Inequality of outcomes and inequality of opportunities in Brazil

The authors depart from John Roemer's theory of equality of opportunities. They seek to determine what part of observed outcome inequality may be attributed to differences in observed"circumstances,"including family background, and what part is due to"personal efforts."The authors use a microeconometric technique to simulate what the distribution of outcomes would look like if circumstances were the same for everybody. They apply this technique to Brazilian data from the 1996 household survey, both for earnings and for household incomes. The authors show that observed circumstances are a major source of outcome inequality in Brazil, probably more so than in other countries for which information is available. Nevertheless, the level of inequality after observed circumstances are equalized remains very high in Brazil.Economic Theory&Research,Public Health Promotion,Curriculum&Instruction,Teaching and Learning,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Teaching and Learning,Economic Theory&Research,Inequality,Poverty Impact Evaluation

In vivo imaging of protease activity by Probody therapeutic activation.

Probody™ therapeutics are recombinant, proteolytically-activated antibody prodrugs, engineered to remain inert until activated locally by tumor-associated proteases. Probody therapeutics exploit the fundamental dysregulation of extracellular protease activity that exists in tumors relative to healthy tissue. Leveraging the ability of a Probody therapeutic to bind its target at the site of disease after proteolytic cleavage, we developed a novel method for profiling protease activity in living animals. Using NIR optical imaging, we demonstrated that a non-labeled anti-EGFR Probody therapeutic can become activated and compete for binding to tumor cells in vivo with a labeled anti-EGFR monoclonal antibody. Furthermore, by inhibiting matriptase activity in vivo with a blocking-matriptase antibody, we show that the ability of the Probody therapeutic to bind EGFR in vivo was dependent on protease activity. These results demonstrate that in vivo imaging of Probody therapeutic activation can be used for screening and characterization of protease activity in living animals, and provide a method that avoids some of the limitations of prior methods. This approach can improve our understanding of the activity of proteases in disease models and help to develop efficient strategies for cancer diagnosis and treatment

Signatures of Dark Matter Scattering Inelastically Off Nuclei

Direct dark matter detection focuses on elastic scattering of dark matter particles off nuclei. In this study, we explore inelastic scattering where the nucleus is excited to a low-lying state of 10-100 keV, with subsequent prompt de-excitation. We calculate the inelastic structure factors for the odd-mass xenon isotopes based on state-of-the-art large-scale shell-model calculations with chiral effective field theory WIMP-nucleon currents. For these cases, we find that the inelastic channel is comparable to or can dominate the elastic channel for momentum transfers around 150 MeV. We calculate the inelastic recoil spectra in the standard halo model, compare these to the elastic case, and discuss the expected signatures in a xenon detector, along with implications for existing and future experiments. The combined information from elastic and inelastic scattering will allow to determine the dominant interaction channel within one experiment. In addition, the two channels probe different regions of the dark matter velocity distribution and can provide insight into the dark halo structure. The allowed recoil energy domain and the recoil energy at which the integrated inelastic rates start to dominate the elastic channel depend on the mass of the dark matter particle, thus providing a potential handle to constrain its mass.Comment: 9 pages, 7 figures. Matches resubmitted version to Phys. Rev. D. One figure added; supplemental material (fits to the structure functions) added as an Appendi

Nonlinear Breathing-like Localized Modes in C60 Nanocrystals

We study the dynamics of nanocrystals composed of C60 fullerene molecules. We demonstrate that such structures can support long-lived strongly localized nonlinear oscillatory modes, which resemble discrete breathers in simple lattices. We reveal that at room temperatures the lifetime of such nonlinear localized modes may exceed tens of picoseconds; this suggests that C60 nanoclusters should demonstrate anomalously slow thermal relaxation when the temperature gradient decays in accord to a power law, thus violating the Cattaneo-Vernotte law of thermal conductivity.Comment: 6 pages, 6 figure

Floral enhancement of arable field margins increases moth abundance and diversity

Moth populations have declined across large parts of north-western Europe since the mid-20th century due, in part, to agricultural intensification. Agri-environment schemes (AES) are widely implemented across Europe to protect biodiversity in agricultural landscapes. Grass field margins enriched with wildflowers typically out-perform grass-only margins in terms of increasing insect abundance and diversity. However, the effect of wildflower enrichment on moths remains largely unstudied. Here, the relative importance of larval hostplants and nectar resources for adult moths within AES field margins are investigated. Two treatments and a control were compared: (i) a plain grass mix, the control, (ii) a grass mix enriched with only moth-pollinated flowers, and (iii) a grass mix enriched with 13 wildflower species. Abundance, species richness and Shannon diversity were up to 1.4, 1.8 and 3.5 times higher, respectively, in the wildflower treatment compared to plain grass. The difference in diversity between treatments became greater in the second year. There was no difference in total abundance, richness or diversity between the plain grass treatment and grass enriched with moth-pollinated flowers. The increase in abundance and diversity in the wildflower treatment was due primarily to the provision of larval hostplants, with nectar provision playing a smaller role. The relative abundance of species whose larval hostplants included sown wildflowers increased in the second year, suggesting colonisation of the new habitat. Implications for insect conservation. We show that, at the farm scale, moth diversity can be greatly enhanced and abundance moderately enhanced by sowing diverse wildflower margins, providing these insects with both larval hostplants and floral resources, compared to grass-only margins

Adaptive control algorithm to provide bus priority with a pre-signal

In urban areas, where road space is limited, it is important to provide efficient public and private transportation systems to maximize person throughput, for example from a signalized intersection. To this end, this research looks at providing bus priority using a dedicated bus lane which is terminated upstream of the intersection, and placing an additional signal at this location, called a pre-signal. Although pre-signals are already implemented in some countries (e.g. UK, Denmark, and Switzerland), an adaptive control algorithm which responds to varying traffic demands has not yet been proposed and analyzed in the literature. This research aims to fill that gap by developing an adaptive control algorithm for pre-signals tailored to real-time private and public transportation demands. The necessary infrastructure to operate an adaptive pre-signal is established, and guidelines for implementation are provided. The relevant parameters regarding the boundary conditions for the adaptive algorithm are first determined, and then quantified for a typical case using a micro-simulation model. It is demonstrated with case studies that, under all considered scenarios, implementing a pre-signal with the proposed adaptive control algorithm will result in the least average person delay at the intersection. The algorithm is expected to function well with a wide range of car demands, bus frequencies, and bus passenger occupancies. Moreover, the algorithm is robust to errors in these input values, so exact information is not required

Analytical evaluation of flexible-sharing strategies on multimodal arterials

This paper examines strategies that allocate road space between modes of transport in a flexible and dynamic manner at a link or a node of an arterial by moving buses in front of the car queues without continuously banning cars from using one full lane. These strategies are collectively referred to as flexible-sharing strategies, and are modelled parsimoniously using a single parameter to describe their performance at the local level. This model provides a solid building block to examine these strategies at large infrastructure levels. We build an analytical framework with input–output systems and fixed set theory to evaluate bimodal arterials with flexible-sharing strategies implemented at multiple locations. Using this framework, the performance of a bimodal arterial is quantified by a set of vehicle throughput. This set is convex with linear constraints, which can be used to solve optmization problems on bimodal arterials. The requirements to efficiently identify links and nodes to install flexible-sharing strategies along a bimodal arterial are mathematically established. Lastly, one particular flexible-sharing strategy, the pre-signal, is illustrated as an example both mathematically and with a calibrated simulation