Interaction of Public and Private Employment: Evidence from a German Government Move

We use the move of the seat of the German government from Bonn to Berlin in 1999 to test competing views about the impact of public employment on private sector activity in a local labor market. A relocated public sector job might create new jobs in an area as it increases demand for locally-produced goods and services, or crowd out existing jobs due to upward pressure on housing rents. Using employment data from a panel of a 50% sample of establishments across 190 Berlin postcodes, we apply a treatment intensity approach which takes the possibility of spillovers into account. Results indicate that the arrival of 100 public sector jobs into an area generates 55 additional jobs in the private sector. There is evidence of spillovers: relocations up to a distance of 1km from a postcode boundary increases employment in the private sector by 36 jobs. These effects are coming through job gains in the service sector, while manufacturing employment is not influenced by the relocation

The impact of public employment on private sector activity: Evidence from Berlin

We use the move of the seat of the German government from Bonn to Berlin in 1999 to test competing views about the impact of public employment on private sector activity in a local labor market. Using employment data from a 50% sample of establishments across 190 Berlin postcodes, we apply a treatment intensity approach which takes the possibility of spillovers into account. Results indicate that the arrival of 100 public sector jobs into an area generates 55 additional jobs in the private sector. There is evidence of spillovers: relocations up to a distance of 1km from a postcode boundary increases employment in the private sector by 36 jobs. These effects are coming through job gains in the service sector, while manufacturing employment is not influenced by the relocation

Midinfrared Conductivity in Orientationally Disordered Doped Fullerides

The coupling between the intramolecular vibrational modes and the doped conduction electrons in $M_3C_{60}$ is studied by a calculation of the electronic contributions to the phonon self energies. The calculations are carried out for an orientationally ordered reference solid with symmetry $Fm \bar{3} m$ and for a model with quenched orientational disorder on the fullerene sites. In both cases, the dispersion and symmetry of the renormalized modes is governed by the electronic contributions. The current current correlation functions and frequency dependent conductivity through the midinfrared are calculated for both models. In the disordered structures, the renormalized modes derived from even parity intramolecular phonons are resonant with the dipole excited single particle spectrum, and modulate the predicted midinfrared conductivity. The spectra for this coupled system are calculated for several recently proposed microscopic models for the electron phonon coupling, and a comparison is made with recent experimental data which demonstrate this effect.Comment: 32 pages + 9 postscript figures (on request), REVTeX 3.

The Role of Rab3a in Secretory Vesicle Docking Requires Association/Dissociation of Guanidine Phosphates and Munc18-1

Rab3a is a small GTPase that binds selectively to secretory vesicles and switches between active, GTP-bound and inactive, GDP-bound conformations. In yeast, Rab and SM-genes interact genetically to promote vesicle targeting/fusion. We tested different Rab3a conformations and genetic interactions with the SM-gene munc18-1 on the docking function of Rab3a in mammalian chromaffin cells. We expressed Rab3a mutants locked in the GTP- or GDP-bound form in wild-type and munc18-1 null mutant cells and analyzed secretory vesicle distribution. We confirmed that wild-type Rab3a promotes vesicle docking in wild-type cells. Unexpectedly, both GTP- and GDP-locked Rab3a mutants did not promote docking. Furthermore, wild-type Rab3a did not promote docking in munc18-1 null cells and GTP- and GDP-Rab3a both decreased the amount of docked vesicles. The results show that GTP- and GDP-locked conformations do not support a Munc18-1 dependent role of Rab3a in docking. This suggests that nucleotide cycling is required to support docking and that this action of Rab3a is upstream of Munc18-1

cis-Regulatory Changes in Kit Ligand Expression and Parallel Evolution of Pigmentation in Sticklebacks and Humans

SummaryDramatic pigmentation changes have evolved within most vertebrate groups, including fish and humans. Here we use genetic crosses in sticklebacks to investigate the parallel origin of pigmentation changes in natural populations. High-resolution mapping and expression experiments show that light gills and light ventrums map to a divergent regulatory allele of the Kit ligand (Kitlg) gene. The divergent allele reduces expression in gill and skin tissue and is shared by multiple derived freshwater populations with reduced pigmentation. In humans, Europeans and East Asians also share derived alleles at the KITLG locus. Strong signatures of selection map to regulatory regions surrounding the gene, and admixture mapping shows that the KITLG genomic region has a significant effect on human skin color. These experiments suggest that regulatory changes in Kitlg contribute to natural variation in vertebrate pigmentation, and that similar genetic mechanisms may underlie rapid evolutionary change in fish and humans

Crater lake cichlids individually specialize along the benthic-limnetic axis

A common pattern of adaptive diversification in freshwater fishes is the repeated evolution of elongated open water (limnetic) species and high-bodied shore (benthic) species from generalist ancestors. Studies on phenotype-diet correlations have suggested that population-wide individual specialization occurs at an early evolutionary and ecological stage of divergence and niche partitioning. This variable restricted niche use across individuals can provide the raw material for earliest stages of sympatric divergence. We investigated variation in morphology and diet as well as their correlations along the benthic-limnetic axis in an extremely young Midas cichlid species, Amphilophus tolteca, endemic to the Nicaraguan crater lake Asososca Managua. We found that A. tolteca varied continuously in ecologically relevant traits such as body shape and lower pharyngeal jaw morphology. The correlation of these phenotypes with niche suggested that individuals are specialized along the benthic-limnetic axis. No genetic differentiation within the crater lake was detected based on genotypes from 13 microsatellite loci. Overall, we found that individual specialization in this young crater lake species encompasses the limnetic- as well as the benthic macro-habitat. Yet there is no evidence for any diversification within the species, making this a candidate system for studying what might be the early stages preceding sympatric divergence

Comparative proteomics of related symbiotic mussel species reveals high variability of host-symbiont interactions.

Deep-sea Bathymodiolus mussels and their chemoautotrophic symbionts are well-studied representatives of mutualistic host-microbe associations. However, how host-symbiont interactions vary on the molecular level between related host and symbiont species remains unclear. Therefore, we compared the host and symbiont metaproteomes of Pacific B. thermophilus, hosting a thiotrophic symbiont, and Atlantic B. azoricus, containing two symbionts, a thiotroph and a methanotroph. We identified common strategies of metabolic support between hosts and symbionts, such as the oxidation of sulfide by the host, which provides a thiosulfate reservoir for the thiotrophic symbionts, and a cycling mechanism that could supply the host with symbiont-derived amino acids. However, expression levels of these processes differed substantially between both symbioses. Backed up by genomic comparisons, our results furthermore revealed an exceptionally large repertoire of attachment-related proteins in the B. thermophilus symbiont. These findings imply that host-microbe interactions can be quite variable, even between closely related systems