The Effective Competition Standard: A New Standard for Antitrust

America’s failing antitrust system is, in large part, to blame for today’s market power problem. Lax antitrust law and enforcement have allowed troubling trends like corporate consolidation to remain unchallenged, further embedding our skewed economy. In highly concentrated markets, individuals have limited choice and little power to pick their price, quality, or provider for the goods and services they need; workers are met with powerful employers and have little agency to shop around or bargain for competitive wages and benefits; and suppliers can’t reach the market without paying powerful intermediaries or succumbing to acquisition. Our Essay offers an alternative to the courts’ consumer welfare standard. Ambiguous and inadequate, the consumer welfare standard identifies threats to competition only by the potential consequences for consumers and ignores adverse effects on workers, suppliers, product quality, and innovation. Our effective competition standard would restore the primary aim of antitrust laws—namely, to promote competition wherever in the economy it has been compromised, including throughout supply chains and in the labor market. These changes are essential to protect competitive markets in the United States, as well as individuals and the economy at large, by deconcentrating private power

Regulation of Obesity and Metabolic Complications by Gamma and Delta Tocotrienols

Tocotrienols (T3s) are a subclass of unsaturated vitamin E that have been extensively studied for their anti-proliferative, anti-oxidative and anti-inflammatory properties in numerous cancer studies. Recently, T3s have received increasing attention due to their previously unrecognized property to attenuate obesity and its associated metabolic complications. In this review, we comprehensively evaluated the recent published scientific literature about the influence of T3s on obesity, with a particular emphasis on the signaling pathways involved. T3s have been demonstrated in animal models or human subjects to reduce fat mass, body weight, plasma concentrations of free fatty acid, triglycerides and cholesterol, as well as to improve glucose and insulin tolerance. Their mechanisms of action in adipose tissue mainly include (1) modulation of fat cell adipogenesis and differentiation; (2) modulation of energy sensing; (3) induction of apoptosis in preadipocytes and (4) modulation of inflammation. Studies have also been conducted to investigate the effects of T3s on other targets, e.g., the immune system, liver, muscle, pancreas and bone. Since δT3 and γT3 are regarded as the most active isomers among T3s, their clinical relevance to reduce obesity should be investigated in human trials

Effect of Red Cabbage Extract on Minced Nile Perch Fish Patties Vacuum Packaged in High and Low Oxygen Barrier Films

Oxidation of polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA), eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) in fish causes loss of product quality. Oxidative rancidity causes loss of nutritional value and undesirable color changes. Therefore, powerful antioxidant extracts may provide a relatively low cost and natural means to reduce oxidation, resulting in longer, higher quality and higher value shelf life of foods. In this study, we measured synergistic effects of red cabbage antioxidant and vacuum packaging on lipid oxidation in fresh tilapia patties using thiobarbituric acid reactive substances (TBARS) assay, peroxide value (PV), pH and color analysis. Concentrated red cabbage extract was obtained using an efficient freeze/thawed method developed in our laboratory (citation). Fresh tilapia patties were prepared with solutions containing 68 ppm of extract concentrate for each 50 gr of fish patties. Samples were stored for 15 days at refrigeration conditions (4±1°C) and analyzed interval between two days for pH, color analysis, and lipid oxidation assessments. Results show that treated and vacuum packaged samples had lower oxidation levels than controls. Lipid peroxide values on treated samples showed benefits through day 12. This work shows that synergistic effect of red cabbage antioxidant extracts and vacuum packaging may represent an inexpensive and natural method for retarding oxidative spoilage of fresh fish

The broiler meat system in Nairobi, Kenya: using a value chain framework to understand animal and product flows, governance and sanitary risks

Livestock food systems play key subsistence and income generation roles in low to middle income countries and are important networks for zoonotic disease transmission. The aim of this study was to use a value chain framework to characterize the broiler chicken meat system of Nairobi, its governance and sanitary risks. A total of 4 focus groups and 8 key informant interviews were used to collect cross-sectional data from: small-scale broiler farmers in selected Nairobi peri-urban and informal settlement areas; medium to large integrated broiler production companies; traders and meat inspectors in live chicken and chicken meat markets in Nairobi. Qualitative data were collected on types of people operating in the system, their interactions, sanitary measures in place, sourcing and selling of broiler chickens and products. Framework analysis was used to identify governance themes and risky sanitary practices present in the system. One large company was identified to supply 60% of Nairobi’s day-old chicks to farmers, mainly through agrovet shops. Broiler meat products from integrated companies were sold in high-end retailers whereas their low value products were channelled through independent traders to consumers in informal settlements. Peri-urban small-scale farmers reported to slaughter the broilers on the farm and to sell carcasses to retailers (hotels and butcheries mainly) through brokers (80%), while farmers in the informal settlement reported to sell their broilers live to retailers (butcheries, hotels and hawkers mainly) directly. Broiler heads and legs were sold in informal settlements via roadside vendors. Sanitary risks identified were related to lack of biosecurity, cold chain and access to water, poor hygiene practices, lack of inspection at farm slaughter and limited health inspection in markets. Large companies dominated the governance of the broiler system through the control of day-old chick production. Overall government control was described as relatively weak leading to minimal official regulatory enforcement. Large companies and brokers were identified as dominant groups in market information dissemination and price setting. Lack of farmer association was found to be system-wide and to limit market access. Other system barriers included lack of space and expertise, leading to poor infrastructure and limited ability to implement effective hygienic measures. This study highlights significant structural differences between different broiler chains and inequalities in product quality and market access across the system. It provides a foundation for food safety assessments, disease control programmes and informs policy-making for the inclusive growth of this fast-evolving sector

Fetishism and the social value of objects.

