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Street vending in urban Tanzania is a big sector that touches different activities. This research paper applies the 'forbearance' conceptual understanding to investigate the introduction and implementation of small traders' Identity Cards or simply Wamachinga IDs as an official formalisation strategy. It reports the findings of a qualitative research design undertaken to explain the process of formalisation of street vendors and their trade in Dar es Salaam region. Multiple interpretations of the strategy were noted, such as a technique to collect data for further planning, a revenue collection tactic and an approach to equality between informal and formal traders. The study found that stakeholders embraced the initiative as progress towards gaining business freedom and access to improved earnings while boosting the government's coffers from the so-called informal sector. Additionally, the study found that the initiative had exposed challenges such as the lack of some important personal information in the IDs. It is hence sometimes dismissed as a politically-motivated initiative lacking legality. Moreover, the Local Government Authorities (LGAs) face challenges in managing business waste, business spaces, congestion and collection of some other revenues. Some formal business people/enterprises were reported to recruit young men and buy them Wamachinga IDs to sell items on their behalf. This was noted as a trick for tax evasion, which impedes tax compliance efforts. The study, therefore, recommends a participatory approach to improving the Wamachinga ID initiative alongside related by-laws to address the challenges this ID system faces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Carbohydrate and peptide-based antitumor vaccine constructs featuring clusters of both tumor associated carbohydrate antigens and mucin-like peptide epitopes are prepared and analyzed. A new vaccine type against ovarian cancer is designed that is based on clusters of [Gb.sub.3] antigen and also uses a MUC5AC peptide epitope.

This paper provides a new benchmark approach, developed to quantify value at risk (VaR) for private equity fund-of-funds. Regulatory as well as investor requests require these measures from alternative asset managers in Europe. Because of the large number of assets within fund-of-funds, a 'look-through' approach to analyse each single asset is not possible in terms of time and cost. Therefore, a sound theoretical benchmark procedure is necessary, which can be used efficiently in the day-to-day business of the risk manager. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

1. Tobacco plants grown under greenhouse conditions in a subirrigation system, were inoculated with common tobacco mosaic virus. A time sequence study of the phosphorus metabolism in healthy-control and mosaic-virus infected tobacco leaves was carried out. 2. The following three phosphorus fractions: inorganic, phosphate esters and residual plus total phosphorus were studied. 3. Inorganic and total phosphorus decreased in infected plants six days after inoculation, at the time when the secondary symptoms were well established. The same fractions remained unaltered at the onset of the infection. 4. Residual phosphorus gave inconsistent results for all different leaves throughout the establishment of the disease. 5. Phosphate esters were markedly increased during the first hours up to the second day after inoculation in all young leaves relative to the control. This increase was followed by a decrease below the control reaching a minimum about the fourth day after inoculation. At the time when secondary symptoms appeared the phosphate esters' fraction of diseased leaves was far above the controls. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 95 % ethanol extract of Astragalus has been demonstrated to have potent activity as an immunological adjuvant when administered with vaccines of various types. We endeavor here to identify the components of this extract that are responsible for this adjuvant activity. Mice were immunized with KLH conjugated to cancer carbohydrate antigens globo H and GD3 and cancer peptide antigen MUC1 combined with different Astragalus fractions or with commercially available Astragalus saponins and flavonoids. The antibody responses against cancer antigens and KLH were quantitated in ELISA assays, and toxicity was calculated by weight loss. Astragalosides II and IV were the most active components, but the toxicity of these two differed dramatically. Astragaloside II was the most toxic Astragalus component with 5-10 % weight loss at a dose of 500 µg while astragaloside IV showed no weight loss at all at this dose, suggesting that astragaloside IV might be utilized as an immunological adjuvant in future studies. Several flavonoids also had significant adjuvant activity. However, when the activities of these known immunologically active components of Astragalus (and of endotoxin) are calculated based on the extent of their presence in the 95 % ethanol extract, they provide only a small proportion of the immunological activity. This raises the possibility that additional uniquely active components of Astragalus may contribute to adjuvant activity, or that the adjuvant activity of Astragalus is greater than the activity of the sum of its parts., (© Georg Thieme Verlag KG Stuttgart · New York.)

The amiloride-sensitive epithelial sodium channel (ENaC), a plasma membrane protein mediates sodium reabsorption in epithelial tissues, including the distal nephron and colon. Syntaxin1A, a trafficking protein of the t-SNARE family has been reported to inhibit ENaC in the Xenopus oocyte expression and artificial lipid bilayer systems. The present report describes the regulation of the epithelial sodium channel by syntaxin1A in a human cell line that is physiologically relevant as it expresses both components and also responds to aldosterone stimulation. In order to evaluate the physiological significance of syntaxin1A interaction with natively expressed ENaC, we over-expressed HT-29 with syntaxin1A constructs comprising various motifs. Unexpectedly, we observed the augmentation of amiloride-sensitive currents with wild-type syntaxin1A full-length construct (1-288) in this cell line. Both gammaENaC and neutralizing syntaxin1A antibodies blocked native expression as amiloride-sensitive sodium currents were inhibited while munc18-1 antibody reversed this effect. The coiled-coiled domain H3 (194-266) of syntaxin1A inhibited, however the inclusion of the transmembrane domain to this motif (194-288) augmented amiloride sensitive currents. More so, data suggest that ENaC interacts with multiple syntaxin1A domains, which differentially regulate channel function. This functional modulation is the consequence of the physical enhancement of ENaC at the cell surface in cells over-expressed with syntaxin(s). Our data further suggest that syntaxin1A up-regulates ENaC function by multiple mechanisms that include PKA, PLC, PI3 and MAP Kinase (p42/44) signaling systems. We propose that syntaxin1A possesses distinct inhibitory and stimulatory domains that interact with ENaC subunits, which critically determines the overall ENaC functionality/regulation under distinct physiological conditions.