This paper applies a four-stage data envelopment analysis (DEA) approach proposed by Fried et al. (1999) to measure the operational environment-adjusted efficiency of sixty mutual funds in Taiwan from 2006 to 2010. We adopt the approach for adjusting negative output as suggested by Lovell and Pastor (1995). In addition, the truncated regression model is used to estimate effects of environmental variables on input slacks in the second stage. The efficiency of funds initially lightly declined, rapidly rose during the financial crisis of 2008, and then gradually fell again. Manager attributes as well as fund characteristics significantly affect the performance of mutual funds. This research finds that the Balance fund performs better than the others and female managers perform more outstandingly than male managers both in cost control and risk management. Accordingly, firm size measured by the net asset value of funds has a positive impact on performance, but persistence, manager tenure, manager replacement, and funds under management all negatively influence management performance.


Th is paper reports on an evaluation of a program in Sierra Leone that sought to support the community reintegration of young women and girls formerly associated with armed groups and forces. In the absence of baseline data, we used locally-derived indicators of reintegration and village timelines to conduct a retrospective cohort study of the progress of 142 girls and young women towards achievement of community reintegration following their experience of abduction. Although girls and young women in both intervention and comparison communities had made progress towards integration, the intervention was associated with improved mental health outcomes and higher ratings on some aspects of marriage quality. For those who had found the greatest challenges in reintegrating, the intervention additionally appeared to support community acceptance and inclusion in women's bondo activities.


An environmentally benign method for the transformation of allylic alcohols into carbonyl compounds is described. Using [Rh(COD(CH3CN)2]BF4 (2) in combination with 1,3,5-triaza-7-phosphaadamantane (PTA, 1) as the catalytic system in water results in a very fast redox isomerisation of a variety of secondary allylic alcohols at ambient temperature. Also, some primary allylic alcohols can be isomerised into the corresponding aldehydes. The active complex, which in some cases can be used in catalyst loadings as low as 0.5 mol%, is formed in situ from commercially available reagents. Based on deuterium labelling studies, a tentative mechanism involving metal-enone intermediates is presented.


In order to conceal malware, malware authors use the packing and encryption techniques. If the malware is packed or encrypted, then it is very difficult to analyze. Therefore, to prevent the harmful effects of malware and to generate signatures for malware detection, the packed and encrypted executable codes must initially be unpacked. The first step of unpacking is to detect the packed executable files. In this paper, a packed file detection technique (PHAD) based on a PE header analysis is proposed. In many cases, to pack and unpack the executable codes, PE files have unusual attributes in their PE headers. In this paper, these characteristics are utilized to detect the packed files. a characteristic vector (CV) that consists of eight elements is defined, and the Euclidean distance (ED) of the CV is calculated. The EDs of the packed files are calculated and represent the base threshold for the detection of packed files.


The very lines inserted daily to provide nutrition to neonates during intensive care remain associated with real risks of both mortality and life-impacting brain injury from associated sepsis. However, most cases of central line-associated bloodstream infection (CLABSI) are preventable. There is now compelling observational evidence that adoption of catheter-care 'bundles' markedly reduces rates of CLABSI in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU).1 2 Catheter-care bundles represent grouped evidence-based interventions for good catheter insertion and maintenance practices that, collectively implemented, reduce infection rates compared with individual component interventions. North American centres have shown that, by using bundles in conjunction with dedicated personnel, enhanced education, documentation and a continuous focus on the gravity of the whole catheterisation process, it is possible to achieve zero CLABSI rates for protracted periods—even as long as 1–2 years.3 In the most recent published UK survey, however, only 70% of tertiary-level UK NICUs had catheter-care bundles in place.4 Current evidence implies that infants cared for on units that have not yet implemented best practice guidelines may be at an increased risk of CLABSI2; such hospitals may be vulnerable to possible litigation in cases of damaging late-onset sepsis.

Furthermore, there is still debate as to preferred choice and accuracy of CLABSI working definition, inconsistency in definitions used to report CLABSI rates, and concern about data reliability.2 5 The National Neonatal Audit Programme's latest report (2016) shows that data entry was considered complete and reliable enough to allow inter-unit comparisons of CLABSI rates for only 22 (14%) of the 182 individual NICUs audited.5 So while many US centres have raced to slash their CLABSI rates, sometimes spurred on by the Medicare health insurance programme's withholding of funding for hospital-acquired CLABSI cases,6 it appears that most UK units do not even know their …


BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: The underlying influences on different patterns of BMI development are not well understood, and psychosocial outcomes linked to BMI development have been little investigated. Objectives were to identify BMI developmental trajectories across the first decade of life, examine early life predictors of trajectory membership, and investigate whether being on a particular BMI trajectory is associated with markers of psychosocial well-being. METHODS: We used latent class analysis to derive BMI trajectories by using data collected at ages 3, 5, 7, and 11 years on 16 936 participants from the Millennium Cohort Study. Regression models were used to estimate predictors of BMI trajectory membership and their psychosocial correlates. RESULTS: Four trajectories were identified: 83.8% had an average "stable" nonoverweight BMI, 0.6% were in a "decreasing" group, 13.1% had "moderate increasing" BMIs, and 2.5% had "high increasing" BMIs. Predictors of "moderate" and "high" increasing group membership were smoking in pregnancy (odds ratios [ORs] = 1.17 and 1.97, respectively), maternal BMI (ORs = 1.10 and 1.14), skipping breakfast (ORs = 1.66 and 1.76), nonregular bedtimes (ORs = 1.22 and 1.55). Children in the "moderate" and "high" increasing groups had worse scores for emotional symptoms, peer problems, happiness, body satisfaction, and self-esteem, and those in the "high increasing" group were more likely to have tried alcohol and cigarettes. CONCLUSIONS: Several potentially modifiable early life factors including smoking in pregnancy, skipping breakfast, and bedtime routines were important predictors of BMI development in the overweight and obese range, and high BMI growth was linked to worse psychosocial well-being.


A real-time detection and recording system (CEDAR) is developed as a means of automating the acquisition and processing of data from short- period local networks. This system has been used for the past two years for the analysis of data from 150 stations in Southern California with an annual workload of about 7500 local events. Two minicomputers are used with one dedicated to the real-time detection and digital recording of local earthquakes while the other is used for timing, location, and data archiving based on interactive graphical techniques. The use of this system has substantially reduced the effort required for the routine analysis of local data. The discussion is kept at a general level so as to be useful to those setting up similar systems with somewhat different requirements. In support of the CEDAR system a magnitude scale, M_(CA), is developed that is particularly adapted to the needs of local digital seismic networks. The supporting algorithm is based on median absolute amplitudes of any on-scale portion of the post-S seismic coda. The use of a power law coda shape function in the form a(t) = a_ot^(-q) makes the proposed method directly commensurable with the already widely used and highly successful duration method. The MCA magnitude scale is predicated on the same short-term averages used by the event detection algorithm on the real- time system, permitting a direct stochastic analysis of the spatial magnitude thresholds of a particular configuration of the detection logic. Such an a priori evaluation of detection capability is necessary since detection failure results in considerable extraneous effort. The use of these techniques has permitted the compilation of a local earthquake catalog and attendant phase data base that are substantially more uniform and accurate than what is generally obtained using manual methods.

The nature of earthquake swarms in the Imperial Valley is investigated with the goal of placing specific constraints on the physical mechanisms governing their behavior. Within the Imperial Valley most earthquakes occur as swarms concentrated within a narrow, sharply bounded, spindle-shaped zone joining the northern terminus of the Imperial Fault with the southern end of the San Andreas Fault. Although over the past five years the seismicity within this zone, designated the Brawley Seismic Zone, is surprisingly uniform, on time scales of a few weeks activity is highly clustered in both space and time. Seismicity is not confined to a few "hot spots", as might be expected, but rather seems to move around, seldom if ever reactivating the site of a previous swarm. Seven sequences of swarms are analyzed in detail using a master event approach in order to provide some insight into supporting tectonic structures. It is generally observed that swarm sequences comprise discrete bursts of activity, each of which appears to "illuminate" a single planar fracture transverse to the major tectonic elements in the Imperial Valley such as the Imperial Fault and the Brawley Fault. Development of activity during a sequence of swarms generally begins with high clustered activity followed by continuous, progressive involvement of the transverse structures, and progressive but discontinuous development in the form of spatially and temporally isolated clusters along the major fault elements. Observed migration rates range from .5 km/hr to .5 km/day. The consistency observed with respect to the pattern of development of independent sequences strongly suggests that a deterministic, physical model can be obtained. One possible model is suggested that relates the swarms on transverse structures with propagating, episodic creep on the major transforms. In this model both the creep rate and the triggering of earthquake swarms is governed by perturbations of pore-pressure in a fluid-infiltrated elastic matrix.


—Capturing color in water is challenging due to the heavy non-uniform attenuation of light in water across the visible spectrum, which results in dramatic hue shifts toward blue. Yet observing color in water is important for monitoring and surveillance as well as marine biology studies related to species identification, individual and group behavior, and ecosystem health and activity monitoring. Underwater robots are equipped with motor control for large scale transects but they lack sensors that enable capturing color-accurate underwater images. We present a method for color-accurate imaging in water called perceptual adaptive illumination. This method dynamically mixes the illumination of an object in a distance-dependent way using a controllable multi-color light source. The color mix compensates correctly for color loss and results in an image whose color composition is equivalent to rendering the object in air. Experiments were conducted with a color palette in the pool and at three different coral reefs sites, and with an underwater robot collecting image data with the new sensor.