The idea of the fetish has a particular presence in the writings of both Marx and Freud. It implies for these two theorists of the social, a particular form of relation between human beings and objects. In the work of both the idea of the fetish involves attributing properties to objects that they do not 'really' have and that should correctly be recognised as human. While Marx's account of fetishism addresses the exchange-value of commodities at the level of the economic relations of production, it fails to deal in any detail with the use-value or consumption of commodities. In contrast Freud's concept of the fetish as a desired substitute for a suitable sex object explores how objects are desired and consumed. Drawing on both Marx and Freud, Baudrillard breaks with their analyses of fetishism as demonstrating a human relation with unreal objects. He explores the creation of value in objects through the social exchange of sign values, showing how objects are fetishised in ostentation. This paper argues that while Baudrillard breaks with the realism characteristic of Marx's and Freud's analyses of fetishism, he does not go far enough in describing the social and discursive practices in which objects are used and sometimes transformed into fetishes. It is proposed that the fetishisation of objects involves an overdetermination of their social value through a discursive negotiation of the capacities of objects that stimulates fantasy and desire for them

Using Artificial Intelligence as a Decision Support System in School Administration: The Development of an Expert System for Student Subject Selection

It is now relatively common for schools to use computers for clerical purposes, and they have been demonstrably successful in supporting these tasks. Nevertheless the potential for computers to analyse data and provide recommendations from which decisions can be made has been greatly under-utilised. The aim of this research project is to ascertain whether computerised decision support systems, such as expert systems, can be developed to assist in the administration of schools. Reports in the literature suggest they should and thus a central research problem was to demonstrate that they could. Resolution of this problem involved several elements: (1) modelling a specific decision making domain in a school, (2) designing and implementing an expert system to assist decision making in this domain, and (3) evaluating the expert system to validate its recommendations and compare its performance with the current system and human experts

Advanced Non-animal Models in Biomedical Research: Respiratory Tract Diseases

A study was initiated at the JRC to develop a current overview of available and emerging non-animal models in the field of Respiratory Tract Diseases. In a literature review, over 21,000 abstracts (11,636 non-cancer and 9,421 cancer) were scanned for relevant non-animal methods of respiratory disease. From this, a total of 284 publications were finally identified as being promising candidate methods according to a set of inclusion/exclusion criteria. In vitro cell and tissue cultures, human ex vivo, in silico approaches were chiefly considered. These methods have been collated into a catalogue of biomedical disease models that will form a key knowledge source for researchers, educators and national ethics and funding authorities. The availability of a centralised source of reviewed methods will contribute to extend the requirements of EU Directive 2010/63/EU on the protection of animals used for scientific purposes to biomedical science. Simple cell culture models using immortalised cell lines are long-established, are inexpensive and quick, however they poorly reflect complex disease mechanism observed in vivo. The emerging use of more physiologically-relevant models of disease, such a 3D human tissue cultures, spheroids, organoids, and microfluidic /’lung on a chip’ based systems shows immense promise for the development of in vitro model systems that can more accurately mimic human respiratory diseases. This review shows that, while simple models are still prominent and have their uses, research focus has, in the past 5 years, shifting towards increasingly sophisticated bioengineering approaches that recapitulate lung development, anatomy and physiologic functions in vitro. Such approaches hold the promise of more human-relevant disease models that can be used to elucidate mechanism of disease and aid in the development of new therapies.JRC.F.3-Chemicals Safety and Alternative Method

GREAT3 results I: systematic errors in shear estimation and the impact of real galaxy morphology

We present first results from the third GRavitational lEnsing Accuracy Testing (GREAT3) challenge, the third in a sequence of challenges for testing methods of inferring weak gravitational lensing shear distortions from simulated galaxy images. GREAT3 was divided into experiments to test three specific questions, and included simulated space- and ground-based data with constant or cosmologically-varying shear fields. The simplest (control) experiment included parametric galaxies with a realistic distribution of signal-to-noise, size, and ellipticity, and a complex point spread function (PSF). The other experiments tested the additional impact of realistic galaxy morphology, multiple exposure imaging, and the uncertainty about a spatially-varying PSF; the last two questions will be explored in Paper II. The 24 participating teams competed to estimate lensing shears to within systematic error tolerances for upcoming Stage-IV dark energy surveys, making 1525 submissions overall. GREAT3 saw considerable variety and innovation in the types of methods applied. Several teams now meet or exceed the targets in many of the tests conducted (to within the statistical errors). We conclude that the presence of realistic galaxy morphology in simulations changes shear calibration biases by $\sim 1$ per cent for a wide range of methods. Other effects such as truncation biases due to finite galaxy postage stamps, and the impact of galaxy type as measured by the S\'{e}rsic index, are quantified for the first time. Our results generalize previous studies regarding sensitivities to galaxy size and signal-to-noise, and to PSF properties such as seeing and defocus. Almost all methods' results support the simple model in which additive shear biases depend linearly on PSF ellipticity.Comment: 32 pages + 15 pages of technical appendices; 28 figures; submitted to MNRAS; latest version has minor updates in presentation of 4 figures, no changes in content or conclusion