Interaction between Cannabinoid System and Toll-Like Receptors Controls Inflammation

Since the discovery of the endocannabinoid system consisting of cannabinoid receptors, endogenous ligands, and biosynthetic and metabolizing enzymes, interest has been renewed in investigating the promise of cannabinoids as therapeutic agents. Abundant evidence indicates that cannabinoids modulate immune responses. An inflammatory response is triggered when innate immune cells receive a danger signal provided by pathogen- or damage-associated molecular patterns engaging pattern-recognition receptors. Toll-like receptor family members are prominent pattern-recognition receptors expressed on innate immune cells. Cannabinoids suppress Toll-like receptor-mediated inflammatory responses. However, the relationship between the endocannabinoid system and innate immune system may not be one-sided. Innate immune cells express cannabinoid receptors and produce endogenous cannabinoids. Hence, innate immune cells may play a role in regulating endocannabinoid homeostasis, and, in turn, the endocannabinoid system modulates local inflammatory responses. Studies designed to probe the interaction between the innate immune system and the endocannabinoid system may identify new potential molecular targets in developing therapeutic strategies for chronic inflammatory diseases. This review discusses the endocannabinoid system and Toll-like receptor family and evaluates the interaction between them

THE CRA IMPLICATIONS OF PREDATORY LENDING

This article considers the Community Reinvestment Act\u27s role in combating predatory lending. It provides an overview of the CRA, explains how CRA-covered lenders may enable predatory lending and explores the relationship between the CRA, federal subsidies and predatory lending. The article concludes that the CRA should be used to penalize lenders that engage in predatory lending and recommends that federal bank regulators use CRA to sanction behavior that could encourage further predatory lending

The ENHANCE System: Creating Meaningful Sub-Types in a Database Knowledge Representation for Natural Language Generation

The knowledge representation is an important factor in natural language generation since it limits the semantic capabilities of the generation system. It is, however, a tedious task to hand code a knowledge representation which reflects both a user\u27s view of a domain and the way that domain is modelled in the database. A system is presented which uses the contents of the database to form part of a database knowledge representation automatically. It augments a database schema depicting the database structure used for natural language generation. Computational solutions are presented for deriving the information types contained in the schema. Three types of world knowledge axioms are used to ensure that the representation formed is meaningful and contains salient information

Low Frequency Noise in Randomly Stimulated Asymmetric Oscillators

A new mechanism of low frequency (1/f-like) noise generation is described and analyzed. It is attributed to higher frequency asymmetric resonance modes, which are stimulated by a random factor, e.g. due to thermal excitation. One-dimensional models of bi-harmonic and non-linear asymmetric oscillators are presented to prove the concept, and a method of detecting the effect is developed. The method is then applied to experimental data, in order to show that the effect exists in magnetoresistive readers

Turning a Blind Eye: Wall Street Finance of Predatory Lending

Today, Wall Street finances up to eighty percent of subprime home loans through securitization. The subprime sector, which is designed for borrowers with blemished credit, has been dogged by predatory lending charges, many of which have been substantiated. As subprime securitization has grown, so have charges that securitization turns a blind eye to financing abusive loans. In this paper, we examine why secondary market discipline has failed to halt the securitization of predatory loans. When investors buy securities backed by predatory loans, they face a classic lemons problem in the form of credit risk, prepayment risk, and litigation risk. Securitization exacerbates all three risks by unbundling the mortgage process, giving rise to adverse selection. In theory, the lemons problem should cause investors to flee the market for subprime mortgage-backed securities or demand a risk premium commensurate with the worst quality loans. Instead, securitization allays adverse selection concerns by structuring transactions so that risk-averse investors receive their agreed-upon return without needing to screen out predatory loans. In addition to pricing, the secondary market uses structured finance and deal terms, instead of filtering, to manage credit, prepayment, and litigation risk. Furthermore, structured finance provides incentives to securitize predatory loans. Voluntary due diligence could help ameliorate the problem, but those efforts remain sparse. To alter this perverse incentive structure, we propose legislation to impose a duty on secondary market assignees of subprime home loans to investigate and police predatory lenders