The Oligocene to Quaternary succession encountered in CRP-2/2A is divided into twelve recurrent lithofacies (some of which have been subdivided further), reflecting a range of
marine, glacimarine and possibly subglacial environments of sediment accumulation. A cyclical vertical arrangement of lithofacies was noted throughout the core, and is used as the basis for a sequence stratigraphic analysis. Twenty-four sequences are recognised, each of which begins with a Sequence Boundary (Glacial Surface of Erosion), and each is interpreted to record a cycle of glacial advance and retreat with associated changes in relative sea-level.
During at least some of these cycles, ice is interpreted to have extended as far as and seaward of the drill-site. A recent reinterpretation of seismic reflection data by Henrys et al. (this volume) permits the first correlation between seismic reflection records and the stratigraphic surfaces identified herein. All but one of the reflectors recognised correspond to sequence boundaries, and most reflectors correspond to the base of thin, truncated and amalgamated sequences. Additionally, three thick and relatively complete sequences (9 to 11) are identified individually by seismic reflectors. The major surfaces of omission in CRP-2/2A, identified from a variety
of evidence, correspond to changes in cross-sectional geometry in the seismic records, and in the case of the unconformity at 307 mbsf can be interpreted as recording the onset of a phase of active tectonic subsidence associated with half-graben development, bounded by periods of more uniform, slower, possibly thermal subsidence. Possible controls on cyclicity are discussed, and include long-term eustatic cycles, Milankovitch frequency cycles, and more local climatic and/or tectonic events. The analysis allows the recognition and separation of tectonic from climatic (?glacio-eustatic) controls on the
Cainozoic stratigraphy of the McMurdo Sound region


This article reports on a study of written production in content and language integrated learning (CLIL) with special emphasis on the ways linguistic resources are used in constructing historical meaning. The study utilizes the systemic functional framework (SFL) and its data consist of essays written in English (language of instruction) and in Finnish (students' first language and language of instruction) by ten CLIL students and in English (the only language of instruction, students' first or second language) by nine peers in international school (all grade 8 students, about 14 years of age). The discussion addresses the following questions: What are some of the features emerging in the written productions that reflect the use of language in constructing historical meaning in the light of systemic-functional linguistics? In particular, what characteristics of grammatical metaphor realized in terms of syntactic intricacy and thematic organization are observed in the English and Finnish essays of the CLIL students? The article concludes with a discussion of future research and pertinent pedagogical implications to CLIL environments.


We describe a family segregating the retinoblastoma phenotype where the affected individuals have only unifocal tumours and where linkage analysis has identified unaffected mutant gene carriers. DNA from members of this 'low penetrance' pedigree was subjected to an exon-by-exon SSCP analysis of the RB1 gene. No mutations were found in the 27 exons of the coding region but an SSCP band shift was seen for PCR products covering the RB1 promoter region. Sequencing identified a G-->C change within a GGGCGG motif which is the core of the recognition sequence of the SP1 transcription factor. Electromobility shift assays demonstrated that SP1 does not bind to oligomers from this region of the RB1 promoter but bandshifts were seen for an, as yet, unidentified protein(s) which was not seen using an oligomer containing the G-->C mutation. Thus, identification of a naturally occurring mutation in a family with only 'mild' phenotypes has identified another regulatory sequence in the RB1 promoter which binds an endogenous cellular protein(s). Identification of this protein should allow a better understanding of the control of expression of the RB1 gene.


In light of escalating environmental demands and reduced international development budgets, there is a growing need to assist loan/donor agencies in improving both the development and implementation of projects in a way that fosters sustainability of the area.s water resources. Projects are defined as any developmental effort that could impact water quality or water quantity and are not limited to water resources development scenarios. The effort described in this paper is attempting to provide an integrated water quantity/quality system to improve water-related sustainability characteristics of projects. The system is designed to provide decision-makers with an additional tool for use in the development of various national, sectoral and local infrastructure projects that utilize and/or impact the water resources of the project area. It is anticipated that the system could assist in improving project level performance at various points in the standard development agency project cycle.


Visceral leishmaniasis is an insidious neglected disease with worldwide distribution. It is caused by parasites from the Leishmania donovani complex, which are able to be transmitted by different species of phlebotomine sand flies and to infect numerous mammal hosts. Despite the high number of people infected or at risk, and the remarkable quantity of studies focusing on this disease, a proper experimental model to efficiently decipher the infectious process of visceral leishmaniasis taking into account the nuances of parasite's virulence and the duration of the infection is still lacking. Therefore, using golden Syrian hamsters and BALB/c mice, state-of-the-art genetic manipulation applied on a fully virulent L. donovani strain and in vivo imaging approaches, we describe herein three benefits for experimental visceral leishmaniasis: (i) the development of a double transfected bioluminescent (firefly luciferase) and fluorescent (E2-crimson) virulent strain of L. donovani (Ld1S_luci_E2-crimson), favoring a wide range of both in vivo and in vitro investigations, (ii) the establishment of a non-invasive mouse model to evaluate the infectious process during visceral leishmaniasis and the parasite's virulence in real time, allowing longitudinal studies with the same animals, and (iii) the elaboration of a suitable method to reinstate (and verify anew) the virulence in a population of attenuated parasites, by recovering persistent parasites from chronic infected mice. Consequently, these results open up new perspectives on the study of visceral leishmaniasis, especially in the fields of therapeutics and vaccinology, since the model described herein renders now possible long-lasting follow up studies, with easy and accurate day-by-day verifications of the infection status along with a reduced number of laboratory animals. Trial registration ClinicalTrials.gov 2013-0047.


Monocyte and dendritic cell (DC) development was evaluated using in vivo BrdU pulse-chase analyses in rhesus macaques, and phenotype analyses of these cells in blood also were assessed by immunostaining and flow cytometry for comparisons among rhesus, cynomolgus, and pigtail macaques, as well as African green monkeys and humans. The nonhuman primate species and humans have three subsets of monocytes, CD14+CD16−, CD14+CD16+, and CD14−CD16+ cells, which correspond to classical, intermediate, and nonclassical monocytes, respectively. In addition, there exist presently two subsets of DC, BDCA-1+ myeloid DC and CD123+ plasmacytoid DC, that were first confirmed in rhesus macaque blood. Following BrdU inoculation, labeled cells first appeared in CD14+CD16− monocytes, then in CD14+CD16+ cells, and finally in CD14−CD16+ cells, thus defining different stages of monocyte maturation. A fraction of the classical CD14+CD16− monocytes gradually expressed CD16+ to become CD16+CD14+ cells and subsequently matured into the nonclassical CD14−CD16+ cell subset. The differentiation kinetics of BDCA-1+ myeloid DC and CD123+ plasmacytoid DC were distinct from the monocyte subsets, indicating differences in their myeloid cell origins. Results from studies utilizing nonhuman primates provide valuable information about the turnover, kinetics, and maturation of the different subsets of monocytes and DC using approaches that cannot readily be performed in humans and support further analyses to continue examining the unique myeloid cell origins that may be applied to address disease pathogenesis mechanisms and intervention strategies in humans.


Abstract Transcriptional co-regulation of adjacent genes has been observed for prokaryotic and eukaryotic organisms, alike. High levels of gene adjacency were also found in a wide variety of yeast species with a high frequency of co-regulated gene sets. The aim of this research was to study how selective pressure on the Histidinol dehydrogenase gene (HIS4), using amino acid starvation, affects the level of expression and secretion of the adjacent human interferon gamma gene (hIFNγ) in the recombinant Pichia pastoris GS115 strain, a histidine-deficient mutant. hIFNγ was cloned into the pPIC9 vector adjacent to the HIS4 gene, a gene essential for histidine biosynthesis, which was then transformed into P. pastoris. The transformed P. pastoris was cultured under continuous amino acid starvation in amino acid-free minimal medium for ten days, with five inoculations into unspent medium every second day. Under these conditions, only successfully transformed cells (hIFNγ -HIS4+) are able to synthesise histidine and therefore thrive. As shown by ELISA, amino acid starvation-induced selective pressure on HIS4 improved expression and secretion of the adjacent hIFNγ by 55% compared to unchallenged cells. RT-qPCR showed that there was also a positive correlation between duration of amino acid starvation and increased levels of the hIFNγ RNA transcripts. According to these results, it is suggested that these adjacent genes (hIFNγ and HIS4) in the transformed P. pastoris are transcriptionally co-regulated and their expression is synchronised. To the best of the knowledge of the authors; this is the first study demonstrating that amino acid starvationinduced selective pressure on HIS4 can alter the regulation pattern of adjacent genes in P. pastoris.


The lack of genetic diversity within cultivated upland cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L.) has hindered the construction of genomewide linkage maps and their applications in genetics and breeding. The objective of this investigation was to develop candidate gene markers for fi ber quality and yield on the basis of approximately 90 genes implicated in fi ber development. Polymorphisms using sequence-tagged site (STS) and single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) markers based on single strand conformation polymorphism (SSCP) and cleaved amplifi ed polymorphism (CAP) were evaluated among three upland and fi ve Pima cotton (G. barbadense L.) genotypes. Of the 90 primer pairs, 75 resulted in polymerase chain reaction amplifi cations, including 11 that yielded polymorphic STS markers. Of the 48 primer pairs that produced polymorphic SSCP markers, 27 yielded interspecifi c polymorphism, while 15 yielded both inter- and intraspecifi c polymorphisms. Six pairs yielded only intraspecifi c polymorphisms. A total of 18 SNPs, including four indels, were identifi ed in seven of the 15 fi ber gene fragments on the basis of direct DNA sequencing, and the average length was 350 bp, with a mean of 1.3 SNPs per fragment. The average rate of SNPs per nucleotide was 0.34%, and 0.31% and 0.41% in coding and noncoding regions, respectively. Eight of the 15 SNPs were interspecifi c and 78% were nucleotide substitutions, with the four indels contributing to interspecifi c polymorphism. Six selected SNPs were confi rmed by restriction enzyme digestion. The high level of SSCP polymorphism observed within a selected set of agronomically improved lines of upland cotton suggests that the use of SSCP will greatly facilitate genomewide mapping in upland cotton.


