Protecting Your Spouse When You Go to a Nursing Home, July 2007

The Spousal Impoverishment Protection Law Have you ever wondered… What will happen if your spouse is not able to live at home because of poor health or confusion? Will you have to spend all of your resources to pay for your spouse’s nursing home care before Medicaid will help? The answer is, “NO”! You have protection from losing all income and assets to pay for your spouse’s care in the nursing home when your spouse qualifies for Medicaid.

Pay-as-you-go social security and the distribution of bequests

This paper studies the impact of an unfunded social security system on the distribution of bequests in a framework where savings are due both by life cycle and by random altruistic motivations. We show that the impact of social security on the distribution of bequests depends crucially on the importance of the bequest motive in explaining savings behavior. If the bequest motive is strong, then an increase in the social security tax raises the bequests left by altruistic parents. On the other hand, when the importance of bequests in motivating savings is sufficiently low, theincrease in the social security tax could result in a reduction of the bequests left by altruistic parents under some conditions on the attitude of individuals toward risk and on the relative returns associated with private saving and social security. Some implications concerning the transitional effects of introducing an unfunded social security scheme are also discussed.

An attempt to go beyond conventional financial accounting information

Conventional financial accounting informationis slanted in favour of certain economic interests. This paper argues in favour ofaccounting information capturing and showingrelevant aspects of the economic-social situation,and of decision-making based on it allowingfor decisions to be taken with economic-social,and not purely economic-weighted, awareness.

GO! Explore the World of Transportation, January - February 2007

Newsletter produced by the Iowa Department of Transport.

Heterotrimeric Go protein links Wnt-Frizzled signaling with ankyrins to regulate the neuronal microtubule cytoskeleton.

Drosophila neuromuscular junctions (NMJs) represent a powerful model system with which to study glutamatergic synapse formation and remodeling. Several proteins have been implicated in these processes, including components of canonical Wingless (Drosophila Wnt1) signaling and the giant isoforms of the membrane-cytoskeleton linker Ankyrin 2, but possible interconnections and cooperation between these proteins were unknown. Here, we demonstrate that the heterotrimeric G protein Go functions as a transducer of Wingless-Frizzled 2 signaling in the synapse. We identify Ankyrin 2 as a target of Go signaling required for NMJ formation. Moreover, the Go-ankyrin interaction is conserved in the mammalian neurite outgrowth pathway. Without ankyrins, a major switch in the Go-induced neuronal cytoskeleton program is observed, from microtubule-dependent neurite outgrowth to actin-dependent lamellopodial induction. These findings describe a novel mechanism regulating the microtubule cytoskeleton in the nervous system. Our work in Drosophila and mammalian cells suggests that this mechanism might be generally applicable in nervous system development and function.

Role of Go/i subgroup of G proteins in olfactory signaling of Drosophila melanogaster.

Intracellular signaling in insect olfactory receptor neurons remains unclear, with both metabotropic and ionotropic components being discussed. Here, we investigated the role of heterotrimeric Go and Gi proteins using a combined behavioral, in vivo and in vitro approach. Specifically, we show that inhibiting Go in sensory neurons by pertussis toxin leads to behavioral deficits. We heterologously expressed the olfactory receptor dOr22a in human embryonic kidney cells (HEK293T). Stimulation with an odor led to calcium influx, which was amplified via calcium release from intracellular stores. Subsequent experiments indicated that the signaling was mediated by the Gβγ subunits of the heterotrimeric Go/i proteins. Finally, using in vivo calcium imaging, we show that Go and Gi contribute to odor responses both for the fast (phasic) as for the slow (tonic) response component. We propose a transduction cascade model involving several parallel processes, in which the metabotropic component is activated by Go and Gi , and uses Gβγ.

