Pro-competitive price beating guarantees: experimental evidence

We report experimental results on duopoly pricing with and without price beating guarantees (PBG). In two control treatments, price beating is either imposed as an industry-wide rule or offered as a business strategy. Our major finding is that when price beating guarantees are imposed as a rule or offered as an option, effective prices are equal to or lower than those in a baseline treatment in which price beating is forbidden. Also, when price beating is treated as a business strategy, less than 50% of subjects adopted the guarantee, suggesting that, subjects realize the pro-competitive effects of the guarantee.

The ancient Greek address system and some proposed sociolinguistic universals

This article summarizes the results of a longer study of address forms in Ancient Greek, based on 11,891 address tokens from a variety of sources. It argues that the Greek evidence appears to contradict two tendencies, found in address forms in other languages, which have been claimed as possible sociolinguistic universals: the tendency toward T/V distinctions, and the principle that “What is new is polite.” It is suggested that these alleged universals should perhaps be re-examined in light of the Greek evidence, and that ancient languages in general have more to contribute to sociolinguistics than is sometimes realized. (Address, Ancient Greek, T/V distinctions)

Housing or property? The dynamics of housing policy and property principles in the right to buy

This paper examines the interplay and tension between housing law and policy and property law, in the specific context of the right to buy (RTB). It focuses on funding arrangements between the RTB tenant and another party. It first examines how courts determine the parties' respective entitlements in the home, highlighting the difficulty of categorising, under traditional property law principles, a contribution in the form of the statutory discount conferred on the RTB tenant. Secondly, it considers possible exploitation of the RTB scheme, both at the macro level of exploitation of the policy underpinning the legislation and, at the micro level, of exploitation of the tenant. The measures contained in the Housing Act 2004 intended to curb exploitation of the RTB are analysed to determine what can be considered to be legitimate and illegitimate uses of the scheme. It is argued that, despite the government's implicit approval, certain funding arrangements by non-resident relatives fail to give effect to the spirit of the scheme.

Noisy Monte Carlo: convergence of Markov chains with approximate transition kernels

Monte Carlo algorithms often aim to draw from a distribution π by simulating a Markov chain with transition kernel P such that π is invariant under P. However, there are many situations for which it is impractical or impossible to draw from the transition kernel P. For instance, this is the case with massive datasets, where is it prohibitively expensive to calculate the likelihood and is also the case for intractable likelihood models arising from, for example, Gibbs random fields, such as those found in spatial statistics and network analysis. A natural approach in these cases is to replace P by an approximation Pˆ. Using theory from the stability of Markov chains we explore a variety of situations where it is possible to quantify how ’close’ the chain given by the transition kernel Pˆ is to the chain given by P . We apply these results to several examples from spatial statistics and network analysis.

In silico identification and three-dimensional modelling of the missense mutation in ADAMTS2 in a sheep flock with dermatosparaxis

Background Dermatosparaxis (Ehlers–Danlos syndrome in humans) is characterized by extreme fragility of the skin. It is due to the lack of mature collagen caused by a failure in the enzymatic processing of procollagen I. We investigated the condition in a commercial sheep flock. Hypothesis/Objectives Mutations in the ADAM metallopeptidase with thrombospondin type 1 motif, 2 (ADAMTS2) locus, are involved in the development of dermatosparaxis in humans, cattle and the dorper sheep breed; consequently, this locus was investigated in the flock. Animals A single affected lamb, its dam, the dam of a second affected lamb and the rams in the flock were studied. Methods DNA was purified from blood, PCR primers were used to detect parts of the ADAMS2 gene and nucleotide sequencing was performed using Sanger's procedure. Skin samples were examined using standard histology procedures. Results A missense mutation was identified in the catalytic domain of ADAMTS2. The mutation is predicted to cause the substitution in the mature ADAMTS2 of a valine molecule by a methionine molecule (V15M) affecting the catalytic domain of the enzyme. Both the ‘sorting intolerant from tolerant’ (SIFT) and the PolyPhen-2 methodologies predicted a damaging effect for the mutation. Three-dimensional modelling suggested that this mutation may alter the stability of the protein folding or distort the structure, causing the protein to malfunction. Conclusions and clinical importance Detection of the mutation responsible for the pathology allowed us to remove the heterozygote ram, thus preventing additional cases in the flock.

Cultural policy, literature and readership in revolutionary Cuba: the view from the 21st century

This article presents a fresh perspective on cultural policy in revolutionary Cuba, focusing specifically on the centrality of dialogue with the general readership to the production, reception and regulation of literature. It first summarises the positions regarding revolutionary literature that have been asserted and essayed at various points along the sometimes chaotic trajectory of revolution in Cuba. It then examines reading-related policies and recent attempts within Cuba to re-orient reading practices in the aftermath of the Período Especial [Special Period], and ends by presenting current Cuban debates on the need to mitigate dialogic breakdown between literary text and readership.

