THE GENDER IMPACT OF IRISH BUDGETARY POLICY. ESRI SURVEY AND STATISTICAL REPORT SERIES, October 2018

In this report, we make use of the analytical approach previously developed by the ESRI (Keane et al., 2014). We then provide an up-to-date picture of the overall gender impacts of budgetary policy from the start of the recession (2008) to 2018. This period is split into an austerity period, running from 2008 to 2012, and a recovery period, running from 2012 to 2018. This allows us to identify how the gender impact of Irish tax-benefit policy has evolved from austerity to recovery. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, we embed this analytical capacity within SWITCH, the ESRI’s tax-benefit model. This ensures that, in future, gender impact assessment of budgets can be routinely undertaken by government departments3 and by ESRI researchers. This can be done both in the development of options prior to the budget, to help gender-proof policy reforms, and in the assessment of the impact of policies actually chosen in the budget. The project, therefore, not only helps to answer questions about the impact of past policy but will also serve to ensure that the need for gender impact assessment of tax and welfare policies – as identified, inter alia, in the Programme for Government (2016) – can be met more readily in future

The Rabl configuration limits topological entanglement of chromosomes in budding yeast.

The three dimensional organization of genomes remains mostly unknown due to their high degree of condensation. Biophysical studies predict that condensation promotes the topological entanglement of chromatin fibers and the inhibition of function. How organisms balance between functionally active genomes and a high degree of condensation remains to be determined. Here we hypothesize that the Rabl configuration, characterized by the attachment of centromeres and telomeres to the nuclear envelope, helps to reduce the topological entanglement of chromosomes. To test this hypothesis we developed a novel method to quantify chromosome entanglement complexity in 3D reconstructions obtained from Chromosome Conformation Capture (CCC) data. Applying this method to published data of the yeast genome, we show that computational models implementing the attachment of telomeres or centromeres alone are not sufficient to obtain the reduced entanglement complexity observed in 3D reconstructions. It is only when the centromeres and telomeres are attached to the nuclear envelope (i.e. the Rabl configuration) that the complexity of entanglement of the genome is comparable to that of the 3D reconstructions. We therefore suggest that the Rabl configuration is an essential player in the simplification of the entanglement of chromatin fibers

Dynamic shear suppression in quantum phase space

© 2019 American Physical Society. All rights reserved.Classical phase space flow is inviscid. Here we show that in quantum phase space Wigner's probability current J can be effectively viscous. This results in shear suppression in quantum phase space dynamics which enforces Zurek's limit for the minimum size scale of spotty structures that develop dynamically. Quantum shear suppression is given by gradients of the quantum terms of J's vorticity. Used as a new measure of quantum dynamics applied to several evolving closed conservative 1D bound state systems, we find that shear suppression explains the saturation at Zurek's scale limit and additionally singles out special quantum states.Peer reviewe

SU(3) Breaking in Charmless B Decays

There are many charmless B decay pairs whose amplitudes are related by U spin (d s) or flavor SU(3). The theoretical uncertainty in any analysis involving such pairs must take into account U-spin/SU(3) breaking. In the past, such considerations generally used theoretical input, but we show that this can be experimentally measured. We present lists of two- and three-body decay pairs from which the size of the breaking can be obtained. We detail the values of U-spin/SU(3) breaking given by the present experimental data. One pair -- Bd -> pi+ pi- and Bd -> pi- K+ -- exhibits large nonfactorizable breaking. We present other signals of SU(3) breaking in two- and three-body decays, and discuss further tests for nonfactorizable effects. Finally, we also point out that the pure-penguin decay Bs -> Kbar0 Kbar0 K0 is intriguing because it can be used to cleanly probe the Bs-Bsbar mixing phase.Comment: 24 pages, B decay data update

Focal seizures unfold variably over time.

This scientific commentary refers to 'Chronic intracranial EEG recordings and interictal spike rate reveal multiscale temporal modulations in seizure states' by Schroeder et al. (https://doi.org/10.1093/braincomms/fcad205)

BUDGET PERSPECTIVES 2019, PAPER 3. INCOME GROWTH AND INCOME DISTRIBUTION: A LONG-RUN VIEW OF IRISH EXPERIENCE. July 2018

Over the past 30 years, there have been periods of boom and bust, but average household incomes have grown strongly in Ireland. The distribution of household income has been broadly stable over this period, so that there has been substantial growth for low-, middle- and high-income households. Ireland’s rapid, even growth in incomes across the distribution is unusual in an international setting. During this time, inequality has risen in many other countries. As a result, while Ireland was once towards the high end of the inequality spectrum for an advanced country, it now occupies a middle-ranking position. Market income inequality is high in Ireland, but a redistributive tax and transfer system has helped to offset that. Over the 1987 to 2014 period, discretionary changes in tax and welfare policy led to gains which were greatest among those with incomes in the lowest 20 per cent of households. Much of this differential growth in incomes arose from the implementation of the recommendations of the Commission on Social Welfare (1986), which raised the payment rates for the schemes with the lowest payment levels

On the multiplicativity of the Euler characteristic

In this short paper, we give two proofs that the Euler characteristic is multiplicative, for fiber sequences of finitely dominated spaces. This is equivalent to proving that the Becker-Gottlieb transfer is functorial on $\pi_0$.Comment: Accepted version. 13 pages plus reference