Assessing the Barriers to Universal Antiretroviral Treatment Access for HIV/AIDS in South Africa

Caveolae are a type of invaginated membrane domain that has been shown to be involved in several disease states, including lipodystrophy, muscular dystrophies and cancer. Several of these diseases are caused by the lack of caveolae or caveolae-related signaling deficiencies in the tissues in which the caveolar domain are abundant such as lung, adipose, muscle and their related endothelial cells. Caveolae are formed through the assembly of the membrane inserted protein caveolin, cholesterol and the recently described family of cavin proteins, which together form the caveolae coat. The work in this thesis focuses on understanding the protein components and mechanisms that control the biogenesis and dynamics of caveolae. We have found that the protein EHD2 is an important regulator and stabilizer of the caveolar domain at the cell membrane. EHD2 is a dimeric ATPase known to oligomerize into ring-like structures around lipid membranes to control their shape. We have characterized the domain interactions involved in the specific targeting and assembly of this protein at caveolae. We propose a stringent regulatory mechanism for the assembly of EHD2 involving ATP binding and switching of the EH domain position to release the N-terminus and facilitate oligomerization in the presence of membrane species. We show that loss of EHD2 in cells results in hyper- dynamic caveolae and that caveolae stability at the membrane can be restored by reintroducing EHD2 into these cells. In a study of the protein cavin-3, which is known to be an integral component of the caveolar coat, we showed that this protein is targeted to caveolae via direct binding to the caveolar core protein caveolin1. Furthermore, we show that cavin-3 is enriched at deeply invaginated caveolae and regulate the duration time of caveolae at the cell surface. In combination with a biochemical and cellbiological approach, the advanced fluorescence microscopy techniques, like Fluorescence Recovery After Photobleaching (FRAP), Total Internal Reflection microscopy (TIRF), combined with correlative Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) have allowed us to characterize distinct caveolae-associated proteins and their respective functions at caveolae

Informing Lottery Budget Decisions: HOPE and Pre-K

This report address how different allocations of lottery revenue between the Pre-K and HOPE programs might affect the achievement of the objectives of these two programs

Revenue Losses from Exemptions of Goods from the Georgia Sales and Use Tax

This report provides estimates of the revenue loss from sales tax exemptions. FRC Report 13

A profile of the home-based business sector within the City of Swan

Home-based businesses are the single biggest business cohort in Australia, accounting for 67% of all small businesses and 58% of all businesses [1]. Home-based businesses are not a new phenomenon but what is precipitating the current interest in this cohort is the duel factors of emerging new technologies and industrial restructuring. This is demonstrated on the one hand by technology making it easier to actually work from home, while at the same time job losses in traditional main-stream occupations are making self-employment more attractive. These and other reasons could account for home-based businesses being the fastest growing business sector with an annual growth rate in 2001 of 16%, compared to 11% for small business in general..

Malaga business review 2004

This report is the result of a Swan Grant to review the current status of business and business activity in the Malaga Business District and to map any changes that have occurred since the original Malaga Business Audit was conducted in 2001. This project was undertaken in two parts. The first part was a replication of the 2001 Malaga business survey so that the City could review trends and analyse if any of the implemented recommendations based on the 2001 results had any discernable effect. The results of the current survey were also used to inform the second part of the project, which was to develop some targeted business growth workshops that were specific to the needs of Malaga businesses. The aim of the workshops was to support and assist local businesses to develop growth strategies, local networks and connect together using external support agencies and resources. Only the results of the 2004 survey are reported here..

Georgia Agricultural Water Use Metering Program: Using Results To Benefit Farmers And The State

