Host-parasite relationships during a biologic invasion: 75 years postinvasion, cane toads and sympatric Australian frogs retain separate lungworm faunas.

Invasive species may carry with them parasites from their native range, differing from parasite taxa found in the invaded range. Host switching by parasites (either from the invader to native fauna or from native fauna to the invader) may have important consequences for the viability of either type of host (e.g., their survivorship, fecundity, dispersal ability, or geographic distribution). Rhabdias pseudosphaerocephala (Nematoda) is a common parasite of cane toads (Rhinella marina) in the toad's native range (South and Central America) and also in its introduced Australian range. This lungworm can depress host viability and is capable of infecting Australian frogs in laboratory trials. Despite syntopy between toads and frogs for up to 75 yr, our analyses, based on DNA sequence data of lungworms from 80 frogs and 56 toads, collected from 2008 to 2011, did not reveal any cases of host switching in nature: toads and native frogs retain entirely different lungworm faunas. All lungworms in cane toads were the South and Central American species Rhabdias pseudosphaerocephala, whereas Australian frogs contained at least four taxa (mostly undescribed and currently lumped under the name Rhabdias cf. hylae). General patterns of prevalence and intensity, based on the dissection of 1,315 frogs collected between 1989 and 2011 across the toads' Australian range, show that these Australian endemic Rhabdias spp. are widely distributed geographically and across host taxa but are more common in some frog species (especially, large-bodied species) than they are in others.

Experimental and computational study on the synthesis and characterization of self-assembling meso/macroporous materials in highly concentrated emulsions

Report for the scientific sojourn carried out at Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center-Harvard Medical School, Estats Units, from 2010 to 2011. The project aims to study the aggregation behavior of amphiphilic molecules in the continuous phase of highly concentrated emulsions, which can be used as templates for the synthesis of meso/macroporous materials. At this stage of the project, we have investigated the self-assembly of diblock and triblock surfactants under the effect of a confined geometry being surrounded by the droplets of the dispersed phase. These droplets limit the growth of the aggregates, deeply modify their orientation and hence alter their spatial arrangement as compared to the self-assembly taking place far enough from any boundary surface, that is in the bulk. By performing Monte Carlo simulations, we have showed that the interface between the dispersed and continuous phases as well as its shape has a significant impact on the structural order of the resulting aggregates and hence on the potential applications of highly concentrated emulsions as reaction media, drug delivery systems, or templates for meso/macroporous materials. Due to the combined effect of symmetry breaking and morphological frustration, very intriguing structures, such as square columnar liquid crystals, twisted X-shaped aggregates, and helical phases of cylindrical aggregates, never observed in the bulk for the same model surfactant, have been found. The presence of other more conventional structures, such as micelles and cubic and hexagonal liquid crystals, formed at low and high amphiphilic concentrations, respectively, further enhance the interest on this already rich aggregation behavior.

Porting and performance analysis of EC-Earth System on the BSC-MareNostrum Supercomputer

Earth System Models (ESM) have been successfuly developed over past few years, and are currently beeing used for simulating present day-climate, seasonal to interanual predictions of climate change. The supercomputer performance plays an important role in climate modeling since one of the challenging issues for climate modellers is to efficiently and accurately couple earth System components on present day computers architectures. At the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC), we work with the EC- Earth System Model. The EC- Earth is an ESM, which currently consists of an atmosphere (IFS) and an ocean (NEMO) model that communicate with each other through the OASIS coupler. Additional modules (e.g. for chemistry and vegetation ) are under development. The EC-Earth ESM has been ported successfully over diferent high performance computin platforms (e.g, IBM P6 AIX, CRAY XT-5, Intelbased Linux Clusters, SGI Altix) at diferent sites in Europ (e.g., KNMI, ICHEC, ECMWF). The objective of the first phase of the project was to identify and document the issues related with the portability and performance of EC-Earth on the MareNostrum supercomputer, a System based on IBM PowerPC 970MP processors and run under a Linux Suse Distribution. EC-Earth was successfully ported to MareNostrum, and a compilation incompatibilty was solved by a two step compilation approach using XLF version 10.1 and 12.1 compilers. In addition, the EC-Earth performance was analyzed with respect to escalability and trace analysis with the Paravear software. This analysis showed that EC-Earth with a larger number of IFS CPUs (<128) is not feasible at the moment since some issues exists with the IFS-NEMO balance and MPI Communications.

