Multiple Regime Shifts: The Influence of ASEAN Politics on Financial Integration within South-East Asia

For the last two decades, a key policy objective of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), to which it claims much success, has been the supra-national integration among the region’s financial markets. This paper critically appraises this claim by locating and estimating multiple structural breaks in two equity market-based indicators and by employing a method to examine the effects of the ASEAN decision-making regime on variations in South-East Asian equity prices. The main findings of the paper are that the majority of identified structural breaks coincide with regime shifts in the ASEAN decision-making mechanism but that the politics of the regimes has had little influence on supra-national integration of the region’s financial markets.ASEAN, equity prices, financial markets, integration, politics, structural breaks

A Normal Country

During the 1990s, Russia underwent an extraordinary transformation from a communist dictatorship to a multi-party democracy, from a centrally planned economy to a market economy, and from a belligerent adversary of the West to a cooperative partner. Yet a consensus in the US circa 2000 viewed Russia as a disastrous and threatening failure, and the 1990s as a decade of catastrophe for its citizens. Analyzing a variety of economic and political data, we demonstrate a large gap between this perception and the facts. In contrast to the common image, by the late 1990s Russia had become a typical middle- income capitalist democracy.

The experiences and meaning for UK-based African women after being diagnosed with HIV during their pregnancy

Section A provides a conceptual critical review of the literature pertinent to the consideration of Mothers living with HIV/AIDS (MLWHA), with a particular focus on African mothers. This review first highlights relevant contextual factors, including discussing prevalence rates and the current reconceptualisations of HIV. This is followed by theories and research relevant to MLWHA, whilst considering wider contextual, social and cultural factors. Thirdly, the theoretical links of the reviewed literature to coping models and strategies are made, and specific cultural factors considered. Finally, suggestions for future research are highlighted. Section B provides the findings of a qualitative investigation conducted to explore the experience of African women living in the UK after being diagnosed with HIV during their pregnancy. Twelve participants completed a short demographic questionnaire, and participated in a one-to-one semi-structured interview. The interview was designed to address multiple personal, interpersonal, and systemic issues related to their HIV status, and HIV in the context of motherhood. Data were analysed using interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA). Themes which emerged included: HIV being part of one’s wider tapestry, community and systemic influences and responses to HIV, experiencing a different story of HIV, and the mother-child relationship. Strikingly, the aspect of HIV that these women reported finding most distressing was their inability to breastfeed, which seemed central to their cultural identity as mothers. While the generalisability of these findings is clearly limited, nevertheless it seems important for clinicians to (i) recognise that HIV may not always be the primary difficulty facing their clients, and may be amongst numerous other factors, (ii) consider systemic and contextual factors, including cultural influences and past trauma, (iii) focus on client resources and capacity for resilience, and (iv) support clients to access local resources, including support groups, (v) attend to issues around confidentiality, disclosure decisions and breastfeeding, and (vi) hold in mind the potentially powerful and helpful affect for these women of witnessing different narratives around HIV. The continuing need to counteract stigma and discrimination, including from health professionals and from the media, was also apparent. Section C provides a critical appraisal and reflection on the research process, including, evaluating what research skills were learned, which research skills the researcher wishes to develop in the future, what would the researcher have done differently given the chance, how will the research shape or inform the researcher’s clinical practice, and what future research related to the studied area would the researcher consider carrying out

Tumor Suppressor p53 in Cerebellar Development, Medulloblastoma Initiation, and Treatment Resistance.