Borderline cases and the collapsing principle

John Broome has argued that value incommensurability is vagueness, by appeal to a controversial ‘collapsing principle’ about comparative indeterminacy. I offer a new counterexample to the collapsing principle. That principle allows us to derive an outright contradiction from the claim that some object is a borderline case of some predicate. But if there are no borderline cases, then the principle is empty. The collapsing principle is either false or empty.

Palaeoenvironmental evidence for the impact of the crusades on the local and regional environment of medieval (13th–16th century) northern Latvia, eastern Baltic

This paper evaluates the impact of the crusades on the landscape and environment of northern Latvia between the 13th–16th centuries (medieval Livonia). The crusades replaced tribal societies in the eastern Baltic with a religious state (Ordenstaat) run by the military orders and their allies, accompanied by significant social, cultural and economic developments. These changes have previously received little consideration in palaeoenvironmental studies of past land use in the eastern Baltic region, but are fundamental to understanding the development and expansion of a European Christian identity. Sediment cores from Lake Trikāta, located adjacent to a medieval castle and settlement, were studied using pollen, macrofossils, loss-on-ignition and magnetic susceptibility. Our results show that despite continuous agricultural land use from 500 BC, the local landscape was still densely wooded until the start of the crusades in AD 1198 when a diversified pattern of pasture, meadow and arable land use was established. Colonisation followed the crusades, although in Livonia this occurred on a much smaller scale than in the rest of the Ordenstaat; Trikāta is atypical showing significant impact following the crusades with many other palaeoenvironmental studies only revealing more limited impact from the 14th century and later. Subsequent wars and changes in political control in the post-medieval period had little apparent effect on agricultural land use.

Effect of simulated rainfall during wheat seed development and maturation on subsequent seed longevity is reversible

Poor wheat seed quality in temperate regions is often ascribed to wet production environments. We investigated the possible effect of simulated rain during seed development and maturation on seed longevity in wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) cv. Tybalt grown in the field (2008, 2009) or a polythene tunnel house (2010). To mimic rain, the seed crops were wetted from above with the equivalent of 30mm (2008, 2009) or 25mm rainfall (2010) at different stages of seed development and maturation (17 to 58 DAA, days after 50% anthesis), samples harvested serially, and subsequent air-dry seed longevity estimated. No pre-harvest sprouting occurred. Seed longevity (p50, 50% survival period in experimental hermetic storage at 40°C with c. 15% moisture content) in field-grown controls increased during seed development and maturation attaining maxima at 37 (2008) or 44 DAA (2009); it declined thereafter. Immediate effects of simulated rain at 17-58 DAA in field studies (2008, 2009) on subsequent seed longevity were negative but small, e.g. a 1-4 d delay in seed quality improvement for treatments early in development but with no damage detected at final harvests. In rainfall-protected conditions (2010), simulated rain close to harvest maturity (55-56 DAA) reduced longevity immediately and substantially, with greater damage from two sequential days of wetting than one; again, later harvests provided evidence of recovery in subsequent longevity. In the absence of pre-harvest sprouting, the potentially deleterious effects of rainfall to wheat seed crops on subsequent seed longevity may be reversible in full or in part.

NATO and the environment: the committee on the challenges of modern society

Launched with considerable fanfare in 1969, the Committee on the Challenges of Modern Society (CCMS) was supposed to bring new life to NATO by both re-energising public support and engaging with a variety of themes, issues and partners well beyond the alliance’s traditional scope. The first aim of this article is to go beyond the careful media operation that surrounded the launch of the CCMS and to examine the scepticism and resistance of some European partners, particularly the British. The second aim is to demonstrate that NATO started to think in terms of crisis management, disaster relief and environmental disasters well before 1989. The sheer military strength of the alliance and of its partners did remain central – and notably came back to the forefront in 1979 – but the alliance did start to see itself as a geopolitical player and to consider engagement beyond its strictly defined geographical area as early as 1969.

