IS MODERATE-TO-HIGH INFLATION INHERENTLY UNSTABLE?

The data across time and countries suggest that moderate-to-high inflation and inflation volatility are highly correlated. This paper examines the effect of trend inflation on the ability of the monetary authority to ensure a determinate equilibrium and macroeconomic stability in a sticky-price model. Trend inflation increases the importance of future marginal costs for current price-setters in a staggered price-setting model. The greater importance of expectations makes it more difficult for the monetary authority to ensure stability; in fact, equilibrium determinacy cannot be achieved through reasonable specifications of nominal interest rate (Taylor) rules at moderate-to-high levels of inflation (for example, at levels below 8 percent per year). If monetary policymakers have followed these types of policy rules in the past, this result may explain why moderate-to-high inflation is associated with inflation volatility. It also suggests a revision to interpretations of the 1970s. At that time, inflation in many countries was at least moderate, which can contribute to economic instability. The results suggest that some moderate-inflation countries that have recently adopted inflation targeting may want to commit to low target inflation ratesMonetary policy; equilibrium determinacy; Taylor rule; sunspot fluctuations

Roles of tRNA in Cell Wall Biosynthesis

Recent research into various aspects of bacterial metabolism such as cell wall and antibiotic synthesis, degradation pathways, cellular stress, and amino acid biosynthesis has elucidated roles of aminoacyl‐transfer ribonucleic acid (aa‐tRNA) outside of translation. Although the two enzyme families responsible for cell wall modifications, aminoacyl‐phosphatidylglycerol synthases (aaPGSs) and Fem, were discovered some time ago, they have recently become of intense interest for their roles in the antimicrobial resistance of pathogenic microorganisms. The addition of positively charged amino acids to phosphatidylglycerol (PG) by aaPGSs neutralizes the lipid bilayer making the bacteria less susceptible to positively charged antimicrobial agents. Fem transferases utilize aa‐tRNA to form peptide bridges that link strands of peptidoglycan. These bridges vary among the bacterial species in which they are present and play a role in resistance to antibiotics that target the cell wall. Additionally, the formation of truncated peptides results in shorter peptide bridges and loss of branched linkages which makes bacteria more susceptible to antimicrobials. A greater understanding of the structure and substrate specificity of this diverse enzymatic family is necessary to aid current efforts in designing potential bactericidal agents. These two enzyme families are linked only by the substrate with which they modify the cell wall, aa‐tRNA; their structure, cell wall modification processes and the physiological changes they impart on the bacterium differ greatly

Adaptation of the Bacterial Membrane to Changing Environments Using Aminoacylated Phospholipids

Fine‐tuning of the biophysical properties of biological membranes is essential for adaptation of cells to changing environments. For instance, to lower the negative charge of the lipid bilayer, certain bacteria add lysine to phosphatidylglycerol (PG) converting the net negative charge of PG (−1) to a net positive charge in Lys‐PG (+1). Reducing the net negative charge of the bacterial cell wall is a common strategy used by bacteria to resist cationic antimicrobial peptides (CAMPs) secreted by other microbes or produced by the innate immune system of a host organism. The article by Klein et al. in the current issue of Molecular Microbiology reports a new modification of the bacterial membrane, addition of alanine to PG, in Pseudomonas aeruginosa. In spite of the neutral charge of Ala‐PG, this modified lipid was found to be linked to several resistance phenotypes in P. aeruginosa. For instance, Ala‐PG increases resistance to two positively charged antibacterial agents, a β‐lactam and high concentrations of lactate. These findings shed light on the mechanisms by which bacteria fine‐tune the properties of their cell membranes by adding various amino acids on the polar head group of phospholipids

The JanDY Survey System

JanDY is a survey system built by students and faculty from Hope College’s Computer Science Department. It is the program that runs behind the scenes during the Student Assessment of Learning & Teaching surveys that all students take each semester, which are used by the institution and instructors to evaluate the effectiveness of all courses at Hope. The current system was built using the outdated Google Web Toolkit. Our goal was to build a new version of JanDY using a more modern web framework, AngularJS. Beyond updating the technologies used in the system, we also added new functionality, including an interface for the creation and editing of surveys. In order to ensure that our new system was reliable we constructed a comprehensive test suite in the development process, testing our web application and load handling with tools such as Mockito, Jasmine, Karma, and JMeter

