Ricklefs and Renner (1) published a highly stimulating paper that compared orders, families, and genera of trees present in tropical Asia, Africa, and America. Both total abundance and number of species in orders and families were found to be significantly correlated among continents, but neither correlation was significant for genera (1). Ricklefs and Renner (1) concluded that the intercontine...

This paper incorporates more general cases with a new class of constantly adjusted concavity demand curves and includes three types taxes. To verify the output symmetry under various forms taxation, we simulate both linear constant elasticity functions unit, ad valorem, cost valorem If all in submarkets are linear, total outputs identical uniform pricing third-degree price discrimination. Furth...

It is well known that ad valorem taxes welfare-dominate specific taxes under monopoly. This paper demonstrates that the comparative welfare ranking of the two instruments reverses under monopsony. The relative performance of alternative tax forms is thus highly sensitive to whether the buyer or seller has market power.

We show that if a monopoly sector is imbedded in a general equilibrium framework and profits are taxed at one hundred percent, then unit (specific) taxation and ad valorem taxation are welfare-wise equivalent. This is contrary to all known claims. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Number:H21

BACKGROUND The association of antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) with tuberculosis-diabetes comorbidity (PTB-DM) is not well understood. METHODS To study the association of AMPs with PTB-DM, we examined the systemic levels of cathelicidin (LL37), human beta defensin- 2 (HBD2), human neutrophil peptides 1-3, (HNP1-3) and granulysin in individuals with either PTB-DM, PTB, latent TB (LTB) or no TB in...

BACKGROUND Angiogenesis and lymphangiogenesis are classical features of granuloma formation in pulmonary tuberculosis (PTB). In addition, the angiogenic factor--VEGF-A is a known biomarker for PTB. AIMS/METHODOLOGY To examine the association of circulating angiogenic factors with PTB, we examined the systemic levels of VEGF-A, VEGF-C, VEGF-D, VEGF-R1, VEGF-R2 and VEGF-R3in individuals with PT...

Prion protein (PrPC) is implicated in the pathogenesis of prion disorders, but its normal function is unclear. We demonstrate that PrPC is a ferrireductase (FR), and its absence causes systemic iron deficiency in PrP knock-out mice (PrP-/-). When exposed to non-transferrin-bound (NTB) radioactive-iron (59FeCl3) by gastric-gavage, PrP-/- mice absorb significantly more 59Fe from the intestinal lu...

The neutral theory of biodiversity (NTB) provides an individual-based modeling framework to study eco-evolutionary dynamics. Previous NTB models usually assumed the same per capita rate of speciation across lineages. However, population dynamics may induce macroevolutionary feedbacks that can result in variable per capita speciation rates across lineages. In this paper, with analytical and simu...

Online shopping platforms (such as Amazon and eBay) or payment card networks (such as Visa and MasterCard) serve to facilitate transactions between buyers and sellers. While these platforms typically only incur small per-transaction costs, they often charge sellers a substantial proportional fee plus a small fixed transaction fee. In this paper, we investigate the implications of this use of ad...