Trade Agreements, Bargaining and Economic Growth

Rebelo's two-sector endogenous growth model is embedded within a two-country international trade framework. The two countries bargain over a trade agreement that specifies: (i) the size of the foreign aid that the richer country gives to the poorer one; (ii) the terms of the international trade that takes place after the aid is given. The aid is given not because of generosity, but because it improves the capital allocation across the world and thus raises total world production. This world production surplus enables the rich country to raise its equilibrium consumption and welfare beyond their no-aid levels. To ensure it, the rich country uses a trade agreement to condition the aid on favorable terms of trade.International trade, Aid, Balanced Growth, Trade Agreement

Trade Agreements, Bargaining and Economic Growth

Rebelo's two-sector endogenous growth model is embedded within a two-country international trade framework. The two countries bargain over a trade agreement that specifies: (i) the size of the foreign aid that the richer country gives to the poorer one; (ii) the terms of the international trade that takes place after the aid is given. Foreign aid is given not because of generosity, but because it improves the capital allocation across the world and thus raises total world production. This world production surplus enables the rich country to raise its equilibrium consumption and welfare beyond their no-aid levels. To ensure it, the rich country uses a trade agreement to condition the aid on favorable terms of trade.International trade; Aid; Balanced Growth

Opposition theory and computational semiotics

Opposition theory suggests that binary oppositions (e.g., high vs. low) underlie basic cognitive and linguistic processes. However, opposition theory has never been implemented in a computational cognitive-semiotics model. In this paper, we present a simple model of metaphor identification that relies on opposition theory. An algorithm instantiating the model has been tested on a data set of 100 phrases comprising adjective-noun pairs in which approximately a half represent metaphorical language-use (e.g., dark thoughts) and the rest literal language-use (e.g., dark hair). The algorithm achieved 89% accuracy in metaphor identification and illustrates the relevance of opposition theory for modelling metaphor processing

Parasitization by the wasp Eretmocerus mundus induces transcription of genes related to immune response and symbiotic bacteria proliferation in the whitefly Bemisia tabaci

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The whitefly <it>Bemisia tabaci </it>(Gennadius) (Hemiptera: Aleyrodidae), and the viruses it transmits, are a major constraint to growing vegetable crops worldwide. Although the whitefly is often controlled using chemical pesticides, biological control agents constitute an important component in integrated pest management programs, especially in protected agriculture. One of these agents is the wasp <it>Eretmocerus mundus </it>(Mercet) (Hymenoptera: Aphelinidae)<it>. E. mundus </it>lays its egg on the leaf underneath the second-third instar nymph of <it>B. tabaci</it>. First instars of the wasp hatch and penetrate the whitefly nymphs. Initiation of parasitization induces the host to form a capsule composed of epidermal cells around the parasitoid. The physiological and molecular processes underlying <it>B. tabaci-E. mundus </it>interactions have never been investigated.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We used a cDNA microarray containing 6,000 expressed sequence tags (ESTs) from the whitefly genome to study the parasitoid-whitefly interaction. We compared RNA samples collected at two time points of the parasitization process: when the parasitoid first instar starts the penetration process and once it has fully penetrated the host. The results clearly indicated that genes known to be part of the defense pathways described in other insects are also involved in the response of <it>B. tabaci </it>to parasitization by <it>E. mundus</it>. Some of these responses included repression of a serine protease inhibitor (<it>serpin</it>) and induction of a melanization cascade. A second set of genes that responded strongly to parasitization were bacterial, encoded by whitefly symbionts. Quantitative real-time PCR and FISH analyses showed that proliferation of <it>Rickettsia</it>, a facultative secondary symbiont, is strongly induced upon initiation of the parasitization process, a result that supported previous reports suggesting that endosymbionts might be involved in the insect host's resistance to various environmental stresses.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>This is the first study to examine the transcriptional response of a hemipteran insect to attack by a biological control agent (hymenopterous parasitoid), using a new genomic approach developed for this insect pest. The defense response in <it>B. tabaci </it>involves genes related to the immune response as described in model organisms such as <it>Drosophila melanogaster</it>. Moreover, endosymbionts of <it>B. tabaci </it>appear to play a role in the response to parasitization, as supported by previously published results from aphids.</p

Optical Gain from InAs Nanocrystal Quantum Dots in a Polymer Matrix

We report on the first observation of optical gain from InAs nanocrystal quantum dots emitting at 1.55 microns based on a three-beam, time resolved pump-probe technique. The nanocrystals were embedded into a transparent polymer matrix platform suitable for the fabrication of integrated photonic devices.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures. This second version is excactly the same as the first. It is resubmitted to correct some format errors appeared in the pdf file of the first versio

Definite orthogonal modular forms:Computations, Excursions and Discoveries

We consider spaces of modular forms attached to definite orthogonal groups of low even rank and nontrivial level, equipped with Hecke operators defined by Kneser neighbours. After reviewing algorithms to compute with these spaces, we investigate endoscopy using theta series and a theorem of Rallis. Along the way, we exhibit many examples and pose several conjectures. As a first application, we express counts of Kneser neighbours in terms of coefficients of classical or Siegel modular forms, complementing work of Chenevier-Lannes. As a second application, we prove new instances of Eisenstein congruences of Ramanujan and Kurokawa-Mizumoto type

Trade Agreements, Bargaining and Economic Growth

Rebelo's two-sector endogenous growth model is embedded within a two-country international trade framework. The two countries bargain over a trade agreement that specifies: (i) the size of the foreign aid that the richer country gives to the poorer one; (ii) the terms of the international trade that takes place after the aid is given. The aid is given not because of generosity, but because it improves the capital allocation across the world and thus raises total world production. This world production surplus enables the rich country to raise its equilibrium consumption and welfare beyond their no-aid levels. To ensure it, the rich country uses a trade agreement to condition the aid on favorable terms of trade

Metaphor Identification in Large Texts Corpora

Identifying metaphorical language-use (e.g., sweet child) is one of the challenges facing natural language processing. This paper describes three novel algorithms for automatic metaphor identification. The algorithms are variations of the same core algorithm. We evaluate the algorithms on two corpora of Reuters and the New York Times articles. The paper presents the most comprehensive study of metaphor identification in terms of scope of metaphorical phrases and annotated corpora size. Algorithms’ performance in identifying linguistic phrases as metaphorical or literal has been compared to human judgment. Overall, the algorithms outperform the state-of-the-art algorithm with 71% precision and 27% averaged improvement in prediction over the base-rate of metaphors in the corpus.United States. Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA)United States. Dept. of Defense (U.S. Army Research Laboratory Contract W911NF-12-C-0021

A Large-scale Dataset for Argument Quality Ranking: Construction and Analysis

Identifying the quality of free-text arguments has become an important task in the rapidly expanding field of computational argumentation. In this work, we explore the challenging task of argument quality ranking. To this end, we created a corpus of 30,497 arguments carefully annotated for point-wise quality, released as part of this work. To the best of our knowledge, this is the largest dataset annotated for point-wise argument quality, larger by a factor of five than previously released datasets. Moreover, we address the core issue of inducing a labeled score from crowd annotations by performing a comprehensive evaluation of different approaches to this problem. In addition, we analyze the quality dimensions that characterize this dataset. Finally, we present a neural method for argument quality ranking, which outperforms several baselines on our own dataset, as well as previous methods published for another dataset.Comment: Accepted to AAAI 202