which students may learn about the crisis as part of an established course in economics or finance departments.  Popular press books are highlighted, and writing prompts and discussion questions are shared.  The paper focuses on the response by two key public institutions: the Federal Reserve and the Treasury.  Results from a student survey provide evidence of value from the use of such books

Quality of life of adolescents with cancer: family risks and resources

PURPOSE: The goal of this study was to evaluate the relative contribution of treatment intensity, family sociodemographic risk, and family resources to health-related quality of life (QOL) of 102 adolescents in treatment for cancer. METHODS: Adolescents and parents completed self-report measures of teen QOL, family functioning, and parent-child bonding. Based on parent report of family sociodemographic variables, an additive risk index was computed. A pediatric oncologist rated treatment intensity. RESULTS: Simultaneous regression analyses demonstrated the significant contribution of roles in family functioning and quality of parent-child relationship to prediction of psychosocial QOL (parent and teen-reported) as well as parent-reported teen physical QOL over and above the contribution of treatment intensity. Family sociodemographic risk did not contribute to QOL in these regression analyses. In additional analyses, specific diagnosis, types of treatment and individual sociodemographic risk variables were not associated with QOL. Parent and teen ratings of family functioning and quality of life were concordant. CONCLUSIONS: Family functioning, including quality of parent-child relationship, are central and potentially modifiable resistance factors in teen QOL while under treatment for cancer. Even more important than relying on diagnosis or treatment, screening for roles and relationships early in treatment may be an important aspect of determining risk for poor QOL outcomes

Discretizing Gravity in Warped Spacetime

We investigate the discretized version of the compact Randall-Sundrum model. By studying the mass eigenstates of the lattice theory, we demonstrate that for warped space, unlike for flat space, the strong coupling scale does not depend on the IR scale and lattice size. However, strong coupling does prevent us from taking the continuum limit of the lattice theory. Nonetheless, the lattice theory works in the manifestly holographic regime and successfully reproduces the most significant features of the warped theory. It is even in some respects better than the KK theory, which must be carefully regulated to obtain the correct physical results. Because it is easier to construct lattice theories than to find exact solutions to GR, we expect lattice gravity to be a useful tool for exploring field theory in curved space.Comment: 17 pages, 4 figures; references adde

Influence of medical journal press releases on the quality of associated newspaper coverage: retrospective cohort study

Objective To determine whether the quality of press releases issued by medical journals can influence the quality of associated newspaper stories

A new approach to generating research-quality data through citizen science: The USA National Phenology Monitoring System

Phenology is one of the most sensitive biological responses to climate change, and recent changes in phenology have the potential to shake up ecosystems. In some cases, it appears they already are. Thus, for ecological reasons it is critical that we improve our understanding of species’ phenologies and how these phenologies are responding to recent, rapid climate change. Phenological events like flowering and bird migrations are easy to observe, culturally important, and, at a fundamental level, naturally inspire human curiosity— thus providing an excellent opportunity to engage citizen scientists. The USA National Phenology Network has recently initiated a national effort to encourage people at different levels of expertise—from backyard naturalists to professional scientists—to observe phenological events and contribute to a national database that will be used to greatly improve our understanding of spatio-temporal variation in phenology and associated phenological responses to climate change.

Traditional phenological observation protocols identify specific dates at which individual phenological events are observed. The scientific usefulness of long-term phenological observations could be improved with a more carefully structured protocol. At the USA-NPN we have developed a new approach that directs observers to record each day that they observe an individual plant, and to assess and report the state of specific life stages (or phenophases) as occurring or not occurring on that plant for each observation date. Evaluation is phrased in terms of simple, easy-to-understand, questions (e.g. “Do you see open flowers?”), which makes it very appropriate for a citizen science audience. From this method, a rich dataset of phenological metrics can be extracted, including the duration of a phenophase (e.g. open flowers), the beginning and end points of a phenophase (e.g. traditional phenological events such as first flower and last flower), multiple distinct occurrences of phenophases within a single growing season (e.g multiple flowering events, common in drought-prone regions), as well as quantification of sampling frequency and observational uncertainties. These features greatly enhance the utility of the resulting data for statistical analyses addressing questions such as how phenological events vary in time and space, and in response to global change. This new protocol is an important step forward, and its widespread adoption will increase the scientific value of data collected by citizen scientists.
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Dynamical compactification from de Sitter space

