CHANGE AND FIRM VALUATION IN U.S. FOOD RETAILING AND MANUFACTURING

The competitive environment in the agri-food sector is evolving as the food manufacturing and retailing industries become more concentrated. Evolving industry structure and new firm investment portend changes in future firm competitiveness and performance. This research describes how large food-manufacturing and retail firm performance has shifted and how firm valuation signals expected future change in performance. While there have been expectations that return on investment of large food retailers would increase relative to large packaged-food manufacturers, we find that this has not yet happened and that market valuations imply that retailers are not likely to gain on manufacturers in the future.Agribusiness,

A Matter of Vicious Habits : Civil War Families Under the Strain of War

This thesis examines the long term consequences of spatial and temporal distance on marriages during the Civil War. The absence of male labor created by enlistment in the Union Army stretched women to their economic limits while physical and emotional separation created opportunities for infidelity for both husbands and wives. Central to this narrative is mid-nineteenth-century ideas about manhood. The war offered a confirmation of male adulthood, but also required men to abandon the duties to home that were no less fundamental to the ideal of male maturity. Recent scholarship on veterans’ disabilities, including mental illness and substance abuse, show that this paradox continued to define soldiers’ lives for decades after the war. Equally important to the narrative is perceptions of female behavior and morality as women navigated the economic hardships and exigencies of a protracted military conflict. The central themes of this thesis are brought forward by utilizing the pension records of George A. Casedy, a volunteer with the 17th and 97th Ohio Volunteer Infantry, as well as the 61st New York Volunteer Infantry. Casedy contracted syphilis during the war under circumstances created by his absence in the army, circumstances which Bureau of Pension examiners in the 1890s found shocking and appalling. The distance created by the Civil War strained the fabric of George Casedy’s marriage and led to decisions that had long-term negative consequences

Variability in water column respiration in Salish Sea waters and implications for coastal and ocean acidification

Water column respiration is a key driver of carbon cycling, ocean acidification, and oxygen dynamics in marine ecosystems. However, empirical estimates of the range and variability of respiration and its relative contribution to ocean acidification are seldom measured. In 2014, we began measuring respiration rates at multiple sites in the central Salish Sea (San Juan Islands, Bellingham Bay) and then initiated routine monitoring of water column respiration at multiple sites in Padilla Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve (NERR). Measurements in Padilla Bay were integrated into the well-established NERR System Wide Monitoring Program (SWMP). Our investigation revealed that 1) rates of respiration vary seasonally and appear to be associated with changes in organic matter supply and, to a lesser extent, temperature, and 2) incoming deeper waters of marine origin are characterized by relatively low rates of respiration (i.e. ~5ugO2/L/h). To further explore underlying mechanisms, we conducted a series of manipulative experiments to investigate the direct effect of increasing ocean temperature and organic matter supply on rates of respiration. These experiments revealed that respiration can more than triple in response to increases in organic carbon supply and that this response may be influenced by seasonal changes in the export of organic matter and detritus from the extensive eelgrass meadows of Padilla Bay. Our field sampling and manipulative experiments have produced empirical estimates of respiration that can be included in models and projections of water quality and ocean acidification for the Puget Sound, and provide insight into the response of inland marine waters of the Pacific Northwest to a warmer, more acidified ocean