Dairy Markets in Asia: An Overview of Recent Findings and Implications, September 2005

This paper is an overview of important findings regarding the ongoing evolution of Asian dairy markets based on a series of new economic investigations. These investigations provide systematic empirical foundations for assessing Asian dairy markets with their new consumption patterns, changing industries, and trade prospects under different domestic and trade policy regimes. The findings are drawn from four case studies (China, India, Japan, and Korea), as well as a prospective analysis of future regional patterns of consumption and a policy analysis of trade liberalization of Asian dairy markets. The overview distills the findings of these new investigations and integrates them in the earlier economic literature; it draws policy implications and identifies lessons for countries outside of Asia, especially for emerging exporters in Latin America.

The Regulatory Choice between a Label and a Minimum-Quality Standard, 2005

This paper revisits the issue of the regulatory choice between a mandatory label and a minimum-quality standard. When the cost of regulation is relatively low, we show that the socially optimal choice depends on the producers’ cost structure for complying with regulation and improving quality. Under a marginal cost for improving quality, the mandatory labeling is sufficient for reaching the socially optimal level of quality. Under a fixed cost for improving quality, we show that each instrument or the combination of both instruments may emerge at the equilibrium.

Cytochrome P450 1A2 activity and inducibility: impact of smoking, smoking cessation and genetic polymorphisms

Aims: Cytochrome P4501A2 (CYP1A2) is involved in the metabolism of severaldrugs (clozapine, olanzapine, theopylline, caffeine, etc) and is induced by smoking.This can result in decreased plasma levels of drugs metabolized by thisisoenzyme, causing a decrease in therapeutic response. After quitting smoking,increased plasma levels can lead to adverse effects of the concerned drugs, such asconfusion and seizures, described under clozapine treatment. The present studyaimed to examine the variation of CYP1A2 activity in a large group of smokersbefore and after smoking cessation. Moreover, we aimed to determine whethergenetic polymorphisms of CYP1A2 gene could influence the inducibility ofCYP1A2. Methods: CYP1A2 activity was determined by the paraxanthine/caffeineratio in 194 smokers and in 118 of them being abstinent during a 4-weekperiod. Participants were genotyped for CYP1A2*1F (rs762551), *1D(rs35694136) and *1C (rs2069514) polymorphisms. Results: Smokers had higherCYP1A2 activity (1.55-fold; p < 0.0001). Individual change of CYP1A2 activityafter smoking cessation ranged from 1.0-fold (no change) to 7.3-fold decreasedactivity. In five participants with low initial CYP1A2 activity, an increase wasobserved after smoking cessation. During smoking, CYP1A2*1F (p = 0.005), CYP1A2*1D (p = 0.014), the number of cigarettes/day (p = 0.012), contraceptives use(p < 0.001) and - 163A/- 2467T/- 3860G haplotype (p = 0.002) influencedCYP1A2 activity, while after quitting smoking, CYP1A2*1F (p = 0.017) and contraceptives(p = 0.05) did. No influence of CYP1A2 polymorphisms on the inducibilityof CYP1A2 was observed. Conclusion: Higher CYP1A2 activity wasmeasured in smokers, but with a large interindividual variability of its inductionby smoking. Careful clinical management with the help of therapeutic drug monitoringis therefore needed for patients receiving drugs which are metabolized byCYP1A2, who stop or start smoking. Unidentified genetic variations in theCYP1A2 gene and/or in other genes controlling CYP1A2 activity and other environmentalfactors could be responsible of the observed differences in CYP1A2enzymatic activity and inducibility.

Movement, impacts and management of plant distributions in response to climate change: insights from invasions

A major challenge in this era of rapid climate change is to predict changes in species distributions and their impacts on ecosystems, and, if necessary, to recommend management strategies for maintenance of biodiversity or ecosystem services. Biological invasions, studied in most biomes of the world, can provide useful analogs for some of the ecological consequences of species distribution shifts in response to climate change. Invasions illustrate the adaptive and interactive responses that can occur when species are confronted with new environmental conditions. Invasion ecology complements climate change research and provides insights into the following questions: i) how will species distributions respond to climate change? ii) how will species movement affect recipient ecosystems? and iii) should we, and if so how can we, manage species and ecosystems in the face of climate change? Invasion ecology demonstrates that a trait-based approach can help to predict spread speeds and impacts on ecosystems, and has the potential to predict climate change impacts on species ranges and recipient ecosystems. However, there is a need to analyse traits in the context of life-history and demography, the stage in the colonisation process (e.g., spread, establishment or impact), the distribution of suitable habitats in the landscape, and the novel abiotic and biotic conditions under which those traits are expressed. As is the case with climate change, invasion ecology is embedded within complex societal goals. Both disciplines converge on similar questions of "when to intervene?" and "what to do?" which call for a better understanding of the ecological processes and social values associated with changing ecosystems.

