Social Security and Pension Reform: International Perspectives

Countries around the world are reforming their social security and pension systems. International studies often focus on social security reforms in Europe and North America, and may include Latin America. Reforms, however, are also occurring in Asia and Africa, and include reforms of voluntary and employer-provided pensions as well as social security programs. This book discusses both social security and employer-provided pension reforms, as well as reforms in most regions of the world.https://research.upjohn.org/up_press/1243/thumbnail.jp

Parabolic groups acting on one-dimensional compact spaces

Given a class of compact spaces, we ask which groups can be maximal parabolic subgroups of a relatively hyperbolic group whose boundary is in the class. We investigate the class of 1-dimensional connected boundaries. We get that any non-torsion infinite f.g. group is a maximal parabolic subgroup of some relatively hyperbolic group with connected one-dimensional boundary without global cut point. For boundaries homeomorphic to a Sierpinski carpet or a 2-sphere, the only maximal parabolic subgroups allowed are virtual surface groups (hyperbolic, or virtually $\mathbb{Z} + \mathbb{Z}$).Comment: 10 pages. Added a precision on local connectedness for Lemma 2.3, thanks to B. Bowditc

Two types of vascularisation of intramural uterine leiomyomata revealed by corrosion casting and immunohistochemical study

The blood supply of myomatous uteri collected upon autopsy was examined. The uterine vascular beds were perfused via afferent vessels with fixative followed by Mercox resin and corroded after polymerisation of the resin. The vascular casts thus obtained were examined using scanning electron microscopy. The vascular system of the uterine fibroids was also examined using immunohistochemical analysis (FVIII, factor VIII-related antigen)

Eta invariants for flat manifolds

Using H. Donnelly result from the article "Eta Invariants for G-Spaces" we calculate the eta invariants of the signature operator for almost all 7-dimensional flat manifolds with cyclic holonomy group. In all cases this eta invariants are an integer numbers. The article was motivated by D. D. Long and A. Reid article "On the geometric boundaries of hyperbolic 4-manifolds, Geom. Topology 4, 2000, 171-178Comment: 18 pages, a new version with referees comment

Application of acrylic emulsion Liquitex R (Binney and Smith) for the preparation of injection specimens and immunohistochemical studies - an observation

Application of acrylic emulsion Liquitex R for injection studies of the vascular system of human myomatous uteri was analysed. It was found that this injection mass does not penetrate the capillary bed of human organs, but it is useful in studies carried out on the blood supply of the human organs removed from cadavers. The results were compared with the studies performed with the help of immunohistochemical tests for von Willebrandt's factor

Asymptotic geometry of the mapping class group and Teichmueller space

In this work, we study the asymptotic geometry of the mapping class group and Teichmueller space. We introduce tools for analyzing the geometry of `projection' maps from these spaces to curve complexes of subsurfaces; from this we obtain information concerning the topology of their asymptotic cones. We deduce several applications of this analysis. One of which is that the asymptotic cone of the mapping class group of any surface is tree-graded in the sense of Drutu and Sapir; this tree-grading has several consequences including answering a question of Drutu and Sapir concerning relatively hyperbolic groups. Another application is a generalization of the result of Brock and Farb that for low complexity surfaces Teichmueller space, with the Weil-Petersson metric, is delta-hyperbolic. Although for higher complexity surfaces these spaces are not delta-hyperbolic, we establish the presence of previously unknown negative curvature phenomena in the mapping class group and Teichmueller space for arbitrary surfaces.Comment: This is the version published by Geometry & Topology on 21 October 200