Top incomes under finance-driven capitalism, 1990-2010: power resources and regulatory orders

This article examines the impact of financialisation on the income shares of the top 1% from 1990-2010, through a panel analysis of 14 OECD countries. Drawing together literatures stressing the dependence of income inequality on the structural bargaining power of capital relative to labour, and of the dependence of accumulation on underlying institutionalised modes of state regulation, it shows that financialisation has significantly enhanced top income shares net of underlying controls. Whilst the income shares of the top 1% appear responsive to variables typical of wider studies of personal income inequality, we emphasise distinctive mechanisms of top income growth linked to the rising dominance of financial instruments and actors, facilitated by a historically specific regulatory order. These conditions were key to the emergence of a state of ‘asymmetric bargaining’ which disproportionately enhanced the fortunes of the wealthy. Results thus emphasise the importance of class-biased power resources and underlying regulatory structures, as determinants both of income concentration and of the distribution of economic rewards beyond growth capacity alone.

Predator-free space, functional responses and invasions.

1. Predator–prey interactions are mediated by the structural complexity of habitats, but disentangling the many facets of structure that contribute to this mediation remains elusive. In a world replete with altered landscapes and biological invasions, determining how structure mediates the interactions between predators and novel prey will contribute to our understanding of invasions and predator–prey dynamics in general.
2. Here, using simplified experimental arenas, we manipulate predator-free space, whilst holding surface area and volume constant, to quantify the effects on predator–prey interactions between two resident gammarid predators and an invasive prey, the Ponto-Caspian corophiid Chelicorophium curvispinum.
3. Systematically increasing predator-free space alters the functional responses (the relationship between prey density and consumption rate) of the amphipod predators by reducing attack rates and lengthening handling times. Crucially, functional response shape also changes subtly from destabilizing Type II towards stabilizing Type III, such that small increases in predator-free space to result in significant reductions in prey consumption at low prey densities.
4. Habitats with superficially similar structural complexity can have considerably divergent consequences for prey population stability in general and, particularly, for invasive prey establishing at low densities in novel habitats.

Aquatic invasive alien species – top issues for their management. Outcomes from the IFI/EIFAAC conference “Freshwater Invasives – Networking for Strategy”

In November 2014, a new EU Regulation to address Invasive Alien Species (IAS) and protect biodiversity was published. This entered into force across the EU in January 2015. The aim of the Regulation is to ‘prevent the introduction of, control or eradicate alien species which threaten ecosystems, habitats or species’. In an effort to provide focus to the Regulation prior to its publishing and to identify the major issues relating to Invasive Alien Species in Europe, the views of invasive species experts from around the world were sought. These were consolidated at an international conference (Freshwater Invasives - Networking for Strategy (FINS)) that was held in Ireland in April 2013. A major outcome from this meeting of experts was the production of the Top 20 IAS issues that relate primarily to freshwater habitats but are also directly relevant to marine and terrestrial ecosystems. This list will support policy makers throughout the EU as preparations are made to implement this important piece of legislation. A further outcome from the conference was the formation of an expert IAS Advisory Group to support EIFAAC in its work on invasive species

Temporal Spatial-Keyword Top-k publish/subscribe

Massive amount of data that are geo-tagged and associated with text information are being generated at an unprecedented scale. These geo-textual data cover a wide range of topics. Users are interested in receiving up-to-date tweets such that their locations are close to a user specified location and their texts are interesting to users. For example, a user may want to be updated with tweets near her home on the topic “food poisoning vomiting.” We consider the Temporal Spatial-Keyword Top-k Subscription (TaSK) query. Given a TaSK query, we continuously maintain up-to-date top-k most relevant results over a stream of geo-textual objects (e.g., geo-tagged Tweets) for the query. The TaSK query takes into account text relevance, spatial proximity, and recency of geo-textual objects in evaluating its relevance with a geo-textual object. We propose a novel solution to efficiently process a large number of TaSK queries over a stream of geotextual objects. We evaluate the efficiency of our approach on two real-world datasets and the experimental results show that our solution is able to achieve a reduction of the processing time by 70-80% compared with two baselines.

Breaking and Entering: Examining the role of stress and aerial exposure in predator-prey relationships between the common shore crab (Carcinus maenas) and cultivated blue mussels (Mytilus edulis).

