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editorial

The economic crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic sharply reduced mobility and economic activity, disrupting the lives of people around the globe. This brief presents estimates on the crisis’ impact on labor markets in 39 countries based on high-frequency phone survey (HFPS) data collected between April and July 2020. Workers in these countries experienced severe labor market disruptions following the COVID-19 outbreak. 34 percent of respondents reported stopping work, 20 percent of wage workers reported lack of payment for work performed, 9 percent reported job changes due to the pandemic, and 62 percent reported income loss in their household. Measures of work stoppage and income loss in the HFPS are generally consistent with GDP growth projections in Latin America and the Caribbean but not in Sub-Saharan Africa, indicating that the phone survey data contributes valuable new information about the impacts of the crisis. Ensuring availability of such critical data in the future will require investments into statistical and physical infrastructure as well as human capital to set up Emergency Observatories, which can rapidly deploy phone surveys to inform decision makers.

Early health technology assessment is increasingly being used to support health economic evidence development during early stages of clinical research. Such early models can be used to inform research and development about the design and management of new medical technologies to mitigate the risks, perceived by industry and the public sector, associated with market access and reimbursement. Over the past 25 years it has been suggested that health economic evaluation in the early stages may benefit the development and diffusion of medical products. Early health technology assessment has been suggested in the context of iterative economic evaluation alongside phase I and II clinical research to inform clinical trial design, market access, and pricing. In addition, performing early health technology assessment was also proposed at an even earlier stage for managing technology portfolios. This scoping review suggests a generally accepted definition of early health technology assessment to be “all methods used to inform industry and other stakeholders about the potential value of new medical products in development, including methods to quantify and manage uncertainty”. The present review also aimed to identify recent published empirical studies employing an early-stage assessment of a medical product. With most included studies carried out to support a market launch, the dominant methodology was early health economic modeling. Further methodological development is required, in particular, by combining systems engineering and health economics to manage uncertainty in medical product portfolios.

The authors present empirical evidence on the determinants of industry-level multifactor productivity growth. They focus on "traditional factors," including the process of technological catch up, human capital, and research and development (R&D), as well as institutional factors affecting labor adjustment costs. Their analysis is based on harmonized data for 17 manufacturing industries in 18 industrial economies over the past two decades. The disaggregated analysis reveals that the process of technological convergence takes place mainly in low-tech industries, while in high-tech industries, country leaders tend to pull ahead of the others. The link between R&D activity and productivity also depends on technological characteristics of the industries: while there is no evidence of R&D boosting productivity in low-tech industries, the effect is strong in high-tech industries, but the technology leaders tend to enjoy higher returns on R&D expenditure compared with followers. There is also evidence in the data that high labor adjustment costs (proxied by the strictness of employment protection legislation) can have a strong negative impact on productivity. In particular, when institutional settings do not allow wages or internal training to offset high hiring and firing costs, the latter reduce incentives for innovation and adoption of new technologies, and lead to lower productivity performance. Albeit drawn from the experience of industrial countries, this result may have relevant implications for many developing economies characterized by low relative wage flexibility and high labor adjustment costs.

A DNA template containing a single ethyl phosphotriester was replicated in vitro by the bacteriophage T4 DNA polymerase and by Escherichia coli DNA polymerase I (DNA pol I). Escherichia coli DNA pol I bypassed the lesion ef®ciently, but partial inhibition was observed for T4 DNA polymerase. The replication block produced by the ethyl phosphotriester was increased at low dNTP concentrations and for a mutant T4 DNA polymerase with an antimutator phenotype, increased proofreading activity, and reduced ability to bind DNA in the polymerase active center. These observations support a model in which an ethyl phosphotriester impedes primer elongation by T4 DNA polymerase by decreasing formation of the ternary DNA polymerase±DNA± dNTP complex. When primer elongation is not possible, proofreading becomes the favored reaction. Apparent futile cycles of nucleotide incorporation and proofreading, the idling reaction, were observed at the site of the lesion. The replication block was overcome by higher dNTP concentrations. Thus, ethyl phosphotriesters may be tolerated in vivo by the up-regulation of dNTP biosynthesis that occurs during the cellular checkpoint response to blocked DNA replication forks.

During my life, I have spent a great deal of time – some would argue far too much time – watching movies. And of the countless films I have seen, few have made more of an impression on me than Steven Spielberg’s 1998 masterpiece, Saving Private Ryan, which is generally regarded as one of the greatest movies of all time. Staff no

Inherited retinal degenerations (IRDs) affect approximately 1:4,000 people worldwide and are currently the leading cause of vision loss of people between the ages of 15-45. The mechanisms of degeneration in many IRDs remain unclear. It is vital to establish relationships between retinal structural and functional measures in order to better understand the relationship between the genetic mutations and the phenotypes they cause in these diseases. For example, retinitis pigmentosa (RP), the most prevalent IRD, and choroideremia (CHM), an X-linked degeneration that affects choroidal, RPE and photoreceptor cells, both progress over time due to rod, then cone, photoreceptor loss. Greater understanding of disease progression may clarify the underlying mechanisms of retinal degenerations. Furthermore, the development of novel outcome measures could accelerate clinical trials of treatments designed to treat these relentless, sight-threatening diseases. The experiments and research described in this document use multimodal state-of-the-art, novel, high-resolution techniques in addition to standard technologies used in the clinical setting to study the relationship between structure and function of the retina including rod and cone photoreceptors, retinal pigment epithelium, choriocapillaris and other retinal layers affected in the eyes of patients with retinal degeneration.

This study examines public policy approaches to increase the recovery of residentially generated textile waste materials in Metro Vancouver Regional District. It reports findings from a survey, conducted in Greater Vancouver in summer 2017, of consumer preferences and motivations with respect to textile waste disposal. The study also reviews the literature on factors that impact household behaviour in disposing textile waste material. Policy elements are determined from an analysis of the generalized supply chain for textile waste recovery and policy features implemented in other jurisdictions. Four policy elements are considered: disposal ban, education campaign, additional collection points, and curbside collection. The policy elements are analyzed and assessed on key criteria, with discussions informed by conclusions drawn from the literature review and survey findings. I recommend the implementation of an education campaign in the short term and further consideration of increasing collection points and curbside collection in the longer term. I also conclude that a disposal ban for textile waste in MVRD, as currently configured, should not be pursued.