Aggregate Costs of Gender Gaps in the Labor Market: A Quantitative Estimate

This paper examines the quantitative effects of gender gaps in entrepreneurship and labor force participation on aggregate productivity and income per capita. We simulate an occupational choice model with heterogeneous agents in entrepreneurial ability, where agents choose to be workers, self-employed or employers. The model assumes that men and women have the same talent distribution, but we impose several frictions on women's opportunities and pay in the labor market. In particular, we restrict the fraction of women participating in the labor market.

Aggregate Costs of Gender Gaps in the Labor Market: A Quantitative Estimate

This paper examines the quantitative effects of gender gaps in entrepreneurship and labor force participation on aggregate productivity and income per capita. We simulate an occupational choice model with heterogeneous agents in entrepreneurial ability, where agents choose to be workers, self-employed or employers. The model assumes that men and women have the same talent distribution, but we impose several frictions on women's opportunities and pay in the labor market. In particular, we restrict the fraction of women participating in the labor market.

The Impact of Housing Market Segmentation between Tourists and Residents on the Hedonic Price for Landscape Quality

Market segmentation is an important issue when estimating the implicit price for an environmental amenity from a surrogate market like property. This paper tests the hypothesis of a segmentation of the housing market between tourists and residents and computes the implicit price for natural landscape quality in Swiss alpine resorts. The results show a clear segmentation between both groups of consumers, although tests also show that the estimated coefficient for landscape is similar in the tourists' model and in the residents'. However, since the functional form is non linear, the nominal - rather than relative - value of a change in natural landscape quality is higher in the tourist housing market than in the residents'. Hence, considering the segmentation of the market between tourists and residents is essential in order to provide valid estimates of the nominal implicit price of natural landscape quality.

CD1d-antibody fusion proteins target iNKT cells to the tumor and trigger long-term therapeutic responses.

Despite the well-established antitumor activity of CD1d-restricted invariant natural killer T lymphocytes (iNKT), their use for cancer therapy has remained challenging. This appears to be due to their strong but short-lived activation followed by long-term anergy after a single administration of the CD1d agonist ligand alpha-galactosylceramide (αGC). As a promising alternative, we obtained sustained mouse iNKT cell responses associated with prolonged antitumor effects through repeated administrations of tumor-targeted recombinant sCD1d-antitumor scFv fusion proteins loaded with αGC. Here, we demonstrate that CD1d fusion proteins bound to tumor cells via the antibody fragment specific for a tumor-associated antigen, efficiently activate human iNKT cell lines leading to potent tumor cell lysis. The importance of CD1d tumor targeting was confirmed in tumor-bearing mice in which only the specific tumor-targeted CD1d fusion protein resulted in tumor inhibition of well-established aggressive tumor grafts. The therapeutic efficacy correlated with the repeated activation of iNKT and natural killer cells marked by their release of TH1 cytokines, despite the up-regulation of the co-inhibitory receptor PD-1. Our results demonstrate the superiority of providing the superagonist αGC loaded on recombinant CD1d proteins and support the use of αGC/sCD1d-antitumor fusion proteins to secure a sustained human and mouse iNKT cell activation, while targeting their cytotoxic activity and cytokine release to the tumor site.

Difficult-to-engage patients: a specific target for time-limited assertive outreach in a Swiss setting.

OBJECTIVE: Assertive community treatment (ACT) failed to develop in Europe, and its efficacy is debated. In Lausanne, Switzerland, ACT focuses on difficult-to-engage patients and aims to facilitate linkage with outpatient care through time-limited interventions. This study aimed to evaluate the applicability and efficiency of time-limited ACT. METHODS: We retrospectively assessed social, clinical, and functional outcomes and motivation for treatment in 75 consecutively seen subjects treated between 2000 and 2002. RESULTS: With 70% of the interventions lasting less than 6 months, we observed significant improvement in most clinical and social problems, in collaboration, in motivation for treatment, and in social network support, despite high baseline levels of clinical and social problems. The number of hospitalizations decreased significantly. CONCLUSIONS: Time-limited ACT is a useful treatment for difficult-to-engage patients with severe clinical and social problems, and it facilitates linkage to care. This narrower target for ACT may facilitate its implementation in Europe.

Target joining of duplicated insertion sequence IS21 is assisted by IstB protein in vitro.

Tandemly repeated insertion sequence IS21, located on a suicide plasmid, promoted replicon fusion with bacteriophage lambda in vitro in the presence of ATP. This reaction was catalyzed in a cell extract containing the 45-kDa IstA protein (cointegrase) and the 30-kDa IstB helper protein of IS21 after both proteins had been overproduced in Escherichia coli. Without IstB, replicon fusion was inefficient and did not produce the 4-bp target duplications typical of IS21.