This article addresses the long-term impact of colonialism on Europe's internal structures and on its self-positioning in a global context. Using the 2015 refugee crisis as a focal point and centering the German example, the author explores the complex relationship between memory discourses and visions of Germany's and Europe's postunification future. The author argues that the erasure of colonial violence from the continent's collective memory has a direct, negative impact on its ability to let go of a racialized identity that is in increasing tension with Europe's actual multiracial and multireligious composition. The article traces this dynamic around the example of the non-European collections in Berlin's Museum Island and the future Humboldt Forum, conceptualized as the world's largest "universal museum." The narratives through which this art is integrated into Europe's cultural heritage are in stark contrast to those that simultaneously defined the refugees, who arrived from the same region in which the art originated, as fundamentally different and threatening. The narratives intersect in the Multaqa initiative, which offers Arab language tours of Museum Island to refugees, and in the controversy around the site of the Humboldt Forum and the colonial art it is meant to house.


Gender and Transitional Justice provides the first comprehensive feminist analysis of the role of international law in formal transitional justice mechanisms. Using East Timor as a case study, it offers reflections on transitional justice administered by a UN transitional administration. Often presented as a UN success story, the author demonstrates that, in spite of women and children's rights programmes of the UN and other donors, justice for women has deteriorated in post-conflict Timor, and violence has remained a constant in their lives. This book provides a gendered analysis of transitional justice as a discipline. It is also one of the first studies to offer a comprehensive case study of how women engaged in the whole range of transitional mechanisms in a post-conflict state, ie, domestic trials, internationalised trials and truth commissions. The book reveals the political dynamics in a post-conflict setting around gender and questions of justice, and reframes the meanings of success and failure of international interventions in the light of them.


We propose a new scheme for constructing a single-beam dark optical trap that minimizes light-induced perturbations of the trapped atoms. The proposed scheme optimizes the trap depth for given trapping laser power and detuning by creating a light envelope with (a) an almost minimal surface area for a given volume and (b) the minimal wall thickness that is allowed by diffraction. The stiffness of the trap's walls, combined with the large detuning allowed by the efficient distribution of light intensity, yields a low spontaneous photon scattering rate for the trapped atoms. Our trap also optimizes the loading efficiency by maximizing the geometrical overlap between a magneto-optical trap and the dipole trap. We demonstrate this new scheme by generating the proposed light distribution of a single-beam dark trap with a trap depth that is ∼33 times larger than that of existing blue-detuned traps and ∼13 times larger than that of a red-detuned trap with the same diameter, detuning, and laser power. Trapped atoms are predicted to have a decoherence rate that is >200 times smaller than in existing single-beam dark traps and ∼1800 times smaller than in a red-detuned trap with the same diameter, depth, and laser power.


We aim to study whether lax environmental regulations induce comparative advantages, causing the least-regulated countries to specialize in polluting industries. The study is based on Trefler and Zhu's (2005) definition of the factor content of trade. For the econometrical analysis, we use a cross-section of 71 countries in 2000 to examine the net exports in the most polluting industries. We try to overcome three weaknesses in the empirical literature: the measurement of environmental endowments or environmental stringency, the possible endogeneity of the explanatory variables, and the influence of the industrial level of aggregation. As a result, we do find some evidence in favor of the pollution-haven effect. The exogeneity of the environmental endowments was rejected in several industries, and we also find that industrial aggregation matters.


This article is a republication, by permission, of a chapter of Arthur M. Melzer's book Philosophy Between the Lines: The Lost History of Esoteric Writing (University of Chicago Press, 2014). The book explains four purposes or motives to esotericism: defense, protective, pedagogical, and political. The present article is devoted to pedagogical esotericism, in which a writer uses puzzles, riddles, contrarieties, conundrums, indirection, obscurity, and so forth, to induce the reader to richer understanding. Melzer writes: "Just as education must begin by addressing the student where he is, so, as he learns and changes, it must stay with him. The internal or dialectical critique of received opinion takes place not in a single stroke but in a series of successive approximations to the truth, each of which will seem in its time to be the final one." And: "if the world is composed of appearance and reality, of a surface and a depth, then a book that consciously imitates that structure might best prepare one for comprehending the world."


For more than a century, tax dollars spent on agricultural research have produced some of society's highest net returns, up to 45% a year according to studies by economists.* Scientists at land-grant universities and the U.S. Department of Agriculture have improved farm efficiency, leading to an abundance of low-cost food and a positive balance in international trade. U.S. research-based information and technology and U.S.-trained foreign agricultural scientists have also provided the foundation for a quantum increase in world food production over the past 30 years. Moreover, the application of science to agricultural production, food processing, and manufacturing has by no means run its course. Advances in basic biology, for example, are spawning a vast array of potential plant and animal production technologies. Resulting productivity gains may dwarf those of the past century while enhancing environmental quality and natural resource management. Despite its past success and future promise, funding for agricultural research is endangered at both the state and iederal levels. Currently, 33 of the 50 states are running substantial budget deficits, leaving university and, in Wn, agricultural research funding in jeopardy. California slashed its 1990-91 funding of agricultural research by 5%; further cuts are likely for 1991-92. Statesupportmakesupabout two-thirdsof the totalbudget ofthe UC Agricultural Experiment Station (AES) an amount that equals less than l%of the state's gross farm income. During the 1980s, the combined effects of inflation and escalating costs of instrumentation to conduct increasingly complex research have resulted in a severe erosion, perhaps 50% to 60% in real terms, in the non-salary components of the AES budget. Federal support of experiment station research through the USDA, which accounts for another 19% of the UC Agricultural Experiment Station budget, was no better. "Formula funding," constituting nearly 60% of all USDA-originated funding for state experiment stations, eroded by 20% in inflation-adjusted terms during the 1980s. Relative to all non-defense R&D expenditures by the federal government, spending on agricultural research has declined from 13% in 1955 to only 4% in 1990. Despite the highly promising USDA National Research Initiative established in 1990, which eventually could make as much as $500 million available annually on a competitive basis, long-term prospects for federal support are clouded. Huge federal budget deficits loom into the indefinite future. High priority likely will be given to R&D in the fields of medicine, space, energy, and environment. Total federal spending for agricultural research may well be a zero-sum game in the 1990s an increase in one part of the agricultural research budget may be a reduction in another part of that budget. The one major source of increased funding for experiment station scientists during the past decade has been in the basic sciences through organizations such as NIH, NSF, DOE and, more recently, EPA. Now funding of basic science has grown to the point where many question the balance between such basic research and the traditional problem-solving applied research in the AES. The decline in stateand USDA-originated funding comes at a particularly crucial time in California. Agriculture and related in* Vernon Ruttan and Robert Evenson, economists at the University of Minnesota and Yale University, respectwely. dustries, the largest single sector of the California economy, now face unprecedented challenge. Rapid population growth is creating intense competition for land and water resources. Environmental regulation of pesticides and other chemically-based technologies is tightening. Deteriorating air quality threatens crop yields in some parts of the state. California agricultural products are meeting intense competition in both domestic and foreign markets. ' If the agricultural sector is to remain viable in the California economy and competitive in domestic and foreign markets, adjustments will be necessary. Scientists must generate new technology which not only enhances production, but safeguards the environment and natural resources. What strategies and actions are now needed to ensure a balanced, forward-looking, and responsive agricultural research system? w The research and education community must build public support and prove its readiness to address critical state research needs. The critical research needs of the future are interrelated and will involve the joint interests of agriculture, natural resources, and the environment. All Californians stand to gain. w The AES must restate its missions in light of agriculture's relationship to natural resources and the environment; set and communicate its priorities through a transparent process involving both scientists and public interest groups; and prepare to organize, coordinate, and deploy scarce resources across the continuum of basic to applied research. w Colleges of agriculture and the AES must give greater emphasis to interdisciplinary, mission-oriented research whether through consolidation of departments or formation of cross-disciplinary research entities. Scientist reward systems should be reformed to give greater weight to such research and also to applied and problem-solving research conducted with experiment station funds. w Some research now conducted in the AES could be shifted to the private sector, where spending on agricultural research now exceeds that of the public sector. In addition, Cooperative Extension's (CE) applied, problem-solving research capabilities should be increased. Linkage between CE and the AES, with leadership assigned to department-based CE specialists, should be tightened and reinforced by appropriate rewards to participating scientists. w Private sector support of the AES should be increased, particularly for applied and problem-solving research. This support now constitutes about 16% of the total AES budget. The $23 million in private sector support in 1990 represents a tiny fraction of the state's agricultural income of $17 billion. In return for increased support, the private sector will reasonably expect clear commitments from the AES and an efficient, reliable system of information transfer. After a decade of virtually no real growth in funding for agricultural research, there is a clear need to increase public and private investment in research if the interrelated problems of agriculture, natural resources, and environmental quality are to be addressed. For this to occur, the experiment stationitself must prove its readiness to address critical research needs by restating and refocusing its historic missions.