TP53 is a crucial tumor suppressor inactivated in the majority of human cancers. Medulloblastoma (MB), the most common malignant pediatric brain tumor, is an exception, rarely mutating TP53. Within the Sonic Hedgehog (SHH) MB subtype, TP53 mutation is a prognostic factor, and mutant TP53 SHH-MBs have the worst prognosis of all subtypes. How most SHH-MBs can form without mutating TP53 remains unclear. Almost all SHH-MBs with TP53 mutation arise during childhood, indicating that mutation to TP53 must occur during a limited developmental window. Early postnatal (postnatal day 0.5) granule cell precursors (GCPs) are p53-activation resistant following genotoxic stress, whereas late postnatal (postnatal day 10) GCPs are p53-activation sensitive. I hypothesize that a p53-activation resistant GCP population gives rise to p53 wild type SHH-MBs and that p53-activation sensitive GCPs are eliminated during postnatal development unless they harbor mutant p53. Using two mutant p53 alleles, a conditional knockout, p53∆E5-6, and a hypomorph, p53R172P, I demonstrated that p53 activation occurs during cerebellar development, and is activated in the earliest detectable lesions driven by Ptch1 loss. Consistently, p53-dependent apoptosis plays a major role in both the initiation and progression of SHH-MBs, while p53-dependent cell cycle arrest only delays SHH-MB progression. Surprisingly, a subset of Ptch1-deficient pre-neoplastic lesions (PNLs) showed no evidence of p53 activation, regardless of p53 mutation, providing a mechanistic basis for the formation of p53 wild type (WT) SHH-MBs. To test whether these PNL represented a p53-activation resistant population, I designed a clinically relevant treatment scheme to induce genotoxic stress and elicit a heightened p53 response. I found that treatment eliminated all PNL cells and reduced the incidence of SHH-MBs, but only when p53-mediated apoptosis was activated. Activation of p53-mediated cell-cycle arrest alone halted proliferation and induced neuronal differentiation, but failed to eliminate Sox2-positive stem-like cells, which were capable of surviving treatment and generating highly proliferative SHH-MB. Thus, only when p53 activation surpasses a critical threshold will Sox2-positive stem-like cells be eliminated, preventing p53 recurrence and determining therapeutic outcomes.PHDCellular & Molecular BiologyUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/135886/1/treisman_1.pd

Are All Happy Families Alike? Conceptualizing a Dashboard of Family Flourishing

In the opening line of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, we read that all happy families are alike, yet all unhappy families are unhappy in their own way. The Anna Karenina Principle is derived from this and is understood to mean that success in any endeavor is so elusive that failure to achieve even one condition for success will lead to certain doom. Applying this principle to the family, one might say that a deficiency in any one element of family well-being will prevent family flourishing and doom a family to be unhappy. Thus, there are many more ways for a family to be unhappy than to flourish. Is this a helpful frame through which to view family well-being and happiness? What have scholars from the science of human flourishing learned about the conditions for family well-being? How does individual well-being relate to family flourishing? How do positive psychologists conceptualize, define, and measure family well-being? Below, I present findings from a broad survey of the positive psychology literature related to defining and measuring individual and family flourishing. I conclude with a conceptual framework for a Family Flourishing Dashboard (FFD). The dashboard incorporates a curated subset of scales for measuring subjective individual and family well-being. Such a dashboard may help families and the practitioners who work with them by promoting informed and constructive discussion about individual family members’ hopes and goals for the family. Practitioners who work with families may find this dashboard of value in planning and developing positive interventions intended to boost family well-being

Requirements for Mediator Complex Subunits Distinguish Three Classes of Notch Target Genes at the Drosophila Wing Margin

Spatial and temporal gene regulation relies on a combinatorial code of sequence-specific transcription factors that must be integrated by the general transcriptional machinery. A key link between the two is the mediator complex, which consists of a core complex that reversibly associates with the accessory kinase module. We show here that genes activated by Notch signaling at the dorsal-ventral boundary of the Drosophila wing disc fall into three classes that are affected differently by the loss of kinase module subunits. One class requires all four kinase module subunits for activation, while the others require only Med12 and Med13, either for activation or for repression. These distinctions do not result from different requirements for the Notch coactivator Mastermind or the corepressors Hairless and Groucho. We propose that interactions with the kinase module through distinct cofactors allow the DNA-binding protein Suppressor of Hairless to carry out both its activator and repressor functions

Income, Democracy, and the Cunning of Reason

A long-standing debate pits those who think economic development leads to democratization against those who argue that both result from distant historical causes. Using the most comprehensive estimates of national income available, I show that development is associated with more democratic government—but in the medium run (10 to 20 years). The reason is that, for the most part, higher income only prompts a breakthrough to more democratic politics after the incumbent leader falls from power. And in the short run, faster economic growth increases the leader’s odds of survival. This logic—for which I provide evidence at the levels of individual countries and the world—helps explain why democracy advances in waves followed by periods of stasis and why dictators, concerned only to entrench themselves in power, end up preparing their countries to leap to a higher level of democracy when they are eventually overthrown.