An Overview of the Kauffman Firm Survey: Results From 2009 Business Activities

Highlights findings from longitudinal data on new businesses' performance since 2004 as well as new firms founded in 2009, including trends in customer payment problems and loan denials, financial injections, and sources of comparative advantage

Casting a Wide Net: Online Activities of Small and New Businesses in the United States

Examines trends in businesses' use of Web sites and e-mail, online sales, and outcomes of such online activities by industry, age and size of firm, and owners' race/ethnicity, gender, location, and education

An Overview of the Kauffman Firm Survey: Results From 2010 Business Activities

Examines longitudinal data on new businesses' survival and performance since 2004 as well as new firms founded in 2010, including trends in slow or lost sales, predictability of business conditions, credit availability, and product or service innovation

Four wave mixing with self-phase matching due to collective atomic recoil

We describe a method for non-degenerate four-wave mixing in a cold sample of 4-level atoms. An integral part of the four-wave mixing process is a collective instability which spontaneously generates a periodic density modulation in the cold atomic sample with a period equal to half of the wavelength of the generated high-frequency optical field. Due to the generation of this density modulation, phase-matching between the pump and scattered fields is not a necessary initial condition for this wave-mixing process to occur, rather the density modulation acts to "self phase-match" the fields during the course of the wave-mixing process. We describe a one-dimensional model of this process, and suggest a proof-of-principle experiment which would involve pumping a sample of cold Cs atoms with three infra-red pump fields to produce blue light.Comment: to appear in Physical Review Letter

Characterisation of immunometabolic responses in astrocytes

Astrocytes play a role in the central nervous system (CNS) inflammatory response. In many immune cell types cellular inflammation and metabolism are linked, a phenomenon termed ‘immunometabolism’. This has led to attempts to reduce chronic inflammation through manipulating cellular metabolism. Proteins of interest for this approach include transcription factor nuclear factor-kappa B (NF-κB) and mitochondrial protein ‘translocator protein (18 kDa)’ (TSPO). TSPO is of particular interest as a therapy for CNS disease as many TSPO ligands can access the CNS and have been demonstrated to have anti-inflammatory effects. However, immunometabolism has not been well described in astrocytes, and the function of TSPO is currently disputed. In this thesis, mouse primary astrocytes were used to characterise immunometabolic responses following treatment with the pro-inflammatory stimulus lipopolysaccharide (LPS). An initial increase in glycolytic metabolism was measured, prior to a shift towards oxidative phosphorylation and away from glucose metabolism, in part mediated by a decrease in glucose transporter GLUT1 expression. Pharmacological inhibition of NF-κB signalling demonstrated that this pathway is important in mediating the cellular metabolic response to inflammation in astrocytes, and may play a role in maintaining basal metabolic function in these cells. Pharmacological or genetic modulation of TSPO signalling in human astroglioma (U373) cells and/or mouse primary astrocytes demonstrated that while TSPO suppressed fatty acid oxidation and promoted glycolytic metabolism, this did not appear to acutely alter the inflammatory response of these cells after LPS treatment; however, the longer term effects remain to be explored. Together these data demonstrate that inflammation and metabolism are intrinsically linked in astrocytes and TSPO plays an important role in regulating metabolism in these cells

What can we really say about skeletal part representation, MNI and funerary ritual? A simulation approach

Two cornerstones of conventional wisdom in interpreting commingled assemblages are (a) the MNI provides reliable information about how many individuals were deposited there, and (b) the distribution of skeletal parts provides information about ritual processes such as primary vs. secondary deposition. Both of these involve assumptions about the taphonomic processes linking the original depositions and the assemblage which archaeologists recover. Yet, it is almost impossible to investigate these processes directly in ethnoarchaeological, forensic or experimental settings, particularly observing the effects of the passage of long time spans and repeated disturbance events. This paper reports an attempt to understand these relationships and processes through simulation of a hypothetical prehistoric collective tomb. The key results are (a) there is no linear or proportionate relationship between the number of bodies originally deposited in a tomb and the MNI excavated there; indeed, in many situations, for taphonomic reasons, the MNI quickly reaches a low ceiling and levels off regardless of how many individuals were actually placed in the tomb, and (b) lack of small and fragile bones provides a very poor criterion for differentiating between burial within a tomb and secondary deposition there following primary burial elsewhere. However, skeletal part representation can prove informative about other processes such as selective curation of crania and removal of bones from tombs for funerary use elsewhere.This is the final version of the article. It first appeared from Elsevier via http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2016.05.03

Intravenous conscious sedation in patients under 16 years of age. Fact or fiction?

Recently published guidelines on the use of conscious sedation in dentistry have published varying recommendations on the lower age limit for the use of intravenous conscious sedation. There are a large number of dentists currently providing dental treatment for paediatric patients under intravenous conscious sedation. The 18 cases reported here (age range 11-15 years), were successfully managed with intravenous conscious sedation. The experience in this paper is not sufficient evidence to recommend the wholesale use of intravenous conscious sedation in patients who are under 16 years. The fact that a range of operators can use these techniques on paediatric patients would suggest that further study should be carried out in this population. The guidance should be modified to say there is insufficient evidence to support the use of intravenous conscious sedation in children, rather than arbitrarily selecting a cut off point at age 16 years