Metal foams fabricated via sintering offer novel mechanical and acoustic properties. Previously, polymer foams have been used as a means of absorbing acoustic energy. However, the structural applications of these foams are limited. The metal sintering approach offers a cost-effective means for the mass-production of open-cell metal foams. The static flow resistance of sintered metal foams was characterized for a range of practical pore sizes and porosities. The measured values for the flow resistance were subsequently used in a phenomenological acoustic model to predict the impedances and propagation constants of the foams. The predictions were then compared to acoustic measurements. At low frequencies (0- 1000Hz), the phenomenological model captures the magnitude and frequency dependence of the absorption. At higher frequencies, as expected, the phenomenological model underpredicted the acoustic properties of the foams. However, an alternative microstructural model demonstrated good correlation to the measured results in this frequency range. The effects of foam type and arrangement on the absorption pattern were examined. General trends were identified for enhancing the low frequency performance of an acoustic absorber incorporating sintered foams.


Abstract Multiple metallotolerant bacterial strains were isolated from soil and drainage water samples collected from three industrially heavy metals polluted areas in Slovakia. Obtained bacterial isolates were identified using MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry and bacterial isolates that belonged to the Acinetobacter genus were subjected for the further study. A. calcoaceticus was found to be prevalent species among analyzed Acinetobacter spp. strains, followed by A. lwoffii and A. johnsonii. A. calcoaceticus strains exhibited higher minimum inhibitory concentration to Mn, Zn, and Cu cations compared to A. lwoffii and A. johnsonii. On the other hand minimum inhibitory concentration to Co and Ni were identical in all Acinetobacter spp. isolates. Genetic analyses demonstrated multiple plasmids presence in A. lwoffii and A. johnsonii but not in A. calcoaceticus. Using ERIC-PCR the presence of two different genotypes of A. calcoaceticus was detected in heavy metal polluted environments in Slovakia.


We present a new method for reaching in an initially unknown environment with only haptic sensing. In this paper, we propose a haptically-guided interleaving planning and control (HIPC) method with a haptic mapping framework. HIPC runs two planning methods, interleaving a task-space and a joint-space planner, to provide fast reaching performance. It continually replans a valid trajectory, alternating between planners and quickly reflecting collected tactile information from an unknown environment. One key idea is that tactile sensing can be used to directly map an immediate cause of interference when reaching. The mapping framework efficiently assigns raw tactile information from whole-arm tactile sensors into a 3D voxel-based collision map. Our method uses a previously published contact-regulating controller based on model predictive control (MPC). In our evaluation with a physics simulation of a humanoid robot, interleaving was superior at reaching in the 9 types of environments we used.


In general, the concept of propaganda refers to a method as well as the symbolic object mobilized by it. Propaganda equally constitutes a particular type of communication that involves not only the mobilization of objects, but also of discourse, places, acts, and rituals. This essay employs the writings of Max Weber, Paul Ricoeur, Jacques Ellul, and Jacques Ranciere to analyze propaganda as a particular type of symbolic political dispositif linked to a specific performance and utterance context. I examine humanitarian songs as a propagandatool in democracy, and show the conditions and the limits of their mobilization through their contextualization. I argue that the link between music and propaganda could be defined as the willingness of a particular power or organized opposition to control the symbolic and emotional dimension of musical works. Through giving the music a meaning in this way, they try to impose a certain social order or to invalidate other possible political configurations of reality. I discuss the contradiction between the specific polysemy of musical works and the fictional construction of reality produced by propaganda, and conclude that the political dimension of music should not necessarily be reduced to the propaganda dispositif. These musical works require consideration of the possibilities offered through fiction in contexts of specific representation, as well as the political dimension of collaborative musical practices.


Test scores from a comprehensive neuropsychological battery administered to 1602 subjects consisting of 1347 subjects with probable Alzheimer's disease (AD), 100 subjects with questionable dementia (QD) and 155 non-demented elderly control subjects were cross-sectionally analyzed. Subjects with probable AD were categorized as mild (n = 244), moderate (n = 480), severe (n = 376), and very severe (n = 247) according to modified mini mental status exam (mMMSE) scores. Mean scores on individual neuropsychological tests are provided for each group of subjects. Stratified random sampling was performed to select a sample of mild AD subjects who were matched in age and education to non-demented elderly controls, and analyses focused on the performance of QD subjects and mild AD subjects, whose scores were compared to those of the elderly control subjects. Selected scores were organized by cognitive domain and logistic regressions were used to determine the domains and individual tests within each that were most predictive of group status. Results suggested a profile of scores associated with QD and mild AD including impaired recall of verbal information for both groups. Areas of lower functioning in QD subjects as compared to elderly controls included category fluency and visuospatial ability. (JINS, 2003, 9, 720–732.)


In this paper, we consider the problem of Robust Matrix Completion (RMC) where the goal is to recover a low-rank matrix by observing a small number of its entries out of which a few can be arbitrarily corrupted. We propose a simple projected gradient descent method to estimate the low-rank matrix that alternately performs a projected gradient descent step and cleans up a few of the corrupted entries using hard-thresholding. Our algorithm solves RMC using nearly optimal number of observations as well as nearly optimal number of corruptions. Our result also implies significant improvement over the existing time complexity bounds for the low-rank matrix completion problem. Finally, an application of our result to the robust PCA problem (low-rank+sparse matrix separation) leads to nearly linear time (in matrix dimensions) algorithm for the same; existing state-of-the-art methods require quadratic time. Our empirical results corroborate our theoretical results and show that even for moderate sized problems, our method for robust PCA is an an order of magnitude faster than the existing methods.


Robin Fretwell Wilson, "Estate of Gelsinger v. Trustees of University of Pennsylvania: Money, Prestige, and Conflicts of Interest In Human Subjects Research," in Health Law and Bioethics: Cases In Context (Sandra H. Johnson, Joan H. Krause, Richard S. Saver, & Robin Fretwell Wilson, eds., 2009).This chapter re-examines the death of Jesse Gelsinger on September 17, 1999, the first person reported to die in a human gene-therapy trial. Unlike many of the cases in the book in which it appears, HEALTH LAW AND BIOETHICS: CASES IN CONTEXT, no public court record exists anywhere of the mistakes made in Jesse's clinical trial. After Jesse's death, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) charged that a cascade of mistakes culminated in Jesse's death. The consent forms Jesse signed failed to disclose both the death of monkeys in an earlier animal study using higher dosages of the viruses infused into Jesse's liver and ''significant adverse events'' experienced by other subjects in the same trial — ''important evidence,'' the FDA said, ''of increased risk.'' The researchers failed to adequately alert the FDA about the adverse events, denying the agency the opportunity to stop the study well before Jesse's infusion. The researchers infused Jesse even though his liver was not functioning within the study's limits 24 hours prior to infusion. Less than four days later, Jesse died.In the early days following Jesse's death, his father, Paul Gelsinger, publicly defended the researchers. All that changed as news emerged of one researcher's, Dr. James Wilson's, financial interests in the trial. Paul Gelsinger filed suit against Wilson; Drs. Mark Batshaw and Steve Raper, the trial's two principal investigators; Penn, which approved and sponsored the research through IHGT; Genovo, the gene-therapy company that partially funded IHGT and in which Wilson had shares; the Dean of Penn's medical school; Arthur Caplan, Penn's world famous medical ethicist who had advised the researchers to test the virus on relatively healthy adults rather than dying infants; Children's Hospital of Philadelphia; and Children's National Medical Center. The suit sought compensatory and punitive damages for using an adenovirus that was ''unreasonably dangerous,'' a product liability claim; intentional assault and battery; breach of the duty to secure informed consent; intentional infliction of emotional distress; fraud and intentional misrepresentation; and fraud on the FDA. When the suit ultimately settled, no one accepted responsibility for Jesse's death. When the government subsequently brought and settled a civil false claims suit against the researchers and sponsoring institutions, no one admitted any wrongdoing or apologized. No one grappled in detail with the substance of the FDA's original charges. Each defendant maintained that it acted lawfully at all times, even as Penn and CNMC together paid more than a million dollars and the government restricted the researchers' ability to do human experimentation — terms that arguably say as much about the crushing power of federal false claims investigations as they do about the underlying merits. What remains of Jesse's story sat in document boxes crammed full by the Gelsingers' attorneys and set aside after the insurers, the parties, and the court signed off on the settlement. This chapter resurrects that story and fills in those missing pieces.


ABSTRACT Body size is one of the most important individual traits, determining various other life-history traits, including fitness. Both evolutionary and ecological factors shape the body size in arthropods, but the relative contribution of abiotic drivers acting at different spatial scales has been little investigated. We aimed to identify the importance of two broad-scale variables (study region and elevation) in shaping body size of the free-running and locally abundant wolf spider Pardosa palustris (Linnaeus 1758), in contrast to the fine-scaled variable topographic position. Therefore, we set up transects along environmental gradients in the arctic-alpine ecosystems of Norway, which we analyzed using a random forest approach to identify the relative importance of topographic position, elevation, and study region on body size of P. palustris. Our approach revealed that research region was the best explanatory variable, followed by elevation and topographic position. Differences in body size were most likely a consequence of the pronounced differences in season length and the ability of P. palustris to avoid local unfavorable environmental conditions due to its high mobility.


This paper proposes an index that quantifies the well-being (ill-being) of a target group as associated with its occupational segregation: that is, it assesses the gains/losses of that group which are derived from its underrepresentation in some occupations and overrepresentation in others. This index has several good properties. In particular, it is equal to zero when either the group has no segregation or all occupations have the same wage, and increases when individuals of the group move into occupations that have higher wages than those left behind. Moreover, our well-being measure permits to rank different demographic groups using distributive value judgments that are in the line of those conducted in the literature on economic inequality.


