Who Invests in Home Equity to Exempt Wealth from Bankruptcy?

Homestead exemptions to personal bankruptcy allow households to retain their home equity up to a limit determined at the state level. Households that may experience bankruptcy thus have an incentive to bias their portfolios towards home equity. Using US household data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation for the period 1996-2006, we find that especially households with low net worth maintain a larger share of their wealth as home equity if a larger homestead exemption applies. This home equity bias is also more pronounced if the household head is in poor health, increasing the chance of bankruptcy on account of unpaid medical bills. The bias is further stronger for households with mortgage finance, shorter house tenures, and younger household heads, which taken together reflect households that face more financial uncertainty.Homestead exemptions;Personal bankruptcy;Portfolio allocation;Home ownership

The Ellipticity of the Disks of Spiral Galaxies

The disks of spiral galaxies are generally elliptical rather than circular. The distribution of ellipticities can be fit with a log-normal distribution. For a sample of 12,764 galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 1 (SDSS DR1), the distribution of apparent axis ratios in the i band is best fit by a log-normal distribution of intrinsic ellipticities with ln epsilon = -1.85 +/- 0.89. For a sample of nearly face-on spiral galaxies, analyzed by Andersen and Bershady using both photometric and spectroscopic data, the best fitting distribution of ellipticities has ln epsilon = -2.29 +/- 1.04. Given the small size of the Andersen-Bershady sample, the two distribution are not necessarily inconsistent. If the ellipticity of the potential were equal to that of the light distribution of the SDSS DR1 galaxies, it would produce 1.0 magnitudes of scatter in the Tully-Fisher relation, greater than is observed. The Andersen-Bershady results, however, are consistent with a scatter as small as 0.25 magnitudes in the Tully-Fisher relation.Comment: 19 pages, 5 figures; ApJ, accepte

The Dependence of Galaxy Shape on Luminosity and Surface Brightness Profile

For a sample of 96,951 galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 3, we study the distribution of apparent axis ratios as a function of r-band absolute magnitude and surface brightness profile type. We use the parameter fracDeV to quantify the profile type (fracDeV = 1 for a de Vaucouleurs profile; fracDeV = 0 for an exponential profile). When the apparent axis ratio q_{am} is estimated from the moments of the light distribution, the roundest galaxies are very bright (M_r \sim -23) de Vaucouleurs galaxies and the flattest are modestly bright (M_r \sim -18) exponential galaxies. When the apparent axis ratio q_{25} is estimated from the axis ratio of the 25 mag/arcsec^2 isophote, we find that de Vaucouleurs galaxies are flatter than exponential galaxies of the same absolute magnitude. For a given surface brightness profile type, very bright galaxies are rounder, on average, than fainter galaxies. We deconvolve the distributions of apparent axis ratios to find the distribution of the intrinsic short-to-long axis ratio gamma, assuming constant triaxiality T. For all profile types and luminosities, the distribution of apparent axis ratios is inconsistent with a population of oblate spheroids, but is usually consistent with a population of prolate spheroids. Bright galaxies with a de Vaucouleurs profile (M_r < -21.84, fracDeV > 0.9) have a distribution of q_{am} that is consistent with triaxiality in the range 0.4 < T < 0.8, with mean intrinsic axis ratio 0.66 < gamma < 0.69. The fainter de Vaucouleurs galaxies are best fit with prolate spheroids (T = 1) with mean axis ratio gamma = 0.51.Comment: 32 pages, 12 figures, to appear in Ap

Ten years of METEOR (an international rheumatoid arthritis registry): development, research opportunities and future perspectives

