New Releases by Jonathan Thomas

The basic tenets of gametogenesis are conserved among metazoans. After lineage commitment, germ cells proliferate, complete meiosis, and then differentiate into gametes capable of fertilization. In the mouse, spermatogenesis begins at approximately postnatal day (P) 3-4, as prospermatogonia transition into distinct populations of spermatogonia. Some prospermatogonia become spermatogonial stem cells (SSCs) that provide a consistent source of gametes throughout the male reproductive lifespan. The remaining prospermatogonia proliferate and directly differentiate (without going through an SSC stage) in response to retinoic acid (RA) to eventually enter meiosis at P10. The pathways and cellular mechanisms that direct this critical cell fate decision are poorly defined. This dissertation summarizes the results of an examination of the cellular and molecular changes that occur downstream of RA signaling that direct prospermatogonia at P0-2 to transition to differentiating spermatogonia at P3-4. The results support a novel mechanism by which RA directs spermatogonial differentiation during spermatogenesis.

The global economy is changing: experts are noting slow growth in the advanced economies, greater volatility in international markets, and the emergence of state-owned companies in the competitive marketplace. This forward-looking reference explores the role that state capitalism plays within the political structures of countries throughout the world. The text begins with an introduction to state capitalism, moves into an in-depth examination of several countries and regions, and concludes with a discussion on the future of state capitalism in the next decade. Coauthors Scott B. MacDonald.

In this third short story collection, following up on Midnight Call (2008) and Tempting Providence (2010), Jonathan Thomas continues to demonstrate the skill and emotive power that have made him a dynamic new voice in contemporary weird fiction. This volume opens with a quartet of tales elaborating upon Lovecraft''s Cthulhu Mythos, including "Mobymart After Midnight" (a delightful skewering of Walmart culture) and "King of Cat Swamp," an ingenious riff on "The Call of Cthulhu." Other stories treat a variety of weird themes: "Way Up When," about a man who has remarkable precognitive powers; "The Comeuppance Hour," in which the makers of a skeptical TV show about occult phenomena find more than they bargain for; and "A Retouch in Camonica," about strange happenings in an Italian archaeological site. The volume concludes with a "Swedish-American Triptych," in which various protagonists encounter the bizarre in a far Baltic land. Each tale is crafted meticulously and enlivened by a wit and mordant satire that renders them unique in recent weird writing. "Jonathan Thomas pushes us toward . . . fresh hells, as in his pages we recognize the still startling twenty-first-century disjunction between our own fragmentary human skull and our own residual ape-like jaw."-From Barton L. St. Armand''s Foreword "Jonathan Thomas has an enviably impressive range-from the gentle to the gruesome, from science fiction through fantasy to the spectral and horrific-but his wit is reliable, and so is the clarity of his eye, and the precision of his prose. He''s an asset to all his fields."-Ramsey Campbell

A dynamic contrast-enhanced (DCE) near-infrared (NIR) method to measure cerebral blood flow (CBF) in the neurocritical care unit (NCU) is described. A primary concern in managing patients with acquired brain injury (ABI) is onset of delayed ischemic injury (DII) caused by complications during the days to weeks following the initial insult, resulting in reduced CBF and impaired oxygen delivery. The development of a safe, portable, and quantitative DCE-NIR method for measuring CBF in NCU patients is addressed by focusing on four main areas: designing a clinically compatible instrument, developing an appropriate analytical framework, creating a relevant ABI animal model, and validating the method against CT perfusion. In Chapter 2, depth-resolved continuous-wave NIR recovered values of CBF in a juvenile pig show strong correlation with CT perfusion CBF during mild ischemia and hyperemia (r=0.84, p

Céu do Mapiá is a community of people living in the rainforest in the southwestern quadrant of Brazil. It was founded in 1983 by ex-rubber tapper Sebastião Mota de Melo and a collection of followers of the religion known as "Santo Daime." These men and women were seeking to create a "New World," separating themselves from a society that was undergoing a great deal of upheaval as the period marked the initial phases of major deforestation in the Amazon. The community, therefore, offered a chance of escape from the devastation around them and the freedom to practice their religious beliefs. ''The Holy Gift,'' as it translates in Portuguese, Santo Daime is a religion that melds together popular Roman Catholicism and indigenous ayahuasca use, as well as Afro-Brazilian spirit possession, Amazonian encantaria, and most recently, New Age beliefs and concepts. Ayahuasca is a concoction of two plants, B. caapi and P. viridis, that produces psychotropic effects and has been widely consumed among indigenous tribes in the Amazon. However, in the context of Santo Daime, it has been deemed a kind of sacrament, the central force of a religious movement that has expanded from its corner in the Amazon into urban centers across Brazil and into Europe, North America, and Japan. Though maintaining a fairly small following of 10,000, Santo Daime has become a global religious movement. This thesis attempts to unravel two seemingly contradictory processes embodied in the community of Céu do Mapiá: separation and expansion. First, I outline the trajectory of the community from its initial ideals to its later entanglements with state and other international actors. Second, I trace the network of people, ideas, and goods that have become a part of Santo Daime''s international expansion. Third, I discuss the contemporary everyday rhythms in the communities and how they have been shaped by the various relationships that have developed through this expansion, positing that place is a nexus of relations.

