Opening Pandora's box: New technology, new complications

Opening the Credit Box

Opening the Black Box

Controversy over the aggregate impact of foreign aid has focused on reduced form estimates of the aid-growth link. The causal chain, through which aid affects developmental outcomes including growth, has received much less attention. We address this gap by: (i) specifying a structural model of the main relationships; (ii) estimating the impact of aid on a range of final and intermediate outcome...

New Box-Behnken designs

Box and Behnken (1960) constructed 10 three-level, second-order designs, while their 1958 technical report contained seven additional designs. This series of designs is based on combining 2 or 2 designs in different subsets of the t factors, with k < t. The subsets of size k were determined using balanced (or partially balanced) incomplete block designs. This present article offers additional B...

Maillard Proteomics: Opening New Pages

Protein glycation is a ubiquitous non-enzymatic post-translational modification, formed by reaction of protein amino and guanidino groups with carbonyl compounds, presumably reducing sugars and α-dicarbonyls. Resulting advanced glycation end products (AGEs) represent a highly heterogeneous group of compounds, deleterious in mammals due to their pro-inflammatory effect, and impact in pathogenesi...

Apoptosis: Opening PANdora's BoX

Extracellular nucleotides have been reported to act as a 'find-me' signal in the context of phagocyte recruitment by apoptotically dying cells. A new study now examines the mechanisms of nucleotide release during apoptosis and describes the hemichannel-forming protein pannexin 1 as a crucial player in this scenario.