OBJECTIVES: Ten years ago, the METEOR tool was developed to simulate treatment-to-target and create an international research database. The development of the METEOR tool and database, research opportunities and future perspectives are described. METHODS: The METEOR tool is a free, online, internationally available tool in which daily practice visits of all rheumatoid arthritis patients visiting a rheumatologist can be registered. In the tool, disease characteristics, patient- and physician-reported outcomes and prescribed treatment could be entered. These can be subsequently displayed in powerful graphics, facilitating treatment decisions and patient-physician interactions. An upload facility is also available, by which data from local electronic health record systems or registries can be integrated into the METEOR database. This is currently being actively used in, among other countries, the Netherlands, Portugal and India. RESULTS: Since an increasing number of hospitals use electronic health record systems, the upload facility is being actively used by an increasing number of sites, enabling them to benefit from the benchmark and research opportunities of METEOR. Enabling a connection between local registries and METEOR is a well established but time-consuming process for which an IT-specialist of METEOR and the local registry are necessary. However, once this process has been finished, data can be uploaded regularly and relatively easily according to a pre-specified format. The METEOR database currently contains data from >39,000 patients and >200,000 visits, from 32 different countries and is ever increasing. Continuous efforts are being undertaken to increase the quality of data in the database. CONCLUSIONS: Since METEOR was founded 10 years ago, many rheumatologists worldwide have used the METEOR tool to follow-up their patients and improve the quality of care they provide to their patients. Combined with uploaded data, this has led to an extensive growth of the database. It now offers a unique opportunity to study daily practice care and to perform research regarding cross-country differences in a large, worldwide setting, which could provide important knowledge about disease and its treatment in different geographic and clinical settings

Interpreting big-data analysis of retrospective observational data

Pathophysiology and treatment of rheumatic disease

Endotoxin- and ATP-neutralizing activity of alkaline phosphatase as a strategy to limit neuroinflammation

BACKGROUND: Alkaline phosphatase (AP) is a ubiquitously expressed enzyme which can neutralize endotoxin as well as adenosine triphosphate (ATP), an endogenous danger signal released during brain injury. In this study we assessed a potential therapeutic role for AP in inhibiting neuroinflammation using three complementary approaches. METHODS: Mice were immunized to induce experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE) and treated with AP for seven days during different phases of disease. In addition, serological assays to determine AP activity, endotoxin levels and endotoxin-reactive antibodies were performed in a cohort of multiple sclerosis (MS) patients and controls. Finally, the expression of AP and related enzymes CD39 and CD73 was investigated in brain tissue from MS patients and control subjects. RESULTS: AP administration during the priming phase, but not during later stages, of EAE significantly reduced neurological signs. This was accompanied by reduced proliferation of splenocytes to the immunogen, myelin oligodendrocyte glycoprotein peptide. In MS patients, AP activity and isoenzyme distribution were similar to controls. Although endotoxin-reactive IgM was reduced in primary-progressive MS patients, plasma endotoxin levels were not different between groups. Finally, unlike AP and CD73, CD39 was highly upregulated on microglia in white matter lesions of patients with MS. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings demonstrate that: 1) pre-symptomatic AP treatment reduces neurological signs of EAE; 2) MS patients do not have altered circulating levels of AP or endotoxin; and 3) the expression of the AP-like enzyme CD39 is increased on microglia in white matter lesions of MS patients

Intestinal colonization due to Escherichia coli ST131: Risk factors and prevalence

Background Escherichia coli sequence type 131 (ST131) is a successful clonal group that has dramatically spread during the last decades and is considered an important driver for the rapid increase of quinolone resistance in E. coli. Methods Risk factors for rectal colonization by ST131 Escherichia coli (irrespective of ESBL production) were investigated in 64 household members (18 were colonized) and 54 hospital contacts (HC; 10 colonized) of 34 and 30 index patients with community and nosocomial infection due to these organisms, respectively, using multilevel analysis with a p limit of < 0.1. Result Colonization among household members was associated with the use of proton-pump inhibitors (PPI) by the household member (OR = 3.08; 95% CI: 0.88–10.8) and higher age of index patients (OR = 1.05; 95% CI; 1.01–1.10), and among HC, with being bed-ridden (OR = 21.1; 95% CI: 3.61–160.0) and having a urinary catheter (OR = 8.4; 95% CI: 0.87–76.9). Conclusion Use of PPI and variables associated with higher need of person-to-person contact are associated with increased risk of rectal colonization by ST131. These results should be considered for infection control purposes.Plan Nacional de I + D + i 2013-2016Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (España)European Development Regional Fund REIPI RD12/0015/0010 REIPI RD16/0016/0001Instituto de Salud Carlos III 070190 AC16/000076-MODERN AC16/AC16/00072-ST131TSJunta de Andalucía CTS5259 CTS21

Characterization of immune response to neurofilament light in experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis

PMCID: PMC3856490This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.PMCID: PMC385649