A Bowl of Strawberries Can Go A Long WAY..., 2009

Strawberries are one of the healthiest fruits you can eat. They are a great source of Vitamin C. One serving of just eight strawberries will provide 140 % of the US Recommended Daily Allowance of Vitamin C. In a recent study, strawberries ranked second among the top ten fruits in antioxidant capacity (TAC), which is one reason why they may help prevent cancer and heart disease. This brochure produced by The Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship.

Feed the ICU patient 'gastric' first, and go post-pyloric only in case of failure.

In a randomised trial comparing early enteral feeding by gastric and post-pyloric routes, White and colleagues have shown that gastric feeding is possible and efficient in the vast majority of critically ill patients. But the authors' conclusion that gastric is equivalent to post-pyloric is true in only the least severe patients. Given the extra workload and costs, post-pyloric is now clearly indicated in case of gastric feeding failure.

Potencial de uso e qualidade estrutural de dois solos cultivados com cana-de-açúcar em Goianésia (GO)

Com a expansão do setor sucroalcooleiro, tanto os solos com poucas limitações como aqueles que apresentam riscos permanentes ao cultivo intensivo tiveram sua vegetação nativa removida e foram incorporados ao processo produtivo. Para isso, a adoção de sistemas de manejo que mantêm a estrutura do solo pode ser a chave para a manutenção da qualidade e sustentabilidade dos agrossistemas canavieiros. Assim, o objetivo deste estudo foi avaliar o potencial de uso para cana-de-açúcar e a qualidade estrutural de um Cambissolo Háplico Tb distrófico (CXvbd) e um Latossolo Vermelho-Amarelo distrófico (LVAd), no município de Goianésia, GO. Em cada área, realizou-se a classificação das terras quanto à capacidade de uso. Foram coletadas amostras deformadas nas profundidades correspondentes aos horizontes diagnósticos superficiais e subsuperficiais, para caracterização química e físico-hídrica dos solos. Nas profundidades de 0 a 0,05, 0,1 a 0,15 e 0,3 a 0,4 m, foram coletadas amostras indeformadas para determinação da porosidade do solo, da curva de retenção de água, do intervalo hídrico ótimo e da pressão de preconsolidação. O enquadramento dos solos no sistema de capacidade de uso da terra apontou o CXvbd como pertencente à classe IVe, e o LVAd, à classe IIIs. Os resultados das análises dos atributos químicos e físico-hídricos do CXvbd indicaram que o cultivo contínuo com cana-de-açúcar, mesmo com o enquadramento na classe IVe do sistema de capacidade de uso, deve-se à adoção de terraceamento agrícola, além do fato de essa cultura promover pequeno revolvimento do solo e aumentar a cobertura do solo quando colhida crua. O CXvbd apresentou maior disponibilidade de água para as plantas, o que tende a trazer benefícios à cultura. O LVAd, nas condições de estudo, é mais suscetível à compactação, necessitando da adequação do tráfego de máquinas.

The UniProt-GO Annotation database in 2011.

The GO annotation dataset provided by the UniProt Consortium (GOA: http://www.ebi.ac.uk/GOA) is a comprehensive set of evidenced-based associations between terms from the Gene Ontology resource and UniProtKB proteins. Currently supplying over 100 million annotations to 11 million proteins in more than 360,000 taxa, this resource has increased 2-fold over the last 2 years and has benefited from a wealth of checks to improve annotation correctness and consistency as well as now supplying a greater information content enabled by GO Consortium annotation format developments. Detailed, manual GO annotations obtained from the curation of peer-reviewed papers are directly contributed by all UniProt curators and supplemented with manual and electronic annotations from 36 model organism and domain-focused scientific resources. The inclusion of high-quality, automatic annotation predictions ensures the UniProt GO annotation dataset supplies functional information to a wide range of proteins, including those from poorly characterized, non-model organism species. UniProt GO annotations are freely available in a range of formats accessible by both file downloads and web-based views. In addition, the introduction of a new, normalized file format in 2010 has made for easier handling of the complete UniProt-GOA data set.