An Outline of a Progressive Resolution to the Euro-area Sovereign Debt Overhang: How a Five year Suspension of the Debt Burden Could Overthrow Austerity

The present study puts forward a plan for solving the sovereign debt crisis in the euro area (EA) in line with the interests of the working classes and the social majority. Our main strategy is for the European Central Bank (ECB) to acquire a significant part of the outstanding sovereign debt (at market prices) of the countries in the EA and convert it to zero-coupon bonds. No transfers will take place between individual states; taxpayers in any EA country will not be involved in the debt restructuring of any foreign eurozone country. Debt will not be forgiven: individual states will agree to buy it back from the ECB in the future when the ratio of sovereign debt to GDP has fallen to 20 percent. The sterilization costs for the ECB are manageable. This model of an unconventional monetary intervention would give progressive governments in the EA the necessary basis for developing social and welfare policies to the benefit of the working classes. It would reverse present-day policy priorities and replace the neoliberal agenda with a program of social and economic reconstruction, with the elites paying for the crisis. The perspective taken here favors social justice and coherence, having as its priority the social needs and the interests of the working majority

Michallat, Wendy, French Cartoon Art in the 1960s and 1970s: Pilote hebdomadaire and the Teenager Bande Dessinée

Le livre de Michallat est le sixième de la collection « Studies in European Comics and Graphic Novels », publiée par les éditions de l’Université (néerlandophone) de Leuven (Belgique). Ces publications sont en anglais, ce qui leur permet d’être lisibles sur tout le marché européen linguistiquement divisé et d’atteindre l’immense marché américain, déjà bien servi par des presses universitaires qui ont des séries spécialisées sur les comics. Les cinq autres volumes parus depuis 2014 sont tous d..

Meesters, Gert, Pâques, Frédéric et Vrydaghs, David (s. la dir. de), Les Métamorphoses de Spirou

Spirou vient de célébrer ses 80 ans (1938-2018). Et quel plus beau cadeau lui faire que de lui offrir une reconnaissance académique, qui plus est, de qualité, tant dans sa matérialité (papier glacé, nombreuses illustrations, superbes couleurs, reliure solide) que par le haut niveau critique de ses contributions. Pour le lecteur non-francophone et qui ne connaîtrait pas ce personnage, il faut d’abord rappeler que Spirou, autant que Tintin, est un héros très populaire dans le domaine francopho..

Photodynamic therapy with mTHPC and polyethylene glycol-derived mTHPC: a comparative study on human tumour xenografts

The photosensitizing properties of m-tetrahydroxyphenylchlorin (mTHPC) and polyethylene glycol-derivatized mTHPC (pegylated mTHPC) were compared in nude mice bearing human malignant mesothelioma, squamous cell carcinoma and adenocarcinoma xenografts. Laser light (20 J/cm2) at 652 nm was delivered to the tumour (surface irradiance) and to an equal-sized area of the hind leg of the animals after i.p. administration of 0.1 mg/kg body weight mTHPC and an equimolar dose of pegylated mTHPC, respectively. The extent of tumour necrosis and normal tissue injury was assessed by histology. Both mTHPC and pegylated mTHPC catalyse photosensitized necrosis in mesothelioma xenografts at drug-light intervals of 1–4 days. The onset of action of pegylated mTHPC seemed slower but significantly exceeds that of mTHPC by days 3 and 4 with the greatest difference being noted at day 4. Pegylated mTHPC also induced significantly larger photonecrosis than mTHPC in squamous cell xenografts but not in adenocarcinoma at day 4, where mTHPC showed greatest activity. The degree of necrosis induced by pegylated mTHPC was the same for all three xenografts. mTHPC led to necrosis of skin and underlying muscle at a drug-light interval of 1 day but minor histological changes only at drug-light intervals from 2–4 days. In contrast, pegylated mTHPC did not result in histologically detectable changes in normal tissues under the same treatment conditions at any drug-light interval assessed. In this study, pegylated mTHPC had advantages as a photosensitizer compared to mTHPC

Inflammatory Myofibroblastic Tumor of the Trachea with Concomitant Granulomatous Lymph Node Lesions

We report herein the case of a 57-year-old lady who had two concomittant lesions, an inflammatory myofibroblastic tumor in the trachea, and severe granulomatous lesions in the adjacent hilar lymph nodes. While these two lesions shared histological and some immunohistochemical features lesions. They differed in terms of ALK-1 expression, which was positive in the tracheal tumor and negative in the lymph nodes. The discussion of the case circles around putative pathophysiological links between the lesions. The authors favor the idea that the lymph nodes present a sarcoid-like granulomatous reaction to the inflammatory myofibroblastic tumor in the trachea over a coexistence of two independent entities. However, no conclusive evidence for this interpretation can be presented based on the existing literature

Using learning dimensions within the Effective Lifelong Learning Inventory (ELLI) as indicators of academic success in Biosciences

The Effective Life-long Learning Inventory (ELLI) has been designed to raise students' awareness of their own learning power, summarised in seven key dimensions. This study used ELLI with level 4 and level 6 cohorts in Biosciences programmes at Northumbria University as an indicator of academic performance. The dimension with the highest mean score for level 4 students was 'Meaning Making', followed by 'Changing and Learning'. 'Creativity' had the lowest mean score. Students were divided into two groups with respect to their academic achievement: the 'successful' and the 'satisfactory' group. The successful group scored higher in all dimensions, compared to the satisfactory group. The differences in the scores for 'Meaning Making' and 'Creativity' were statistically significant. Large differences were also found for 'Changing and Learning', 'Strategic Awareness', and 'Resilence'. Interestingly, all of these, with the exception of 'Meaning Making', were also the dimensions in which level 6 students scored higher than level 4 students, but the differences were not statistically significant. Results indicate that ELLI is a useful tool to identify key dispositions in successful learners, which could inform interventions to improve learning within a cohort

Performance Analysis of Direct N-Body Algorithms on Special-Purpose Supercomputers

Direct-summation N-body algorithms compute the gravitational interaction between stars in an exact way and have a computational complexity of O(N^2). Performance can be greatly enhanced via the use of special-purpose accelerator boards like the GRAPE-6A. However the memory of the GRAPE boards is limited. Here, we present a performance analysis of direct N-body codes on two parallel supercomputers that incorporate special-purpose boards, allowing as many as four million particles to be integrated. Both computers employ high-speed, Infiniband interconnects to minimize communication overhead, which can otherwise become significant due to the small number of "active" particles at each time step. We find that the computation time scales well with processor number; for 2*10^6 particles, efficiencies greater than 50% and speeds in excess of 2 TFlops are reached.Comment: 34 pages, 15 figures, submitted to New Astronom