During benthic cultivation Mytilus edulis (blue mussels) are subject to predation pressure from a number of predators including Carcinus maenas (shore crabs). This predator can be responsible for substantial losses of mussels from the fishery and a full understanding of the predator–prey relationship between M. edulis and C. maenas is required to ensure attempts that reduce predatory pressure and subsequent commercial loss are successful. Whilst much work has examined the prey–predator size relationships between C. maenas and M. edulis, far less research has investigated how stress, such as periods of extended aerial exposure, may affect these relationships. We tested whether profit in terms of calories gained by crabs consuming mussels stressed by aerial exposure for 48 h differed from that of mussels at ambient conditions and whether being stressed affected the mussel's likelihood of predation. We also tested whether the size relationship between predators and their prey differed when mussels were stressed. We found that the profitability of prey (calories gained per second of handling time) did not vary between stressed and unstressed mussels. Handling times for stressed and unstressed mussels were similar, even when crabs were presented with mussels of the maximum size that they are able to consume. Small crabs were more likely to reject a mussel of preferred size if it was unstressed, suggesting that crabs may be able to assess that these mussels would require extra effort to break into and consume. Our findings suggest that the predator–prey relationship between mussels and crabs is not altered when mussels are stressed. C. maenas remains a voracious predator and regardless of the condition of mussels laid on commercial beds there is a need to control this predator in attempt to reduce losses in the benthic fishery.

The Top 10 Oomycete Pathogens in Molecular Plant Pathology

Oomycetes form a deep lineage of eukaryotic organisms that includes a large number of plant pathogens that threaten natural and managed ecosystems. We undertook a survey to query the community for their ranking of plant pathogenic oomycete species based on scientific and economic importance. In total, we received 263 votes from 62 scientists in 15 countries for a total of 33 species. The Top 10 species and their ranking are: (1) Phytophthora infestans; (2, tied) Hyaloperonospora arabidopsidis; (2, tied) Phytophthora ramorum; (4) Phytophthora sojae; (5) Phytophthora capsici; (6) Plasmopara viticola; (7) Phytophthora cinnamomi; (8, tied) Phytophthora parasitica; (8, tied) Pythium ultimum; and (10) Albugo candida. The article provides an introduction to these 10 taxa and a snapshot of current research. We hope that the list will serve as a benchmark for future trends in oomycete research.

Two divergent ways to manage HR and to get to the top: an exploratory study in micro firms

Aim of the paper: The purpose of this paper is to examine human resources management practices (HRM practices) in small firms and to improve the understanding of the relationship between this kind of practices and business growth. This exploratory study is based on the resource-based view of the firm and empirical work carried out in two small firms by relating HRM practices with the firms’ results. Contribution to the literature: This is an in-depth study of HRM practices and its impact on performance growth in micro firms, isolating and controlling for most of the contextual and internal variables considered in the literature that relate HRM to growth. Firm growth analysis was broadened by the use of several dependent variables: employment growth and operational and financial performance growth. Some hypotheses for further research in identifying HRM practices in small business and its relation with firm growth are suggested. Methodology: Case study methodology was used to study two firms. The techniques used to collect data were semi-structured interviews to the owner and all the employees, unstructured observation at the firms’ facilities (during two days), entrepreneur profile definition (survey answer) and document data collection (on demographic characterization and performance results). Data was analyzed through content analysis methodology, and categories derived from the interviews’ protocols and literature. Results and implications: Results revealed that despite the firms’ organizational characteristics similarities, they differ significantly in owners’ motivation to grow, HRM practices and organizational performance and growth. Future studies should pay special attention to owner willingness to grow, to firms’ years of experience in business, to staff’s years of experience in their field of work and turnover. HRM practices in micro/small firms should be better defined and characterized. The external image of management posture relating to longitudinal financial results and growth should also be explored.

Top Three Pharmacogenomics and Personalized Medicine Applications at the Nexus of Renal Pathophysiology and Cardiovascular Medicine.

