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Discovery of reliable signatures for the empirical diagnosis of neurological diseases – both infectious and non-infectious – remains unrealized. One of the primary challenges encountered in such studies is the lack of a comprehensive database representative of a signature background that exists in healthy individuals, and against which an aberrant event can be assessed. For neurological insults and injuries, it is important to understand the normal profile in the neuronal (cerebrospinal fluid) and systemic fluids (e.g., blood). Here, we present a comparative multi-omic human database of of serum and cerebrospinal fluid signatures derived from a population of 30 individuals (15 males, 15 females, 23–74 years) as a first step towards establishing a comprehensive database in future. In addition to empirical signatures, we also assigned common pathways between serum and CSF. Together, our findings provide a strategy to establish a biomarker baseline against which aberrant signature profiles in individuals with neurological injuries/disease can be assessed – providing a pathway for comprehensive diagnostics and therapeutics discovery.

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is not a single disease state but describes an array of conditions associated with insult or injury to the brain. While some individuals with TBI recover within a few days or months, others present with persistent symptoms that can cause disability, neuropsychological trauma, and even death. Understanding, diagnosing, and treating TBI is extremely complex for many reasons, including the variable biomechanics of head impact, differences in severity and location of injury, and individual patient characteristics. Because of these confounding factors, the development of reliable diagnostics and targeted treatments for brain injury remains elusive. We argue that the development of effective diagnostic and therapeutic strategies for TBI requires a deep understanding of human neurophysiology at the molecular level and that the framework of multiomics may provide some effective solutions for the diagnosis and treatment of this challenging condition. To this end, we present here a comprehensive review of TBI biomarker candidates from across the multiomic disciplines and compare them with known signatures associated with other neuropsychological conditions, including Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease. We believe that this integrated view will facilitate a deeper understanding of the pathophysiology of TBI and its potential links to other neurological diseases.

As resource conflicts grow, resource managers are increasingly faced with trade-offs among environmental assets. The management of the Columbia River system in the US Pacific Northwest is illustrative of such conflict. The Columbia River was developed to provide benefits of flood control, irrigation, municipal and industrial water use, navigation, recreation, and electrical power. The river has long been managed to maximize its power benefits. However, the river's development has adversely affected one of its greatest resources-salmon-bringing several species to the brink of extinction. Today, the river is managed to accord salmon the highest priority. Consequently, the power system has lost much of the flexibility it formerly enjoyed, and because of those changes replacement power sources are needed. Simultaneously, concern with greenhouse gases, principally carbon dioxide has grown. This paper illustrates the conflicts resource managers face when attempting to develop cost-effective new power resources, avoid further carbon emissions, and save the salmon from extinction. It shows that constraints imposed by efforts to save salmon make it much more difficult to achieve another environmental goal, the reduction of carbon emissions.

The environmental costs of electricity generation technologies are the total value of risks imposed on society by the environmental effects of those technologies. The economic value of environmental risks is the amount that society would be willing to pay to avoid those risks or the amount society would require as compensation to accept those risks voluntarily.2

A multivariate model of the effect of population on local fiscal behavior, assessed value of property and average single family home values is estimated using cross-sectional data from Oregon. Regression results suggest that property tax levies are unit elastic with respect to population, that the total assessed value of property increases less than proportionally with population, and that the average value of a single family home increases with population. These results imply a positive relationship between population and both property tax rates and the tax bill of the average single family homeowner. Ceteris paribus, increases in average residential property taxes are associated with increases in population.

Distribution of the tax impacts of population growth is explicitly incorporated into a fiscal model of Oregon local governments. Regression results suggest that, while levies are inelastic with respect to population, the elasticity of residential property values causes residential property taxes to increase more than proportionally with increases in population.

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