Can Market Power influence Employment, Wage Inequality and Growth ?

We introduce an efficiency-wage mechanism into an innovation-driven growth model. Due to informational problems, the labour market is segmented and homogeneous workers may be employed either in a non-competitive intermediate sector or in a competitive research one. We analyse the impact that variations in the monopoly power of the intermediate firms may have on unemployment, wage inequality and growth. We find that the lower the product market competition in the intermediate sector, the higher the research employment, the lower the intermediate sector employment, the higher the aggregate growth rate. Growth and inequality are negatively correlated whereas growth and unemployment are positively correlated. The last two results are obtained through numerical simulations.Efficiency wages; research and development; endogenous growth; market power

Reverse transcriptase-PCR differential display analysis of meningococcal transcripts during infection of human cells: Up-regulation of priA and its role in intracellular replication

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p><it>In vitro </it>studies with cell line infection models are beginning to disclose the strategies that <it>Neisseria meningitidis </it>uses to survive and multiply inside the environment of the infected host cell. The goal of this study was to identify novel virulence determinants that are involved in this process using an <it>in vitro </it>infection system.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>By using reverse transcriptase-PCR differential display we have identified a set of meningococcal genes significantly up-regulated during residence of the bacteria in infected HeLa cells including genes involved in L-glutamate transport (<it>gltT </it>operon), citrate metabolism (<it>gltA</it>), disulfide bond formation (<it>dsbC</it>), two-partner secretion (<it>hrpA-hrpB</it>), capsulation (<it>lipA</it>), and DNA replication/repair (<it>priA</it>). The role of PriA, a protein that in <it>Escherichia coli </it>plays a central role in replication restart of collapsed or arrested DNA replication forks, has been investigated. <it>priA </it>inactivation resulted in a number of growth phenotypes that were fully complemented by supplying a functional copy of <it>priA</it>. The <it>priA</it>-defective mutant exhibited reduced viability during late logarithmic growth phase. This defect was more severe when it was incubated under oxygen-limiting conditions using nitrite as terminal electron acceptors in anaerobic respiration. When compared to wild type it was more sensitive to hydrogen peroxide and the nitric oxide generator sodium nitroprusside. The <it>priA</it>-defective strain was not affected in its ability to invade HeLa cells, but, noticeably, exhibited severely impaired intracellular replication and, at variance with wild type and complemented strains, it co-localized with lysosomal associated membrane protein 1.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>In conclusion, our study i.) demonstrates the efficacy of the experimental strategy that we describe for discovering novel virulence determinants of <it>N. meningitidis </it>and ii.) provides evidence for a role of <it>priA </it>in preventing both oxidative and nitrosative injury, and in intracellular meningococcal replication.</p

It's not always varicocele: A strange case of Zinner syndrome

A 42-year-old man presented with a huge varicocele. The patient was completely asymptomatic and he did not complain of dysuria, perineal discomfort, or ejaculatory pain. During the visit, the mass mimicked a varicocele and during the Valsalva maneuver a reflux was documented by colour Doppler ultrasound and an abdominal ultrasound revealed an agenesis of the right kidney and a 4.5-cm diameter intra-prostatic cyst. An abdominal and pelvis magnetic resonance imaging was then performed, which confirmed the right renal agenesis, with an epididymal enlargement in the body and tail. This is a unique case of Zinner syndrome in which the patient presented with a paratesticular mass mimicking a varicocele. \ua9 2015 Canadian Urological Association

Inguinal recurrence of malignant mesothelioma of the tunica vaginalis: one case report with delayed recurrence and review of the literature

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In vitro cytotoxicity of different thermoplastic materials for clear aligners

To investigate the in vitro cytotoxicity of different thermoplastic materials for clear aligners on human primary gingival fibroblasts (HGFs)

