Financial Contagion Kolb, Robert W
2011, 2011., 2011-01-20, 2011-02-09, Volume:
604
eBook
'Financial Contagion: The Viral Threat to the Wealth of Nationscovers a lot of territory. It is, of course, terribly important to analyze case histories to discover potential triggers, mechanisms of ...transmission, and viable ways to contain the damage of financial contagion. The problem is, as these articles amply demonstrate, that there’s always a new virus or a mutation of a former one lurking in some corner of the financial world. We don’t know what it is or where it is. And, even if we had some inkling, there’s almost never enough time to develop a financial flu shot.' --SeekingAlpha.comThe latest insights on financial contagion and how both nations and investors can effectively deal with it.The domino-style structure in which the financial system exists is a perilous one. Although historically, the financial system has been able to deal with major shocks, the fact remains that our financial system is not as secure as it should be.Recent years have brought about too many examples of contagion and systemic risk. That is why Financial Contagionis such an important read. In it, the serious concerns that revolve around our fragile economic system are investigated, researched, and explained.Throughout the book, Kolb offers valuable insights on this dilemma as he compiles the history of financial contagion, highlights the latest research on systemic failure and interrelated markets, and analyzes the risks and consequences we face moving forward.Examines the importance of careful regulation and what must be done to stabilize the global financial systemIncludes contributed chapters from both academics and experienced professionals, offering a variety of perspectives and a rich interplay of ideasDetails how close we are to witnessing a financial contagion that could devastate the world economyWe have been harshly reminded of how fragile our economic ecosystem is. With Financial Contagion,you'll hold a better understanding of what needs to be done to strengthen our system and safeguard our financial future.
The bone marrow microenvironment plays an important role in acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) cell proliferation, maintenance, and resistance to chemotherapy. Annexin II (ANX2) is abundantly ...expressed on bone marrow cells and complexes with p11 to form ANX2/p11-hetero-tetramer (ANX2T). We present evidence that p11 is upregulated in refractory ALL cell lines and patient samples. A small molecule inhibitor that disrupts ANX2/p11 interaction (ANX2T inhibitor), an anti-ANX2 antibody, and knockdown of p11, abrogated ALL cell adhesion to osteoblasts, indicating that ANX2/p11 interaction facilitates binding and retention of ALL cells in the bone marrow. Furthermore, ANX2T inhibitor increased the sensitivity of primary ALL cells co-cultured with osteoblasts to dexamethasone and vincristine induced cell death. Finally, in an orthotopic leukemia xenograft mouse model, the number of ALL cells homing to the bone marrow was reduced by 40-50% in mice injected with anti-ANX2 antibody, anti-p11 antibody or ANX2T inhibitor compared to respective controls. In a long-term engraftment assay, the percentage of ALL cells in mouse blood, bone marrow and spleen was reduced in mice treated with agents that disrupt ANX2/p11 interaction. These data show that disruption of ANX2/p11 interaction results in reduced ALL cell adhesion to osteoblasts, increased ALL cell sensitization to chemotherapy, and suppression of ALL cell homing and engraftment.
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The world's best financial minds help us understand today's financial crisisWith so much information saturating the market for the everyday investor, trying to understand why the economic crisis ...happened and what needs to be done to fix it can be daunting. There is a real need, and demand, from both investors and the financial community to obtain answers as to what really happened and why.Lessons from the Financial Crisisbrings together the leading minds in the worlds of finance and academia to dissect the crisis. Divided into three comprehensive sections-The Subprime Crisis; The Global Financial Crisis; and Law, Regulation, the Financial Crisis, and The Future-this book puts the events that have transpired in perspective, and offers valuable insights into what we must do to avoid future missteps.Each section is comprised of chapters written by experienced contributors, each with his or her own point of view, research, and conclusionsExamines the market collapse in detail and explores safeguards to stop future crisesEncompasses the most up-to-date analysis from today's leading financial mindsWe currently face a serious economic crisis, but in understanding it, we can overcome the challenges it presents. This well-rounded resource offers the best chance to get through the current situation andlearn from our mistakes.