Abstract
Tetrameric inhibitors of heterologous α-amylases have been characterized in allohexaploid wheat, Triticum aestivum (genomes AABBDD), as well as in Triticum turgidum (AABB) and Triticum tauschii (DD). Their subunits have been identified as the previously described CM proteins. Single oligomeric species were observed in T. Turgidum (subunits CM2, CM3A, and CM16) and in T. tauschii (CM1, CM3D, and CM17) by a two-dimensional electrophoretic method that does not dissociate the inhibitors in the first dimension. Multiple tetrameric species, resulting from different combinations of the subunits contributed by the two ancestral species, are observed by the same procedure in T. aestivum. The three types of subunits were required for significant activity when the inhibitor of T. turgidum was reconstituted from the purified subunits, whereas, in the case of T. tauschii, binary mixtures involving subunit CM1 also had some activity. Additional combinations of the subunits present in these two species, which occur in the allohexaploid T. aestivum, were also reconstituted, and their inhibitory activities ranged from 144% to 33% the activity of the reconstituted inhibitor from T. tauschii. The activity of these inhibitors toward the α-amylase (1,4-α-D-glucan glucanohydrolase, EC 126.96.36.199) of the insect Tenebrio molitor is much greater than that against the salivary enzyme. These observations, together with the previously established chromosomal locations of genes encoding CM proteins, fit a model of alloploid heterosis at the molecular level.


Modern optic systems require modern assembly and joining techniques. The trend of keeping production dimensions as small as possible while maintaining or increasing optic imaging capacity leaves little room for mechanical equipment to align the individual elements in the end product. The two methods of directional adhesive bonding lenses in their final cell and alignment turning provide attractive solutions under these conditions.


The European Union (EU) Invasive Alien Species (IAS) Regulation (1143/2014) restricts keeping of named species, in order to preserve native biodiversity. As some of these species are currently kept by private exotic animal keepers, zoological collections and animal encounter businesses, it is important for veterinary surgeons to be aware of the restrictions. As of August 2017, new species have been added to the legislation; this article reviews the previous situation and includes the updated information.


The underlying components of protection motivation theory (PMT; Rogers 1983) are explored through choice experiment-based analysis within a random utility framework, to account for some of the motivational, cognitive, and affective processes that likely affect celiacs' propensity to use a novel health-risk reducing product. Those four groups of variables that are aimed to capture threat appraisal and coping appraisal processes as part of the standard PMT (Rogers 1975, 1983; Floyd et al. 2000) are found to contribute significantly to explaining the adaptive response of celiacs. Self-assessed vulnerability and perceived product efficacy form a most significant part of respondents' threat appraisal process. Standard socio-demographic and lifestyle characteristics were found less useful in explaining the propensity to choose an adaptive response. Estimation results support an extended PMT model that accounts for risk attitudes, as measured by the psychometric scales of Weber et al. (2002), and outcome confidence (Zakay and Tsal 1993), since perceived ambiguity regarding the effectiveness of the novel health-risk reducing device affects consumers' outcome confidence. Results provide some support for loss aversion (Kahneman and Tversky 1991), but no support for the competence hypothesis of Heath and Tversky (1991).


A small proportion of American charitable donors give to international causes. Aid to developing countries constitutes a large part of this charitable sector. By studying donors who make contributions to causes outside the US, we may better understand the factors which shape public concern for global poverty and inequality, and which influence the will for redistribution. While a substantial amount of research has investigated the determinants of overall giving in the US, little is known about the determinants of giving to specific causes, especially international causes. With the data set, "Giving and Volunteering in the United States 2001," this study uses econometric regression analysis to estimate the predictors of giving to international causes and compares them to the determinants of giving to other causes such as health, education and the arts. My main hypothesis is that educational and religious institutions influence people to identify with and donate to individuals and causes in the developing world. This is based on the theory in altruism studies that people behave prosocially when they identify others' interests as indistinct from their own. The results of econometric analysis support the idea that education and religiosity are significant predictors of giving to international causes, but suggest that other mechanisms are more influential. Of the predictors included in the regression model, youth volunteering has the largest effect on the likelihood that someone gives internationally, both compared to other predictors in the model, and compared to the effect of youth volunteering on giving to other causes. The size and significance of the effect of each variable vary by cause, confirming that there are unique determinants for giving to different charitable sectors. For giving to international causes, the results suggest that being foreign born, having volunteered in one's youth, belonging to a non-religious group, attending religious services frequently and having a four-year college degree or more are all significant factors. These variables may represent mechanisms for identification, as well as other factors that motivate charitable giving such as individual personality characteristics.


We develop several new algorithms for learning Markov Decision Processes in an infinite-horizon average-reward setting with linear function approximation. Using the optimism principle and assuming that the MDP has a linear structure, we first propose a computationally inefficient algorithm with optimal $\widetilde{O}(\sqrt{T})$ regret and another computationally efficient variant with $\widetilde{O}(T^{3/4})$ regret, where $T$ is the number of interactions. Next, taking inspiration from adversarial linear bandits, we develop yet another efficient algorithm with $\widetilde{O}(\sqrt{T})$ regret under a different set of assumptions, improving the best existing result by Hao et al. (2020) with $\widetilde{O}(T^{2/3})$ regret. Moreover, we draw a connection between this algorithm and the Natural Policy Gradient algorithm proposed by Kakade (2002), and show that our analysis improves the sample complexity bound recently given by Agarwal et al. (2020).


Deep-learning based computer vision models have proved themselves to be ground-breaking approaches to human activity recognition (HAR). However, most existing works are dedicated to improve the prediction accuracy through either creating new model architectures, increasing model complexity, or refining model parameters by training on larger datasets. Here, we propose an alternative idea, differing from existing work, to increase model accuracy and also to shape model predictions to align with human understandings through automatically creating higher-level summarizing labels for similar groups of human activities. First, we argue the importance and feasibility of constructing a hierarchical labeling system for human activity recognition. Then, we utilize the predictions of a black box HAR model to identify similarities between different activities. Finally, we tailor hierarchical clustering methods to automatically generate hierarchical trees of activities and conduct experiments. In this system, the activity labels on the same level will have a designed magnitude of accuracy and reflect a specific amount of activity details. This strategy enables a trade-off between the extent of the details in the recognized activity and the user privacy by masking some sensitive predictions; and also provides possibilities for the use of formerly prohibited invasive models in privacy-concerned scenarios. Since the hierarchy is generated from the machine's perspective, the predictions at the upper levels provide better accuracy, which is especially useful when there are too detailed labels in the training set that are rather trivial to the final prediction goal. Moreover, the analysis of the structure of these trees can reveal the biases in the prediction model and guide future data collection strategies.


A decentralized consensus protocol refers to a process for all nodes in a distributed system to collect the information/status from every other node and reach a consensus among them. Two classes of decentralized consensus protocols have been studied before: the one without an initiator and the one with an initiator. While the one without an initiator has been well studied in the literature, it is noted that the prior protocols with an initiator mainly relied upon the one without an initiator and thus did not fully exploit the intrinsic properties of having an initiator. By exploiting the concept of multilayered execution, we develop in this paper an efficient multilayered decentralized consensus protocol for a distributed system with an initiator. By adapting itself to the number of nodes in the system, the proposed protocol can determine a proper layer for execution and reach the consensus in the minimal numbers of message steps while incurring a much smaller number of messages than required by prior works. Several illustrative examples are given and performance analysis of the proposed algorithm is conducted to provide many insights into the problem studied. It is shown that the decentralized consensus protocols developed in this paper for the case of having an initiator significantly outperform prior schemes. Specifically, it is proven that (1) the ratio of the average number of messages incurred by the proposed algorithm to that by the prior method approaches zero as the number of nodes increases and (2) the proposed algorithm is asymptotically optimal in the sense that the message number required by the proposed algorithm and that of the optimal one are asymptotically of the same complexity with respect to the number of nodes in the system, showing the very important advantage of the proposed algorithm.


A synthesis of the current knowledge on the bryophyte flora of the Natural Park of Serra da Estrela (PNSE) is presented. This study is based on 7500 specimens, from old records since 1804 but mainly on material collected recently. Three hundred and eighty three taxa (284 mosses and 99 hepatics) are reported from the area. Thirty three taxa are first reports to Beira Alta province, and eighteen species are new to the Natural Park. Data on the distribution of bryophyte species are updated, and distributional patterns of bryophytes in the Park are analysed. PNSE is the exclusive area of occurrence for 37 taxa in Portugal, which evidences the importance of the bryophyte flora in this area. Seven phytogeographical elements are recognized, among which the most represented ones are the oceanic, temperate and boreal elements. Potential threats to the bryoflora in this area are discussed.


This work presents a variationist investigation of language change and the social factors motivating that change within the Fiji Islands at the level of dialect variation. In Fiji, urbanisation coupled with a growing sense of national identity is hypothesized to be effecting an unprecedented linguistic shift towards the standard dialect of the Fijian language and away from the country's numerous distinct regional dialects. Urban communities with high socioeconomic status are predicted to be at the forefront of this shift, demonstrating a higher percentage of standard features in daily speech than their rural counterparts. Five social variables (Socioeconomic status, Gender, Education, Religion and Age) and two experimental design variables (Feature and Speech environment) comprised the parameters of this work. Language change was studied through a comparison of three age groups from two different villages according to their use of divergent linguistic features over three distinct dialects. Data was collected through a controlled, three-part dialogue. The data demonstrates that patterns of association between social variables and dialect choice are quite different between urban and rural Fijian villages. Rural communities with a comparatively low socioeconomic status appear to reliably follow the predicted intergenerational shift towards greater standard usage. However, though a greater percentage of standard usage has been evidenced in urbanised communities with a high socioeconomic status, intergenerational trends have been found to demonstrate a shift back to regional forms in some cases. Therefore, results only partially support the primary hypothesis that the Fijian language is undergoing a shift away from regional diversity in favour of the standard Fijian dialect.


