Narrowing Sex Differential in Life Expectancy in Canada and Austria: Comparative Analysis

Throughout most of the 20th century the sex gap in life expectancy in the industrialised countries widened in favour of women. By the early 1980s a reversal in the long-term pattern of this differential occurred in some countries, where it reached a maximum and thereafter has followed a declining trend. It is argued in this study that this development represents an emerging feature of the epidemiological profile of post-industrial societies. I look at Canada and Austria as two representative cases of this phenomenon over roughly three decades, between 1970 and 2001. Decomposition analysis shows that reduced sex differences in life expectancy in the 1980s and 1990s obtained mainly from the effects of reduced sex differences in mortality with respect to heart disease, and secondarily accidents and violence and lung cancer. Heart disease has played a larger role in Canada, whereas differential mortality from accidents and violence has been of greater importance in Austria. A further aspect of the investigation links sex differences in smoking prevalence to sex differences in life expectancy. A model is suggested that incorporates female labour force participation and a measure of gender role traditionalism in society as factors in female smoking prevalence. These variables are also postulated to correlate with change in the sex gap in life expectancy by a time lag of twenty years. It is found that sex differences in smoking prevalence in the past are related to sex difference in life expectancy in the present, and that female labour force participation and gender role traditionalism are also associated with the sex gap in expectation of life. The findings are interpreted in reference to epidemiological transition theory and the literature concerning change in the position of women and sex differences in mortality in high-income nations.

A new perspective on the analysis of helix-helix packing preferences in globular proteins

For many years it had been believed that steric compatibility of helix interfaces could be the source of the observed preference for particular angles between neighbouring helices as emerging from statistical analysis of protein databanks. Several elegant models describing how side chains on helices can interdigitate without steric clashes were able to account quite reasonably for the observed distributions. However, it was later recognized (Bowie, 1997 and Walther, 1998) that the ``bare'' measured angle distribution should be corrected to avoid statistical bias. Disappointingly, the rescaled distributions dramatically lost their similarity with theoretical predictions casting many doubts on the validity of the geometrical assumptions and models. In this report we elucidate a few points concerning the proper choice of the random reference distribution. In particular we show the existence of crucial corrections due to the correct implementation of the approach used to discriminate whether two helices are in contact or not and to measure their relative orientations. By using this new rescaling, the ``true'' packing angle preferences are well described, even more than with the original ``bare'' distribution, by regular packing models.Comment: 23 pages, 5 figure

A Novel Technique to Reconstruct the Z mass in WZ/ZZ Events with Lepton(s), Missing Transverse Energy and Three Jets at CDFII

Observing WZ/ZZ production at the Tevatron in a final state with a lepton, missing transverse energy and jets is extremely difficult because of the low signal rate and the huge background. In an attempt to increase the acceptance we study the sample where three high-energy jets are reconstructed, where about 1/3 of the diboson signal events are expected to end. Rather than choosing the two E$_{T}$-leading jets to detect a Z signal, we make use of the information carried by all jets. To qualify the potential of our method, we estimate the probability of observing an inclusive diboson signal at the three standard deviations level (P$_{3\sigma}$) to be about four times larger than when using the two leading jets only. Aiming at applying the method to the search for the exclusive WZ/ZZ$\rightarrow \ell \nu q\bar{q}$ channel in the three jets sample, we analyzed separately the sample with at least one $b$-tagged jet and the sample with no tags. In WZ/ZZ$\rightarrow \ell \nu b\bar{b}$ search, we observe a modest improvement in sensitivity over the option of building the Z-mass from the two leading jets in E$_T$ . Studies for improving the method further are on-going.Comment: Presented at the 2011 Hadron Collider Physics symposium (HCP-2011), Paris, France, November 14-18 2011, 3 pages, 8 figur

Simple solvation potential for coarse-grained models of proteins

We formulate a simple solvation potential based on a coarsed-grain representation of amino acids with two spheres modeling the $C_\alpha$ atom and an effective side-chain centroid. The potential relies on a new method for estimating the buried area of residues, based on counting the effective number of burying neighbours in a suitable way. This latter quantity shows a good correlation with the buried area of residues computed from all atom crystallographic structures. We check the discriminatory power of the solvation potential alone to identify the native fold of a protein from a set of decoys and show the potential to be considerably selective.Comment: 18 pages, 8 tables, 3 figure