Pharmacogenomics is a field with origins in the study of monogenic variations in drug metabolism in the 1950s. Perhaps because of these historical underpinnings, there has been an intensive investigation of 'hepatic pharmacogenes' such as CYP450s and liver drug metabolism using pharmacogenomics approaches over the past five decades. Surprisingly, kidney pathophysiology, attendant diseases and treatment outcomes have been vastly under-studied and under-theorized despite their central importance in maintenance of health, susceptibility to disease and rational personalized therapeutics. Indeed, chronic kidney disease (CKD) represents an increasing public health burden worldwide, both in developed and developing countries. Patients with CKD suffer from high cardiovascular morbidity and mortality, which is mainly attributable to cardiovascular events before reaching end-stage renal disease. In this paper, we focus our analyses on renal function before end-stage renal disease, as seen through the lens of pharmacogenomics and human genomic variation. We herein synthesize the recent evidence linking selected Very Important Pharmacogenes (VIP) to renal function, blood pressure and salt-sensitivity in humans, and ways in which these insights might inform rational personalized therapeutics. Notably, we highlight and present the rationale for three applications that we consider as important and actionable therapeutic and preventive focus areas in renal pharmacogenomics: 1) ACE inhibitors, as a confirmed application, 2) VDR agonists, as a promising application, and 3) moderate dietary salt intake, as a suggested novel application. Additionally, we emphasize the putative contributions of gene-environment interactions, discuss the implications of these findings to treat and prevent hypertension and CKD. Finally, we conclude with a strategic agenda and vision required to accelerate advances in this under-studied field of renal pharmacogenomics with vast significance for global public health.

Automatic top-down processing explains common left occipito-temporal responses to visual words and objects.

Previous studies have demonstrated that a region in the left ventral occipito-temporal (LvOT) cortex is highly selective to the visual forms of written words and objects relative to closely matched visual stimuli. Here, we investigated why LvOT activation is not higher for reading than picture naming even though written words and pictures of objects have grossly different visual forms. To compare neuronal responses for words and pictures within the same LvOT area, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging adaptation and instructed participants to name target stimuli that followed briefly presented masked primes that were either presented in the same stimulus type as the target (word-word, picture-picture) or a different stimulus type (picture-word, word-picture). We found that activation throughout posterior and anterior parts of LvOT was reduced when the prime had the same name/response as the target irrespective of whether the prime-target relationship was within or between stimulus type. As posterior LvOT is a visual form processing area, and there was no visual form similarity between different stimulus types, we suggest that our results indicate automatic top-down influences from pictures to words and words to pictures. This novel perspective motivates further investigation of the functional properties of this intriguing region.

Mouse alarm pheromone shares structural similarity with predator scents.

Sensing the chemical warnings present in the environment is essential for species survival. In mammals, this form of danger communication occurs via the release of natural predator scents that can involuntarily warn the prey or by the production of alarm pheromones by the stressed prey alerting its conspecifics. Although we previously identified the olfactory Grueneberg ganglion as the sensory organ through which mammalian alarm pheromones signal a threatening situation, the chemical nature of these cues remains elusive. We here identify, through chemical analysis in combination with a series of physiological and behavioral tests, the chemical structure of a mouse alarm pheromone. To successfully recognize the volatile cues that signal danger, we based our selection on their activation of the mouse olfactory Grueneberg ganglion and the concomitant display of innate fear reactions. Interestingly, we found that the chemical structure of the identified mouse alarm pheromone has similar features as the sulfur-containing volatiles that are released by predating carnivores. Our findings thus not only reveal a chemical Leitmotiv that underlies signaling of fear, but also point to a double role for the olfactory Grueneberg ganglion in intraspecies as well as interspecies communication of danger.

Identification of pyridine analogs as new predator-derived kairomones.

In the wild, animals have developed survival strategies relying on their senses. The individual ability to identify threatening situations is crucial and leads to increase in the overall fitness of the species. Rodents, for example have developed in their nasal cavities specialized olfactory neurons implicated in the detection of volatile cues encoding for impending danger such as predator scents or alarm pheromones. In particular, the neurons of the Grueneberg ganglion (GG), an olfactory subsystem, are implicated in the detection of danger cues sharing a similar chemical signature, a heterocyclic sulfur- or nitrogen-containing motif. Here we used a "from the wild to the lab" approach to identify new molecules that are involuntarily emitted by predators and that initiate fear-related responses in the recipient animal, the putative prey. We collected urines from carnivores as sources of predator scents and first verified their impact on the blood pressure of the mice. With this approach, the urine of the mountain lion emerged as the most potent source of chemical stress. We then identified in this biological fluid, new volatile cues with characteristic GG-related fingerprints, in particular the methylated pyridine structures, 2,4-lutidine and its analogs. We finally verified their encoded danger quality and demonstrated their ability to mimic the effects of the predator urine on GG neurons, on mice blood pressure and in behavioral experiments. In summary, we were able to identify here, with the use of an integrative approach, new relevant molecules, the pyridine analogs, implicated in interspecies danger communication.