Political Polarization in the American Public: How Increasing Ideological Uniformity and Partisan Antipathy Affect Politics, Compromise and Everyday Life

Republicans and Democrats are more divided along ideological lines -- and partisan antipathy is deeper and more extensive -- than at any point in the last two decades, according to a nationwide 10,000-person survey conducted by the Pew Research Center and supported by MacArthur. The survey finds that divisions are greatest among those who are the most engaged and active in the political process and that polarization also affects everyday life

Cuyahoga Greenways: A Community-Driven, Data-Enriched Initiative to Implement a Regional Greenway Vision

Cleveland and surrounding Cuyahoga County is undergoing a gradual transformation. A highly urbanized region in America’s rust belt, it has experienced decades of declining population and sprawling development. Presently however, the region has shown signs of economic and social improvement as it recovers from years of stagnation and disinvestment. Accompanying this rebound is an increased awareness to the region’s fluctuating socioeconomic conditions and residual challenges to improving mobility. Moreover, there is a desire to ensure that change is sustainable and leads to equitable outcomes for all segments of the community. Greenways, most notably the county-wide Emerald Necklace, have long been a staple and signature asset of Cuyahoga County. However, the needs of the population are diversifying, particularly regarding mobility and how people access jobs, parks, cultural resources, public services, and commercial centers. Being such, non-motorized travel -- a rising trend for a broad spectrum of the populace -- has become a key component in the region’s renewal as it grapples with constricted transit, geographic inequality, and an existing Greenway network whose benefits do not fully reach all sectors of the population. Cuyahoga Greenways is a county-wide initiative to envision, plan, and implement over 800-miles of greenways and urban trails throughout the region. Unlike conventional approaches to building nonmotorized facilities, like bike lanes, that may only serve a segment of the population, Cuyahoga Greenways seeks to build an interconnected, non-motorized transportation network that is safe and welcoming for people of all ages and all abilities. This initiative, which featured input from 29 regional agencies and 43 participating communities, developed a vision, framework plan, and implementation tools for making the new greenway framework a reality. The planning process was community-driven and data-enriched, empowering local leaders and stakeholders with the knowledge necessary to make informed decisions and craft a plan that benefits the community both economically and socially. A cornerstone of the process was a robust public engagement program with over 20 community-wide events. Leveraging both traditional and digital tools, a rigorous spatial analysis of over 300 corridor opportunities was completed. The resulting analysis, coupled with the community’s involvement, allowed stakeholders to identify and prioritize actionable greenway proposals that provide the biggest return to the community while dispensing more equitable outcomes. With the greenway framework plan in place, community leadership has shown a willingness to more effectively collaborate across jurisdictions, leveraging resources to implement projects. The Cuyahoga Greenways initiative exemplifies a regionally coordinated and evidence-based process to improve equity, mobility, and expand the benefits of greenways to all neighborhoods in Northeast Ohio

How Has the Monetary Transmission Mechanism Evolved Over Time?

We discuss the evolution in macroeconomic thought on the monetary policy transmission mechanism and present related empirical evidence. The core channels of policy transmission – the neoclassical links between short-term policy interest rates, other asset prices such as long-term interest rates, equity prices, and the exchange rate, and the consequent effects on household and business demand – have remained steady from early policy-oriented models (like the Penn-MIT-SSRC MPS model) to modern dynamic-stochastic-general-equilibrium (DSGE) models. In contrast, non-neoclassical channels, such as credit-based channels, have remained outside the core models. In conjunction with this evolution in theory and modeling, there have been notable changes in policy behavior (with policy more focused on price stability) and in the reduced form correlations of policy interest rates with activity in the United States. Regulatory effects on credit provision have also changed significantly. As a result, we review the empirical evidence on the changes in the effect of monetary policy actions on real activity and inflation and present new evidence, using both a relatively unrestricted factor-augmented vector autoregression (FAVAR) and a DSGE model. Both approaches yield similar results: Monetary policy innovations have a more muted effect on real activity and inflation in recent decades as compared to the effects before 1980. Our analysis suggests that these shifts are accounted for by changes in policy behavior and the effect of these changes on expectations, leaving little role for changes in underlying private-sector behavior (outside shifts related to monetary policy changes).