A simplified exactly solvable model for beta-amyloid aggregation

We propose an exactly solvable simplified statistical mechanical model for the thermodynamics of beta-amyloid aggregation, generalizing a well-studied model for protein folding. The monomer concentration is explicitly taken into account as well as a non trivial dependence on the microscopic degrees of freedom of the single peptide chain, both in the alpha-helix folded isolated state and in the fibrillar one. The phase diagram of the model is studied and compared to the outcome of fibril formation experiments which is qualitatively reproduced.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figure

Phase diagram of force-induced DNA unzipping in exactly solvable models

The mechanical separation of the double helical DNA structure induced by forces pulling apart the two DNA strands (``unzipping'') has been the subject of recent experiments. Analytical results are obtained within various models of interacting pairs of directed walks in the (1,1,...,1) direction on the hypercubic lattice, and the phase diagram in the force-temperature plane is studied for a variety of cases. The scaling behaviour is determined at both the unzipping and the melting transition. We confirm the existence of a cold denaturation transition recently observed in numerical simulations: for a finite range of forces the system gets unzipped by {\it decreasing} the temperature. The existence of this transition is rigorously established for generic lattice and continuum space models.Comment: 19 pages, 5 eps figures; revised version with minor changes, presentation simplified in the text with details in appendix. Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.

From A. rhizogenes RolD to Plant P5CS: Exploiting Proline to Control Plant Development

The capability of the soil bacterium Agrobacterium rhizogenes to reprogram plant development and induce adventitious hairy roots relies on the expression of a few root-inducing genes (rol A, B, C and D), which can be transferred from large virulence plasmids into the genome of susceptible plant cells. Contrary to rolA, B and C, which are present in all the virulent strains of A. rhizogenes and control hairy root formation by affecting auxin and cytokinin signalling, rolD appeared non-essential and not associated with plant hormones. Its role remained elusive until it was discovered that it codes for a proline synthesis enzyme. The finding that, in addition to its role in protein synthesis and stress adaptation, proline is also involved in hairy roots induction, disclosed a novel role for this amino acid in plant development. Indeed, from this initial finding, proline was shown to be critically involved in a number of developmental processes, such as floral transition, embryo development, pollen fertility and root elongation. In this review, we present a historical survey on the rol genes focusing on the role of rolD and proline in plant development

Credit rationing and the financial structure of Italian small and medium enterprises

Our aim is to analyze the effect of public subsidies on the development path of Italian small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Public subsidies to SMEs have been often used with the aim of favoring economic growth in less developed regions. The main theoretical arguments justifying this intervention are related to the idea that public subsidies can solve lack-ofcapital problems deriving from asymmetric information. According to Stiglitz and Weiss (1981), public subsidies to rationed firms can reduce the informational gap, leading subsidized firms to reduce their financial constraints and to increase their investment levels. Results obtained modelling leverage, performance and investment behaviour in a panel of around 1,900 enterprises over the years 1989 to 1994 seem to confirm the working hypotheses. However, they can not be considered as conclusive and further research is needed in this context.Public subsidies, credit rationing, asymmetric information, Markov regression models

Value of thermostatic loads in future low-carbon Great Britain system

This paper quantifies the value of a large population of heterogeneous thermostatically controlled loads (TCLs). The TCL dynamics are regulated by means of an advanced demand side response model (DSRM). It optimally determines the flexible energy/power consumption and simultaneously allocates multiple ancillary services. This model explicitly incorporates the control of dynamics of the TCL recovery pattern after the provision of the selected services. The proposed framework is integrated in a mixed integer linear programming formulation for a multi-stage stochastic unit commitment. The scheduling routine considers inertia-dependent frequency response requirements to deal with the drastic reduction of system inertia under future low-carbon scenarios. Case studies focus on the system operation cost and CO2 emissions reductions for individual TCLs for a) different future network scenarios, b) different frequency requirements, c) changes of TCL parameters (e.g. coefficient of performance, thermal insulation etc.)