Financial Networks and Contagion Elliott, Matthew; Golub, Benjamin; Jackson, Matthew O.
The American economic review,
10/2014, Volume:
104, Issue:
10
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
We study cascades of failures in a network of interdependent financial organizations: how discontinuous changes in asset values (e.g., defaults and shutdowns) trigger further failures, and how this ...depends on network structure. Integration (greater dependence on counterparties) and diversification (more counterparties per organization) have different, nonmonotonic effects on the extent of cascades. Diversification connects the network initially, permitting cascades to travel; but as it increases further, organizations are better insured against one another's failures. Integration also faces trade-offs: increased dependence on other organizations versus less sensitivity to own investments. Finally, we illustrate the model with data on European debt cross-holdings.
Due to masculine expectations and cultural perceptions, Luo and Busoga men, in their respective countries of Kenya and Uganda, can experience a range of mental health conditions which can lead to ...violent and problematic behaviours. Over an 18 month period in 2022/23, Masculinities and Mental Health used bottom-up, culturally responsive, arts and health workshops to seek to understand the cultural causes of stress and depression reported by men in Luo and Busoga cultures. The project included a two month arts-based residency in Osiri village, Kisumu County (Kenya) and a four week residency in Walukuba, Jinja (Uganda) working with groups of men to explore definitions of mental health via arts-based research methodologies. This article will present examples from the research whilst critically interrogating the possibilities of arts-based research contributing to an ongoing process of decolonising mental health practices in East Africa. The paper is focused on three dilemmas and learnings that occurred during the project; balancing the relationship between popular and progressive ideas in health care research, the complications of developing the 'art' in arts-based research and the inherent limitations of arts-based research in developing impact. I argue that arts-based research can effectively contribute to wider efforts of decolonising mental health by enabling participatory spaces to explore indigenous knowledge and lived experience. However, such efforts could be advanced if arts-based research engaged with systemic structures which enforce Global North practices and ignore culturally specific understandings of mental health.
Evidence suggests that learning to play music enhances musical processing skills and benefits other cognitive abilities. Furthermore, studies of children and adults indicate that the brains of ...musicians and nonmusicians are different. It has not been determined, however, whether such differences result from pre‐existing traits, musical training, or an interaction between the two. As part of an ongoing longitudinal study, we investigated the effects of music training on children's brain and cognitive development. The target group of children was compared with two groups of children, one involved in sports and another not enrolled in any systematic afterschool training. Two years after training, we observed that children in the music group had better performance than comparison groups in musically relevant auditory skills and showed related brain changes. For nonmusical skills, children with music training, compared with children without music or with sports training, showed stronger neural activation during a cognitive inhibition task in regions involved in response inhibition despite no differences in performance on behavioral measures of executive function. No such differences were found between music and sports groups. We conclude that music training induces brain and behavioral changes in children, and those changes are not attributable to pre‐existing biological traits.
In pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH), endothelial dysfunction and obliterative vascular disease are associated with DNA damage and impaired signaling of BMPR2 (bone morphogenetic protein type 2 ...receptor) via two downstream transcription factors, PPARγ (peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma), and p53.
We investigated the vasculoprotective and regenerative potential of a newly identified PPARγ-p53 transcription factor complex in the pulmonary endothelium.
In this study, we identified a pharmacologically inducible vasculoprotective mechanism in pulmonary arterial and lung MV (microvascular) endothelial cells in response to DNA damage and oxidant stress regulated in part by a BMPR2 dependent transcription factor complex between PPARγ and p53. Chromatin immunoprecipitation sequencing and RNA-sequencing established an inducible PPARγ-p53 mediated regenerative program regulating 19 genes involved in lung endothelial cell survival, angiogenesis and DNA repair including,
(
),
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),
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),
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), and
(
). Expression of these genes was partially impaired when the PPARγ-p53 complex was pharmacologically disrupted or when BMPR2 was reduced in pulmonary artery endothelial cells (PAECs) subjected to oxidative stress. In endothelial cell-specific
-knockout mice unable to stabilize p53 in endothelial cells under oxidative stress, Nutlin-3 rescued endothelial p53 and PPARγ-p53 complex formation and induced target genes, such as
(
) and
, to regenerate pulmonary microvessels and reverse pulmonary hypertension. In PAECs from
mutant PAH patients, pharmacological induction of p53 and PPARγ-p53 genes repaired damaged DNA utilizing genes from the nucleotide excision repair pathway without provoking PAEC apoptosis.
We identified a novel therapeutic strategy that activates a vasculoprotective gene regulation program in PAECs downstream of dysfunctional BMPR2 to rehabilitate PAH PAECs, regenerate pulmonary microvessels, and reverse disease. Our studies pave the way for p53-based vasculoregenerative therapies for PAH by extending the therapeutic focus to PAEC dysfunction and to DNA damage associated with PAH progression.
