More workers should be facilitated to work from home in order to improve their chances of retaining their jobs, according to the Economic and Social Research Institute.

Electric scooters are coming to New York and, with a little planning and preparation, they can safely thrive here. To understand how, it helps to start with some context.

Advocates have long protested the lack of special education pre-K classes for 3- and 4-year-olds, which is federally mandated, even as the city invests millions in universal pre-K.

The GAA's management committee and chairpersons from each county board will meet remotely today to discuss the future of the 2020 All-Ireland Championships.

It's not the government takeover that many Californians wanted for the fire-starting utility, but the deal Gavin Newsom struck with PG&E should help.

In America, the healthiest are by no coincidence also the wealthiest. The poor, the disabled and people of color get the short end of the stick.

A doctor leaves the calm of home to work in the charged atmosphere of the hospital where sober conversations abound about the possibility of being overrun with COVID-19 cases.

Collecting and analyzing real-time data on the number of cases and deaths during a disease outbreak is crucial. Here's why we've failed.

Dear Readers, As we embark on a new year, I want to take a moment to thank you for reading and to look back at the highlights of 2014.

Nearly 50 years after Congress passed Title IX, female athletes are still scrambling for a fair shot in the male-dominated world of sport. In hockey, top Americans and Canadians train with their national teams part-time; the rest of the season, they have only a small pro league that offers twice-a-week practices, weekend games and thin salaries.

The NCAA is giving spring sports athletes whose 2020 seasons were majorly disrupted by the coronavirus another year of eligibility.

NCAA voted Monday to approve an extra year of eligibility for spring athletes who had their seasons canceled because of COVID-19 but some might not get same financial aid.

A proposal that would allow Division I sports teams to be cut amid the coronavirus crisis has created concern among coaches and athletics officials.

Tyree Thompson has been granted a sixth year of eligibility and will finish his college career at Buffalo. He started every game for UCLA in 2018.

Schools have been told they must provide equal learning opportunities to students with disabilities, but the schools and parents say that's not happening during the coronavirus crisis.

Mitch McConnell has promised that the next coronavirus bill would protect business owners from lawsuits related to COVID-19.

The coronavirus pandemic has shut down theaters, which may result in big changes for the Oscars.

Emmy ceremony stays on schedule, but FYC events are banned, the period during which "hanging" episodes can qualify expands and the voting schedule pushes back.

Morgan Stanley stock analyst Adam Jonas told clients Wednesday that if Tesla's troubles continue, it's unlikely to be acquired by a tech company, an auto company, or someone from China.

With movie theaters shut down due to the pandemic, the motion picture academy's board voted Tuesday to temporarily suspend its long-held rule requiring a theatrical release for Oscar consideration

The PGA Tour has been disrupted by the ongoing coronavirus pandemic - but will player eligibility be affected?

The Hardware Engineer is a multidisciplinary role with mechanical and electrical responsibilities. This role will be responsible for the design, development, testing, certification, and production support of aircraft environmental control systems. Our Engineers must possess the ability to apply engi

HYPOCRISY is one of the aggravating sins of the progressive elite. There is nothing more sickening than the failure of prominent figures to abide by the standards they seek to impose on others. Such double standards can be found in socialists who rage against private education but send their children to fee-paying schools, or in eco warriors who wail about carbon footprints while globe-trotting in luxury jets.

HYPOCRISY is one of the aggravating sins of the progressive elite. There is nothing more sickening than the failure of prominent figures to abide by the standards they seek to impose on others. Such double standards can be found in socialists who rage against private education but send their children to fee-paying schools, or in eco warriors who wail about carbon footprints while globe-trotting in luxury jets.

THIS is a story of two businesses and of two very different approaches to our current exigencies.The first concerns my local laundry CleanCall, which devised a means to keep going and contributing to the economy.

This year, I am currently making over $12,000 less a year then I was supposed to when I was hired in 2004, a letter to the editor says.

Belatedly, I've got round to looking at the Treasury's recent decision to change how it calculates the necessary contributions that have to be made to cover the future costs of unfunded public service pensions.

My interest was sparked by a letter sent to the chancellor by 23 pension experts, organised by the consultant John Ralfe. They argue that the Treasury has made a mistake in its choice of a new so-called discount rate.

