[Review of] Ellen Carol DuBois and Vicki L. Ruiz, eds. Unequal Sisters: A Multicultural Reader in U. S. Women\u27s History

Edited by Ellen C. DuBois and Vicki L. Ruiz, two respected historians, Unequal Sisters: A Multicultural Reader in U.S. Women\u27s History is a welcome response to the call for a more complex approach to women\u27s history. Central to this approach are the integration of women of color into women\u27s history and a definition of community that reflects both conflict and concord

Implementation via vote delegation

For some years now, the number of political parties asking for the direct participation of citizens in the decision making process is increasing. These parties defend that citizens should be able to decide on each and every one of the issues that comes up for discussion, being thus what the majority of people desires for such specific issue carried out. However, organizing a referendum on each single issue may involve serious problems. An alternative option is to allow voters to delegate the decision making process to a politician who, once in power, will decide on each single issue. We wonder under which conditions the two aforementioned procedures to make decisions may be equivalent in terms of the developed policies for each of the considered issues.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech. JSPS KAKENHI Grants (15H05728) International Economic Review JSPS Open Research Area for the Social Sciences Progra

Nash equilibria applied to Spot-financial equilibria in General equilibrium incomplete market models

We consider a two period pure exchange economy with a finite number of states of nature at the second date. The economy consists of a real asset structure and a finite set of durable goods in the initial period that depreciate; we suppose that there is only one single good available in each state of nature at the second date. In this paper, we demonstrate that the spot-financial equilibrium can be obtained as a Nash equilibrium of a market game in which the strategies of the players consist in suggesting prices and quantities for both goods and assets.Incomplete markets; market games; Nash equilibrium; strategic outcome functions

The Hidden Costs of Fixed Term Contracts: the Impact On Work Accidents

This paper assesses whether there is a systematic difference between the accident rates of fixed term and permanent contract workers that is not just the result of a compositional effect. A pure contractual effect might exist because the short duration of the temporary contract reduces the incentives to invest in specific human capital leading to a higher accident rate. I provide two identification strategies to control for selection and reporting biases. The results confirm there is a pure contractual effect that increases the accident probability by 4 percent to 7 percent.work accidents, fixed-term contracts, productivity

CONTRASTING EFFECTS OF AN MDM2 FUNCTIONAL POLYMORPHISM ON TUMOR PHENOTYPES

Cancer predisposition by the cooperation of genetic variants, such as single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), may be of much greater significance to public health than previously appreciated. Functional polymorphisms are genetic variants that alter gene function. Meta-analyses associate many functional polymorphisms with cancer risk. The MDM2 SNP309G allele is a cancer-associated functional polymorphism positioned in the MDM2 P2 promoter that enhances transcription factor SP1 binding, resulting in elevated levels of MDM2 concomitant with decreased p53 tumor-suppressor activity. Mdm2SNP309G/G mice are more prone to spontaneous tumor formation than Mdm2SNP309T/T mice, providing direct evidence for the impact of this SNP on tumor development. We examined the impact of SNP309 on cancer risk in response to environmental factors by treating SNP309 mice with ionizing radiation, UVB, or Benzo(a)pyrene. The results show that SNP309G cooperates with ionizing radiation to exacerbate tumor development. Contrastingly, ultraviolet B light or Benzo(a)pyrene exposure of skin indicates that SNP309G allele protects against squamous cell carcinoma susceptibility. These contradicting differences led us to interrogate the mechanism by which Mdm2 SNP309 regulates tumor susceptibility in a tissue-specific manner. The assessment of potential transcriptional regulators in ENCODE ChIP-seq database identified transcriptional repressor E2F6 as a possible negative regulator of MDM2 expression. Our data show that E2F6 protein is expressed at higher levels in skin keratinocytes of SNP309 mice as compared to lymphatic tissues. Furthermore, E2F6 binds and suppresses Mdm2 expression in cells harboring the SNP309G allele but not the SNP309T allele. Thus, the Mdm2 SNP309G allele exhibits tissue-specific regulation and differentially impacts cancer risk

Two Globally Convergent Adaptive Speed Observers for Mechanical Systems

A globally exponentially stable speed observer for mechanical systems was recently reported in the literature, under the assumptions of known (or no) Coulomb friction and no disturbances. In this note we propose and adaptive version of this observer, which is robust vis--a--vis constant disturbances. Moreover, we propose a new globally convergent speed observer that, besides rejecting the disturbances, estimates some unknown friction coefficients for a class of mechanical systems that contains several practical examples