EC common agricultural policy and the world trade in feed grain: a multi-region nonspatial price equilibrium analysis

Since the adoption of the Common Agricultural Policy in 1962, the members of the European Economic Community have protected their common borders against the importation of certain agricultural commodities. Heavy variable levies and high guaranteed producer prices have triggered rise in market prices followed by a rise in grain production in EC countries. Therefore, the number one grain importing region of the 1960s has transformed into a major grain exporting region of the 1980s. These developments led to many objections from the grain exporting countries, followed by bilateral and multilateral negotiations, with little if any success;The general concern of this study is the impact of alternative less protective EC feed grain policies, on the prices and quantities traded by the major trading partners in the world feed grain market. The feed grain market is chosen primarily because the EC has turned into a net exporter of feed grains, only in the mid-1980s. Besides, the wheat market with the longest standing problem of surplus production has been extensively covered by other studies;This study analyzes several scenarios, each of which adopts one of the following policies: nominal or real threshold prices are kept constant, the policy prices are gradually reduced, producers are subsidized while the import market is kept free, and, finally, the protection rates in feed grain and soybean markets are harmonized. The estimation period covers the years 1968-1982, while the policy impacts are simulated until 1989;In conclusion, the policy changes studied here are not suggested to cause a significant development in the imports of the importing regions. On the export side, the most extreme of the policy changes analyzed in the study appears to increase U.S. exports only by five percent, while only one of the other exporting countries\u27 export increases by as much as 20 percent

Prokaryotic Expression of H1N1 Influenza A Virus Haemagglutinin Protein Globular Domain (HA1)

Background: Influenza viruses are a significant cause of morbidity and mortality. The influenza virus pandemics, 1918, 1977, and especially the most recent one, A/H1N1/2009, made evident the need for generating recombinant Influenza H1N1 antigens which are essential to develop both basic and applied research programs. Among influenza virus proteins, haemagglutinin (HA) is a major surface antigen of influenza virus, thus it is highly topical in influenza research and vaccine engineering programs. Alternatively, expression of fragments of the HA (HA1 and HA2) proteins in prokaryotic systems can potentially be the most efficacious strategy for manufacture of large quantities of influenza vaccine in a short period of time.Materials and Methods: The gene encoding the HA1 protein of the influenza A/Puerto Rico/8/34 was amplified by PCR, then cloned into pTZ57R/T cloning vector. The fidelity of the HA1 open reading frame was confirmed by bidirectional sequencing, then sub-cloned into pET28a prokaryotic expression plasmid, and proteins containing HA1 N-terminally fused to His-Tag were produced in Escherichia coli BL21 through IPTG inducing. The accuracy of the expression was confirmed by running time coursed fraction samples taken before and after the IPTG induction in SDS-PAGE, Western blot analysis were also used for confirmation of the recombinant protein.Results and Conclusion: The HA1 protein produced here could be considered and evaluated as a protective antigen, which its immunogenicity potential needs to be assessed in animal models along with proper control groups. Moreover, it could be subjected for polyclonal antibody preparation, which, in turn, may be used as an essential material in western blot analyses, as well as in other immunological applications, such as ELISA, immunocytochemistry, immunohistochemistry, and other immunological and serological studies

EC Trade Liberalization and World Trade in Feed Grains: A Comparison and A Criticism

Agricultural policies in most countries are aimed at protecting agents involved in food production or consumption from a variety of undesirable outcomes, including: price and/or political instability, food shortages, declining agricultural income and the resulting rural-urban migration. The European Community (EC), formed in 1959, is best organized for the purpose of protecting agricultural producers and in recent years has been the target of criticism by the opponents of this protection

Robust localization and navigation with linear programming

Linear programming is an established, well-understood technique optimization problem; the goal of this thesis is to show that we can still use linear programming to advance the state of the art in two important blocks of modern robotic systems, namely perception, and control. In the context of perception, we study the effects of outliers in the solution of localization problems. In its essence, this problem reduces to finding the coordinates of a set of nodes in a common reference frame starting from relative pairwise measurements and is at the core of many applications such as Structure from Motion (SfM), sensor networks, and Simultaneous Localization And Mapping (SLAM). In practical situations, the accuracy of the relative measurements is marred by noise and outliers (large-magnitude errors). In particular, outliers might introduce significant errors in the final result, hence, we have the problem of quantifying how much we should trust the solution returned by some given localization solver. In this work, we focus on the question of whether an L1-norm robust optimization formulation can recover a solution that is identical to the ground truth, under the scenario of translation-only measurements corrupted exclusively by outliers and no noise. In the context of control, we study the problem of robust path planning. Path planning deals with the problem of finding a path from an initial state toward a goal state while considering collision avoidance. We propose a novel approach for navigating in polygonal environments by synthesizing controllers that take as input relative displacement measurements with respect to a set of landmarks. Our algorithm is based on solving a sequence of robust min-max Linear Programming problems on the elements of a cell decomposition of the environment. The optimization problems are formulated using linear Control Lyapunov Function (CLF) and Control Barrier Function (CBF) constraints, to provide stability and safety guarantees, respectively. We integrate the CBF and CLF constraints with sampling-based path planning methods to omit the assumption of having a polygonal environment and add implementation to learn the constraints and estimate the controller when the environment is not fully known. We introduce a method to find the controller synthesis using bearing-only measurements in order to use monocular camera measurements. We show through simulations that the resulting controllers are robust to significant deformations of the environment. These works provide a simple approach in terms of computation to study the robustness of the localization and navigation problem