In their adoption of HB 579, the apparent legislative intent was to obtain clear and accurate information on the patterns and amounts of such use, which information is essential to proper management of water resources by the state and useful to farmers for improving efficiency and effectiveness of their use of water. As a part of their charge to implement this program of measuring agricultural water use, GSWCC is required to read metering devices annually, and to compile and report findings.This paper suggests approaches that might be used by the GSWCC in responding to these legislative mandates. Using data drawn from meters installed during the meter installation program's first year -- 2004 -- examples are given for types of summary statistics that might serve the GSWCC's interests in using metering data for purposes that support their more general mission of assisting farmers in their efforts to improve the management and conservation of land and water resources. We also suggest the structure of an analytical model that can be used to several important purposes, most important among which are to explore primary determinants of water use in the agricultural sector, and to assess the effectiveness of public policies in improving water use efficiency. While the peculiarities of hydrological conditions in 2004, coupled with expected data problems during the meter installation program's initial year of operation, does not allow for meaningful applications of the model when 2004 data are used, we suggest that it will play its intended role for data analyses in future years as improved data become available from the metering program.Finally, we describe a program that we are in the process of developing that will carry results from the metering program directly to the farmer in ways that should be useful to him or her in efforts to optimally manage land and water resources. This program will involve making available to farmers a secure, on-line means for accessing data, and an ability to compare their individual performance (in terms of such measures as yields and water use) with average performance measures from farms with similar characteristics. Working Paper Number 2005-00

Estimating Differential Responses to Local Fiscal Conditions: A Mixture Model Analysis

Alternative hypotheses exist regarding the impact of local sales and income taxes on local governments' taxing and spending decisions. One hypothesis is that local governments use sales and income taxes to pay for spending increases and leave property tax collections unchanged, while an equally plausible alternative is that local governments use sales and income taxes to reduce property taxes. Traditional models that restrict the impact of these local taxes to be the same across all local governments are not able to capture both types of behavior. The methodological difficulty lies in allowing for differences in behavior with no a priori information on which cities belong in which category. In this article, the authors use panel data to estimate a mixture model of spending and property tax response to the existence of local taxes. These empirical results provide evidence to support both hypotheses. These differences are both substantive and statistically significant

The Interdependence of School Outcomes and School and Neighborhood Crime

In this paper, we estimate the effects of neighborhood crime and in-school crime on educational outcomes for elementary and secondary schools in the city of Atlanta over the period 1999 to 2002. We specify a model that accounts for the joint determination of both types of crime along with school outcomes. Despite the large empirical literature on both education production functions and crime incidence, there has been little empirical work on crime's effect on school outcomes. One exception is Grogger (1997) who used individual data from the High School and Beyond study to estimate the effect of school violence on measures of individual student performance. After controlling for individual and school characteristics, he found that moderate and severe levels of school violence had substantial negative consequences for school outcomes. Our study both updates and expands on his work, using current data and better measures of neighborhood violence. Working Paper 07-1

Inclusion in Practice: An explanatory study of how patterns of classroom discourse shape processes of educational inclusion in Tanzanian secondary school classrooms

While access to secondary school is increasingly available to a larger and more heterogeneous population of learners, expansion in enrolment masks the reality that educational inequalities are widening. Using a comparative and in-depth qualitative research design, this dissertation explores processes of educational inclusion and exclusion as they unfold within the classroom walls, where it is teachers who determine how access to the curriculum and classroom culture is created and sustained. Data generated through 12 lesson observations and accompanying stimulated recall interviews enable consideration of how patterns of teacher discourse influence teacher capacity to foster inclusivity, and why such patterns emerge. Data gathered through key informant interviews and focus group discussions support the scrutinization and triangulation of tentative findings drawn from the observation and stimulated recall data. This research is premised on the need to expand our knowledge of what inclusive education can mean in classrooms typically characterized by material and human deprivation, and in teaching approaches most often defined by a strong pedagogic tradition of knowledge transmission. The findings support the construction of an explanatory framework revealing the ways in which patterns of classroom discourse shape teacher capacity to foster inclusion in Tanzanian secondary school classrooms. They reveal the importance of three moments embedded within each teacher-student interaction: The moment within which a turn is allocated, the moment within which a student response is interpreted by a teacher, and the moment within which a teacher then follows up. The findings demonstrate the power of the multiple continua of discursive strategies within which teachers move, revealing the specific decisions and respective trade-offs which influence teacher capacity to foster processes of educational inclusion. The findings are significant for expanding our understanding of the intersection between pedagogy and inclusion in the Tanzanian context, generating insight into that which teachers do, the reasons for why they do it, and the contextually relevant levers for change.N/