Studies in Carangid fishes No.6: key to the western Indian Ocean species of the Genus Carangoides Bleeker, 1851, with a description of Carangoides Nitidus Smith

From introduction: Fishes in the family Carangidae commonly known as Jacks or Kingfishes are generally characterised by a silvery ovate body with s mall insignificant cycloid scales,a lateral line with curved anterior portion and a posterior straight portion bearing scules, a moderate mouth usually with feeble teeth, no dorsal and anal finlets, and a deeply forked caudal with a slender peduncle. A horizontally forwardly directed spine from the dorsal pterygiophore visible in front of the dorsal fin in shrunken or dried specimens, and the first two anal spines separate from the third and the rest of the fin are more pronounced in juvenile specimens

The wellbeing of Gypsies and Travellers

Outline the social, economic and policy factors behind the increasing settlement of Britain’s nomadic communities. Discuss how the concepts of cultural trauma and collective resilience can aid our understanding of how minority groups respond to external change. Examine the relationship between accommodation and the wellbeing of Gypsies and Travellers. Explore some of the difficulties faced by newly housed Gypsies and Travellers and consider the impact on subjective wellbeing. Consider the role of locally based social networks in boosting individual and collective wellbeing

Hazardous cosleeping environments and risk factors amenable to change: case-control study of SIDS in south west England

Objectives: To investigate the factors associated with sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) from birth to age 2 years, whether recent advice has been followed, whether any new risk factors have emerged, and the specific circumstances in which SIDS occurs while cosleeping (infant sharing the same bed or sofa with an adult or child). Design: Four year population based case-control study. Parents were interviewed shortly after the death or after the reference sleep (within 24 hours) of the two control groups. Setting: South west region of England (population 4.9 million, 184 800 births). Participants: 80 SIDS infants and two control groups weighted for age and time of reference sleep: 87 randomly selected controls and 82 controls at high risk of SIDS (young, socially deprived, multiparous mothers who smoked). Results: The median age at death (66 days) was more than three weeks less than in a study in the same region a decade earlier. Of the SIDS infants, 54% died while cosleeping compared with 20% among both control groups. Much of this excess may be explained by a significant multivariable interaction between cosleeping and recent parental use of alcohol or drugs (31% v 3% random controls) and the increased proportion of SIDS infants who had coslept on a sofa (17% v 1%). One fifth of SIDS infants used a pillow for the last sleep (21% v 3%) and one quarter were swaddled (24% v 6%). More mothers of SIDS infants than random control infants smoked during pregnancy (60% v 14%), whereas one quarter of the SIDS infants were preterm (26% v 5%) or were in fair or poor health for the last sleep (28% v 6%). All of these differences were significant in the multivariable analysis regardless of which control group was used for comparison. The significance of covering the infant’s head, postnatal exposure to tobacco smoke, dummy use, and sleeping in the side position has diminished although a significant proportion of SIDS infants were still found prone (29% v 10%). Conclusions: Many of the SIDS infants had coslept in a hazardous environment. The major influences on risk, regardless of markers for socioeconomic deprivation, are amenable to change and specific advice needs to be given, particularly on use of alcohol or drugs before cosleeping and cosleeping on a sofa

Cartels in an Nth-Best World: The Wholesale Foodstuff Trade in Ibadan, Nigeria

The purpose of this paper is to develop an understanding of the economic functions and associated welfare implications of the cooperative associations that dominate the wholesale trade in two staple foods. Questionnaire responses lead to several conclusions. Individual traders face incomplete markets, imperfect information, and little government-provided institutional and physical infrastructure. The associations are sophisticated Coase-like responses to this market environment: they focus on reducing their members\u27 transaction costs, and hence the marginal private costs of trading. Thus it is likely that these associations enhance efficiency. We conclude with a critique of current government policy with respect to this trade

On Optimizing the Conditional Value-at-Risk of a Maximum Cost for Risk-Averse Safety Analysis

The popularity of Conditional Value-at-Risk (CVaR), a risk functional from finance, has been growing in the control systems community due to its intuitive interpretation and axiomatic foundation. We consider a non-standard optimal control problem in which the goal is to minimize the CVaR of a maximum random cost subject to a Borel-space Markov decision process. The objective takes the form $\text{CVaR}_{\alpha}(\max_{t=0,1,\dots,N} C_t)$, where $\alpha$ is a risk-aversion parameter representing a fraction of worst cases, $C_t$ is a stage or terminal cost, and $N \in \mathbb{N}$ is the length of a finite discrete-time horizon. The objective represents the maximum departure from a desired operating region averaged over a given fraction $\alpha$ of worst cases. This problem provides a safety criterion for a stochastic system that is informed by both the probability and severity of the potential consequences of the system's trajectory. In contrast, existing safety analysis frameworks apply stage-wise risk constraints (i.e., $\rho(C_t)$ must be small for all $t$, where $\rho$ is a risk functional) or assess the probability of constraint violation without quantifying its possible severity. To the best of our knowledge, the problem of interest has not been solved. To solve the problem, we propose and study a family of stochastic dynamic programs on an augmented state space. We prove that the optimal CVaR of a maximum cost enjoys an equivalent representation in terms of the solutions to this family of dynamic programs under appropriate assumptions. We show the existence of an optimal policy that depends on the dynamics of an augmented state under a measurable selection condition. Moreover, we demonstrate how our safety analysis framework is useful for assessing the severity of combined sewer overflows under precipitation uncertainty.Comment: A shorter version is under review for IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, submitted December 202

Recognition of secretory proteins in Escherichia coli requires signals in addition to the signal sequence and slow folding

BACKGROUND: The Sec-dependent protein export apparatus of Escherichia coli is very efficient at correctly identifying proteins to be exported from the cytoplasm. Even bacterial strains that carry prl mutations, which allow export of signal sequence-defective precursors, accurately differentiate between cytoplasmic and mutant secretory proteins. It was proposed previously that the basis for this precise discrimination is the slow folding rate of secretory proteins, resulting in binding by the secretory chaperone, SecB, and subsequent targeting to translocase. Based on this proposal, we hypothesized that a cytoplasmic protein containing a mutation that slows its rate of folding would be recognized by SecB and therefore targeted to the Sec pathway. In a Prl suppressor strain the mutant protein would be exported to the periplasm due to loss of ability to reject non-secretory proteins from the pathway. RESULTS: In the current work, we tested this hypothesis using a mutant form of λ repressor that folds slowly. No export of the mutant protein was observed, even in a prl strain. We then examined binding of the mutant λ repressor to SecB. We did not observe interaction by either of two assays, indicating that slow folding is not sufficient for SecB binding and targeting to translocase. CONCLUSIONS: These results strongly suggest that to be targeted to the export pathway, secretory proteins contain signals in addition to the canonical signal sequence and the rate of folding