The Food Prices / Body Mass Index Relationship: Theory and Evidence from a Sample of French Adults

What would be the effect of a "fat tax" on obesity? This paper shows that the sign of the price-weight correlation is unclear, as variations of food price have a direct effect on weight through changes in energy intakes, and an indirect (income) effect that affects energy expenditure. Food expenditures data are used to examine the link between the prices of 16 food groups and the distribution of the Body Mass Index among French adults. We find positive correlations for ready-meals and snacks, and negative correlations for sea products and fruits. It is thus unlikely that the epidemic of obesity will react in the short-term to nutritional taxes.obesity, fat tax, price policies, quantitle regressions, Agricultural and Food Policy, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, D1, H3, I1,

Calculation of the Multivariate Probability Distribution Function Values and their Gradient Vectors

The described collection of subroutines developed for calculation of values of multivariate normal, Dirichlet and gamma distribution functions and their gradient vectors is an unique tool that can be used e.g. to compute the Loss-of-Load Probability of electric networks and to solve optimization problems with a reliability constraint

User's Guide of the Computer Code for the Calculation of the Loss-of-Load-Probability (LOLP)

The described computer code is one of the results of the IIASA contracted study "Modelling of interconnected power systems". Based on the latest results of A. Prekopa, it gives the possibility to compute the Loss-of-Load Probability of a given aggregated electric network on IBM/PC-XT or AT compatibles

Development Of Thioamides As Protein Probes

Thioamides have been used for various applications with small molecules and peptides, including as protease sensors, fluorescence quenching probes, folding probes, and handles for site-specific chemical modification. However, their use in proteins has been limited due to cumbersome incorporation through semi-synthesis, as well as their unknown effects on protein structure. In this work, I address these issues from multiple perspectives. I present improvements for the synthesis of thioamide-containing peptides, which are needed for semi-synthesis. I also investigate the effects that thioamide substitutions have on tertiary structure in a model protein and show that based on thermal denaturation experiments, the position of thioamide substitution can have a significant impact on the tertiary fold. Furthermore, I demonstrate a new semi-synthetic strategy to obtain mg quantities of a thioamide-containing protein that will enable structural investigation by Nuclear Magnetic Resonance spectroscopy and X-Ray crystallography. Finally, I describe my attempts at the genetic incorporation of thioamides using a combination of unnatural amino acid mutagenesis and amber suppression. While the last part was not successful, the efforts to improve semi-synthesis of thioamides will enable the use of thioamides as probes in proteins in a similar fashion as they have been used previously in peptides

Évaluation des élasticites-prix de la demande des produits d’origine animale en France entre 1999 et 2009

La consommation de viandes a connu de profonds changements durant les quatre dernières décennies en France (FranceAgriMer, 2010). Le volume total consommé par habitant est passé de 77,6 kg équivalent carcasse par habitant en 1970 à 85,9/kg.ec/hab en 2012. Cette augmentation s’est accompagnée d’une modification de la structure de la consommation en termes d’espèces. La part des viandes issues de ruminants (boeuf, veau et ovin/caprin) a baissé au profit des viandes de monogastriques (porc et volailles). Cette contribution vise à mesurer les parts budgétaires consacrées aux produits d’origine animale (hors produits laitiers) et à mesurer la sensibilité de la demande à leur variation de prix

Stochastic Programming in Water Resources System Planning: A Case Study and a Comparison of Solution Techniques

To analyze the influence of increasing needs upon a given water resources system in Eastern Slovakia and to get a decision on the system development and extension, several stochastic programming models can be used. The two selected models are based on individual probabilistic constraints for the minimum storage and for the freeboard volume supplemented by one joint probabilistic constraint on releases or by a nonseparable penalty term in the objective function. Suitable numerical techniques for their solution are applied to alternative design parameter values. As a result, the paper gives an answer to the case study which is based on multi modeling within the framework of stochastic programming and, at the same time, it gives a comparison of various solution techniques partly included in the SDS/ADO collection of stochastic programming codes

Polyhedral inclusion-exclusion

Motivated by numerical computations to solve probabilistic constrained stochastic programming problems, we derive a new identity claiming that many terms are cancelled out in the inclusion-exclusion formula expressing the complement of a Euclidean polyhedron

The polymorphic nature of the human dopamine D4 receptor gene: A comparative analysis of known variants and a novel 27 bp deletion in the promoter region

BACKGROUND: The human dopamine D4 receptor (DRD4) is a candidate gene of great interest in molecular studies of human personality and psychiatric disorders. This gene is unique in having an exceptionally high amount of polymorphic sites both in the coding and in the promoter region. RESULTS: We report the identification of a new 27 bp deletion starting 524 bp upstream of the initiation codon (27 bp del) of the dopamine D4 receptor (DRD4) gene, in the close vicinity of the -521C>T SNP. The presence of the 27 bp deletion leads to the misgenotyping of the -616C>G SNP by the Sau96 I RFLP method, thus the genotype determination of the mutation is of additional importance. The frequency of this novel sequence variation is considerably low (allele frequency is = 0.16%), as no homozygotes, and only 3 heterozygote carriers were found in a healthy, unrelated Caucasian sample (N = 955). CONCLUSION: Remarkably, the deleted region contains consensus sequences of binding sites for several known transcription factors, suggesting that the different alleles may affect the transcriptional regulation of the gene. A comparison of methods and results for the allelic variations of the DRD4 gene in various ethnic groups is also discussed, which has a high impact in psychiatric genetic studies