The open parliament in the age of the internet : can the people now collaborate with legislatures in lawmaking?

This work seeks to address those questions and evaluate other international experiences and experiments designed to achieve the same ends. The book is based on a study of two particular cases where parliamentary bodies designed and implemented participatory digital processes, namely, the e-Democracy Program developed by the Brazilian House of Representatives, and the Virtual Senator Program developed by the Chilean Senate. The text unfolds in the form of a systematic analysis of institutional aspects embracing political and organizational elements as well as the social aspects associated to the application of digital democracy in parliaments. The investigation shows that at the stage they found themselves in 2010 those projects had only brought in very incipient results in regard to the aspects of enhancing representativity in decision making processes, aggregating collective intelligence to the legislative process or transparency to parliamentary performances, even though all of those are precious components of any democracy that deems itself to be participatory and deliberative. Nevertheless, such experiences have had the merit of contributing towards the gradual construction of more effective participatory mechanisms, complementary to the political representation system in place.

Reference Points and Optimal Management in Stochastic Age-Structured Fisheries Models

The purpose of this article is to characterize dynamic optimal harvesting trajectories that maximize discounted utility assuming an age-structured population model, in the same line as Tahvonen (2009). The main novelty of our study is that uses as an age-structured population model the standard stochastic cohort framework applied in Virtual Population Analysis for fish stock assessment. This allows us to compare optimal harvesting in a discounted economic context with standard reference points used by fisheries agencies for long term management plans (e.g. Fmsy). Our main findings are the following. First, optimal steady state is characterized and sufficient conditions that guarantees its existence and uniqueness for the general case of n cohorts are shown. It is also proved that the optimal steady state coincides with the traditional target Fmsy when the utility function to be maximized is the yield and the discount rate is zero. Second, an algorithm to calculate the optimal path that easily drives the resource to the steady state is developed. And third, the algorithm is applied to the Northern Stock of hake. Results show that management plans based exclusively on traditional reference targets as Fmsy may drive fishery economic results far from the optimal.

Population age structure and private consumption in Spain

In this paper we study the effect of population age distribution upon private consumption expenditure in Spain from 1964 to 1997 using aggregate data. We obtain four main results. First, changes in the population pyramid have substantial effects upon the behaviour of private consumption. Second, the pattern of the coefficients of the demographic variables is not consistent with the simplest version of the life cycle hypothesis. Third, we estimate the impact of the demographic transition upon consumption and find positive values associated with episodes in which the shares of groups of individuals with expenditure levels higher (lower) than the mean increased (decreased). Fourth, the results are robust to alternative specifications for the population age distribution.

Age-dependent decrease in glutamine synthetase expression in the hippocampal astroglia of the triple transgenic Alzheimer's disease mouse model : mechanism for deficient glutamatergic transmission?

Astrocytes are fundamental for brain homeostasis and the progression and outcome of many neuropathologies including Alzheimer's disease (AD). In the triple transgenic mouse model of AD (3xTg-AD) generalised hippocampal astroglia atrophy precedes a restricted and specific beta-amyloid (A beta) plaque-related astrogliosis. Astrocytes are critical for CNS glutamatergic transmission being the principal elements of glutamate homeostasis through maintaining its synthesis, uptake and turnover via glutamate-glutamine shuttle. Glutamine synthetase (GS), which is specifically expressed in astrocytes, forms glutamine by an ATP-dependent amination of glutamate. Here, we report changes in GS astrocytic expression in two major cognitive areas of the hippocampus (the dentate gyrus, DG and the CA1) in 3xTg-AD animals aged between 9 and 18 months. We found a significant reduction in Nv (number of cell/mm(3)) of GS immunoreactive (GS-IR) astrocytes starting from 12 months (28.59%) of age in the DG, and sustained at 18 months (31.65%). CA1 decrease of GS-positive astrocytes Nv (33.26%) occurs at 18 months. This Nv reduction of GSIR astrocytes is paralleled by a decrease in overall GS expression (determined by its optical density) that becomes significant at 18 months (21.61% and 19.68% in DG and CA1, respectively). GS-IR Nv changes are directly associated with the presence of A beta deposits showing a decrease of 47.92% as opposed to 23.47% in areas free of A beta. These changes in GS containing astrocytes and GS-immunoreactivity indicate AD-related impairments of glutamate homeostatic system, at the advanced and late stages of the disease, which may affect the efficacy of glutamatergic transmission in the diseased brain that may contribute to the cognitive deficiency.