A quantitative model of a cooperative two-state equilibrium in DNA: experimental tests, insights, and predictions

Quantitative parameters for a two-state cooperative transition in duplex DNAs were finally obtained during the last 5 years. After a brief discussion of observations pertaining to the existence of the two-state equilibrium per se, the lengths, torsion, and bending elastic constants of the two states involved and the cooperativity parameter of the model are simply stated. Experimental tests of model predictions for the responses of DNA to small applied stretching, twisting, and bending stresses, and changes in temperature, ionic conditions, and sequence are described. The mechanism and significance of the large cooperativity, which enables significant DNA responses to such small perturbations, are also noted. The capacity of the model to resolve a number of long-standing and sometimes interconnected puzzles in the extant literature, including the origin of the broad pre-melting transition studied by numerous workers in the 1960s and 1970s, is demonstrated. Under certain conditions, the model predicts significant long-range attractive or repulsive interactions between hypothetical proteins with strong preferences for one or the other state that are bound to well-separated sites on the same DNA. A scenario is proposed for the activation of the ilvPG promoter on a supercoiled DNA by integration host factor.

Democracy As Failure

The theory and the practice of democracy alike are entangled with the prospect of failure. This is so in the sense that a failure of some kind is almost always to be found at democracy’s inception. Different kinds of shortfalls also dog its implementation. No escape is found in theory, which precipitates internal contradictions that can only be resolved by compromising important democratic values. The nexus of democracy and failure elucidates the difficulty of dichotomizing democracies into the healthy and the ailing. It illuminates the sound design of democratic institutions by gesturing toward resources usefully deployed to mitigate the costs of inevitable failure. Finally, it casts light on the public psychology best adapted to persisting democracy. To grasp the proximity of democracy’s entanglements with failure is thus to temper the aspiration for popular self-government as a steady-state equilibrium, to open new questions about the appropriate political psychology for a sound democracy, and to limn new questions about democracy’s optimal institutional specification.

A NOTE ON THE UNIQUENESS OF STEADY-STATE EQUILIBRIUM UNDER STATE-DEPENDENT WAGE SETTING

Does wage setting exhibit strategic complementarity and produce multiple equilibria? This study constructs a discrete-time New Keynesian model in which households choose the timing of their wage adjustments endogenously subject to fixed wage-setting costs. I explore steady-state equilibrium of the state-dependent wage-setting model both analytically and numerically. For reasonable parameter values, complementarity in wage setting is weak and the steady-state equilibrium is unique.

Performance-Based Rankings and School Quality

I study students’ inferences about school quality from performance-based rankings in a dynamic setting. Schools differ in location and unobserved quality; students differ in location and ability. Short-lived students observe a school ranking as a signal about schools’ relative qualities, but this signal also depends on the abilities of schools’ past intakes. Students apply to schools, trading off expected quality against proximity. Oversubscribed schools select applicants based on an admission rule. In steady-state equilibrium, I find that rankings are more informative if more able applicants are given priority in admissions or if students care less about distance to school.

Empirics of Solow growth model in Nepali economy

Economic growth model developed by R. M. Solow explained the steady-state equilibrium in long run based on neoclassical production function with factor substitutions and diminishing returns in context of developed economy. As the nature of Nepali economy is different than developed economy, this paper aims to analyze economic growth of Nepal in the Solow growth model standard. Specifically, it aims to examine the effect of saving rate, labor growth and human capital on economic growth. On basis of steady-state equilibrium equation developed by Solow, regression equation is developed to find the effect of exogenous variables saving rate and labor growth rate on per capita GDP. Further, the model is extended by adding human capital as regressor. Data of 44 years of Nepali economy are used to analyze the model. Since time series of all the variables are stationary at first difference and they contain same stochastic trend, coefficients are estimated by using ordinary least square method. The analysis shows that the Solow model is applicable to Nepali economy as the predicted coefficients are very close to estimated coefficients. However, the estimated coefficients are very less than the predicted coefficients of the extended model. Furthermore, coefficient of labor growth rate is statistically insignificant in the extended model.