Traducción comentada de “Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs): Transgenic Crops and Recombinant DNA Technology”

The purpose of this paper is to provide a translation into Spanish of a review articleabout genetically modified organisms (GMOs) entitled “Genetically ModifiedOrganisms (GMOs): Transgenic Crops and Recombinant DNA Technology” publishedby the well-known scientific journal Nature. In a world where English has become thelingua franca when it comes to transferring scientific knowledge and information, itmust be taken into account that not everyone—from scientist to the general public—hasa good enough command of English so that they can feel comfortable enough reading inthis language. Translators are consequently needed resulting from a great demand oftranslation activity into, for example, Spanish. This is the reason why the proposedSpanish translation is followed by a detailed analysis emphasizing the difficulties andproblems that characterize scientific—and also general—translation (i.e. terminology,syntax, semantics, pragmatics, and ideology), for which different approaches as how tosolve them are provided. On the basis of the analysis, it can be concluded thatexperience will be of much help to scientific translators, given that specificterminological knowledge and style requirements must always be born in mind whentranslating in this field. Moreover, this paper is intended to serve as a guide forTranslation students specializing in the field of science and the expectation is to helpthem make the right decisions when it comes to translating. However, it is clear that itcan only be thought of as an introduction that should be completed with further researchand documentation tasks in order to offer a complete reference tool: the ultimatehandbook of scientific translation.

A Model of Collateral, Investment, and Adverse Selection

This paper characterizes the relationship between entrepreneurial wealth and aggregate investment under adverse selection. Its main finding is that such a relationship need not be monotonic. In particular, three results emerge from the analysis: (i) pooling equilibria, in which investment is independent of entrepreneurial wealth, are more likely to arise when entrepreneurial wealth is relatively low; (ii) separating equilibria, in which investment is increasing in entrepreneurial wealth, are most likely to arise when entrepreneurial wealth is relatively high and; (iii) for a given interest rate, an increase in entrepreneurial wealth may generate a discontinuous fall in investment.

Hepatic deficiency in transcriptional cofactor TBL1 promotes liver steatosis and hypertriglyceridemia.

The aberrant accumulation of lipids in the liver ("fatty liver") is tightly associated with several components of the metabolic syndrome, including type 2 diabetes, coronary heart disease, and atherosclerosis. Here we show that the impaired hepatic expression of transcriptional cofactor transducin beta-like (TBL) 1 represents a common feature of mono- and multigenic fatty liver mouse models. Indeed, the liver-specific ablation of TBL1 gene expression in healthy mice promoted hypertriglyceridemia and hepatic steatosis under both normal and high-fat dietary conditions. TBL1 deficiency resulted in inhibition of fatty acid oxidation due to impaired functional cooperation with its heterodimerization partner TBL-related (TBLR) 1 and the nuclear receptor peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor (PPAR) α. As TBL1 expression levels were found to also inversely correlate with liver fat content in human patients, the lack of hepatic TBL1/TBLR1 cofactor activity may represent a molecular rationale for hepatic steatosis in subjects with obesity and the metabolic syndrome.