We show that D-dimensional de Sitter space is unstable to the nucleation of non-singular geometries containing spacetime regions with different numbers of macroscopic dimensions, leading to a dynamical mechanism of compactification. These and other solutions to Einstein gravity with flux and a cosmological constant are constructed by performing a dimensional reduction under the assumption of q-dimensional spherical symmetry in the full D-dimensional geometry. In addition to the familiar black holes, black branes, and compactification solutions we identify a number of new geometries, some of which are completely non-singular. The dynamical compactification mechanism populates lower-dimensional vacua very differently from false vacuum eternal inflation, which occurs entirely within the context of four-dimensions. We outline the phenomenology of the nucleation rates, finding that the dimensionality of the vacuum plays a key role and that among vacua of the same dimensionality, the rate is highest for smaller values of the cosmological constant. We consider the cosmological constant problem and propose a novel model of slow-roll inflation that is triggered by the compactification process.Comment: Revtex. 41 pages with 24 embedded figures. Minor corrections and added reference

A \u3cem\u3eColletotrichum graminicola\u3c/em\u3e Mutant Deficient in the Establishment of Biotrophy Reveals Early Transcriptional Events in the Maize Anthracnose Disease Interaction

Background: Colletotrichum graminicola is a hemibiotrophic fungal pathogen that causes maize anthracnose disease. It progresses through three recognizable phases of pathogenic development in planta: melanized appressoria on the host surface prior to penetration; biotrophy, characterized by intracellular colonization of living host cells; and necrotrophy, characterized by host cell death and symptom development. A “Mixed Effects” Generalized Linear Model (GLM) was developed and applied to an existing Illumina transcriptome dataset, substantially increasing the statistical power of the analysis of C. graminicola gene expression during infection and colonization. Additionally, the in planta transcriptome of the wild-type was compared with that of a mutant strain impaired in the establishment of biotrophy, allowing detailed dissection of events occurring specifically during penetration, and during early versus late biotrophy. Results: More than 2000 fungal genes were differentially transcribed during appressorial maturation, penetration, and colonization. Secreted proteins, secondary metabolism genes, and membrane receptors were over-represented among the differentially expressed genes, suggesting that the fungus engages in an intimate and dynamic conversation with the host, beginning prior to penetration. This communication process probably involves reception of plant signals triggering subsequent developmental progress in the fungus, as well as production of signals that induce responses in the host. Later phases of biotrophy were more similar to necrotrophy, with increased production of secreted proteases, inducers of plant cell death, hydrolases, and membrane bound transporters for the uptake and egress of potential toxins, signals, and nutrients. Conclusions: This approach revealed, in unprecedented detail, fungal genes specifically expressed during critical phases of host penetration and biotrophic establishment. Many encoded secreted proteins, secondary metabolism enzymes, and receptors that may play roles in host-pathogen communication necessary to promote susceptibility, and thus may provide targets for chemical or biological controls to manage this important disease. The differentially expressed genes could be used as ‘landmarks’ to more accurately identify developmental progress in compatible versus incompatible interactions involving genetic variants of both host and pathogen

Development of a stabilized trimer pre-fusion RSV F recombinant viral glycoprotein vaccine

It has been known that the RSV fusion protein F is a target vaccine protein to produce a protective immune response. The VRC has shown (Ngwuta, et.al.) through binding competition assays that the amount of pre-fusion site Ø–specific antibodies correlates with neutralizing (NT) activity, whereas the pre/post-fusion site II mAbs does not correlate with neutralization. Our results indicate that RSV NT activity in human sera is primarily derived from pre-F–specific antibodies, and therefore, inducing or boosting NT activity by vaccination will be facilitated by using pre-F antigens that preserve site Ø. Therefore, the instability of the RSV pre-fusion conformation has limited the potential of this as a vaccine antigen. Therefore, the VRC has designed a structurally stabilized glycoprotein pre-fusion RSV F trimer vaccine antigen and has shown it to be highly immunogenic in preclinical studies. A description of challenges in the development of a high productivity CHO cell line, production process and product quality and antigenic characterization assays for Phase I clinical material will be presented along with comparison of pre-clinical results of research to development material. Please click Additional Files below to see the full abstract

Unification and the Hierarchy from AdS5

In AdS5, the coupling for bulk gauge bosons runs logarithmically, not as a power law. For this reason, one can preserve perturbative unification of couplings. Depending on the cutoff, this can occur at a high scale. We discuss subtleties in the calculation and present a regularization scheme motivated by the holographic correspondence. We find that generically, as in the standard model, the couplings almost unify. For specific choices of the cutoff and number of scalar multiplets, there is good agreement between the measured couplings and the assumption of high scale unification.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figure