AbstractTheory about the conceptual basis of psychiatric disorders has long emphasized negative emotionality. More recent ideas emphasize roles for positive emotionality and impulsivity as well. This ...article examines impulsive responses to positive and negative emotions, which have been labelled as urgency. Urgency is conceptually and empirically distinct from other forms of impulsivity. A large body of work indicates that Urgency is more robustly related to psychopathology than are other forms of impulsivity. Researchers have considered four neurocognitive models of urgency: excessive emotion generation, poor emotion regulation, risky decision-making, and poor cognitive control. Little evidence supports emotion generation or risky decision-making as the core issues driving urgency. Rather, urgency appears related to dysfunction in key hubs implicated in the integration of cognitive control and emotion regulation (e.g., the orbitofrontal cortex and anterior insula), expressed as response inhibition deficits that emerge most robustly in high arousal contexts. These neurocognitive processes appear remarkably parallel for positive and negative urgency. We provide methodological suggestions and theoretical hypotheses to guide future research.
Internalizing symptoms like anxiety and depression are common and impairing in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Here, we test the hypothesis that aberrant functional connectivity among three brain ...networks (salience network SN, default mode network DMN, and frontoparietal network FPN) plays a role in the pathophysiology of internalizing in ASD.
We examined the association between resting-state functional connectivity and internalizing in 102 adolescents and young adults with ASD (n = 49) or typical development (n = 53). Seed-to-target functional connectivity was contrasted between adolescents and young adults with ASD and typically developing subjects using a recent parcellation of the human cerebral cortex, and connections that were aberrant in ASD were analyzed dimensionally as a function of parent-reported internalizing symptoms.
Three connections demonstrated robust overconnectivity in ASD: 1) the anterior insula to the retrosplenial cortex (i.e., SN-DMN), 2) the anterior insula to the frontal pole (i.e., SN-FPN), and 3) the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex to the retrosplenial cortex (i.e., FPN-DMN). These differences remained significant after controlling for age, and no age-related effects survived correction. The SN-DMN connection was associated with greater internalizing in ASD, mediated by a bigger difference between self- and parent-reported internalizing. Control analyses found that the other two connections were not associated with internalizing, and SN-DMN connectivity was not associated with a well-matched control measure (externalizing symptoms).
The present findings provide novel evidence for a specific link between SN-DMN overconnectivity and internalizing in ASD. Further, the mediation results suggest that intact anterior insula-retrosplenial connectivity may play a role in an individual’s generating insight into his or her own psychopathology.
Temperature control of multiple zones with a multi-evaporator vapor compression system is a common problem in modern air conditioning. Due to the coupled system dynamics, standard decoupled ...controllers can interfere with each unit′s performance. This paper proposes an architecture that is decentralized and modular, avoiding competing controllers and the practical difficulty of implementing a centralized controller. A model predictive control (MPC) supervisor calculates evaporator cooling and pressure setpoints for each zone, balancing temperature regulation with energy efficiency; these setpoints are tracked by local level controllers, which rely upon MPC's ability to respect constraints in order to maintain safe, efficient operation.
•A control architecture is proposed for coordinating the temperature control of multiple zones cooled by a multi-evaporator vapor compression system.•The resulting architecture is decentralized and modular, despite the coupled nature of the system dynamics.•The control architecture relies upon model predictive control's ability to respect system constraints in order to maintain safe, efficient operation.•Evaporators or compressors can easily be added to the supervisory controller without having to develop new controllers for existing components.
Networks and economic policy Elliott, Matthew L; Goyal, Sanjeev; Teytelboym, Alexander
Oxford review of economic policy,
12/2019, Volume:
35, Issue:
4
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Abstract
Over the past two decades, economists have made significant advances in understanding how networks affect individual behaviour and shape aggregate outcomes. We argue that insights from ...network economics can play an important role in the design of economic policy. Focusing on six policy domains, we show that network economics not only deepens our understanding of existing policy concerns but also suggests a number of new policy questions. In each of these policy areas, we evaluate the availability of data and assess the suitability of the network economics toolkit for policy work. We conclude with a discussion of challenges to the adoption of network-based methods in economic policy along with strategies to overcome them.
This paper studies market clearing in matching markets. The model is non-cooperative, fully decentralized, and in Markov strategies. Workers and firms bargain with each other to determine who will be ...matched with whom and at what terms of trade. Once a worker-firm pair reach agreement, they exit the market. Alternative possible matches affect agents' bargaining positions. We ask under which conditions such markets clear efficiently and find that inefficiencies -- mismatch and delay -- feature frequently. Mismatch occurs whenever an agent's bargaining position is at risk of deteriorating. Delay occurs whenever agents expect their bargaining position to improve. Delay can be extensive and structured with vertically differentiated markets endogenously clearing from the top down.
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