Three essays in control, entrepreneurship and innovation

One of the key emphases of these three essays is to provide practical managerial insight. However, good practical insight, can only be created by grounding it firmly on theoretical and empirical research. Practical experience-based understanding without theoretical grounding remains tacit and cannot be easily disseminated. Theoretical understanding without links to real life remains sterile. My studies aim to increase the understanding of how radical innovation could be generated at large established firms and how it can have an impact on business performance as most businesses pursue innovation with one prime objective: value creation. My studies focus on large established firms with sales revenue exceeding USD $ 1 billion. Usually large established firms cannot rely on informal ways of management, as these firms tend to be multinational businesses operating with subsidiaries, offices, or production facilities in more than one country. I. Internal and External Determinants of Corporate Venture Capital Investment The goal of this chapter is to focus on CVC as one of the mechanisms available for established firms to source new ideas that can be exploited. We explore the internal and external determinants under which established firms engage in CVC to source new knowledge through investment in startups. We attempt to make scholars and managers aware of the forces that influence CVC activity by providing findings and insights to facilitate the strategic management of CVC. There are research opportunities to further understand the CVC phenomenon. Why do companies engage in CVC? What motivates them to continue "playing the game" and keep their active CVC investment status. The study examines CVC investment activity, and the importance of understanding the influential factors that make a firm decide to engage in CVC. The main question is: How do established firms' CVC programs adapt to changing internal conditions and external environments. Adaptation typically involves learning from exploratory endeavors, which enable companies to transform the ways they compete (Guth & Ginsberg, 1990). Our study extends the current stream of research on CVC. It aims to contribute to the literature by providing an extensive comparison of internal and external determinants leading to CVC investment activity. To our knowledge, this is the first study to examine the influence of internal and external determinants on CVC activity throughout specific expansion and contraction periods determined by structural breaks occurring between 1985 to 2008. Our econometric analysis indicates a strong and significant positive association between CVC activity and R&D, cash flow availability and environmental financial market conditions, as well as a significant negative association between sales growth and the decision to engage into CVC. The analysis of this study reveals that CVC investment is highly volatile, as demonstrated by dramatic fluctuations in CVC investment activity over the past decades. When analyzing the overall cyclical CVC period from 1985 to 2008 the results of our study suggest that CVC activity has a pattern influenced by financial factors such as the level of R&D, free cash flow, lack of sales growth, and external conditions of the economy, with the NASDAQ price index as the most significant variable influencing CVC during this period. II. Contribution of CVC and its Interaction with R&D to Value Creation The second essay takes into account the demands of corporate executives and shareholders regarding business performance and value creation justifications for investments in innovation. Billions of dollars are invested in CVC and R&D. However there is little evidence that CVC and its interaction with R&D create value. Firms operating in dynamic business sectors seek to innovate to create the value demanded by changing market conditions, consumer preferences, and competitive offerings. Consequently, firms operating in such business sectors put a premium on finding new, sustainable and competitive value propositions. CVC and R&D can help them in this challenge. Dushnitsky and Lenox (2006) presented evidence that CVC investment is associated with value creation. However, studies have shown that the most innovative firms do not necessarily benefit from innovation. For instance Oyon (2007) indicated that between 1995 and 2005 the most innovative automotive companies did not obtain adequate rewards for shareholders. The interaction between CVC and R&D has generated much debate in the CVC literature. Some researchers see them as substitutes suggesting that firms have to choose between CVC and R&D (Hellmann, 2002), while others expect them to be complementary (Chesbrough & Tucci, 2004). This study explores the interaction that CVC and R&D have on value creation. This essay examines the impact of CVC and R&D on value creation over sixteen years across six business sectors and different geographical regions. Our findings suggest that the effect of CVC and its interaction with R&D on value creation is positive and significant. In dynamic business sectors technologies rapidly relinquish obsolete, consequently firms operating in such business sectors need to continuously develop new sources of value creation (Eisenhardt & Martin, 2000; Qualls, Olshavsky, & Michaels, 1981). We conclude that in order to impact value creation, firms operating in business sectors such as Engineering & Business Services, and Information Communication & Technology ought to consider CVC as a vital element of their innovation strategy. Moreover, regarding the CVC and R&D interaction effect, our findings suggest that R&D and CVC are complementary to value creation hence firms in certain business sectors can be better off supporting both R&D and CVC simultaneously to increase the probability of generating value creation. III. MCS and Organizational Structures for Radical Innovation Incremental innovation is necessary for continuous improvement but it does not provide a sustainable permanent source of competitiveness (Cooper, 2003). On the other hand, radical innovation pursuing new technologies and new market frontiers can generate new platforms for growth providing firms with competitive advantages and high economic margin rents (Duchesneau et al., 1979; Markides & Geroski, 2005; O'Connor & DeMartino, 2006; Utterback, 1994). Interestingly, not all companies distinguish between incremental and radical innovation, and more importantly firms that manage innovation through a one-sizefits- all process can almost guarantee a sub-optimization of certain systems and resources (Davila et al., 2006). Moreover, we conducted research on the utilization of MCS along with radical innovation and flexible organizational structures as these have been associated with firm growth (Cooper, 2003; Davila & Foster, 2005, 2007; Markides & Geroski, 2005; O'Connor & DeMartino, 2006). Davila et al. (2009) identified research opportunities for innovation management and provided a list of pending issues: How do companies manage the process of radical and incremental innovation? What are the performance measures companies use to manage radical ideas and how do they select them? The fundamental objective of this paper is to address the following research question: What are the processes, MCS, and organizational structures for generating radical innovation? Moreover, in recent years, research on innovation management has been conducted mainly at either the firm level (Birkinshaw, Hamel, & Mol, 2008a) or at the project level examining appropriate management techniques associated with high levels of uncertainty (Burgelman & Sayles, 1988; Dougherty & Heller, 1994; Jelinek & Schoonhoven, 1993; Kanter, North, Bernstein, & Williamson, 1990; Leifer et al., 2000). Therefore, we embarked on a novel process-related research framework to observe the process stages, MCS, and organizational structures that can generate radical innovation. This article is based on a case study at Alcan Engineered Products, a division of a multinational company provider of lightweight material solutions. Our observations suggest that incremental and radical innovation should be managed through different processes, MCS and organizational structures that ought to be activated and adapted contingent to the type of innovation that is being pursued (i.e. incremental or radical innovation). More importantly, we conclude that radical can be generated in a systematic way through enablers such as processes, MCS, and organizational structures. This is in line with the findings of Jelinek and Schoonhoven (1993) and Davila et al. (2006; 2007) who show that innovative firms have institutionalized mechanisms, arguing that radical innovation cannot occur in an organic environment where flexibility and consensus are the main managerial mechanisms. They rather argue that radical innovation requires a clear organizational structure and formal MCS.