If you think this is tedious abstruse stuff that has no relevance to you, think again. The aggregate public-sector net liability for pensions is so huge - perhaps £1 trillion - that it matters to all of us as taxpayers, especially those likely to be paying tax in 10 and 20 years time, that the government has a reliable and accurate valuation of pension promises.

Pensions represent, to coin the phrase, a massive off-balance-sheet debt. And as we've all learned to our cost from the financial crisis of 2007-8, it is a bad idea to carry on blithely pretending off-balance-sheet liabilities don't exist.

So what is this blessed discount rate? Well in the private sector it can be seen as the number used to translate into today's money a commitment to pay £650 a week pension (for example) for 30 years or so to a retired employee (till he or she dies), so that we can see whether there's enough money in the pension fund to pay that employee (and all the other employees) during his or her long retirement.

The point of the discount rate is to assess whether there's enough money in the pension fund - or whether it needs to be topped up.

Which is all very well, except that for most of the public sector, there are no funds or pots of money to pay for future pensions. Most of the pension promises are unfunded, payable out of employees' current contributions and out of general taxation.

That said, since public sector workers are increasingly expected to make a contribution to the costs of their own pensions, it would presumably be sensible for that contribution to be set at a level that is rationally related to the value of promised pensions.

So what is the best way of measuring the cost today of new pension promises?

Well the government has decided to "discount" those promises by the rate at which the economy is expected to grow.

Now there is some logic to that: the growth rate of the economy should determine the growth rate of tax revenues; and the growth rate of tax revenues will have a direct bearing on whether future pension promises will bankrupt us all or not.

But here's the thing. Any private sector chief executive might well be sent to prison if he or she decided to use the equivalent discount rate for a company, which would be the expected growth rate of that company's revenues or profits.

The reason is that although it might be possible to remove subjectivity (or in a worst case, manipulation) from any long-term forecast of the growth of GDP or of a company's turnover, it is not possible to remove considerable uncertainty.

To illustrate, the Treasury has chosen a GDP growth rate of 3% per annum as the discount rate for public sector pensions, which is considerably above the rate at which the UK economy has grown for years or indeed may grow for many years.

If we were growing at 3%, we would in practice be less worried about the off-balance-sheet liabilities of public-sector pensions, because the on-balance-sheet debt of the government would not be growing at an unsustainably fast rate.

To put it another way, in choosing its view of the long term growth rate of GDP as the discount rate, the Treasury is arguably understating the burden of future pensions to a considerable extent.

So what discount rate do companies use?

Well they are obliged to discount the liabilities at the yield or interest rate on AA rated corporate bonds.

Which may not be ideal, but has some advantages: there is a market price for AA corporate bonds, so the yield or discount rate is difficult to manipulate by unscrupulous employers; and it tells the company how much money would need to be in the pension pot, on the basis that all the money were invested in relatively safe investments (AA corporate bonds).

Now Ralfe and his chums believe that the discount rate for public sector promises should be the yield on long-term index linked gilts (gilts are bonds or debts of the British government) - partly because this too has a difficult-to-manipulate market price and because an index-linked government bond is a very similar liability to a public sector pension promise (both are protected against inflation, both are in effect debts of the government).

They point out that gilt interest and principal payments are paid out of future tax revenues, just as future pensions are. So if the value today of future pensions should be discounted at the GDP rate, that's how index linked gilts should be value on the government's balance sheet - which would be bonkers.

Anyway, if you've read this far (and many congratulations to you if you have), you may take the view that it would not be rational to impose a tougher discount rate on the government than on private-sector companies - which is what Ralfe et al seem to want, in that the yield on index linked gilts will always be lower than the yield on AA corporate bonds (because HMG, even with all its debts, is deemed to be more creditworthy than any British business).

But for a government and for a chancellor who have made it a badge of honour to bring transparency and prudence to public-sector finances, prospective GDP growth does look a slightly rum discount rate for valuing those enormous pension liabilities.

The first day of the 2020-2021 school year is just a few months away. Will kids be back in classrooms or continue logging on?

A fixture in IU's starting lineup for most of the past two years, Smith averaged 10.4 points and 5.2 rebounds per game in 2019-20.

IU baseball, softball working out expanded rosters

Prophet Brown's wide-ranging skill set could bring possibilities for Notre Dame.

