We consider a model of pollution accumulation in which a catastrophic environmental event occurs once the pollution stock exceeds some uncertain critical level. This catastrophic event is irreversible in the sense that once it has occurred economic activities become impossible. Usually, in this type of model, the variable of interest, i.e. the critical pollution threshold, is modelled as a real...

Huntingtin is an essential protein that with mutant polyglutamine tracts initiates dominant striatal neurodegeneration in Huntington's disease (HD). To assess the consequences of mutant protein when huntingtin is limiting, we have studied three lines of compound heterozygous mice in which both copies of the HD gene homolog (Hdh) were altered, resulting in greatly reduced levels of huntingtin wi...

The postulated posttranslational modification of the polyhydroxybutyrate (PHA) synthase from Ralstonia eutropha by 4-phosphopantetheine was investigated. Four beta-alanine auxotrophic Tn5-induced mutants of R. eutropha HF39 were isolated, and two insertions were mapped in an open reading frame with strong similarity to the panD gene from Escherichia coli, encoding L-aspartate-1-decarboxylase (E...

Some researchers argue that co-operative behaviour is possible in the commons because individuals, instead of just being concerned with their own material payoffs, are also concerned with the material payoffs of others. In the economic literature these types of preferences are sometimes called "interdependent". However, while there is much informal discussion on the importance of individual pre...

The identification of the species of origin of meat and meat products is an important issue to prevent and detect frauds that might have economic, ethical and health implications. In this paper we evaluated the potential of the next generation semiconductor based sequencing technology (Ion Torrent Personal Genome Machine) for the identification of DNA from meat species (pig, horse, cattle, shee...

In this paper we discuss three important econometric problems with the estimation of Environmental Kuznets Curves, which we exemplify with the particular example of the Carbon Kuznets Curve (CKC). The Carbon Kuznets hypothesis postulates an inverse U–shaped relationship between per capita GDP and per capita CO2 emissions. All three problems occur in the presence of unit root nonstationary regre...

New polarized fragmentation functions are introduced and justified, in addition to those conventional ones assumed to be independent of the helicity of the parent parton. It is demonstrated that due to our present ignorance concerning these new parton–spin dependent leading–twist fragmentation functions, it is impossible to utilize current experiments on spin–dependent semi–inclusive deep inela...

BACKGROUND Awareness about antibiotic resistance depends on the attitudes and information about antibiotic resistance of both patients and physicians. Persons who practice self-medication are at high risk of also self-medicating with antibiotics. The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the awareness about antibiotic resistance by investigating the practice in a group of self-medication...

OBJECTIVE To assess the differences in ovarian transcriptomes in Shan Ma ducks between their peak and late stages of egg production, and to obtain new transcriptomic data of these egg-producing ducks. METHODS The Illumina HiSeq 2000 system was used for high throughput sequencing of ovarian transcriptomes from Shan Ma ducks at their peak or late stages of egg production. RESULTS Greater than...

The purpose of this Position Stand is to provide guidance to professionals who counsel and prescribe individualized exercise to apparently healthy adults of all ages. These recommendations also may apply to adults with certain chronic diseases or disabilities, when appropriately evaluated and advised by a health professional. This document supersedes the 1998 American College of Sports Medicine...