Below-cost legislation: lessons from the Republic of Ireland

This paper traces the emergence, evolution, and demise of below cost legislation in the grocery industry in the republic of Ireland. The paper adds to our understanding of the legislation by adopting the view that, by using the net invoice price as its definition of cost, the legislation increased two streams of quasi-rents, first on suppliers’ brandeds and second on retailers’ own brands which acted to depress competitive forces and direct supplier-buyer negotiations to off-invoice discounts. Supplier generated quasi-rents financed discounts, and when coupled with retailers’ higher margins on their own brands, provided little incentive for a return to a price competitive environment. Two factors undermined this situation: the substitution of discounters’ products for suppliers’ brands as the discounters share of the market grew and the increase in cross border shopping. These had the combined effect of reducing the available quasi-rents earned in the Irish market resulting in the breakdown of the status quo and a return to price competition. Through its impact on negotiations, the legislation also introduced inefficiencies to both retailers’ and suppliers businesses representing additional waste that could have been more productively used to reduce consumer prices. The paper endorses the Government’s decision to rescind the order and remove an important constraint on both vertical and horizontal competition. Lessons from the Republic of Ireland suggest that the competitive response to the removal of below cost legislation, and reductions in prices, may take time and will depend on economic circumstances and a change in the prevailing norms of organizational behaviour and quasi-rent seeking opportunitie

Veterinary Considerations for the Theoretical Resurrection of Extinct Species

The de-extinction of the dinosaur is a dubious possibility but its consideration brings forth some issues that are at least worthy of scientific discussion. In this review, we discuss two distinct issues that have implications for a de-extinct species such as a dinosaur: the ability, or lack thereof, to safely sedate a rare and potentially fractious animal capable of harming the veterinary staff tasked with its care; and, disease risks associated with a species that has been extinct for millions of years. To identify potential sedatives, comparative pharmacology will be needed to uncover the links between receptor pharmacology and the desired clinical outcomes of activating established alpha-2 adrenergic, opioid, and benzodiazepine receptors. Specific to disease control, it will be necessary to understand the unique susceptibility of the new species to current diseases as well as predicting their reservoir capacity for potential human and veterinary pandemic diseases. While the topics presented herein are not exhaustive, this review highlights some of the foremost research that should be conducted in order to serve the unique veterinary needs of a de-extinct species using the dinosaur as a paradigm. Addressing these issues should be considered if an intact dinosaur genome becomes available, regardless of the feasibility of dinosaur resurrection

Theoretical Engineering of the Gut Micro biome for the Purpose of Creating Superior Soldiers

The purpose of this review is to highlight research raising the possibility of exploiting the host-microbiome gut axis for military purposes. Through optimizing the gut-microbiome environment it is possible to enhance nutritional access to indigestible material, provide local and systemic analgesia, enhance psychological robustness to battlefield stress, produce endogenous steroids, reduce muscle fatigue, and promote peripheral wound healing. However, this approach is still in its early stages and thus has not been explored to its full potential. The challenges that are currently preventing the practical use of gut bacteria include the following: inconsistency of clinical outcomes, transient effects requiring continuous supplementation, the type of regimen selected, the initiation and cessation of regimen, and the broader clinical studies needed to validate this research. This review is intended to shed light on the numerous and varied positive impacts such an approach could have for the military if further developed

Workplace Accidents among Nepali Male Workers in the Middle East and Malaysia: A Qualitative Study

There are many Nepali men working in the Middle East and Malaysia and media reports and anecdotal evidence suggest a high risk of workplace-related accidents and injuries for male Nepali workers. Therefore, this study aims to explore the personal experiences of male Nepali migrants of unintentional injuries at their place of work. In-depth, face-to-face interviews (n = 20) were conducted with male Nepali migrant workers. Study participants were approached at Kathmandu International Airport, hotels and lodges around the airport. Interviews were transcribed and analysed using thematic analysis. Almost half of study participants experienced work-related accident abroad. The participants suggested that the reasons behind this are not only health and safety at work but also poor communication, taking risks by workers themselves, and perceived work pressure. Some participants experienced serious incidents causing life-long disability, extreme and harrowing accounts of injury but received no support from their employer or host countries. Nepali migrant workers would appear to be at a high risk of workplace unintentional injuries owing to a number of interrelated factors poor health and safety at work, pressure of work, risk taking practices, language barriers, and their general work environment. Both the Government of Nepal and host countries need to be better policing existing policies, introduce better legislation where necessary, ensure universal health (insurance) coverage for labour migrants, and improve preventive measures to minimize the number and severity of accidents and injuries among migrant workers

α-Synuclein impairs macroautophagy: implications for Parkinson’s disease

α-Synuclein impairs autophagosome formation and mislocalizes Atg9 by inhibiting Rab1a

Surveying the Agents of Galaxy Evolution in the Tidally-Stripped, Low Metallicity Small Magellanic Cloud (SAGE-SMC) II. Cool Evolved Stars