Alice in "Bio-land": engineering challenges in the world of Life-Sciences

Alice is an engineer who ventures into the research world of life sciences. To her eyes, life sciences researchers work backwards compared to what happens in her world. It appears that their research methodology has a number of issues that may limit its potential. Nevertheless, she also becomes aware that a different set of problems arises if her own traditional top-down engineering approach is applied to life sciences. This article discusses how the authors see the role of systems and computational biology as a fundamental methodological "middle-ground" between these two (apparently) distant worlds. This article is part of a special issue on life sciences computing

Media monitoring and information extraction for the highly inflected agglutinative language Hungarian

The Europe Media Monitor (EMM) is a fully-automatic system that analyses written online news by gathering articles in over 70 languages and by applying text analysis software for currently 21 languages, without using linguistic tools such as parsers, part-of-speech taggers or morphological analysers. In this paper, we describe the effort of adding to EMM Hungarian text mining tools for news gathering; document categorisation; named entity recognition and classification for persons, organisations and locations; name lemmatisation; quotation recognition; and cross-lingual linking of related news clusters. The major challenge of dealing with the Hungarian language is its high degree of inflection and agglutination. We present several experiments where we apply linguistically light-weight methods to deal with inflection and we propose a method to overcome the challenges. We also present detailed frequency lists of Hungarian person and location name suffixes, as found in real-life news texts. This empirical data can be used to draw further conclusions and to improve existing Named Entity Recognition software. Within EMM, the solutions described here will also be applied to other morphologically complex languages such as those of the Slavic language family. The media monitoring and analysis system EMM is freely accessible online via the web pag

Prevention and treatment of infectious complications after urogenital prosthesis surgery

Prostheses are widely used in urogenital surgery for many decades and have gained a fundamental role in the management of multiple diseases with good results in terms of functionality, aesthetic outcomes and patients\u2019 satisfaction. It is remarkable that prosthetic device vary in term of mechanical sophistication, costs and surgical implantation techniques ranging from simple device widely used in urological practice like testicular prosthesis to highly sophisticated devices as Inflatable Penile Prosthesis (IPP) and Artificial Urinary Sphincter (AUS). Despite continuous implementations of the devices and improvements of surgical implantation techniques infective complications are still fearful and not uncommon events. Risk of infection depends on patients\u2019 individual features, perioperative strategies, implantation techniques and prosthetic devices. Prevent these complications is imperative because the management of prosthesis infection requires removal of the device in most cases. Centres that plan prosthetic implantations should based on these strategies protocols in order to prevent as far as possible infective complications

Comparison of an electromagnetic and an electrohydraulic lithotripter: Efficacy, pain and complications

Introduction. We analyzed efficacy and complications of extracorporeal shock wave lithotripsy (SWL) and analgesia requirement during the treatment in two groups of patients treated with different lithotripters. Materials and methods. The patients treated were 189, 102 between September 2016 and April 2017 with HMT Lithotron® LITS 172, electrohydraulic, and 87 between May and September 2017 with Storz Medical Modulith® SLK, electromagnetic. The main differences between the lithotripters are: type of energy source, patient position, frequency and number of shock waves. All the patients underwent sonography before and four to eight weeks after the treatment. The targeting was sonographic for renal stones and X-ray for ureteral stones. All the patients received Ketorolac before the treatment with a supplement of Pethidine if needed. People lost to follow-up and with incomplete data were excluded. Results. We enrolled 173 patients, 94 treated with the electrohydraulic lithotripter and 79 with the electromagnetic one. 43 patients (54%) in the electromagnetic group and 31 (33%) in the electrohydraulic group were stone free or presented clinically insignificant residual fragments (CIRFs), defined as asymptomatic, noninfectious, ≤ 3 mm. The association between CIRFs and the kind of lithotripter was statistically significant (p = 0.004). An increased need for analgesia was found in 14.9% of patients in the electromagnetic group and in 81% of patients in the electrohydraulic group (p < 0.001). The access to emergency room (intractable pain, kidney failure, fever, Steintrasse) after the treatment was similar in the two groups (p = 0.37). Conclusions. The best results in stones fragmentation and less analgesia requirement were demonstrated in the electromagnetic lithotripter group. No differences were demonstrated considering the need for emergency room after the treatmen