Habit Formation, Dynastic Altruism, and Population Dynamics

We study the general equilibrium properties of two growth models with overlapping generations, habit formation and endogenous fertility. In the neoclassical model, habits modify the economy's growth rate and generate transitional dynamics in fertility; station- ary income per capita is associated with either increasing or decreasing population and output, depending on the strength of habits. In the AK specification, growing population and increasing consumption per capita require that the habit coefficient lie within definite boundaries; outside the critical interval, positive growth is associated with either declining consumption due to overcrowding, or extinction paths with declining population. In both frameworks, habits reduce fertility: the trade-off between second-period consumption and spending for bequests prompts agents to decrease fertility in order to make parental altru- ism less costly. This mechanism suggests that status-dependent preferences may explain part of the decline in fertility rates observed in most developed economies.Economic Growth, Endogenous Fertility, Habit Formation, Intergenerational Altruism, Overlapping Generations.

ESF-EMBO symposium "molecular biology and innovative therapies in sarcomas of childhood and adolescence" Sept 29–Oct 4, Polonia Castle Pultusk, Poland

Rhabdomyosarcoma (RMS) and Ewing sarcoma (ES) are among the most common pediatric sarcomas (Arndt et al., 2012). Despite sarcomas representing a highly heterogeneous group of tumors, ES and alveolar RMS (ARMS) typically share one common genetic characteristic, namely a specific chromosomal translocation (Helman and Meltzer, 2003; Lessnick and Ladanyi, 2012). These translocations generate fusion proteins, which are composed of two transcription factors (TF). Typically, one TF is a developmentally regulated factor that is essential for proper specification of a given lineage and provides the DNA-binding domain, while the partner TF contributes a transactivation domain that drives aberrant expression of target genes. Based on these common genetic characteristics, the first ESF-EMBO research conference entitled “Molecular Biology and Innovative Therapies in Sarcomas of Childhood and Adolescence” with special focus on RMS and ES was held at the Polonia Castle in Pultusk, Poland. The conference gathered 70 participants from more than 15 countries and several continents representing most research groups that are active in this field

HABIT FORMATION, DYNASTIC ALTRUISM, AND POPULATION DYNAMICS

We study the general equilibrium properties of two growth models with overlapping generations, habit formation, and endogenous fertility. In the neoclassical model, habits modify the economy's growth rate and generate transitional dynamics in fertility; stationary income per capita is associated with either increasing or decreasing population and output, depending on the strength of habits. In the AK specification, growing population and increasing consumption per capita require that the habit coefficient lie within definite boundaries; outside the critical interval, positive growth is associated with either declining consumption due to overcrowding, or extinction paths with declining population. In both frameworks, habits reduce fertility: the trade-off between second-period consumption and spending for bequests prompts agents to decrease fertility in order to make parental altruism less costly. This mechanism suggests that status-dependent preferences may explain part of the decline in fertility rates observed in most developed economie

Sivers, Boer-Mulders and worm-gear distributions at next-to-leading order

We compute the Sivers, Boer-Mulders, worm-gear (T and L) transverse momentum dependent distributions in terms of twist-two and twist-three collinear distributions in the small-b limit up to next-to-leading order (NLO) in perturbation theory.Comment: 26 pages, 1 figur

Decorin protein core affects the global gene expression profile of the tumor microenvironment in a triple-negative orthotopic breast carcinoma xenograft model

Decorin, a member of the small leucine-rich proteoglycan gene family, exists and functions wholly within the tumor microenvironment to suppress tumorigenesis by directly targeting and antagonizing multiple receptor tyrosine kinases, such as the EGFR and Met. This leads to potent and sustained signal attenuation, growth arrest, and angiostasis. We thus sought to evaluate the tumoricidal benefits of systemic decorin on a triple-negative orthotopic breast carcinoma xenograft model. To this end, we employed a novel high-density mixed expression array capable of differentiating and simultaneously measuring gene signatures of both Mus musculus (stromal) and Homo sapiens (epithelial) tissue origins. We found that decorin protein core modulated the differential expression of 374 genes within the stromal compartment of the tumor xenograft. Further, our top gene ontology classes strongly suggests an unexpected and preferential role for decorin protein core to inhibit genes necessary for immunomodulatory responses while simultaneously inducing expression of those possessing cellular adhesion and tumor suppressive gene properties. Rigorous verification of the top scoring candidates led to the discovery of three genes heretofore unlinked to malignant breast cancer that were reproducibly found to be induced in several models of tumor stroma. Collectively, our data provide highly novel and unexpected stromal gene signatures as a direct function of systemic administration of decorin protein core and reveals a fundamental basis of action for decorin to modulate the tumor stroma as a biological mechanism for the ascribed anti-tumorigenic properties

The ferroelectric photo ground state of SrTiO3: Cavity materials engineering

Optical cavities confine light on a small region in space, which can result in a strong coupling of light with materials inside the cavity. This gives rise to new states where quantum fluctuations of light and matter can alter the properties of the material altogether. Here we demonstrate, based on first-principles calculations, that such light-matter coupling induces a change of the collective phase from quantum paraelectric to ferroelectric in the SrTiO3 ground state, which has thus far only been achieved in outof-equilibrium strongly excited conditions [X. Li et al., Science 364, 1079-1082 (2019) and T. F. Nova, A. S. Disa, M. Fechner, A. Cavalleri, Science 364, 1075-1079 (2019)]. This is a light-matter hybrid ground state which can only exist because of the coupling to the vacuum fluctuations of light, a photo ground state. The phase transition is accompanied by changes in the crystal structure, showing that fundamental ground state properties of materials can be controlled via strong light-matter coupling. Such a control of quantum states enables the tailoring of materials properties or even the design of novel materials purely by exposing them to confined light.We are grateful for the illuminating discussions with Dmitri Basov, Atac Imamoglu, Jerome Faist, Jean-Marc Triscone, Peter Littlewood, Andrew Millis, Michael Ruggenthaler, Michael A. Sentef, and Eugene Demler. We acknowledge financial support from the European Research Council (Grant ERC2015AdG694097) , Grupos Consolidados (Grant IT124919) , the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science KAKENHI program (Grant JP20K14382) , and the Cluster of Excellence "CUI: Advanced Imag-ing of Matter" of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (Grant EXC 2056 Project 390715994) . The Flatiron Institute is a division of the Simons Foundation. S.L. and D.S. acknowledge support from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation