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The U.S. financial regulatory structure is complex, with responsibilities fragmented among multiple agencies that have overlapping authorities. As a result, financial entities may fall under the regulatory authority of multiple regulators depending on the types of activities in which they engage (see figure on next page). While the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (Dodd-Frank Act) made a number of reforms to the financial regulatory system, it generally left the regulatory structure unchanged.
In 2009, GAO established a framework for evaluating regulatory reform proposals and noted that an effective regulatory system would need to address certain structural shortcomings created by fragmentation and overlap. While changes made by the Dodd-Frank Act were consistent with some of the characteristics identified in this framework, the existing regulatory structure does not always ensure (1) efficient and effective oversight, (2) consistent financial oversight, and (3) consistent consumer protections. As a result, negative effects of fragmented and overlapping authorities persist throughout the system. For example, regulation of the swaps and security-based swaps markets by separate agencies creates potential market inefficiencies because of differences in certain of the agencies' rules for each product. GAO has previously made suggestions to Congress to modernize and improve the effectiveness of the financial regulatory structure. Without congressional action it is unlikely that remaining fragmentation and overlap in the U.S. financial regulatory system can be reduced or that more effective and efficient oversight of financial institutions can be achieved.
Participants: Two-hundred fifty participants were screened from a normative OCT angiography database. Of those, 12 participants were found to have at least 1 eye with a fragmented FAZ. Eight returned for follow-up imaging, along with an additional 3 participants with ocular disease (amblyopia, autosomal recessive bestrophinopathy, premature birth) having a similar FAZ phenotype.
Methods: Follow-up OCT imaging and monocular best-corrected visual acuity (BCVA) were performed for these 11 participants. Twenty-four participants with a clearly defined FAZ were recruited for comparison. A normative database was created measuring parafoveal intercapillary area (PICA) to determine if an FAZ was fragmented.
Results: The frequency of a fragmented FAZ was 4.8% of individuals (12 of 250) or 3.6% of eyes (18 of 500 eyes). A significant difference was found between the control eyes and eyes with fragmented FAZs for foveal pit depth, pit area, and total PICA (P < 0.001, P = 0.002, and P < 0.001, respectively). The presence of a fragmented FAZ did not affect visual acuity.
Conclusions: The presence of a fragmented FAZ seems not to be a rare phenotype in individuals with normal vision. The presence of altered FAZ topography in patients with retinal or systemic disease could negatively impact the accuracy and sensitivity of biomarkers dependent on FAZ identification.
In neurodegenerative diseases, debris of dead neurons are thought to trigger glia-mediated neuroinflammation, thus increasing neuronal death. Here we show that the expression of neurotoxic proteins associated with these diseases in microglia alone is sufficient to directly trigger death of naive neurons and to propagate neuronal death through activation of naive astrocytes to the A1 state. Injury propagation is mediated, in great part, by the release of fragmented and dysfunctional microglial mitochondria into the neuronal milieu. The amount of damaged mitochondria released from microglia relative to functional mitochondria and the consequent neuronal injury are determined by Fis1-mediated mitochondrial fragmentation within the glial cells. The propagation of the inflammatory response and neuronal cell death by extracellular dysfunctional mitochondria suggests a potential new intervention for neurodegeneration-one that inhibits mitochondrial fragmentation in microglia, thus inhibiting the release of dysfunctional mitochondria into the extracellular milieu of the brain, without affecting the release of healthy neuroprotective mitochondria.
The United States now confronts a starkly different reality. The utopian vision of an open, reliable, and secure global network has not been achieved and is unlikely ever to be realized. Today, the internet is less free, more fragmented, and less secure.
Land take, urban sprawl and economic activities lead to habitat fragmentation, decreasing the resilience of ecosystems. Monitoring fragmentation supports policy actions that aim to ensure remaining habitats can support biodiversity. Fragmentation affects all areas of Europe, even very sparsely populated ones. Moreover, in the EU plus the United Kingdom, 27% of land is considered highly fragmented where habitats are less than 0.02km2 on average. However, policy measures to protect certain areas seem to be effective in preventing fragmentation, particularly in protected areas.
