"On Hochberg et al.'s, the tragedy of the reviewers commons"

We discuss each of the recommendations made by Hochberg et al. (2009) to prevent the “tragedy of the reviewer commons”. Having scientific journals share a common database of reviewers would be to recreate a bureaucratic organization, where extra-scientific considerations prevailed. Pre-reviewing of papers by colleagues is a widespread practice but raises problems of coordination. Revising manuscripts in line with all reviewers’ recommendations presupposes that recommendations converge, which is acrobatic. Signing an undertaking that authors have taken into accounts all reviewers’ comments is both authoritarian and sterilizing. Sending previous comments with subsequent submissions to other journals amounts to creating a cartel and a single all-encompassing journal, which again is sterilizing. Using young scientists as reviewers is highly risky: they might prove very severe; and if they have not yet published themselves, the recommendation violates the principle of peer review. Asking reviewers to be more severe would only create a crisis in the publishing houses and actually increase reviewers’ workloads. The criticisms of the behavior of authors looking to publish in the best journals are unfair: it is natural for scholars to try to publish in the best journals and not to resign themselves to being second rate. Punishing lazy reviewers would only lower the quality of reports: instead, we favor the idea of paying reviewers “in kind” with, say, complimentary books or papers.Reviewer;Referee;Editor;Publisher;Publishing;Tragedy of the Commons;Hochberg

Biproportional Techniques in Input-Output Analysis: Table Updating and Structural Analysis

This paper is dedicated to the contributions of Sir Richard Stone, Michael Bacharach, and Philip Israilevich. It starts out with a brief history of biproportional techniques and related matrix balancing algorithms. We then discuss the RAS algorithm developed by Sir Richard Stone and others. We follow that by evaluating the interpretability of the product of the adjustment parameters, generally known as R and S. We then move on to discuss the various formal formulations of other biproportional approaches and discuss what defines an algorithm as “biproportionalâ€. After mentioning a number of competing optimization algorithms that cannot fall under the rubric of being biproportional, we reflect upon how some of their features have been included into the biproportional setting (the ability to fix the value of interior cells of the matrix being adjusted and of incorporating data reliability into the algorithm). We wind up the paper by pointing out some areas that could use further investigation.Input-Output Economics; RAS; data raking; iterative proportional fitting; estimating missing data

HTLV-1 HBZ cooperates with JunD to enhance transcription of the human telomerase reverse transcriptase gene (hTERT)

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Activation of telomerase is a critical and late event in tumor progression. Thus, in patients with adult-T cell leukaemia (ATL), an HTLV-1 (Human T cell Leukaemia virus type 1)-associated disease, leukemic cells display a high telomerase activity, mainly through transcriptional up-regulation of the human telomerase catalytic subunit (hTERT). The HBZ (HTLV-1 bZIP) protein coded by the minus strand of HTLV-1 genome and expressed in ATL cells has been shown to increase the transcriptional activity of JunD, an AP-1 protein. The presence of several AP-1 binding sites in the hTERT promoter led us to investigate whether HBZ regulates hTERT gene transcription.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Here, we demonstrate using co-transfection assays that HBZ in association with JunD activates the hTERT promoter. Interestingly, the -378/+1 proximal region, which does not contain any AP-1 site was found to be responsible for this activation. Furthermore, an increase of hTERT transcripts was observed in cells co-expressing HBZ and JunD. Chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) assays revealed that HBZ, and JunD coexist in the same DNA-protein complex at the proximal region of hTERT promoter. Finally, we provide evidence that HBZ/JunD heterodimers interact with Sp1 transcription factors and that activation of hTERT transcription by these heterodimers is mediated through GC-rich binding sites for Sp1 present in the proximal sequences of the hTERT promoter.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>These observations establish for the first time that HBZ by intervening in the re-activation of telomerase, may contribute to the development and maintenance of the leukemic process.</p

A critical comment on Oosterhaven–Stelder net multipliers

C67, D57, O20, R15,

La maximisation du taux de profit

On the traditional micro-economic theory, firms are supposed to maximise pure profit. We study what happened when we take into consideration shareholders and the financial profit remunerating the financial capital. We show that it is necessary to surrender the financial profit maximisation to use the rate of financial profit maximisation. The cases of concurrence with fix coefficient of capital, monopoly with fix coefficient of capital, monopoly with variable coefficient of capital are studied, and the role of contraints of rentability are treated. The solutions given by the profit maximisation and by the rate of profitmaximisation are compared. We conclude to a reduction of the volume of investissement on some situations, a non automatic clearing of markets andto the necessity to revise some conclusions of industrial, normative and wellfare economics.Dans la théorie micro-économique traditionnelle, les firmes sont supposées maximiser le profit pur. Nous étudions ici l'impact de la prise en compte des actionnaires et d'un profit financier rémunérant le capital financier. On montre qu'il faut abandonner la maximisation du profit financier pour considérer la maximisation du taux de profit financier. Les cas de concurrence avec coefficient fixe de capital, monopole avec coefficient fixe de capital, monopole avec coefficient variable de capital sont étudiés, et le rôle des contraintes de rentabilité est traité. Les solutions fournies par la maximisation du profit et la maximisation du taux de profit sont comparées. On conclut à une réduction du volume d'investissement dans certaines situations, à un non-clearing automatique des marchés et à la nécessité de revoir certaines conclusions de l'économie industrielle, normative et du bien-être

On the Convergence of the Generalized Ibn Ezra Value

International audienceIbn Ezra (Sefar ha-Mispar (The Book of the Number, in Hebrew), Verona (German trans: Silberberg M. (1895)). Kauffmann, Frankfurt am Main,1146), Rabinovitch (Probability and statistical inference in medieval Jewish literature. University of Toronto Press, Toronto,1973) and O’Neill (Math Soc Sci 2(4):345–371,1982)proposed a method for solving the “rights arbitration problem” (one of the historical problems of “bankruptcy”) for n claimants when the estate E is equal to the largest claim. However, when the greatest claim is for less than the estate, the question of what to do with the difference between E and the largest claim is posed. Alcalde et al.’s (Econ Theory 26(1):103–114,2005) Generalized Ibn Ezra Value (GiEV), solves the problem in T iterations, of n steps. By using Monte-Carlo experiments, we show that: (i) T grows linearly with the number of claimants, which makes GiEV rapidly impracticable for real applications. (ii) The more E is close to the total claim d, themore T grows: T linearly grows when E exponentially approaches d by a factor 10. Moreover, we proved through theory that GiEV fails to provide a solution in a finite number of iterations for the trivial case E = d, whereas it should obviously find a solution in one iteration. So, even if GiEV is convergent, the sum of claims d appears as an asymptote: the number of iterations tends to infinite when the estate E approaches the claims total d. We conclude that GiEV is inefficient and usable only when: (1) the number of claimants is low, and (2) the estate E is largely lower than the total claims d

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