Predatory Lending and Community Development at Loggerheads

For decades, cities have invested in decaying neighborhoods, leading to increases in home values and home equity. As a result, these neighborhoods have become ready targets for predatory lenders, who market their abusive loans to financially unsophisticated homeowners with home equity and no relationships with traditional lenders. Some borrowers lose their homes; others forsake home repairs to avoid default and foreclosure. Neighborhoods that once were stable become littered with abandoned and neglected homes, resulting in increased crime, falling home values, rising demands for social services, and lower tax revenues. In the wake of the devastation done by predatory lenders, the question for policymakers is: what can be done? This paper seeks to answer this question. The paper opens by defining predatory lending. Next, the paper describes how the rise of securitization, deregulation of price terms, affordable lending incentives, bank closings, and historical credit discrimination together fueled the rise and institutionalization of predatory lending in the 1990s. Lastly, the paper evaluates different possible approaches to redressing predatory lending, including industry self-regulation, consumer education and counseling, Community Reinvestment Act oversight, criminal enforcement, existing private causes of action, and a suitability proposa

Federal Preemption and Consumer Financial Protection: Past and Future

Starting in 1995 and throughout the subprime boom during the next decade, Congress failed to take action to curb predatory mortgage lending. Many states and cities filled the void by passing anti-predatory lending laws of their own. Lenders, worried about potential liability, quickly organized a full-scale attack on the state and local initiatives. Their most potent strategy lay in challenging the laws and ordinances under federal preemption rules for national banks and federal savings associations that precluded states from enforcing their anti-predatory lending laws. The Dodd-Frank Act curtailed the preemption rules by establishing that state consumer financial laws can only be preempted if they discriminate against state-chartered depository institutions relative to, or prevent or significantly interfere with the powers of, national banks or federal savings associations. Dodd-Frank\u27s preemption standards became effective on July 21, 2011, at which point the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) should have conformed its preemption rulings to the new law. Instead, on that date, the OCC issued a new rule that preempted broad swaths of existing state laws using its old preemption precedents, bypassing the Dodd-Frank procedures along the way. We contend that the OCC\u27s actions are not consistent with Congress\u27s intent and predict that there will be legal challenges to the substance of the OCC\u27s new preemption rule and to the process the OCC employed when adopting the rule

Extensive Genomic Diversity among Bovine-Adapted Staphylococcus aureus: Evidence for a Genomic Rearrangement within CC97

peer-reviewedStaphylococcus aureus is an important pathogen associated with both human and veterinary disease and is a common cause of bovine mastitis. Genomic heterogeneity exists between S. aureus strains and has been implicated in the adaptation of specific strains to colonise particular mammalian hosts. Knowledge of the factors required for host specificity and virulence is important for understanding the pathogenesis and management of S. aureus mastitis. In this study, a panel of mastitis-associated S. aureus isolates (n = 126) was tested for resistance to antibiotics commonly used to treat mastitis. Over half of the isolates (52%) demonstrated resistance to penicillin and ampicillin but all were susceptible to the other antibiotics tested. S. aureus isolates were further examined for their clonal diversity by Multi-Locus Sequence Typing (MLST). In total, 18 different sequence types (STs) were identified and eBURST analysis demonstrated that the majority of isolates grouped into clonal complexes CC97, CC151 or sequence type (ST) 136. Analysis of the role of recombination events in determining S. aureus population structure determined that ST diversification through nucleotide substitutions were more likely to be due to recombination compared to point mutation, with regions of the genome possibly acting as recombination hotspots. DNA microarray analysis revealed a large number of differences amongst S. aureus STs in their variable genome content, including genes associated with capsule and biofilm formation and adhesion factors. Finally, evidence for a genomic arrangement was observed within isolates from CC97 with the ST71-like subgroup showing evidence of an IS431 insertion element having replaced approximately 30 kb of DNA including the ica operon and histidine biosynthesis genes, resulting in histidine auxotrophy. This genomic rearrangement may be responsible for the diversification of ST71 into an emerging bovine adapted subgroup