Large parts of Europe have become fragmented because of the expansion of urban and transport infrastructure. On average, every km in the 27 EU Member States plus the UK (EU-27+UK) comprises around 1.4 habitats, indicating an average habitat size of 0.68km2. Moreover, 27% of land in the EU-27+UK is considered highly fragmented, where habitats are less than 0.02km2. As distance from city centres increases, the extent of landscape fragmentation drops rapidly. In villages, average habitat size is around 0.12km2. This increases to 0.8km2 in rural areas and 5.3km2 in mostly uninhabited regions. The proportions of strongly fragmented habitats is more persistent, with habitats smaller than 0.02km2 accounting for 79% of land in suburbs, 61% in villages and 53% in rural areas. Even in mostly uninhabited areas, more than 20% of land is covered by habitats of less than 0.02km2.
Other than urban ecosystems, croplands are the most fragmented ecosystem type, with an average habitat size of 5km2. Habitat size in grasslands is on average 8km2 but forests are more continuous, with an average habitat size of 27km2. Coastal ecosystems are under increasing pressure from urban sprawl, with transport infrastructure and other construction jeopardising wildlife movement. Indeed, the average habitat size in coastal ecosystems is around 0.4km2; in inland areas, average habitat size increases to 0.9km2. Policy measures that safeguard protected areas seem to be effective, however: while average habitat size in non-protected areas in the EU-27+UK is around 0.6km2, average habitat size in protected areas is on average 20km2.
The extent of landscape fragmentation varies considerably by country in the EU-27+UK region, being highest in Malta, followed by the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany and Luxembourg. Malta has the most fragmented landscape by far, with 15 landscape objects per km2 on average, which is around double the extent of landscape fragmentation in the Netherlands and Belgium, four times that of Germany and greatly above the EU-27+UK average of 1-3.5 landscape objects/km (95% confidence interval). Moreover, the average landscape object size in Malta is around 0.06km2, considerably below the EU-27+UK average of around 0.68km2.
Although, on average, the extent of landscape fragmentation is highest in Malta, Luxembourg and Belgium have the largest area of highly fragmented habitats, that is, areas with average habitat sizes of less than 0.02km2. About 90% of the landscape is highly fragmented in Luxembourg and around 84% is highly fragmented in Belgium.
The result of step 2 is a fragmentation geometry layer that contains landscape patches (i.e. polygons representing the remaining non-fragmented areas) and gaps (no value), in locations where fragmentation geometries were deleted from the landscape.
He ran a popular competition in Philadelphia and established a Pro Breaking Tour and a nonprofit membership organization called Urban Dance & Educational Foundation with a vision of drawing together the fragmented breaking world.
Our research shows a high number of fragmented outlets are either underserved (for example,with limited direct coverage from sales reps or low access to promotions) or overserved (with the largest outlets receiving 80 visits from CPGs per week). Furthermore, the COVID-19 pandemicforced distributors and CPGs to reduce in-person interaction, making store owners more open to digital adoption. For example, at the peak of the pandemic, more than 75 percent of Chinese independent stores in Tier 3 cities or below used digital applications to place orders.
In most fragmented-trade markets, large CPG companies have built an efficient service model. It provides them with reasonable influence over the larger stores and an ability to serve the wider market through a network of wholesalers.
Reference: Wanigatunga AA, et al. Association of total daily physical activity and fragmented physical activity with mortality in older adults. JAMA Network Open. 2019;2(10): e1912352. doi: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2019.12352.
Unable to move between the fragmented pockets of habitat that remain, dormice are confined to isolated areas. Cut off, populations are at risk from inbreeding and loss of genetic diversity. This has contributed to dormice numbers falling by more than 50% since 1995.
This 6th joint event organised by STOA and the Science and Technology in Society forum (STS forum) will look at international research cooperation through two prisms: a first session will discuss how policy can help promote research cooperation and what choices may be available in a fragmented world; while a second will explore best practices for successful international research cooperation, through concrete examples of actual practitioners from different areas of research.
Although fragmentation may be useful (or at least not a harm) at present and in the short term, the status quo still faces significant challenges. Moreover, process consolidation may be a necessary step if a truly universal set of global cyber norms is to develop, including participation by states in the Global South. These states are often unable to participate in the resource-intensive jet-set diplomacy of the current fragmented processes.
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