Cognitive skills are robustly associated with good national economic performance. How much of this is due to high-skill countries doing a better job of absorbing total factor productivity from the world’s technology leader? Following Benhabib and Spiegel (Handbook of Economic Growth, 2005), who estimated the Nelson–Phelps technology diffusion model, I use the database of IQ tests assembled by L...

Plasmid-containing bacteria often cause serious therapeutic failure during the treatment of infectious diseases. The selection of resistant-mutant strains and the transfer of mobile genetic determinants (such as plasmids and transposons) of resistance promote increased antibiotic resistance. In the last 30 years the antiplasmid effect of acridine dyes, ethidium bromide, sodium dodecyl sulphate ...

The role of Ca2+ and calmodulin in regulating coupled NaCl transport has been investigated in membrane vesicles from rabbit ileal brush border. Uptake of 22Na+ and 36Cl- was determined by a rapid filtration technique in vesicles isolated with a sucrose density gradient ultracentrifugation method. Ca2+ on the inside of the vesicle inhibited Na+ uptake when Cl- was the anion and Cl- uptake when N...

In the present study, the role of calmodulin in the cellular action of arginine vasopressin (AVP), prostaglandin (PG) E2 and forskolin on adenosine-3', 5'-monophosphate (cAMP) production was examined in cultured rat renal papillary collecting tubule cells. In the presence of the phosphodiesterase inhibitor, submaximal concentrations of 10(-9) M AVP, 2 X 10(-8) M PGE2 and 2.4 X 10(-7) M forskoli...

Constructing total factor productivity growth numbers free of the effects of business cycle variations is, as the large recent literature on the topic has shown, a difficult exercise. But the trend evolutions are clear. In most countries, TFP growth has been lower-often much lower-than it was before the mid-1970s. And the decrease in the underlying TFP growth rate appears to have been quite abr...

In this study, P-glycoprotein modulator effects on pharmacokinetics and central nervous system distribution of the chemotherapeutic agent etoposide were evaluated. The multidrug resistance transporter P-glycoprotein is expressed in normal tissues, and its physiological function is thought to be an excretory and/or protective one. To examine this further, we evaluated etoposide under steady-stat...

TWO APPROACHES WERE USED TO STUDY THE POSSIBLE ROLE OF CALMODULIN IN THE REGULATION OF STEROID SYNTHESIS BY MOUSE ADRENAL TUMOR CELLS: trifluoperazine was used as an inhibitor of calmodulin and liposomes were used to deliver calmodulin into the cells. Trifluoperazine inhibits three steroidogenic responses to both ACTH and dibutyryl cyclic AMP: (a) increase in steroid production, (b) increased t...