The effectiveness of banking supervision

Banking supervision is an essential aspect of modern financial systems, seeking crucially to monitor risk-taking by banks so as to protect depositors, the government safety net and the economy as a whole against systemic bank failure and its consequences. In this context, this paper seeks to explore the relationship between risk indicators for individual banks and the different approaches to banking supervision adopted around the world. This is the first work to make use of the currently available cross section series data on bank supervision from the World Bank to carry out empirical investigations in a panel data framework, gaining all the advantages in increased efficiency and information that comes from estimations combining longer time series and a wide range of countries. We find wide-ranging effects of design features of banking supervision on risk taking which raise important policy issues

Deposit insurance systems and bank risk

The link from deposit insurance to bank risk taking has been widely analysed, but has been the subject of relatively little empirical work. This work contributes to the existing literature by exploring microeconomic aspects of the deposit insurance–bank risk relationship. It employs four of the five IMF core financial soundness indicators, using data from financial statements for 914 banks in 64 countries. It also disaggregates deposit insurance by individual design features. Results, generated using GMM, suggest that deposit insurance mainly affects bank risk through its relationship with profitability and asset quality. An optimal deposit insurance system might have features such as voluntary membership, no cover for foreign currency deposits, no coinsurance, be unfunded, and administered by a private sector manager with the insurance cost borne fully by the private sector

Adjuvant electrochemotherapy in veterinary patients: a model for the planning of future therapies in humans

The treatment of soft tissue tumors needs the coordinated adoption of surgery with radiation therapy and eventually, chemotherapy. The radiation therapy (delivered with a linear accelerator) can be preoperative, intraoperative, or postoperative. In selected patients adjuvant brachytherapy can be adopted. The goal of these associations is to achieve tumor control while maximally preserving the normal tissues from side effects. Unfortunately, the occurrence of local and distant complications is still elevated. Electrochemotherapy is a novel technique that combines the administration of anticancer agents to the application of permeabilizing pulses in order to increase the uptake of antitumor molecules. While its use in humans is still confined to the treatment of cutaneous neoplasms or the palliation of skin tumor metastases, in veterinary oncology this approach is rapidly becoming a primary treatment. This review summarizes the recent progresses in preclinical oncology and their possible transfer to humans

Occurrence of pathogenic bacteria associated with Clarias gariepinus in selected fish farms of Kumbotso local governement area of Kano state, Nigeria

With the diminishing rate of natural fish resources globally, a reasonable percentage of fish and fish products supply now comes from aquaculture. However, quality production is highly required for sustainable demand and supply. It is in view of the aforementioned that this study was designed to examine the quality status of Clarias gariepinus in relation to pathogenic bacteria in two fish farms in Kumbotso Local Government Area of Kano State, Nigeria. 66 Clarias gariepinus with bodyweight 17g - 215g were randomly sampled from July to December 2012 followed by the isolation and identification of different pathogenic bacteria from skin and gill. A total of 132 samples comprising skin (1cm2) and gill (1g) were subjected to microbiological assays in the laboratory following standard procedures. Nutrient Agar, MacConkey Agar, Eoisin Methylene blue, Salmonella Shigella Agar and Blood Agar were used for isolation and maintenance of cultures during the study. Lactose broth, Brilliant Green lactose bile broth (BGLB) was used for the estimation of Escherichia coli Most Probable Number per 1cm2 of skin and 1 gram of gill (MPN/ml and MPN/g). The highest mean of Aerobic Plate Count (APC) was 1.26 x 104 cfu/ml while the highest mean of Escherichia coli MPN/1cm2 was 8.75. Bacterial pathogens isolated and percentage occurrences in parenthesis were Escherichia coli (54.27 %); Stapholococcus aureus (22.48 %); Pseudomonas aeruginosa (10.85 %); Salmonella paratyphi (9.30 %) and Enterobacter aerogenes (3.10 %). There was no significant difference (χ2 = 3.42, P > 0.05) in bacteria isolates from the two fish farms. The result from this study indicated that the fishes were less contaminated with pathogenic bacteria, thus consumers are safe to eat fishes harvested from these farms since all the values are within the recommended limit of < 5 x 105 cfu/g for APC and, 11 for Escherichia coli MPN/ml by International Commission for Microbiological Specification for Food (ICMSF, 2007).Keywords: Fish farm, Clarias gariepinus, Microbiological assays, Pathogenic bacteria

Diffusion tensor imaging and magnetic resonance spectroscopy assessment of cancellous bone quality in femoral neck of healthy, osteopenic and osteoporotic subjects at 3T: Preliminary experience.