The wild populations of the Scarlet Macaw subspecies native to southern Mexico and Central America, A. m. cyanoptera, have been drastically reduced over the last half century and are now a major concern to local governments and conservation groups. Programs to rebuild these local populations using captive bred specimens must be careful to reintroduce the native A. m. cyanoptera, as opposed to the South American nominate subspecies (A. m. macao) or hybrids of the two subspecies. Molecular markers for comparative genomic analyses are needed for definitive differentiation. Here I describe the isolation and sequence analysis of multiple loci from 7 pedigreed A. m. macao and 14 pedigreed A. m. cyanoptera specimens. The loci analyzed include the 18S rDNA genes, the complete mitogenome as well as intronic regions of selected autosomally-encoded genes. Although the multicopy18S gene sequences exhibited 10% polymorphism within all A. macao genomes, no differences were observed between any of the 21 birds whose genomes were studied. In contrast, numerous polymorphic sites were observed throughout the 16,993 bp mitochondrial genomes of both subspecies. Although much of the polymorphism was observed in the genomes of both subspecies, subspecies-specific alleles were observed at a number of mitochondrial loci, including 12S, 16S, CO2 and ND3. Evidence of possible subspecies-specific alleles were also found in three of four screened nuclear loci. Collectively, these mitochondrial and nuclear loci can be used as the basis to distinguish A. m. cyanoptera from the nominate subspecies, A. m. macao, as well as identify many hybrids, and most importantly will contribute to further reintroduction efforts.


A multi-platform inter-disciplinary observation network has been operating at the Rutgers University Long-term Ecosystem Observatory (LEO) since 1996, with real-time capabilities beginning in July 1999. The network integrates numerous remote (satellites and shorebased), stationary (surface and subsurface), moveable (ships and AUVs) observation systems. The observation network provides spatially extensive updates of the physics, optics, chemistry and biology on time scales of an hour or less which are communicated in real-time to shipboard scientists and AUV operators. This rapid environmental assessment capability is already changing current paradigms for ocean adaptive sampling strategies. For example, in the well-sampled ocean, where forecast errors are dominated by uncertainties in the model physics or future boundary conditions rather than initial conditions, ensemble forecasts with differing model parameterizations can be used to identify regions in which additional data can be used to keep a model on track. Furthermore these approaches are key for sampling episodic events that play a disproportionately large role in driving the biogeochemistry of the coastal ocean. Results from the 1999 and 2000 seasons demonstrate the usefulness of the LEO network to identify, track and sample small-scale (10 m) features that would otherwise go unnoticed with traditional sampling approaches. For example, during HyCODE 2000, real-time data from physical survey vessels identified offshore convergence features. These observations combined with the surface current CODAR measurements were used to adjust and successfully maneuver other ships that were outfitted with bio-optical instrumentation. Bioluminescent Ceratium fusus, a red-tide dinoflagellate, were observed in the convergence zone. The covergence zone resulted from material collecting against a southward flowing alongshore jet of low saline water and tidally driven onshore flow of offshore waters. The feature was dramatically impacted by tidal forcing with convergence at high tide and dispersion at low tide.


The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have introduced greater integration of development objectives across traditional sectors. This integration is also reflected in Africa's Agenda 2063 vision for development. Africa's agricultural and food security initiatives through the 2003 Comprehensive African Agricultural Development Programme (CAADP) seeks to achieve the goals of Agenda 2063 and contribute to the achievement of the SGDs. This commitment is set out in the 2014 Malabo Declaration on Accelerated Agricultural Growth and Transformation for Shared Prosperity and Improved Livelihoods. The African Union recently (2017) established a Biennial Review (BR) mechanism to support the implementation of the Malabo Declaration and hold countries accountable for making progress on the commitments. Currently, many African countries are revising their first five-year CAADP implementation plans and drafting their second five-year National Agriculture and Food Security Investment Plans (or NAIP IIs) in line with the Malabo commitments. This paper set out to assess ten NAIP IIs from the perspective of the indicator sets contained in the NAIPs against the BR, the First 10-year Implementation Plan of the African Union's Agenda 2063 (2014 to 2023) and the SDG's. The research was conducted in three steps. i. An assessment of the NAIP monitoring and evaluation frameworks of ten available NAIPs to determine the alignment between: a. Country NAIPs and the BR indicators, b. Country NAIPs and Agenda 2063's First 10-year Implementation Plan (2014-2023) indicators, c. Country NAIPs and the SDG indicators with a specific focus on food security and nutrition elements, ii. The identification of novel and innovative practices and indicators and establish where there are gaps that could be improved; and iii. Documenting the insights gained from the analysis and drafting of suggestions to improve the design of monitoring and evaluation frameworks in relation to food security and nutrition components of development programmes across the world. We find that the NAIP monitoring and evaluation frameworks were generally compliant with the SDG indicators that were directly related to agriculture and food security. However, they do not exploit the opportunities to align in the areas of the SDGs that address some of the core aspirations of the CAADP agenda – seeking to advance agricultural transformation to reduce poverty, inequality and unemployment. Furthermore, a misalignment exists between the monitoring and evaluation frameworks of the NAIPs, the indicators of the BR and the first ten-year implementation plans for Agenda 2063. At a minimum, alignment of the NAIP indicators with the BR could provide more comprehensive coverage of indicators that generally overlap with both Agenda 2030 and the First 10-year Implementation Plan (2014 – 2023) of Agenda 2063. However, the BR could be strengthened from closer alignment with the SGDs and in some areas, adopting the broader specifications in the SDGs could lend more direction to the BR indicators and the CAADP process in general. For example, the SDGs include monitoring of the incomes of smallholders and the reduction in the rate of unemployment among vulnerable groups (including youth). In addition, a significant number of indicators were included in the NAIPs that were not in the BR and could be considered in improving the BR indicator set. Some countries adopted a more progressive approach to designing their monitoring and evaluation frameworks, resulting in a higher proportion of indicators aligned with the three indicator sets. The lack of appreciation of the full scope of food security (beyond production) led to an imbalanced focus on production by some countries. Malawi and Liberia responded well to interventions by the team and improved their indicator set. As is evident from this analysis, country-level planning does not seem to take into account the international and African transversal sectoral frameworks in the drafting of policies, legislation, strategies and action plans. An insufficient number of indicators focussed on the impact indicators of the CAADP] Results Framework, namely wealth creation; food security and nutrition; economic opportunities, poverty alleviation and shared prosperity; and resilience and sustainability. Although the second highest performance area coverage was in resilience to climate change, the focus in the BR on climate change meant the NAIPs neglected other elements of resilience related to food security, peace and migration. There is room for improvement in the inclusion of more food security and related indicators, shifting the focus to the inclusion of impact indicators. We recommend a review of the drafting process and the composition of the drafting team to ensure that NAIP II monitoring and evaluation frameworks include a comprehensive, integrated indicator set that is aligned with the BR, Agenda 2063's First 10-year Implementation Plan (2014 – 2023) and the SDGs. Clearer guidance, supported by oversight and the development of enhanced guidance tools and regular updates (such as the NAIP toolkit) are essential to support country teams in their efforts, especially in view of the rapidly changing circumstances and events such as the passing of new agreements that affect the policy context (such as the recently signed African Free Trade Agreement). The findings of the analysis raise the need for considerably more training on the BR, the design of the NAIP monitoring and evaluation and the alignment of these with Agenda 2063 and the SGDs to ensure alignment and compliance, as well as improve the quality of reporting across the transversal development space. Mid-term reviews of the NAIPs and their monitoring and evaluation frameworks could provide opportunities for updating and strengthening the frameworks and aligning these more closely with the First 10-year Implementation Plan (2014 – 2023) of Agenda 2063 and the SDGs. Although we have not analysed the alignment of the NAIP monitoring and evaluation frameworks with the individual countries' long-term national development plans and medium-term (five years) Growth and Development Strategies (GDSs; sometimes referred to as Medium Term Strategic Frameworks (MTSFs), this is an area for further analysis and assessment.


The Mixed-Membership Stochastic Blockmodels (MMSB) is a popular framework for modelling social relationships by fully exploiting each individual node's participation (or membership) in a social network. Despite its powerful representations, MMSB assumes that the membership indicators of each pair of nodes (i.e., people) are distributed independently. However, such an assumption often does not hold in real-life social networks, in which certain known groups of people may correlate with each other in terms of factors such as their membership categories. To expand MMSB's ability to model such dependent relationships, a new framework - a Copula Mixed-Membership Stochastic Blockmodel - is introduced in this paper for modeling intra-group correlations, namely an individual Copula function jointly models the membership pairs of those nodes within the group of interest. This framework enables various Copula functions to be used on demand, while maintaining the membership indicator's marginal distribution needed for modelling membership indicators with other nodes outside of the group of interest. Sampling algorithms for both the finite and infinite number of groups are also detailed. Our experimental results show its superior performance in capturing group interactions when compared with the baseline models on both synthetic and real world datasets.


Phosphorylation of the transcription factor Mad determines whether it mediates Wingless or BMP signaling. This Podcast features a conversation with the senior author of a Research Article published in the 11 October 2011 issue of Science Signaling. Eddy De Robertis discusses his group's finding that the phosphorylation status of the transcription factor Mad determines whether it participates in Wingless (Wg) or bone morphogenetic protein (BMP) signaling (1). Phosphorylation of Mad by the BMP receptor leads to Mad-mediated stimulation of BMP-responsive target genes, whereas phosphorylation of Mad by glycogen synthase kinase 3 (GSK-3) targets it for degradation. Wg signaling prevents GSK-3–mediated phosphorylation of Mad, thus allowing it to stimulate expression of Wg-responsive genes.