The investigation of deaths in custody: a qualitative analysis of problems and prospects.

The right to be treated humanely when detained is universally recognized. Deficiencies in detention conditions and violence, however, subvert this right. When this occurs, proper medico-legal investigations are critical irrespective of the nature of death. Unfortunately, the very context of custody raises serious concerns over the effectiveness and fairness of medico-legal examinations. The aim of this manuscript is to identify and discuss the practical and ethical difficulties encountered in the medico-legal investigation following deaths in custody. Data for this manuscript come from a larger project on Death in Custody that examined the causes of deaths in custody and the conditions under which these deaths should be investigated and prevented. A total of 33 stakeholders from forensic medicine, law, prison administration or national human rights administration were interviewed. Data obtained were analyzed qualitatively. Forensic experts are an essential part of the criminal justice process as they offer evidence for subsequent indictment and eventual punishment of perpetrators. Their independence when investigating a death in custody was deemed critical and lack thereof, problematic. When experts were not independent, concerns arose in relation to conflicts of interest, biased perspectives, and low-quality forensic reports. The solutions to ensure independent forensic investigations of deaths in custody must be structural and simple: setting binding standards of practice rather than detailed procedures and relying on preexisting national practices as opposed to encouraging new practices that are unattainable for countries with limited resources.

Optimal monetary and fiscal policy in a currency union

We lay out a tractable model for fiscal and monetary policy analysis in a currency union, and study its implications for the optimal design of such policies. Monetary policy is conducted by a common central bank, which sets the interest rate for the union as a whole. Fiscal policy is implemented at the countrylevel, through the choice of government spending. The model incorporates country-specific shocks and nominal rigidities. Under our assumptions, the optimal cooperative policy arrangement requires that inflation be stabilized at the union level by the common central bank, while fiscal policy is used by each country for stabilization purposes. By contrast, when the fiscal authorities act in a non-coordinated way, their joint actions lead to a suboptimal outcome, and make the common central bank face a trade-off between inflation and output gap stabilization at the union level.

Full insurance, asymmetric information and genetic testing

This paper extends previous resuls on optimal insurance trading in the presence of a stock market that allows continuous asset trading and substantial personal heterogeneity, and applies those results in a context of asymmetric informationwith references to the role of genetic testing in insurance markets.We find a novel and surprising result under symmetric information:agents may optimally prefer to purchase full insurance despitethe presence of unfairly priced insurance contracts, and other assets which are correlated with insurance.Asymmetric information has a Hirschleifer-type effect whichcan be solved by suspending insurance trading. Nevertheless,agents can attain their first best allocations, which suggeststhat the practice of restricting insurance not to be contingenton genetic tests can be efficient.

Profile of male adolescents with conduct disorder on intellectual efficacy, cognitive flexibility, cognitive coping, impulsivity and alexithymia: a comparison with high-risk controls

Background and Objectives: To specify which of the documented cognitive and emotional deficits characterize adolescents with conduct disorder (CD) compared with high-risk controls. Methods: High-risk adolescent males with and without CD were compared on intellectual efficiency, cognitive flexibility, impulsivity, alexithymia, and cognitive coping strategies. Substance use was controlled for in analyses. Results: Both groups showed normal intellectual efficiency and cognitive flexibility, as weil as heightened alexithymia and bebavioral impulsivity. Youths with CD evidenced more self-defeating and black-and-white tbinking under stress, and more acting-out under negative affect, than those without CD. Conclusions: Deficits specifie to CD resided in facets of emotional functioning and cognitive coping that might be targeted by a coping skills intervention.