Osteosarcoma is the most frequently occurring bone cancer in children and adolescents. Unfortunately, treatment failures are common. Eribulin is a synthetic microtubule inhibitor that has ...demonstrated activity in preclinical osteosarcoma models. The effects of eribulin were evaluated in two human osteosarcoma cell lines as well as in eribulin-sensitive and -resistant osteosarcoma xenograft tumors of the Pediatric Preclinical Testing Program (PPTP) by characterizing cell viability, microtubule destabilization, mitotic arrest and mechanism of cell death. Eribulin demonstrated cytotoxic activity in vitro, through promotion of microtubule dynamic instability, arrest of cells in the G2/M phase, mitotic catastrophe and cell death. The microtubule-destabilizing protein stathmin-1 (STMN1) was coimmunoprecipitated with the cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitor p27 indicating that these cytoplasmic complexes can protect cells from the microtubule destabilizing effect of eribulin. Increased tumoral expression of P-glycoprotein (P-gp) and TUBB3 were also associated with lower drug sensitivity. In summary, eribulin successfully blocked cells in G2/M phase but interfered with mitochondria activity to inhibit proteins involved in apoptosis. Understanding the complex and inter-related mechanisms involved in the overall drug response to eribulin may help in the design of therapeutic strategies that enhance drug activity and improve benefits of eribulin in pediatric patients with osteosarcoma.
Sovereign Debt Kolb, Robert W
2011, 2011-02-09, 2011-02-25, Volume:
605
eBook
An intelligent analysis of the dangers, opportunities, and consequences of global sovereign debtSovereign debt is growing internationally at a terrifying rate, as nations seek to prop up their ...collapsing economies. One only needs to look at the sovereign risk pressures faced by Greece, Spain, and Ireland to get an idea of how big this problem has become. Understanding this dilemma is now more important than ever, that's why Robert Kolb has compiled Sovereign Debt. With this book as your guide, you'll gain a better perspective on the essential issues surrounding sovereign debt and default through discussions of national defaults, systemic risk, associated costs, and much more. Historical studies are also included to provide a realistic framework of reference.Contains up-to-date research and analysis on sovereign debt from today's leading practitioners and academicsDetails the dangers of defaults and their associated systemic risksExplores the past, present, and future of sovereign debtThe repercussions of a national default are all-encompassing as global markets are intricately interwoven in the modern world. Sovereign Debtexamines what it will take to overcome the challenges of this market and how you can deal with the uncertainty surrounding it.
In the international arena, 'vulture investors' acquire the distressed or defaulted debt of sovereign issuers and try to make a profit on that investment by suing the debtor to demand that it pay as ...originally promised. As the derogatory name attached to them shows, vultures have been widely disparaged as being greedy, harming poor nations and peoples, treating other bondholders unfairly, interfering with orderly sovereign debt restructurings, afflicting the sovereign debt market, and harming the society of the debtor nation, as well as the nation that hosts the sovereign debt market. This article describes the basic operation of vulture funds and the legal environment in which sovereign lending and borrowing proceed. It articulates the case against vulture investors, but proceeds to rebut each of the criticisms. Beyond mere rebuttal, however, the article makes an affirmative case for the value of vultures. More specifically, the article argues that, far from harming other actors, the activity of vulture investors actually helps other bondholders and makes the sovereign debt market function better than it otherwise would. In pursuing its profit opportunities, the vulture creates benefits for the society of the debtor nation and the country that houses the sovereign debt market.
Background:
Fatigue is one of the most common and distressing symptoms among persons with multiple sclerosis (pwMS).
Objective:
The aim of this study is to evaluate fatigue as a predictor for disease ...worsening among pwMS.
Methods:
In this retrospective cohort study of New York State MS Consortium (NYSMSC) registry, MS patients reporting moderate-to-severe fatigue at study enrollment (n = 2714) were frequency matched to less-fatigued subjects (n = 2714) on age, baseline Kurtzke Expanded Disability Status Scale (EDSS), disease duration, and MS phenotype. Change from baseline patient-reported outcomes (PROs), as measured by LIFEware™, categorized participants into two groups: those with stable/improved outcomes and those who worsened. In a subgroup of patients with longitudinal data (n = 1951), sustained EDSS worsening was analyzed using Cox proportional hazards modeling to explore the effect of fatigue.
Results:
The median survival time from study enrollment to sustained EDSS worsening was 8.7 years (CI: 7.2–10.1). Participants who reported fatigue at baseline were more likely to experience sustained EDSS worsening during follow-up (HR: 1.4, 95% CI: 1.2–1.7). Patients who were fatigued at baseline were also more likely to report worsening psychosocial limitations (all ps ⩽ 0.01).
Conclusion:
In addition to being a common symptom of MS, severe fatigue was a significant predictor for EDSS worsening in the NYSMSC.