Characterisation of chicken riboflavin carrier protein gene structure and promoter regulation by estrogen

Estrogen is an important steroid hormone that mediates most of its effects on regulation of gene expression by binding to intracellular receptors. The consensus estrogen response element (ERE) is a 13 bp palindromic inverted repeat with a three nucleotide spacer. However, several reports suggest that many estrogen target genes are regulated by diverse elements, such as imperfect EREs and ERE half sites (ERE 1/2),which are either the proximal or the distal half of the palindrome. To gain more insight into ERE half site-mediated gene regulation, we used a region from the estrogen-regulated chicken riboflavin carrier protein (RCP) gene promoter that contains ERE half sites. Using moxestrol, an analogue of estrogen and transient transfection of deletion and mutation containing RCP promoter/reporter constructs in chicken hepatoma (LMH2A) cells, we identified an estrogen response unit (ERU) composed of two consensus ERE 1/2 sites and one non-consensus ERE 1/2 site. Mutation of any of these sites within this ERU abolishes moxestrol response. Further, the ERU is able to confer moxestrol responsiveness to a heterologous promoter. Interestingly, RCP promoter is regulated by moxestrol in estrogen responsive human MCF-7 cells, but not in other cell lines such as NIH3T3 and HepG2 despite estrogen receptor-alpha (ER-�) co transfection. Electrophoretic mobility shift assays (EMSAs) with promoter regions encompassing the half sites and nuclear extracts from LMH2A cells show the presence of a moxestrol-induced complex that is abolished by a polyclonal anti-ER� antibody. Surprisingly, estrogen receptor cannot bind to these promoter elements in isolation. Thus, there appears to be a definite requirement for some other factor(s) in addition to estrogen receptor, for the generation of a suitable response of this promoter to estrogen. Our studies therefore suggest a novel mechanism of gene regulation by estrogen, involving ERE half sites without direct binding of ER to the cognate elements.

Retinoid-Related Receptor (ROR) alpha mRNA Expression Is Altered in the Brain of Male Mice Lacking All Ligand-Binding Thyroid Hormone Receptor (TR) Isoforms

In the vertebrate brain, the thalamus serves as a relay and integration station for diverse neuronal information en route from the periphery to the cortex. Deficiency of TH during development results in severe cerebral abnormalities similar to those seen in the mouse when the retinoic acid receptor (ROR)α gene is disrupted. To investigate the effect of the thyroid hormone recep-tors (TRs) on RORalpha gene expression, we used intact male mice, in which the genes encoding the α and beta TRs have been deleted. In situ hybridization for RORalpha mRNA revealed that this gene is expressed in specific areas of the brain including the thalamus, pons, cerebellum, cortex, and hippocampus. Our quantitative data showed differences in RORalpha mRNA expression in different subthalamic nuclei between wild-type and knock-out mice. For example, the centromedial nucleus of the thalamus, which plays a role in mediating nociceptive and visceral information from the brainstem to the basal ganglia and cortical regions, has less expression of RORalpha mRNA in the knockout mice (-37%) compared to the wild-type controls. Also, in the dorsal geniculate (+72%) and lateral posterior nuclei (+58%) we found more RORalpha mRNA in dKO as compared to dWT animals. Such differences in RORalpha mRNA expression may play a role in the behavioral alterations resulting from congenital hypothyroidism.

Dietary omega-3 fatty acid and omega-3: omega-6 fatty acid ratio predict improvement in glucose disturbances in Japanese Brazilians

Objective: We investigated whether lifestyle-induced changes in dietary fat quality are related to Improvements on glucose metabolism disturbances in Japanese Brazilians at high risk of type 2 diabetes Methods: One hundred forty-eight first- and second-generation subjects with impaired glucose tolerance or impaired fasting glycemia who attended a lifestyle intervention program for 12 mo were studied in the city of Bauru. State of Sao Paulo, Brazil Dietary fatty acid intakes at baseline and after 12 mo were estimated using three 24-h recalls. The effect of dietary fat intake on glucose metabolism was investigated by multiple logistic regression models Results: At baseline, mean standard deviation age and body mass index were 60 II y and 25 5 4.2 kg/m2, respectively After 12 mo. 92 subjects had normal plasma glucose levels and 56 remained in prediabetic conditions. Using logistic regression models adjusted for age, gender, generation, basal intake of explanatory nutrient, energy intake, physical activity, and waist circumference, the odds ratios (95% confidence intervals) for reversion to normoglycemia were 3 14 (1 22-8 10) in the second wrote of total w-3 fatty acid, 4 26 (1.34-13 57) in the second tunic of eicosapentaenoic acid, and 280 (1 10-7.10) in the second tertile of linolenic acid. Similarly. subjects in the highest wrote of w-3.w-6 fatty acid ratio showed a higher chance of improving glucose disturbances (2 51, 1.01-6.37) Conclusions: Our findings support the evidence of an independent protective effect of omega-3 fatty acid and of a higher omega-3:omega-6 fatty acid ratio on the glucose metabolism of high-risk individuals (C) 2010 Elsevier Inc All rights reserved.