A fixture in IU's starting lineup for most of the past two years, Smith averaged 10.4 points and 5.2 rebounds per game in 2019-20.

IU baseball, softball working out expanded rosters

England's physical disability cricketers have taken on an energy-sapping challenge - they are running a collective marathon each day for 10 days.

It comes after reports that garden centres in England and Wales are set to reopen.

Desperate for coronavirus help, California spending billions on no-bid coronavirus contracts, little accountability

The NFL has instituted a league-wide policy in which fans who buy tickets directly from teams can receive refunds for games that are canceled.

One of the hardest tasks in Earth observation is tracking tiny changes in the shape of the ground.

oscon: High Availability in MySQL - how to pick a solution that best matches your use case http://t.co/PItdw0maTj @h_ingo #oscon #tutorial

In the past, we’ve all witnessed sim-jacking attacks that allow a hacker to impersonate the targeted victim to steal the phone number. Hackers can gain access to unauthorized information related to the victim using the vulnerability, ‘SimJacker’ was that vulnerability. Recently there’s a similar vulnerability that has popped up, which uses the same SMS-technology to […]

The post WIB Vulnerability: Sim-Card that Allows Hackers to Takeover Phones appeared first on ReadWrite.

Hear about travel to Tbilisi and the eastern part of the Republic of Georgia as the Amateur Traveler talks to Tommo & Megsy from FoodFunTravel.com who have settled in Georgia.

Rita J. King, co-director and EVP for business development at Science House, recently conducted a series of interviews with business leaders, exploring the challenges and hurdles companies face in evolving business landscapes. In this interview, King chats with Jen Bruno, SVP of culture and human capital at LPL Financial, about mobilizing a change-ready workforce, leadership […]

7 April 2020

28 June 2017

27 September 2017

US policymakers should give special consideration to a more open immigration policy for highly skilled professionals from the EU. This would ultimately benefit the US economy.

4 September 2019 , Volume 95, Number 5

Corporate Members Event

Event participants

Dr Yu Jie, Senior Research Fellow on China, Asia-Pacific Programme, Chatham House
David Lubin, Associate Fellow, Global Economy and Finance Programme, Chatham House; Managing Director and Head of Emerging Markets Economics, Citi
Jinny Yan, Managing Director and Chief China Economist, ICBC Standard
Chair: Creon Butler, Director, Global Economy and Finance Programme, Chatham House

Ignat V. Shilov
Sep 1, 2007; 6:1638-1655
Technology

SUMOylation is a posttranslational modification (PTM) at a lysine residue and is crucial for the proper functions of many proteins, particularly of transcription factors, in various biological processes. Zinc finger homeobox 3 (ZFHX3), also known as AT motif-binding factor 1 (ATBF1), is a large transcription factor that is active in multiple pathological processes, including atrial fibrillation and carcinogenesis, and in circadian regulation and development. We have previously demonstrated that ZFHX3 is SUMOylated at three or more lysine residues. Here, we investigated which enzymes regulate ZFHX3 SUMOylation and whether SUMOylation modulates ZFHX3 stability and function. We found that SUMO1, SUMO2, and SUMO3 each are conjugated to ZFHX3. Multiple lysine residues in ZFHX3 were SUMOylated, but Lys-2806 was the major SUMOylation site, and we also found that it is highly conserved among ZFHX3 orthologs from different animal species. Using molecular analyses, we identified the enzymes that mediate ZFHX3 SUMOylation; these included SUMO1-activating enzyme subunit 1 (SAE1), an E1-activating enzyme; SUMO-conjugating enzyme UBC9 (UBC9), an E2-conjugating enzyme; and protein inhibitor of activated STAT2 (PIAS2), an E3 ligase. Multiple analyses established that both SUMO-specific peptidase 1 (SENP1) and SENP2 deSUMOylate ZFHX3. SUMOylation at Lys-2806 enhanced ZFHX3 stability by interfering with its ubiquitination and proteasomal degradation. Functionally, Lys-2806 SUMOylation enabled ZFHX3-mediated cell proliferation and xenograft tumor growth of the MDA-MB-231 breast cancer cell line. These findings reveal the enzymes involved in, and the functional consequences of, ZFHX3 SUMOylation, insights that may help shed light on ZFHX3's roles in various cellular and pathophysiological processes.