735 research outputs found
Taxation of financial assets in developing countries
No full textIn developing countries, most financial assets in formal markets are deposits at financial institutions. This potentially important tax base could be taxed at a low administrative cost. When revenues of financial taxes are significant, implicit taxes dwarf explicit taxes. The author focuses on the implicit taxation of financial assets through seigniorage, reserve requirements, lending targets, and interest ceilings combined with inflation. The last instrument has often been overlooked, but it has generated more than a third of implicit revenues in some cases by lowering the cost of government borrowing. Tax revenues are difficult to measure because of regulations that prevent the use of market prices for computation and distort the meaning of some definitions. For some countries, the standard method of seigniorage grossly underestimates the revenue from financial taxation. The author discusses various sources of distortion but ignores potential impacts on the level of saving and the growth rate. Although taxes on financial assets have a low administrative cost, the excess burden that stems from the misallocation of resources is probably a much higher fraction of revenues than that of other taxes.Economic Theory&Research,Environmental Economics&Policies,Banks&Banking Reform,Public Sector Economics&Finance,Municipal Financial Management
A Design Tool for Passive Wrist Support
No full textA design tool for passive wrist support using compliant spatial beams as gravity balancer is presented. The aim of this assistive device is to reduce required effort for pronation-supination and flexion-extension by 70% to help patients with muscular weakness keeping their hand’s posture and doing daily tasks, while the forearm is rested. To reach this goal, a setup with three connection points to the user’s hand, and two optimized spatial beams as elastic gravity compensators, are developed. The overall shape and cross-sectional dimensions of the compliant beams are attained using an optimization technique. The objective is reaching a desired endpoint kinetostatic behaviour which is determined based on the hand’s weight and available muscular forces. A design case is presented to show the ability of the method, and the final errors from the desired behaviour are clarified. In the end, possible further applications of the design tool are discussed.Accepted Author ManuscriptMechatronic Systems DesignPrecision and Microsystems Engineerin
A Review of Tools to Automatically Infer Chromosomal Positions From dbSNP and HGVS Genetic Variants
No full textCreating Transparent and Reproducible Pipelines:Best Practices for Tools, Data, and Workflow Management Systems
No full textAnalyzing HLA-G polymorphisms in children from women with scleroderma
No full textInternational audienceEmbryos during pregnancy and organs during transplantation, express high levels of soluble HLA-G (sHLA-G) molecules for successful implantation and protection against maternal immune cells or recipient's cells. We and others have shown that women with scleroderma (SSc) carry cells/DNA arising from pregnancy, so-called fetal microchimerism (Mc) more often and in higher quantities than healthy women decades after delivery. We hypothesized that high levels of fetal Mc were the consequence of a fetus with a high sHLA-G profile, therefore that children from women with SSc would have this profile more often than children from healthy women. High sHLA-G secretor profile is influenced by at least two variations in the HLA-G 3' untranslated region (UTR): a 14bp deletion in exon 8 and the presence of cysteine (C) in position +3142 and by one variation in the 5' Upstream Regulatory Region (URR) at position -725. By a previously developed three-step multiplex PCR SNaPshot method, we evaluated 16 HLA-G polymorphisms in DNA samples from the first-born children of 39 women with SSc and 32 healthy women. Contrary to expectations, children from women with SSc did not have a high sHLA-G profile, but rather the opposite. We discuss possible reasons for this result and future orientations for HLA-G studies in SSc
Functional and molecular characterization of CCK receptors in the rat pancreatic acinar cell line AR 4-2J
No full textCompetitive inhibition binding studies on membranes from the rat pancreatic AR 4-2J cell line revealed the predominance (80%) of low selectivity CCk receptors (K(D) of 1 nM and 4nM for, respectively, CCK-8 and gastrin-17(I) (G-17(I))) over selective receptors (20% with a K(D) of 1 nM and 1 μM for respectively, CCK-8 and G-17(I)). Amylase secretion was stimulated by low concentrations of CCK-8, G-17(I) and CCK-4. G-17(I)-induced amylase secretion was unaffected by 100 nM of the selective peripheral CCK-A receptor antagonist L-364,718, suggesting that amylase hypersecretion followed non-selective CCK receptor activation, a function normally assumed by selective CCK-A receptors in rat pancreatic acini. Direct ultraviolet irradiation of AR 4-2J cell membranes preloaded with 125I-BH-CCK-33 or 125I(Leu)G(2-17)(I) resulted in covalent cross-linking with, respectively, a 90 kDa protein and a 106 kDa protein, both distinct from the 81 kDa CCK binding species revealed in normal rat pancreatic membranes. Gpp[NH]p increased the dissociation rate of CCK-8 and G-17(I) from AR 4-2J cell membranes, indicating a coupling of receptors with guanyl nucleotide regulatory protein(s) G. [32P]ADP-ribosylation of AR 4-2J cell membranes allowed to detect the presence of two G(s)α (the 50 kDa form predominating over the 45 kDa form) and one G(i)α (41 kDa). However, G(i) and G(s) may not be involved in gastrin stimulation of amylase secretion, as Bordetella pertussis toxin and cholera toxin pretreatment of cells did not suppress G-17(I)-dependent amylase secretion.SCOPUS: ar.jinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishe
Multipole-Based Algorithms for Efficient Calculation of Forces and Potentials in Macroscopic Periodic Assemblies of Particles
No full textA new and efficient algorithm based on multipole techniques is presented which calculates the electrostatic forces and potentials in macroscopic periodic assemblies of particles. The Fast Multipole Algorithm (FMA) can be used to compute forces within the n-particle unit cell in O(n) time. For the cubic lattice, forces due to a 3 k \Theta 3 k \Theta 3 k lattice of images of the unit cell can be computed in O(nk 2 + k 3 log k) time to arbitrary precision. For biological systems, k need only be a small constant, giving an algorithm linear in n. The algorithm was easily added onto an existing FMA implementation, and computational results are presented. Accurate electrostatic computations were done on a 3 8 \Theta 3 8 \Theta 3 8 region of unit cells at only a twofold cost over computing the forces and potentials within the 100000 particle unit cell alone. Acknowledgements I'd first like to thank my parents Gerard and Marilynne for their years of love and encouragement; no ..
Multipole-Based Algorithms for Efficient Calculation of Forces and Potentials in Macroscopic Periodic Assemblies of Particles
No full textA new and efficient algorithm based on multipole techniques is presented which calculates the electrostatic forces and potentials in macroscopic periodic assemblies of particles. The Fast Multipole Algorithm (FMA) can be used to compute forces within the n-particle unit cell in O(n) time. For the cubic lattice, forces due to a 3^k &times 3^k &times 3^k lattice of images of the unit cell can be computed in O(nk² + k³ log k) time to arbitrary precision. For biological systems, k need only be a small constant, giving an algorithm linear in n. The algorithm was easily added onto an existing FMA implementation, and computational results are presented. Accurate electrostatic computations were done on a 3^8 × 3^8 × 3^8 region of unit cells at only a twofold cost over computing the forces and potentials within the 100000 particle unit cell alone
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