Teratogenic potential of nanoencapsulated vitamin A evaluated on an alternative model organism, the tunicate Ciona intestinalis

Nano-encapsulation is a technology used to pack substances in order to enhance their stability and bioavailability, but this packing may interact with living systems, causing unexpected toxicity. Vitamin A (vit A) is a substance that has received attention, because in developed countries, the increasing availability of supplements is leading to its excessive intake. This study aims to compare teratogenic effects caused by exposure to the traditional formulation of vit A versus nano-encapsulated vit A. We used ascidian embryos as an alternative model. Ascidians are marine organisms closely related to vertebrates that share with them a body plan and developmental programme, including the morphogenetic role of retinoic acid (RA). Our data showed that the adverse effects of exposure to the same concentration of the two formulations were different, suggesting that the nano-encapsulation increased the bioavailability of the molecule, which could be better absorbed and metabolised to RA, the effective teratogenic substance

Supporting Innovation in Organic Agriculture: A European Perspective Using Experience from the SOLID Project

Organic farming is recognized as one source for innovation helping agriculture to develop sustainably. However, the understanding of innovation in agriculture is characterized by technical optimism, relying mainly on new inputs and technologies originating from research. The paper uses the alternative framework of innovation systems describing innovation as the outcome of stakeholder interaction and examples from the SOLID (Sustainable Organic Low-Input Dairying) project to discuss the role of farmers, researchers and knowledge exchange for innovation. We used a farmer-led participatory approach to identify problems of organic and low-input dairy farming in Europe and develop and evaluate innovative practices. Experience so far shows that improvements of sustainability can be made through better exploitation of knowledge. For example, it is recognized that optimal utilization of good quality forage is vitally important, but farmers showed a lack of confidence in the reliability of forage production both in quantity and quality. We conclude that the systems framework improves the understanding of innovation processes in organic agriculture. Farmer-led research is an effective way to bring together the scientific approach with the farmers’ practical and context knowledge in finding solutions to problems experienced by farmers and to develop sustainability

Resting-state functional connectivity identifies individuals and predicts age in 8-to-26-month-olds

Resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) measured with fMRI has been used to characterize functional brain maturation in typically and atypically developing children and adults. However, its reliability and utility for predicting development in infants and toddlers is less well understood. Here, we use fMRI data from the Baby Connectome Project study to measure the reliability and uniqueness of rsFC in infants and toddlers and predict age in this sample (8-to-26 months old; n = 170). We observed medium reliability for within-session infant rsFC in our sample, and found that individual infant and toddler's connectomes were sufficiently distinct for successful functional connectome fingerprinting. Next, we trained and tested support vector regression models to predict age-at-scan with rsFC. Models successfully predicted novel infants' age within ± 3.6 months error and a prediction R2 = .51. To characterize the anatomy of predictive networks, we grouped connections into 11 infant-specific resting-state functional networks defined in a data-driven manner. We found that connections between regions of the same network-i.e. within-network connections-predicted age significantly better than between-network connections. Looking ahead, these findings can help characterize changes in functional brain organization in infancy and toddlerhood and inform work predicting developmental outcome measures in this age range

Wage inequality, segregation by skill and the price of capital in an assignment model

Some pieces of empirical evidence suggest that in the U.S., over the last few decades, (i) wage inequality between-plants has risen much more than wage inequality within-plants and (ii) there has been an increase in the segregation of workers by skill into separate plants. This paper presents a frictionless assignment model in which these two features can be explained simultaneously as the result of the decline in the relative price of capital. Additional implications of the model regarding the skill premium and the dispersion in labor productivity across plants are also consistent with the empirical evidence. [resumen de autor

Joint Inference and Counterfactual Experimentation for Impulse Response Functions By Local Projections

This paper provides three measures of the uncertainty associated to an impulse response path: (1) conditional confidence bands which isolate the uncertainty of individual response coefficients given the temporal path experienced up to that point; (2) response percentile bounds} which provide bounds on the universe of permissible paths at a given probability level; and (3) Wald tests of joint significance and joint cumulative significance. These results rely on general assumptions for the joint distribution of the system's impulse responses. Given this distribution, the paper then shows how to construct counterfactual experiments formally; provides a test on the likelihood of observing the counterfactual; and derives the distribution of the system's responses conditional on the counterfactual. The paper then derives the asymptotic joint distribution of structural impulse responses identified by either short- or long-run recursive assumptions and estimated by local projections (Jorda, 2005). An application to a two country system implements all of these new methods

Austerity and Private Debt

This study provides empirical evidence that the costs of austerity crucially depend on the level of private indebtedness. In particular, fiscal consolidations lead to severe contractions when implemented in high private debt states. Contrary, fiscal consolidations have no significant effect on economic activity when private debt is low. These results are robust to alternative definitions of private debt overhang, the composition of fiscal consolidations and controlling for the state of the business cycle and government debt overhang. I show that deterioration in household balance sheets is important to understand private debt-dependent effects of austerity

Inference for Impulse Responses

Poor identification of individual impulse response coefficients does not necessarily mean that an impulse response is imprecisely estimated. This paper introduces a three-pronged approach on how to communicate uncertainty of impulse response estimates: (1) withWald tests of joint significance; (2) with conditional t-tests of individual marginal coefficient significance; and (3) with fan charts based on the percentiles of the joint Wald statistics. The paper also shows how to anchor the impulse response analysis with a priori economic restrictions that can be formally tested and used to tighten structural identification. These methods are universal and do not depend on how the impulse responses are estimated. An empirical application illustrates the techniques in practice

N-mixture models reliably estimate the abundance of small vertebrates

Accurate measures of species abundance are essential to identify conservation strategies. N-mixture models are increasingly used to estimate abundance on the basis of species counts. In this study we tested whether abundance estimates obtained using N-mixture models provide consistent results with more traditional approaches requiring capture (capture-mark recapture and removal sampling). We focused on endemic, threatened species of amphibians and reptiles in Italy, for which accurate abundance data are needed for conservation assessments: The Lanza's Alpine salamander Salamandra lanzai, the Ambrosi's cave salamander Hydromantes ambrosii and the Aeolian wall lizard Podarcis raffonei. In visual counts, detection probability was variable among species, ranging between 0.14 (Alpine salamanders) and 0.60 (cave salamanders). For all the species, abundance estimates obtained using N-mixture models showed limited differences with the ones obtained through capture-mark-recapture or removal sampling. The match was particularly accurate for cave salamanders in sites with limited abundance and for lizards, nevertheless non-incorporating heterogeneity of detection probability increased bias. N-mixture models provide reliable abundance estimates that are comparable with the ones of more traditional approaches, and offer additional advantages such as a smaller sampling effort and no need of manipulating individuals, which in turn reduces the risk of harming animals and spreading diseases