Assessment of Stress in General Dentists in Tehran City

Objectives: This study sought to assess the level of stress in general dentists in the 2nd district of Tehran city in 2014 to find out the stressors and suggest strategies to overcome them.Methods: This descriptive, analytical, cross-sectional study was conducted on 130 general dentists from the 2nd district of Tehran city selected via weighted randomization. Level of stress was assessed using Coudron stress questionnaire. Data were analyzed using SPSS version 20.0 and Spearman’s correlation coefficient, Chi square test and ordinal logistic regression tests. P<0.05 was considered statistically significant.Results: All types of stress (occupational, life health, personal life and personality) were significantly correlated. Normal life health stress (compared to high stress) decreased occupational stress to approximately one third. Level of occupational stress was 2.5 times lower in subjects with normal level of stress in their personal life and 2 times lower in subjects with normal personality stress. Most dentists, irrespective of gender and marital status had high levels of occupational stress. Only 11.27% of those with a work experience of less than 10 years had normal life health stress. Personal life stress was significantly correlated with age, work place, and work experience (P<0.05).Conclusion: Most dentists, irrespective of gender (male: 67.3%, female: 73%) and marital status (married: 66.3%, single: 74.2%) had high levels of occupational stress. The effects of age, gender, marital status, work place and work experience were variable on occupational, life health, personal life and personality stresses and depended on the type of stress assessed

Root Morphology and Canal Configuration of First and Second Maxillary Molars in a Selected Iranian Population: A Cone-Beam Computed Tomography Evaluation

Introduction: The aim of this investigation was to evaluate root canal morphology of maxillary first and second molars and also to assess the prevalence and morphology of the second mesiobuccal canal (MB2) in these teeth, using cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT). Methods and Materials: In this cross-sectional study, the total of 470 CBCT images from the archive of Radiology Department of Isfahan University of Medical Sciences (IUMS), Iran, was evaluated and 295 images were selected. The number of roots, and canal configuration were determined based on Vertucci’s classification system. The data was analyzed using SPSS 20, and P-values less than 0.05 were considered significant. Results: A total of 295 images from 295 patients (165 females and 130 males), including 389 maxillary first (197 right and 192 left) and 460 maxillary second (235 right and 225 left) molars were evaluated. The prevalence of MB2 canals were 70.2% and 43.4% in the maxillary first and second molars, respectively. The most common type of Vertucci’s classification was type II (53.1%), followed by type I. Conclusion: The second mesiobuccal canal was present in almost two thirds of first and less than half of second molars. The morphology and canal configuration of a maxillary molar can almost predict the morphology of contralateral molar. However, it does not relate to the ipsilateral molar.Keywords: Cone-Beam Computed Tomography; Maxillary Molar; Mesiobuccal Canal; Root Canal Configuratio

The Effectiveness of the Spiritual Treatment Groupon Improving the Quality of Life and Mental Health in Women with Breast Cancer

For downloading the full-text of this article please click here.Background and Objectives: The purpose of this study was to explain Effectiveness of spiritual therapy based on group on increase mental health and quality of life in Women with breast cancer.Materials & Methods: This study is a clinical trial, in a per – post design. 24 patients (women with breast cancer) were randomly selected, and located in the experimental group (n =12) and control group (n =12). Participants in the experimental group (each 90 minutes) received spiritual therapy for 12 sessions. Collection tool data in this study was Symptom Chek List – 90 – Revised (SCL- 90 – R­) and Quality of life questionnaire (QLQ). Data were analyzed by using SPSS software and descriptive statistics methods (mean, standard deviation, variance) and inferential statistics (analysis of covariance, analysis of variance, Z, F Levin, KS).In this study, all relevant ethical issues were considered.Results: The findings of this study showed that spiritual therapy based on group has considerable influence on increase mental health and quality of life in women with breast cancer. In other words, this intervention could improve the quality of life and mental health in the experimental groupConclusion:The result of this study showed that spiritual therapy, is known effective source for dealing with physical and psychological response­, and This intervention can be used in Common medical treatments to improve the quality of life and mental health  in women with breast cancer­.Keywords: Breast cancer, Mental health, Quality of life, Spiritual therapy based on groupFor downloading the full-text of this article please click here.Please cite this article as: Bahreinian A, Radmehr H­, Mohammadi H,BavadiB, Mousavi M­. The Effectiveness of the Spiritual Treatment Groupon  Improving the Quality of Life and Mental Health in Women with Breast Cancer. J Res Relig Health. 2017; 3 (1): 64- 78