Safety concerns about CCR5 as an antiviral target.

PURPOSE OF REVIEW: Clinical trials of CCR5 antagonists attest to their efficacy and tolerance in HIV treatment. However, there has been debate on their long-term safety because of the role of CCR5 in innate immunity. This review highlights gaps in our understanding of epidemiology of infections that are modulated by CCR5, in particular, in HIV-infected individuals. RECENT FINDINGS: In the mouse model, CCR5 has a role in the response against pathogens as diverse as Toxoplama gondii, West Nile virus, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, herpes simplex virus, Trypanosoma cruzi, Cryptococcus neoformans, Chlamydia trachomatis, Listeria, and plasmodia. In human cohorts, individuals carrying the defective CCR5Delta32 allele present an increased susceptibility to flavivirus (West Nile virus and tickborne encephalitis virus). The selective pressures that led to the spread of loss-of-function CCR5 mutations in humans (CCR5Delta32), and in mangabeys (CCR5Delta24) are not understood. SUMMARY: The recent availability of CCR5 antagonists has raised concern that genetic, biological, or chemical CCR5 knockout, although beneficial against some pathogens (i.e. HIV), could be deleterious for other processes implicated in pathogen response. The consequences of long-term pharmaceutical intervention on CCR5 should be carefully assessed through rigorous postmarketing surveillance.

Mobile Phone Use among Market Traders at Fairs in Rural Peru

We characterize market traders at two rural fairs in Puno, Peru, based on quantitative and qualitative data gathered in 2008, to gain insight into types of traders and the information needs that influence the degree to which they use mobile phones to make decisions regarding which weekly fairs to attend. Using variables such as origin, type of goods sold, means of transportation to the market, and reliance on networks, we identify traders as full-time traders, part-time traders, or subsistence traders, that is, people trading solely to survive. We find that when traders are already familiar with the technology, regularly rely on endogenous networks to make decisions, and have more to lose from failing to trade (e.g., those selling perishable goods), they are more likely to use mobile phones to decide where to sell.

Combining Internet Monitoring Processes, Packaging and Isotopic Analyses to Determine The Market Structure: Example of Gamma Butyrolactone

The Internet is becoming more and more popular among drug users. The use of websites and forums to obtain illicit drugs and relevant information about the means of consumption is a growing phenomenon mainly for new synthetic drugs. Gamma Butyrolactone (GBL), a chemical precursor of Gamma Hydroxy Butyric acid (GHB), is used as a "club drug" and also in drug facilitated sexual assaults. Its market takes place mainly on the Internet through online websites but the structure of the market remains unknown. This research aims to combine digital, physical and chemical information to help understand the distribution routes and the structure of the GBL market. Based on an Internet monitoring process, thirty-nine websites selling GBL, mainly in the Netherlands, were detected between January 2010 and December 2011. Seventeen websites were categorized into six groups based on digital traces (e.g. IP addresses and contact information). In parallel, twenty-five bulk GBL specimens were purchased from sixteen websites for packaging comparisons and carbon isotopic measurements. Packaging information showed a high correlation with digital data confirming the links previously established whereas chemical information revealed undetected links and provided complementary information. Indeed, while digital and packaging data give relevant information about the retailers, the supply routes and the distribution close to the consumer, the carbon isotopic data provides upstream information about the production level and in particular the synthesis pathways and the chemical precursors. A three-level structured market has been thereby identified with a production level mainly located in China and in Germany, an online distribution level mainly hosted in the Netherlands and the customers who order on the Internet.

The need for combination antihypertensive therapy to reach target blood pressures: what has been learned from clinical practice and morbidity-mortality trials?

Pharmacological treatment of hypertension represents a cost-effective way for preventing cardiovascular and renal complications. To benefit maximally from antihypertensive treatment blood pressure (BP) should be brought to below 140/90 mmHg in every hypertensive patient, and even lower (< 130/80 mmHg) if diabetes or renal disease co-exists. Most of the time such targets cannot be reached using monotherapies. This is especially true in patients who exhibit a high cardiovascular risk. The co-administration of two agents acting by different mechanisms considerably increases BP control. Such preparations are not only efficacious, but also well tolerated, and some fixed low-dose combinations have a tolerability profile similar to placebo. This is for instance the case for the preparation containing the angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitor perindopril (2 mg) and the diuretic indapamide (0.625 mg), a fixed low-dose combination that has recently been shown in controlled interventional trials to be more effective than monotherapies in reducing albuminuria, regressing cardiac hypertrophy and improving macrovascular stiffness. Fixed-dose combinations are becoming more and more popular and are even proposed by current hypertension guidelines as a first-line option to treat hypertensive patients.