We assessed the potential of diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) in combination with proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy ((1)H-MRS), in cancellous bone quality evaluation of the femoral neck in postmenopausal women. INTRODUCTION: DTI allows for non-invasive microarchitectural characterization of heterogeneous tissue. In this work we hypothesized that DTI parameters mean diffusivity (MD) and fractional anisotropy (FA) of bone marrow water, can provide information about microstructural changes that occur with the development of osteoporosis disease. Because osteoporosis is associated with increased bone marrow fat content, which in principal can alter DTI parameters, the goal of this study was to examine the potential of MD and FA, in combination with bone marrow fat fraction (FF), to discriminate between healthy, osteopenic and osteoporotic subjects, classified according to DXA criteria. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Forty postmenopausal women (mean age, 68.7years; range 52-81years), underwent a Dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) examination in femoral neck, to be classified as healthy (n=12), osteopenic (n=14) and osteoporotic (n=14) subjects. (1)H-MRS and DTI (with b value=2500s/mm(2)) of femoral neck were obtained in each subject at 3T. The study protocol was approved by local Ethics Committee. MD, FA, FF and MD/FF, FA/FF were obtained and compared among the three bone-density groups. One-way ANOVA with multiple comparisons Bonferroni test and Pearson correlation analysis were applied. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis was also performed. RESULTS: Reproducibility of DTI measures was satisfactory. CV was approximately 2%-3% for MD and 4%-5% for FA measurements. Moreover, no significant difference was found in both MD and FA measurements between two separate sessions (median 34days apart) comprised of six healthy volunteers. FF was able to discriminate between healthy and osteoporotic subjects only. Conversely MD and FA were able to discriminate healthy from osteopenic and healthy from osteoporotic subjects, but they were not able to discriminate between osteopenic and osteoporotic patients. A significant correlation between MD and FF was observed in healthy group only. A moderate correlation was found between MD and T-score when all groups together are considered. No significant correlation was found between MD and T-score within groups. A significant positive correlation between FA and FF was found in both osteopenic and osteoporotic groups. Vice-versa no correlation between FA and FF was observed in healthy group. A high significant positive correlation was found between FA and T-score in all groups together, in healthy and in osteoporotic groups. MD/FF and FA/FF are characterized by a higher sensitivity and specificity compared to MD and FA in the discrimination between healthy, and osteoporotic subjects. MD/FF vs FA/FF graph extracted from femoral neck, identify all healthy individuals according to DXA results. CONCLUSION: DTI-(1)H-MRS protocol performed in femoral neck seems to be highly sensitive and specific in identifying healthy subjects. A MR exam is more expensive when compared to a DXA investigation. However, even though DXA BMD evaluation has been the accepted standard for osteoporosis diagnosis, DXA result has a low predictive value on patients' risk for future fractures. Thus, new approaches for examining patients at risk for developing osteoporosis would be desirable. Preliminary results showed here suggest that future studies on a larger population based on DTI assessment in the femoral neck, in combination with (1)H-MRS investigations, might allow screening of high-risk populations and the establishment of cut-off values of normality, with potential application of the method to single subjects

Information-theoretic postulates for quantum theory

Why are the laws of physics formulated in terms of complex Hilbert spaces? Are there natural and consistent modifications of quantum theory that could be tested experimentally? This book chapter gives a self-contained and accessible summary of our paper [New J. Phys. 13, 063001, 2011] addressing these questions, presenting the main ideas, but dropping many technical details. We show that the formalism of quantum theory can be reconstructed from four natural postulates, which do not refer to the mathematical formalism, but only to the information-theoretic content of the physical theory. Our starting point is to assume that there exist physical events (such as measurement outcomes) that happen probabilistically, yielding the mathematical framework of "convex state spaces". Then, quantum theory can be reconstructed by assuming that (i) global states are determined by correlations between local measurements, (ii) systems that carry the same amount of information have equivalent state spaces, (iii) reversible time evolution can map every pure state to every other, and (iv) positivity of probabilities is the only restriction on the possible measurements.Comment: 17 pages, 3 figures. v3: some typos corrected and references updated. Summarizes the argumentation and results of arXiv:1004.1483. Contribution to the book "Quantum Theory: Informational Foundations and Foils", Springer Verlag (http://www.springer.com/us/book/9789401773027), 201

Dynamics of cerebrospinal fluid levels of matrix metalloproteinases in human traumatic brain injury

Matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) are extracellular enzymes involved in the degradation of extracellular matrix (ECM) proteins. Increased expression of MMPs have been described in traumatic brain injury (TBI) and may contribute to additional tissue injury and blood–brain barrier damage. The objectives of this study were to determine longitudinal changes in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) concentrations of MMPs after acute TBI and in relation to clinical outcomes, with patients with idiopathic normal pressure hydrocephalus (iNPH) serving as a contrast group. The study included 33 TBI patients with ventricular CSF serially sampled, and 38 iNPH patients in the contrast group. Magnetic bead-based immunoassays were utilized to measure the concentrations of eight MMPs in ventricular human CSF. CSF concentrations of MMP-1, MMP-3 and MMP-10 were increased in TBI patients (at baseline) compared with the iNPH group (p < 0.001), while MMP-2, MMP-9 and MMP-12 did not differ between the groups. MMP-1, MMP-3 and MMP-10 concentrations decreased with time after trauma (p = 0.001–0.04). Increased concentrations of MMP-2 and MMP-10 in CSF at baseline were associated with an unfavourable TBI outcome (p = 0.002–0.02). Observed variable pattern of changes in MMP concentrations indicates that specific MMPs serve different roles in the pathophysiology following TBI, and are in turn associated with clinical outcomes

Nanomaterial interactions with biomembranes: Bridging the gap between soft matter models and biological context

Synthetic polymers, nanoparticles, and carbon-based materials have great potential in applications including drug delivery, gene transfection, in vitro and in vivo imaging, and the alteration of biological function. Nature and humans use different design strategies to create nanomaterials: biological objects have emerged from billions of years of evolution and from adaptation to their environment resulting in high levels of structural complexity; in contrast, synthetic nanomaterials result from minimalistic but controlled design options limited by the authors' current understanding of the biological world. This conceptual mismatch makes it challenging to create synthetic nanomaterials that possess desired functions in biological media. In many biologically relevant applications, nanomaterials must enter the cell interior to perform their functions. An essential transport barrier is the cell-protecting plasma membrane and hence the understanding of its interaction with nanomaterials is a fundamental task in biotechnology. The authors present open questions in the field of nanomaterial interactions with biological membranes, including: how physical mechanisms and molecular forces acting at the nanoscale restrict or inspire design options; which levels of complexity to include next in computational and experimental models to describe how nanomaterials cross barriers via passive or active processes; and how the biological media and protein corona interfere with nanomaterial functionality. In this Perspective, the authors address these questions with the aim of offering guidelines for the development of next-generation nanomaterials that function in biological media

Electroporation increases antitumoral efficacy of the bcl-2 antisense G3139 and chemotherapy in a human melanoma xenograft

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Nucleic acids designed to modulate the expression of target proteins remain a promising therapeutic strategy in several diseases, including cancer. However, clinical success is limited by the lack of efficient intracellular delivery. In this study we evaluated whether electroporation could increase the delivery of antisense oligodeoxynucleotides against bcl-2 (G3139) as well as the efficacy of combination chemotherapy in human melanoma xenografts.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Melanoma-bearing nude mice were treated i.v. with G3139 and/or cisplatin (DDP) followed by the application of trains of electric pulses to tumors. Western blot, immunohistochemistry and real-time PCR were performed to analyze protein and mRNA expression. The effect of electroporation on muscles was determined by histology, while tumor apoptosis and the proliferation index were analyzed by immunohistochemistry. Antisense oligodeoxynucleotides tumor accumulation was measured by FACS and confocal microscopy.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The G3139/Electroporation combined therapy produced a significant inhibition of tumor growth (TWI, more than 50%) accompanied by a marked tumor re-growth delay (TRD, about 20 days). The efficacy of this treatment was due to the higher G3139 uptake in tumor cells which led to a marked down-regulation of bcl-2 protein expression. Moreover, the G3139/EP combination treatment resulted in an enhanced apoptotic index and a decreased proliferation rate of tumors. Finally, an increased tumor response was observed after treatment with the triple combination G3139/DDP/EP, showing a TWI of about 75% and TRD of 30 days.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>These results demonstrate that electroporation is an effective strategy to improve the delivery of antisense oligodeoxynucleotides within tumor cells <it>in vivo </it>and it may be instrumental in optimizing the response of melanoma to chemotherapy. The high response rate observed in this study suggest to apply this strategy for the treatment of melanoma patients.</p

An approximate model for cancellous bone screw fixation

This is the author's accepted manuscript. The final published article is available from the link below. Copyright @ 2013 Taylor & Francis.This paper presents a finite element (FE) model to identify parameters that affect the performance of an improved cancellous bone screw fixation technique, and hence potentially improve fracture treatment. In cancellous bone of low apparent density, it can be difficult to achieve adequate screw fixation and hence provide stable fracture fixation that enables bone healing. Data from predictive FE models indicate that cements can have a significant potential to improve screw holding power in cancellous bone. These FE models are used to demonstrate the key parameters that determine pull-out strength in a variety of screw, bone and cement set-ups, and to compare the effectiveness of different configurations. The paper concludes that significant advantages, up to an order of magnitude, in screw pull-out strength in cancellous bone might be gained by the appropriate use of a currently approved calcium phosphate cement