In most industrialized countries, politicians and policy makers face unprecedented levels of fiscal pressure. Such pressure has compelled governments to conduct substantial cuts in government ...spending and services. While policy makers have attempted to build a strong civil society to compensate for the declining government role, previous studies have not examined the link between government retrenchment and citizen involvement in volunteering. This study examines such a relationship by conducting a cross-national study of OECD countries. After controlling for individual- and country-level factors, the findings show that government retrenchment is positively associated with citizen volunteering.
A
bstract
We give a precise definition of BPS vortex loops in 3D non-abelian gauge theories with
N
= 2 SUSY by the path integral over fields with a prescribed singular behavior. We compute the ...expectation value of a BPS vortex loop on an ellipsoid. Using the result we revisit the known equivalence between Wilson and vortex loops in pure Chern-Simons theory. Naive computations of expectation values in
N
= 2 theory leads to an unwanted shift of parameters in the rule of correspondence. We resolve the problem by relating the shift to the global anomaly of
N
= 2 SUSY quantum mechanics. For theories with U(
N
) gauge group we also develop an alternative description of vortex loops in terms of 1D
N
= 2 SUSY quantum mechanics on their worldline. For vortex loops in
N
= 4 theories, our construction reproduces some of the quiver GLSMs of Assel and Gomis.
The governments of many OECD member countries have resorted to expenditure cuts as a significant response to the global economic crisis. While implementing the cuts, several governments have grown ...reliant on the voluntary sector in order to manage public services under austerity. Such reliance has not been studied comprehensively with reference especially to the link between the cuts and the voluntary activities of citizens. In response, this study examines the link in 604 Japanese municipalities based on an extensive survey of the local planning and community service departments of these municipalities. The study tests if there is an inverse effect of crowding-out and crowding-in when governments implement expenditure cuts. The findings show that the cuts have been complemented by increased involvement of citizen organisations in voluntary activities.
Abstract
We prove the Sobolev-to-Lipschitz property for metric measure spaces satisfying the quasi curvature-dimension condition recently introduced in Milman (Commun Pure Appl Math, to appear). We ...provide several applications to properties of the corresponding heat semigroup. In particular, under the additional assumption of infinitesimal Hilbertianity, we show the Varadhan short-time asymptotics for the heat semigroup with respect to the distance, and prove the irreducibility of the heat semigroup. These results apply in particular to large classes of (ideal) sub-Riemannian manifolds.
Background
Intestinal stem cells (ISCs) play indispensable roles in the maintenance of homeostasis, and also in the regeneration of the damaged intestinal epithelia. However, whether the inflammatory ...environment of Crohn’s disease (CD) affects properties of resident small intestinal stem cells remain uncertain.
Methods
CD patient-derived small intestinal organoids were established from enteroscopic biopsy specimens taken from active lesions (aCD-SIO), or from mucosa under remission (rCD-SIO). Expression of ISC-marker genes in those organoids was examined by immunohistochemistry, and also by microfluid-based single-cell multiplex gene expression analysis. The ISC-specific function of organoid cells was evaluated using a single-cell organoid reformation assay.
Results
ISC-marker genes, OLFM4 and SLC12A2, were expressed by an increased number of small intestinal epithelial cells in the active lesion of CD. aCD-SIOs, rCD-SIOs or those of non-IBD controls (NI-SIOs) were successfully established from 9 patients. Immunohistochemistry showed a comparable level of OLFM4 and SLC12A2 expression in all organoids. Single-cell gene expression data of 12 ISC-markers were acquired from a total of 1215 cells. t-distributed stochastic neighbor embedding analysis identified clusters of candidate ISCs, and also revealed a distinct expression pattern of SMOC2 and LGR5 in ISC-cluster classified cells derived from aCD-SIOs. Single-cell organoid reformation assays showed significantly higher reformation efficiency by the cells of the aCD-SIOs compared with that of cells from NI-SIOs.
Conclusions
aCD-SIOs harbor ISCs with modified marker expression profiles, and also with high organoid reformation ability. Results suggest modification of small intestinal stem cell properties by unidentified factors in the inflammatory environment of CD.
Water-soluble photoreactive polymers with both phosphorylcholine and benzophenone groups were synthesized for the reaction between the polymers and the substrate in aqueous medium. To control the ...polymer architecture, the living radical polymerization method was applied to the copolymerization of 2-methacryloyloxyethyl phosphorylcholine and benzophenone methacrylates. These polymers possess various architectures, such as linear polymers, polymers with hydrophobic terminals, and 4-armed star-like polymers, that could promote their adsorption on the substrate surfaces. Additionally, two types of benzophenone groups were examined. Due to the bulky phosphorylcholine group, tetra(ethylene oxide) group as a spacer between polymer main chain and benzophenone group was considered. These polymers could adsorb on the surface in an aqueous medium, followed by reaction on the surface via photoirradiation depending on the chemical structure of the benzophenone group. The thickness of the polymer layer depended on the polymer architecture, i.e. a polymer with a hydrophobic terminal could form a thick layer. After modification, the contact angle by air in the aqueous medium decreased, compared to that on the base substrate. This was due to the hydrophilic nature based on the phosphorylcholine groups at the surface. The amount of proteins adsorbed on the surface also decreased because of the surface modification. These findings indicated that these water-soluble photoreactive polymers could be applied for the safer and effective surface modification of substrates via conventional photoirradiation without using an organic solvent.
Subnational fiscal performance has been receiving a lot of attention from researchers in various disciplines. However, there is very little published on the impact of citizen involvement on fiscal ...performance. This paper shows that a lack of citizen involvement in the electoral process was associated with fiscal performance in all 807 city-level Japanese municipalities from 2006 to 2012.
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