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Generation of orthotopic xenograft mouse models of leukemia is important to understand the mechanisms of leukemogenesis, cancer progression, its cross talk with the bone marrow microenvironment, and ...for preclinical evaluation of drugs. In these models, following intravenous injection, leukemic cells home to the bone marrow and proliferate there before infiltrating other organs, such as spleen, liver, and the central nervous system. Moreover, such models have been shown to accurately recapitulate the human disease and correlate with patient response to therapy and prognosis. Thus, various immune-deficient mice strains have been used with or without recipient preconditioning to increase engraftment efficiency. Mice homozygous for the severe combined immune deficiency (SCID) mutation and with non-obese diabetic background (NOD/SCID) have been used in the majority of leukemia xenograft studies. Later, NOD/SCID mice deficient for interleukin 2 receptor gamma chain (IL2Rγ) gene called NSG mice became the model of choice for leukemia xenografts. However, engraftment of leukemia cells without irradiation preconditioning still remained a challenge. In this study, we used NSG mice with null alleles for major histocompatibility complex class I beta2-microglobulin (β2m) called NSG-B2m. This is a first report describing the 100% engraftment efficiency of pediatric leukemia cell lines and primary samples in NSG-B2m mice in the absence of host preconditioning by sublethal irradiation. We also show direct comparison of the engraftment efficiency and growth rate of pediatric acute leukemia cells in NSG-B2m and NOD/SCID mice, which showed 80-90% engraftment efficiency. Secondary and tertiary xenografts in NSG-B2m mice generated by injection of cells isolated from the spleens of leukemia-bearing mice also behaved similar to the primary patient sample. We have successfully engrafted 25 acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) and 5 acute myeloid leukemia (AML) patient samples with distinct cytogenetic characteristics in NSG-B2m mice, with the purpose of generating pediatric ALL and AML xenografts for preclinical evaluation of drugs. Thus, our data support the use of NSG-B2m mouse model for leukemia engraftment and in vivo preclinical drug efficacy studies.
The scholarly literature on executive compensation is vast. As such, this literature provides an unparalleled resource for studying the interaction between the setting of incentives (or the attempted ...setting of incentives) and the behavior that is actually adduced. From this literature, there are several reasons for believing that one can set incentives in executive compensation with a high rate of success in guiding CEO behavior, and one might expect CEO compensation to be a textbook example of the successful use of incentives. Also, as executive compensation has been studied intensively in the academic literature, we might also expect the success of incentive compensation to be well-documented. Historically, however, this has been very far from the case. This book studies the performance of incentives in executive compensation across many dimensions of CEO performance. The book begins with an overview of incentives and unintended consequences. Then it focuses on the theory of incentives as applied to compensation generally, and as applied to executive compensation particularly. Subsequent chapters explore different facets of executive compensation and assess the evidence on how well incentive compensation performs in each arena. The book concludes with a final chapter that provides an overall assessment of the value of incentives in guiding executive behavior. In it, the book argues that incentive compensation for executives is so problematic and so prone to error that the social value of giving huge incentive compensation packages is likely to be negative on balance. In focusing on incentives, the book provides a much sought-after resource, for while there are a number of books on executive compensation, none focuses specifically on incentives.
We aimed to determine the mortality rate, cause of death, and rate of end-stage kidney disease (ESKD) in adults with nephrotic syndrome (NS).
We conducted a national registry–based study, including ...all 522 adults who had a kidney biopsy for NS in Scotland in 2014–2017. We linked the Scottish Renal Registry to death certificate data. We performed survival and Cox proportional hazards analyses, accounting for competing risks of death and ESKD. We compared mortality rates with those in the age- and sex-matched general population.
A total of 372 patients had primary NS; 150 had secondary NS. Over a median follow-up of 866 days, 110 patients (21%) died. In patients with primary NS, observed versus population 3-year mortality was 2.1% (95% CI 0.0%–4.6%) versus 0.9% (0.8%–1.0%) in patients aged <60 years and 24.9% (18.4%–30.8%) versus 9.4% (8.3%–10.5%) in those aged ≥60 years. In secondary NS, this discrepancy was 17.1% (5.6%–27.2%) versus 1.1% (0.9%–1.2%) in <60-year-olds and 49.4% (36.6%–59.7%) versus 8.1% (6.6%–9.6%) in ≥60-year-olds. In primary NS, cardiovascular causes accounted for 28% of deaths, compared with 18% in the general population. Eighty patients (15%) progressed to ESKD. Incidence of ESKD by 3 years was 8.4% (95% CI 4.9%–11.7%) in primary and 35.1% (24.3%–44.5%) in secondary NS. Early remission of proteinuria and the absence of early acute kidney injury (AKI) were associated with lower rates of death and ESKD.
Adults with NS have high rates of death and ESKD. Cardiovascular causes account for excess mortality in primary NS.
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