This paper describes the emergence of logistics cities, which are geographical concentrations of related industries situated around one or more international trade gateways adjacent to a metropolitan area. Broadly, a logistics city comprises logistics activities and related assets combined with an integrated mix of manufacturing and assembly companies, business services, retail outlets, research and education centres, and associated government services and administration sections. This concept is currently being promoted and developed globally by several regions, and examples of these logistics cities are described in this paper. Drawing from these examples and the limited available literature, a preliminary conceptual map of the logistics cities concept has been developed which incorporates a theoretical foundation of economic development and the principles of competitiveness in the notion of trade clusters. This map has provided the basis for our further investigations and the continued development of a more detailed conceptual model that will provide a systematic knowledge base for those engaged in the development of further logistics cities. The beneficiaries of this model will be public authorities, property developers and industrial concerns, and will be used when making decisions for future logistics infrastructure, services, supporting services and related social elements.


The Ailaoshan Fold Belt represents an important component of the geologically complex South China–Indochina suture zone. The fold belt is made up of the Eastern Ailaoshan (EAL) High–Grade Metamorphic Belt, the Paleozoic Central Ailaoshan (CAL) Melange, and the Carboniferous–Triassic Western Ailaoshan (WAL) volcanic belts. This thesis presents a new, better constrained tectono–magmatic evolution model for the Ailaoshan Fold Belt based on a detailed compilation of existing Chinese literature, complemented by extensive new sampling, as well as geochronological (U–Pb zircon and U–Th/Pb monazite), and whole rock and mineral geochemical data.

Contrasting with most published literature, magmatic rocks within the Paleozoic CAL Melange have been found to record two episodes of continental rifting and/or volcanic passive margin development, one Late Devonian–Early Carboniferous, the other Late Permian. There is no preserved record of the oceanic crust of the ocean basin which opened as a result of the Late Devonian–Early Carboniferous rifting episode, and the other magmatic suite recorded in the CAL is the earliest Mid–Triassic syn–collisional granitic magmatism. The WAL volcanic belts, in contrast, include fault–bounded slices of rocks formed during a Late Carboniferous–earliest Mid–Permian continental rift magmatism, a Mid Permian arc/backarc basin magmatism, a Late Permian syn–collisional granitic magmatism and an Early Triassic post–collisional magmatism. Magmatism/metamorphism in the EAL High–Grade Metamorphic Belt has been determined to have occurred during Neoproterozoic, Mid– to Late–Triassic and Cenozoic events, with protoliths originating from various magmatic– and sedimentary rocks in the Ailaoshan–western South China region.

A new regional tectonic model based on the newly compiled data suggests that diachronous continental rift magmatism, leading to volcanic passive margin formation and break up, occurred in the CAL and WAL during, respectively, Silurian–Late Devonian/Early Carboniferous (ca. 430–400 Ma and ca. 370–325 Ma) and Late Carboniferous/Early Permian–earliest Mid–Permian (ca. 300–270 Ma), before which these terranes were attached to the western South China margin in Eastern Gondwana. The volcanic passive margin development and the subsequent seafloor spreading opened the Ailaoshan–Song Ma Paleotethys branch, also known as the Ailaoshan–Song Ma Ocean.

Ridge push associated with WAL continental rifting may have facilitated the west–vergent subduction of the Ailaoshan–Song Ma Ocean beneath eastern Indochina since Early Permian (ca. 280 Ma), producing the Truong Son arc magmatism in Vietnam. In the WAL, in contrast, Mid Permian (ca. 265 Ma) arc/backarc basin magmatism may have only been active for a limited time before the WAL arc collided with and was accreted onto eastern Indochina during late Mid–Permian to Late Permian. This arc–continent collision has been accompanied by extensive Late Permian WAL–Truong Son syn–collisional granitic magmatism (ca. 260–250 Ma) and followed by Early Triassic WAL post–collisional magmatism (ca. 250–245 Ma). Coevally (ca. 260 Ma), the Emeishan Large Igneous Province located in the western South China Block, and may have extended to the CAL–Jinshajiang–Song Da regions.

Continued subduction of the Ailaoshan–Song Ma Ocean remnants may have eventually led to the South China–Indochina continent–continent collision, commenced during Late Permian–Early Triassic in central Vietnam and propagated northward to the CAL–Song Ma (northwestern Vietnam) region during earliest Mid–Triassic to Late Triassic (ca. 230–200 Ma). This may have produced the major regional unconformity recorded across SE Asia, together with the syn– and post–collisional CAL and EAL magmatism/metamorphism.


IntroductionMany studies demonstrating an association between in utero exposure to serotonergic antidepressants and higher risk of neurodevelopmental disorders in children are confounded by history of maternal depression and disease severity. We conducted a population-based analysis of women diagnosed with mood/anxiety disorder, a patient population for whom pharmacotherapy is clearly indicated.
Objectives and ApproachUsing linked population-based administrative data, we identified all mother-newborn pairs in Manitoba (born 1996 to 2009, with follow-up through 2014). High dimensional propensity scores and inverse probability treatment weighting were used to address confounding by indication and disease severity. The final trimmed cohort consisted of mothers who were diagnosed with a mood/anxiety disorder from 90 days prior to conception until delivery (n=4995). Cox Proportional Hazard Regression models were used to estimate risk of Autism Spectrum Disorder, epilepsy and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in offspring. In addition to clinical data, we used novel education data to define outcomes in children.
ResultsAmong the cohort of mothers diagnosed with a mood/anxiety disorder during pregnancy or up to 90 days before, 16.8% received at least two dispensations of an SSRI or SNRI during pregnancy. We did not observe an association between use of SSRIs/SNRIs during pregnancy and increased risk of Autism Spectrum Disorder (hazard ratio 0.92; 95% CI 0.42 to 2.03), epilepsy (hazard ratio 1.21; 95% CI 0.48 to 3.05), or ADHD (hazard ratio 1.13, 95% CI 0.78 to 1.64) among offspring.
Conclusion/ImplicationsIn the absence of randomized control trials, large observation studies using sophisticated data analysis are the gold standard of evidence to help patients and clinicians making the decision to continue antidepressant use during pregnancy. Results of this study reassure women for whom the medication is clinically indicated.


For many patients with advanced breast cancer, the cancer drug Herceptin (trastuzumab) has offered new hope when traditional cancer drugs failed to work, shrinking tumors and sending some patients into remission. Now Dihua Yu, M.D., Ph.D., and her colleagues at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center have uncovered a powerful new cancer-fighting property of Herceptin, an antibody-based drug that targets a protein on breast cancer cells called HER-2 (also called ErbB2). The discovery explains why some HER-2 positive patients don't respond as well to the drug and also offers a potential solution that could allow more HER-2 positive patients to benefit from the treatment. The study, which appears in the August 2004 issue of the journal Cancer Cell, demonstrates that the presence of a protein called PTEN in HER-2 positive patients' tumor cells is a powerful predictor of who will respond to Herceptin. In normal cells, the PTEN protein helps control cell division, but in about half of breast tumors PTEN levels are very low or the protein is completely missing. Those PTEN-missing tumors did not respond to Herceptin treatment. "Our goal is to allow doctors to quickly and accurately tailor cancer treatment to each individual patient," says Yu, professor of surgical oncology, and the study's principal investigator. "Tailored treatment means giving each patient the medication most likely to benefit her, while simultaneously minimizing side effects." In a recent clinical trial at M. D. Anderson, 65 percent of HER-2 positive patients taking Herceptin in addition to chemotherapy had a complete response rate, compared to 26 percent taking chemotherapy alone. But doctors have had no way to predict who among HER-2-positive patients, which account for about one-third of all breast cancer patients, is most likely to benefit. "Previously, it was known that Herceptin binds to the HER-2 protein and causes it to degrade," says Yu. "But this process takes days. What we found is that very quickly, within ten minutes of administration, Herceptin activates PTEN, a powerful tumor suppressor gene. We are adding a very new understanding of how Herceptin works." The scientists studied the tumors of 47 metastatic HER-2 positive breast cancer patients who had received Herceptin and chemotherapy as well as 37 patients who received chemotherapy alone. PTEN levels varied widely among both groups, but only 11 percent of patients who had a very low level of PTEN responded to Herceptin, versus 66 percent of those with high levels of PTEN. There was no correlation between PTEN level and response to traditional chemotherapy agents called taxanes. "Our results show PTEN is a very powerful predictor of who will respond to Herceptin," says Yu. Breast cancer patients whose tumors make too much of the HER-2 protein are at much greater risk of metastasis because the HER-2 protein stimulates cells to grow and spread aggressively. When Herceptin attaches to the HER-2 protein, it interrupts those growth signals, which are sent through a series of signaling proteins inside the cell. PTEN acts as a natural brake on tumor growth by, among other things, blocking the effect of a growth promoting protein called PI3K. Yu and her colleagues discovered that if they administered a drug that turns off PI3K in breast cancer cells in the laboratory, they became much more sensitive to the effects of Herceptin. The PI3K inhibitor mimicked the action of PTEN and restored the ability of Herceptin to slow or stop the growth of cancer cells. Yu pointed out that there are several experimental PI3K inhibitors currently in clinical trials for treatment of breast cancer that, if they prove to be safe, could potentially be combined with Herceptin to boost its effectiveness in PTEN-missing breast cancers. "In the past we looked for patients' HER-2 expression, and if HER-2 was high we gave them Herceptin," says Yu. "In the future, when patients come to M. D. Anderson we will look for patients with high levels of HER-2 and PTEN expression and these are the patients that we expect will benefit most from Herceptin. For those with low PTEN, we hope to be able to offer combination therapy with a PI3K inhibitor that might work synergistically to boost the effectiveness of Herceptin." Yu says she and her colleagues in the Breast Medical Oncology Department are planning a clinical trial to be conducted at M. D. Anderson in which they would test each patient for HER-2 and PTEN proteins and offer targeted treatment based on the level of each protein. "There has been a need to develop new markers that can improve the efficacy of Herceptin," says Francisco Esteva, M.D., Ph.D., an associate professor in the Department of Breast Medical Oncology. "This is one of the first studies that allows us to understand the mechanism of Herceptin resistance and offers a potential way to counteract it." "In the past, selecting a particular chemotherapy drug has been a lottery," says Yu. "Patients had no way of knowing if they would benefit. The new generation of cancer drugs is providing targeted treatment with fewer side effects and giving patients a better chance that a particular treatment will work for them." The study was funded by grants from the National Institutes of Health and M. D. Anderson Cancer Center. Yu's co-authors include Yoichi Nagata, M.D., Ph.D.; Keng-Hsueh Lan, M.D.; Xiaoyan Zhou; Ming Tan, M.D., Ph.D.; Esteva; Aysegul A. Sahin, M.D.; Kristine S. Klos, Ph.D.; Ping Li; Nina T. Nguyen; Gabriel N. Hortobagyi, M.D. and Mien-Chie Hung, Ph.D. of M. D. Anderson; and Brett P. Monia of ISIS Pharmaceuticals. Contact: Nancy Jensen, (713) 792-0655, firstname.lastname@example.com; or Stephanie Dedeaux, (713) 563-0000, email@example.com