Will Rollins, a greenhorn––cheechako––(chee-chock-oh) is miserable in his new Alaska life. In addition to the bully after him, he can''t seem to make any friends in school and doesn''t know a thing about dogsleds, riverboats, hunting, or surviving at 40 degrees below zero. Even though he doesn''t feel very brave, Will darts out alone onto rampaging river ice to rescue a stranded dog. His bravery wins him a valuable, trained sled dog, Blackie, and a new human friend as well, an Alaskan Indian boy named Elias. It''s Elias who challenges and inspires the cheechako to become a rugged outdoorsman and a real Alaskan. Will starts out by feeding, harnessing and then driving a sled dog team. He learns to throw a hatchet–and hit what he aims at! He learns to snowshoe and stay alive in the cold, to challenge his fears and to push on when everything he wants to do is quit. Best of all, he learns to be a good friend.But when a fierce, Siberian blizzard rampages across central Alaska, stranding Will''s family, nearly burying their log cabin in wind-blown snow drifts,it will be up to Will and Blackie to try to make it out alive. With Elias injured and Will''s family in danger of freezing, can a cheechako save them? Can he save himself?

The San Andreas fault system is distributed across hundreds of kilometers in southern California. This transform system includes offshore faults along the shelf, slope and across the Gulf of Santa Catalina basin (GSCB) - comprising part of the Inner California Continental Borderland. Previously, offshore faults have been interpreted as being discontinuous and striking parallel to the coast between Long Beach and San Diego. Our work, based on several thousand kilometers of deep-penetration industry multi-channel seismic reflection data (MCS) as well as high resolution U.S. Geological Survey MCS, indicates that many of the offshore faults are more geometrically continuous than previously reported including Newport-Inglewood (NI)-San Mateo-Carlsbad(SMC), and Coronado Bank Detachment(CBD)-Descanso faults. We interpret a ~18 km wide step over from the NI-SMC positive flower structure in the north to the CBD-Descanso negative flower structure in the south adjacent to San Diego. These faults and stratigraphic interpretations were gridded and depth converted for modeling slip amounts and orientation on the San Mateo-Carlsbad fault. Stratigraphic interpretations of MCS profiles included the ca. 1.8 Ma Top Lower Pico (TLP), which was correlated from wells located offshore Long Beach (Sorlien et al 2010). Based on this age constraint, four younger (Late) Quaternary unconformities (Q1,Q2,Q3,Q4) are interpreted through much of GSCB. We correlate the Q horizons to core hole data in Los Angeles harbor and constrain their ages: Q1 is 160-300; ka Q2 is 300 ka; Q3 300-450 ka; and Q4 ~600 ka. These ages are an order of magnitude older than interpretations published by Covault and Romans (2009). Assuming the ages that were used to calculate slip are correct, we estimate an average slip rate of ~0.44mm/yr on the San Mateo-Carlsbad with an average azimuth direction of 169° which is significantly less than when calculated with younger interpreted ages and indicates that the SMC fault is a right-lateral strike-slip fault. Our modeling also indicates that the SMC fault is kinematically continuous with a right stepover at its southern extent. This change in SMC strike marks a boundary between transpression in the north and transtension in the south and is significant to understanding future tectonic episodes.

Recent work on consumption allocations in village economies finds that idiosyncratic variation in consumption is systematically related to idiosyncratic variation in income, thus rejecting the hypothesis of full risk-pooling. We attempt to explain these observations by adding limited commitment as an impediment to risk-pooling. We provide a general dynamic model and completely characterise efficient informal insurance arrangements constrained by limited commitment, and test the model using data from from three Indian villages. We find that the model can fully explain the dynamic response of consumption to income, but that it fails to explain the distribution of consumption across households.

A collection of twelve short stories by Jonathan Thomas, including the title story, "Tempting Providence," which is set in H. P. Lovecraft''s native city, and other tales that depict the Lord of the Animals and a man''s quest for a rare psychedelic album.

A collection of short fiction stories in which Jonathan Thomas explores the weird, horrific, and supernatural.

According to the Labour Force Survey, about 20% (approximately 7.5 million) of the non-student working-age population were not in paid employment in 2002. Of these people about one in five were classified as unemployed, with the remainder labelled as ''inactive.'' Despite this categorisation, however, some groups in the so-called inactive population are as likely to move into employment as those classified as unemployed, so any comprehensive measure of labour availability needs to incorporate information on the characteristics of the non-employed pool as a whole. This paper describes the key trends in the demographic and skill structure of the non-employed population since the mid-1980s and contrasts them with those in employment. It also attempts to draw out the implications of these trends for overall labour availability, building on recent Bank research which models individual transition rates from non-employment into employment.

This paper examines the main issues involved in translating domestic bankruptcy procedures to the sovereign context. It considers some of the principles by which domestic bankruptcy procedures operate, and the extent to which they apply to international lending. Two recent proposals are considered in more detail, that of Krueger (A New Approach to Sovereign Debt Restructuring) and that of Pettifor (ch. 9/11, Resolving International Debt Crises - the Jubilee Framework for International Insolvency). The paper also considers the question of the ex ante effects of a procedure which makes default less costly, and concludes that despite a negative impact on the ability to borrow, the overall welfare effect need not be negative.

Four Na+, K+-ATPase alpha isoforms have been identified and characterized in the rat. In humans, three isoforms have been characterized and evidence has been provided suggesting the existence of a fourth alpha isoform. The goal of this study was to isolate and characterize the fourth human alpha isoform. This was accomplished by cloning the cDNA from human testis libraries and expressing it in HeLa cells. Sequence analysis demonstrates that the deduced amino acid sequence shares high homology with the other three human alpha isoforms and the rat alpha 4 isoform. Using an alpha 4 specific antibody, a protein ~100 kDa was identified through western blotting and it was localized to the flagellum of the sperm by immunohistochemistry. These results confirm the existence of the human alpha 4 Na+, K+-ATPase isoform and its localization to sperm suggest that the human alpha 4 isoform plays a role in the function human sperm.