We investigate the infrared (IR) properties of cool, evolved stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), including the red giant branch (RGB) stars and the dust-producing red supergiant (RSG) and asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stars using observations from the Spitzer Space Telescope Legacy program entitled: "Surveying the Agents of Galaxy Evolution in the Tidally-stripped, Low Metallicity SMC", or SAGE-SMC. The survey includes, for the first time, full spatial coverage of the SMC bar, wing, and tail regions at infrared (IR) wavelengths (3.6 - 160 microns). We identify evolved stars using a combination of near-IR and mid-IR photometry and point out a new feature in the mid-IR color-magnitude diagram that may be due to particularly dusty O-rich AGB stars. We find that the RSG and AGB stars each contribute ~20% of the global SMC flux (extended + point-source) at 3.6 microns, which emphasizes the importance of both stellar types to the integrated flux of distant metal-poor galaxies. The equivalent SAGE survey of the higher-metallicity Large Magellanic Cloud (SAGE-LMC) allows us to explore the influence of metallicity on dust production. We find that the SMC RSG stars are less likely to produce a large amount of dust (as indicated by the [3.6]-[8] color). There is a higher fraction of carbon-rich stars in the SMC, and these stars appear to able to reach colors as red as their LMC counterparts, indicating that C-rich dust forms efficiently in both galaxies. A preliminary estimate of the dust production in AGB and RSG stars reveals that the extreme C-rich AGB stars dominate the dust input in both galaxies, and that the O-rich stars may play a larger role in the LMC than in the SMC.Comment: Accepted for publication in AJ. 25 pages, 36 figures, Table 4 will be available electronically from A

TESS spots a mini-neptune interior to a hot saturn in the TOI-2000 system

Hot jupiters (P 60 $\mathrm{M}_\oplus$) are almost always found alone around their stars, but four out of hundreds known have inner companion planets. These rare companions allow us to constrain the hot jupiter's formation history by ruling out high-eccentricity tidal migration. Less is known about inner companions to hot Saturn-mass planets. We report here the discovery of the TOI-2000 system, which features a hot Saturn-mass planet with a smaller inner companion. The mini-neptune TOI-2000 b ($2.70 \pm 0.15 \,\mathrm{R}_\oplus$, $11.0 \pm 2.4 \,\mathrm{M}_\oplus$) is in a 3.10-day orbit, and the hot saturn TOI-2000 c ($8.14^{+0.31}_{-0.30} \,\mathrm{R}_\oplus$, $81.7^{+4.7}_{-4.6} \,\mathrm{M}_\oplus$) is in a 9.13-day orbit. Both planets transit their host star TOI-2000 (TIC 371188886, V = 10.98, TESS magnitude = 10.36), a metal-rich ([Fe/H] = $0.439^{+0.041}_{-0.043}$) G dwarf 174 pc away. TESS observed the two planets in sectors 9-11 and 36-38, and we followed up with ground-based photometry, spectroscopy, and speckle imaging. Radial velocities from CHIRON, FEROS, and HARPS allowed us to confirm both planets by direct mass measurement. In addition, we demonstrate constraining planetary and stellar parameters with MIST stellar evolutionary tracks through Hamiltonian Monte Carlo under the PyMC framework, achieving higher sampling efficiency and shorter run time compared to traditional Markov chain Monte Carlo. Having the brightest host star in the V band among similar systems, TOI-2000 b and c are superb candidates for atmospheric characterization by the JWST, which can potentially distinguish whether they formed together or TOI-2000 c swept along material during migration to form TOI-2000 b.Comment: v3 adds RV frequency analysis; 25 pages, 11 figures, 14 tables; revision submitted to MNRAS; machine-readable tables available as ancillary files; posterior samples available from Zenodo at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7683293 and source code at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.798826

The TESS Grand Unified Hot Jupiter Survey. I. Ten TESS Planets

We report the discovery of ten short-period giant planets (TOI-2193A b, TOI-2207 b, TOI-2236 b, TOI-2421 b, TOI-2567 b, TOI-2570 b, TOI-3331 b, TOI-3540A b, TOI-3693 b, TOI-4137 b). All of the planets were identified as planet candidates based on periodic flux dips observed by NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). The signals were confirmed to be from transiting planets using ground-based time-series photometry, high angular resolution imaging, and high-resolution spectroscopy coordinated with the TESS Follow-up Observing Program. The ten newly discovered planets orbit relatively bright F and G stars ($G < 12.5$,~$T_\mathrm{eff}$ between 4800 and 6200 K). The planets' orbital periods range from 2 to 10~days, and their masses range from 0.2 to 2.2 Jupiter masses. TOI-2421 b is notable for being a Saturn-mass planet and TOI-2567 b for being a ``sub-Saturn'', with masses of $0.322\pm 0.073$ and $0.195\pm 0.030$ Jupiter masses, respectively. In most cases, we have little information about the orbital eccentricities. Two exceptions are TOI-2207 b, which has an 8-day period and a detectably eccentric orbit ($e = 0.17\pm0.05$), and TOI-3693 b, a 9-day planet for which we can set an upper limit of $e < 0.052$. The ten planets described here are the first new planets resulting from an effort to use TESS data to unify and expand on the work of previous ground-based transit surveys in order to create a large and statistically useful sample of hot Jupiters.Comment: 44 pages, 15 tables, 21 figures; revised version submitted to A