To represent a text as a bag of properly identified "phrases" and use the representation for processing the text is proved to be useful. The key question here is how to identify the phrases and represent them. The traditional method of utilizing n-grams can be regarded as an approximation of the approach. Such a method can suffer from data sparsity, however, particularly when the length of n-gram is large. In this paper, we propose a new method of learning and utilizing task-specific distributed representations of n-grams, referred to as "region embeddings". Without loss of generality we address text classification. We specifically propose two models for region embeddings. In our models, the representation of a word has two parts, the embedding of the word itself, and a weighting matrix to interact with the local context, referred to as local context unit. The region embeddings are learned and used in the classification task, as parameters of the neural network classifier. Experimental results show that our proposed method outperforms existing methods in text classification on several benchmark datasets. The results also indicate that our method can indeed capture the salient phrasal expressions in the texts.


Background Alzheimer's disease is a neurodegenerative syndrome characterized by multiple dimensions including cognitive decline, decreased daily functioning and psychiatric symptoms. This systematic review aims to investigate the relation between somatic comorbidity burden and progression in late-onset Alzheimer's disease (LOAD). Methods We searched four databases for observational studies that examined cross-sectional or longitudinal associations of cognitive or functional or neuropsychiatric outcomes with comorbidity in individuals with LOAD. From the 7966 articles identified originally, 11 studies were included in this review. The Newcastle-Ottawa quality assessment was used. The large variation in progression measures, comorbidity indexes and study designs hampered the ability to perform a meta-analysis. This review was registered with PROSPERO under DIO: 10.15124/CRD42015027046. Results Nine studies indicated that comorbidity burden was associated with deterioration in at least one of the three dimensions of LOAD examined. Seven out of ten studies investigating cognition found comorbidities to be related to decreased cognitive performance. Five out of the seven studies investigating daily functioning showed an association between comorbidity burden and decreased daily functioning. Neuropsychiatric symptoms (NPS) increased with increasing comorbidity burden in two out of three studies investigating NPS. Associations were predominantly found in studies analyzing the association cross-sectionally, in a time-varying manner or across short follow-up (≤2 years). Rarely baseline comorbidity burden appeared to be associated with outcomes in studies analyzing progression over longer follow-up periods (>2 years). Conclusion This review provides evidence of an association between somatic comorbidities and multifaceted LOAD progression. Given that time-varying comorbidity burden, but much less so baseline comorbidity burden, was associated with the three dimensions prospectively, this relationship cannot be reduced to a simple cause-effect relation and is more likely to be dynamic. Therefore, both future studies and clinical practice may benefit from regarding comorbidity as a modifiable factor with a possibly fluctuating influence on LOAD.


Subjective and personal forms of nonfiction writing are enjoying exponential popularity in English language publishing currently, as an interested public engages with 'true' stories of society and culture. Yet a paradox exists at the centre of this form of writing. As readers, we want to know who the writer is and what she has to tell us. Yet as writers we use a persona, a constructed character, a narrator who is only partially the writer, to deliver the narrative. How is a writer able to convey 'true' stories that are inherently reliant on memory, within a constructed narrative persona?We find a 'gap' between the writer and the narrator/protagonist on the page, an empowered creative space in which composition occurs, facilitating a balance between the facts and lived experiences from which 'true' stories are crafted, and the acknowledged fallibility of human memory. While the gap between writer and writer-as-narrator provides an enabling space for creative composition, it also creates space for the perception of unreliability. The width of this gap, we argue, is crucial. Only if the gap is small, if writer and writer-as-narrator share a set of passionately held values, can the writer-as-narrator become a believable entity, satisfying the reader with the 'truth' of their story.


Abstract Aim. To investigate the reliability of a sentinel node (SN) procedure for nodal staging in prostate cancer (PCa) patients at high risk for lymph node (LN) involvement. Material and methods. Seventy-four patients with localized prostate adenocarcinoma, who were clinically node-negative and had a risk of LN involvement of ≥ 10% (Partin tables), were prospectively enrolled. Upon intraprostatic 99mTc-nanocolloid injection, they underwent planar scintigraphy and SPECT imaging. Surgical removal of the SN, located by means of a gamma probe, was completed with a superextended LN dissection (seLND) as a reference and followed by radical prostatectomy. Results. In total, 470 SN (median 6, IQR 3–9) were scintigraphically detected of which 371 (median 4, IQR 2–6) were located by gamma probe and selectively removed during surgery (79%). Histopathology confirmed LN metastases in 37 patients (50%) having 106 affected LN in total (median number per patient 2, IQR 1–4). Twenty-eight patients were node positive (N+) based on the analysis of the resected SN. However, the seLND that was performed as a reference revealed nine additional N+ patients resulting in a sensitivity of 76% (28/37). In total, 15 of 37 patients (41%) had metastases in SN only and could have been spared seLND to remove all affected nodes. Conclusion. We found a relatively low sensitivity when addressing the SN procedure for nodal staging in PCa patients at high risk for LN involvement. Importantly, only less than half of the N+ patients could have been spared a seLND to remove all affected lymphoid tissue.


Prostate cancer continues to be the most commonly diagnosed cancer among men. Brachytherapy has emerged as one of the definitive treatment options for early stage prostate cancer which entails permanent implantation of radioactive seeds into the prostate to eradicate the cancer with ionizing radiation. Successful brachytherapy requires the ability to perform dosimetry -which requires seed localizationduring the procedure but such function is not available today. If dosimetry could be performed intraoperatively, physicians could implant additional seeds into the underdosed portions of the prostate while the patient is still on the operating table. This thesis addresses the brachytherapy seed localization problem with introducing intensity based registration between transrectal ultrasound (TRUS) that shows only the prostate and a 3D seed model drawn from fluoroscopy that shows only the implanted seeds. The TRUS images are first filtered and compounded, and then registered to the seed model by using mutual information. A training phantom was implanted with 48 seeds and imaged. Various ultrasound filtering techniques were analyzed. The effect of false positives and false negatives in ultrasound was investigated by randomly masking seeds from the fluoroscopy volume or adding seeds to that in random locations. Furthermore, the effect of sparse and dense ultrasound data was analyzed by running the registration for ultrasound data with different spacing. The registration i error remained consistently below clinical threshold and capture range was significantly larger than the initial guess guaranteed by the clinical workflow. This fully automated method provided excellent registration accuracy and robustness in phantom studies and promises to demonstrate clinically adequate performance on human data.


Dynamic oligopoly estimators have become a workhorse for industry studies in empirical industrial organization. We evaluate parameter recovery and counterfactual predictions for such environments using laboratory data. In our experimental setting we characterize a symmetric Markov-perfect equilibrium and also a non-Markov equilibrium that allows for much higher payoffs. We estimate structural parameters under the standard assumption that the data are generated by a Markov-perfect equilibrium and then use the estimates to predict counterfactual behavior. The concern is that if the Markov assumption is violated in the data, we would find biased estimates large errors in counterfactual predictions. The experimental method allows us to compare estimated parameters to the true induced parameters, and counterfactual predictions to true counterfactuals implemented as treatments. Our main finding is that restricting attention to Markov-perfect equilibria at the estimation stage is, in fact, not very restrictive.


Despite rapid industrialization in Thailand, the contribution of agriculture to GDP remains unusually high. The share of agricultural employment in total employment has also remained high, relative to the country's income level, as has the share of the rural population relative to the total population. Agribusiness has grown significantly, and there has been a rise in the number of large and strongly financed commercial farms that are less labour intensive. Contract farming has also been developing.The introduction of a rice premium by the government obstructed the modernization of the agricultural rice sector and caused the rice share in GDP to steadily decline, while that for upland crops such as cassava, maize, sugarcane, and oil palm increased. However, rice remains the most important crop. The high proportion of the population still living in rural areas and working in the agricultural sector attests to the resilience of that sector in the face of industrialization.