A Pseudo-tRNA Modulates Antibiotic Resistance in Bacillus cereus

Bacterial genomic islands are often flanked by tRNA genes, which act as sites for the integration of foreign DNA into the host chromosome. For example, Bacillus cereus ATCC14579 contains a pathogenicity island flanked by a predicted pseudo-tRNA, tRNA(Other), which does not function in translation. Deletion of tRNA(Other) led to significant changes in cell wall morphology and antibiotic resistance and was accompanied by changes in the expression of numerous genes involved in oxidative stress responses, several of which contain significant complementarities to sequences surrounding tRNA(Other). This suggested that tRNA(Other) might be expressed as part of a larger RNA, and RACE analysis subsequently confirmed the existence of several RNA species that significantly extend both the 39 and 5\u27-ends of tRNA(Other). tRNA(Other) expression levels were found to be responsive to changes in extracellular iron concentration, consistent with the presence of three putative ferric uptake regulator (Fur) binding sites in the 59 leader region of one of these larger RNAs. Taken together with previous data, this study now suggests that tRNA(Other) may function by providing a tRNA-like structural element within a larger regulatory RNA. These findings illustrate that while integration of genomic islands often leaves tRNA genes intact and functional, in other instances inactivation may generate tRNA-like elements that are then recruited to other functions in the cell

A Pseudo-tRNA Modulates Antibiotic Resistance in \u3cem\u3eBacillus cereus\u3c/em\u3e

Bacterial genomic islands are often flanked by tRNA genes, which act as sites for the integration of foreign DNA into the host chromosome. For example, Bacillus cereus ATCC14579 contains a pathogenicity island flanked by a predicted pseudo-tRNA, tRNAOther, which does not function in translation. Deletion of tRNAOther led to significant changes in cell wall morphology and antibiotic resistance and was accompanied by changes in the expression of numerous genes involved in oxidative stress responses, several of which contain significant complementarities to sequences surrounding tRNAOther. This suggested that tRNAOther might be expressed as part of a larger RNA, and RACE analysis subsequently confirmed the existence of several RNA species that significantly extend both the 3′ and 5′-ends of tRNAOther. tRNAOther expression levels were found to be responsive to changes in extracellular iron concentration, consistent with the presence of three putative ferric uptake regulator (Fur) binding sites in the 5′ leader region of one of these larger RNAs. Taken together with previous data, this study now suggests that tRNAOther may function by providing a tRNA-like structural element within a larger regulatory RNA. These findings illustrate that while integration of genomic islands often leaves tRNA genes intact and functional, in other instances inactivation may generate tRNA-like elements that are then recruited to other functions in the cell

Effects of leas and mecury on the blood proteome of children

Heavy metal exposure in children has been associated with a variety of physiological and neurological problems. The goal of this study was to utilize proteomics to enhance the understanding of biochemical interactions responsible for the health problems related to lead and mercury exposure at concentrations well below CDC guidelines. Blood plasma and serum samples from 34 children were depleted of their most abundant proteins using antibody-based affinity columns and analyzed using two different methods, LC-MS/MS and 2-D electrophoresis coupled with MALDI-TOF/MS and tandem mass spectrometry. Apolipoprotein E demonstrated an inverse significant association with lead concentrations (average being one microgram/deciliter) as deduced from LC-MS/MS and 2-D electrophoresis and confirmed by Western blot analysis. This coincides with prior findings that Apolipoprotein E genotype moderates neurobehavioral effects in individuals exposed to lead. Fifteen other proteins were identified by LC-MS/MS as proteins of interest exhibiting expressional differences in the presence of environmental lead and mercury. Brooks Gump is currently at Syracuse University