An Evaluation of Three TRM Feed-Mixing Wagons

Three mixer wagons, three-auger, reel-type auger, and four-auger, were used to evaluate the adequacy of mix of a grower diet. All three mixers were considered in good mechanical condition. The grower diet contained 12.4% rolled corn, 23.7% wet corn gluten feed, 42% soybean hulls, 15.8% grass hay, and 6.19% liquid supplement on an as-is basis. Monensin was added to the diet at 28glton on an as-fed basis. Samples were obtained after 2, 4, 6, and 8 minutes (min) of mixing. Following the 8-min mixing time, the feed was unloaded as a windrow onto a concrete pad. Samples were obtained from the beginning, middle, and end of the windrow. These samples were used for nutrient analysis and ionophore (Monensin) recovery. Dry matter (DM) content and crude protein (CP) showed little variance across treatments. The coefficient of variation (CV) was greater for acid detergent fiber (ADF) levels than for other assayed components. The three-auger mixer produced a ration that was adequately mixed after 8 min of mixing. The reel-type auger required 4 min and the four-auger required only 2 min of mixing based on the observed CV. Monensin recovery gave similar results. The three-auger mixer gave the most accurate Monensin levels as compared to theoretical values. These studies indicate any well-maintained mixer will work well if the timing and sequence of adding ingredients is correct for the type of mixing action

Robust leakage-based distributed precoder for cooperative multicell systems

Coordinated multipoint (CoMP) from long term evolution (LTE)-advanced is a promising technique to enhance the system spectral efficiency. Among the CoMP techniques, joint transmission has high communication requirements, because of the data sharing phase through the backhaul network, and coordinated scheduling and beamforming reduces the backhaul requirements, since no data sharing is necessary. Most of the available CoMP techniques consider perfect channel knowledge at the transmitters. Nevertheless for practical systems this is unrealistic. Therefore in this study the authors address this limitation by proposing a robust precoder for a multicell-based systems, where each base station (BS) has only access to an imperfect local channel estimate. They consider both the case with and without data sharing. The proposed precoder is designed in a distributed manner at each BS by maximising the signal-to-leakage-and-noise ratio of all jointly processed users. By considering the channel estimation error in the design of the precoder, they are able to reduce considerably the impact of these errors in the system's performance. The results show that the proposed scheme has improved performance especially for the high signal-to-noise ratio regime, where the impact of the channel estimation error may be more pronounced

Neonatal Pain-Related Stress Predicts Cortical Thickness at Age 7 Years in Children Born Very Preterm

Background Altered brain development is evident in children born very preterm (24–32 weeks gestational age), including reduction in gray and white matter volumes, and thinner cortex, from infancy to adolescence compared to term-born peers. However, many questions remain regarding the etiology. Infants born very preterm are exposed to repeated procedural pain-related stress during a period of very rapid brain development. In this vulnerable population, we have previously found that neonatal pain-related stress is associated with atypical brain development from birth to term-equivalent age. Our present aim was to evaluate whether neonatal pain-related stress (adjusted for clinical confounders of prematurity) is associated with altered cortical thickness in very preterm children at school age. Methods 42 right-handed children born very preterm (24–32 weeks gestational age) followed longitudinally from birth underwent 3-D T1 MRI neuroimaging at mean age 7.9 yrs. Children with severe brain injury and major motor/sensory/cognitive impairment were excluded. Regional cortical thickness was calculated using custom developed software utilizing FreeSurfer segmentation data. The association between neonatal pain-related stress (defined as the number of skin-breaking procedures) accounting for clinical confounders (gestational age, illness severity, infection, mechanical ventilation, surgeries, and morphine exposure), was examined in relation to cortical thickness using constrained principal component analysis followed by generalized linear modeling. Results After correcting for multiple comparisons and adjusting for neonatal clinical factors, greater neonatal pain-related stress was associated with significantly thinner cortex in 21/66 cerebral regions (p-values ranged from 0.00001 to 0.014), predominately in the frontal and parietal lobes. Conclusions In very preterm children without major sensory, motor or cognitive impairments, neonatal pain-related stress appears to be associated with thinner cortex in multiple regions at school age, independent of other neonatal risk factors

ACT: aggregation and correlation toolbox for analyses of genome tracks

We have implemented aggregation and correlation toolbox (ACT), an efficient, multifaceted toolbox for analyzing continuous signal and discrete region tracks from high-throughput genomic experiments, such as RNA-seq or ChIP-chip signal profiles from the ENCODE and modENCODE projects, or lists of single nucleotide polymorphisms from the 1000 genomes project. It is able to generate aggregate profiles of a given track around a set of specified anchor points, such as transcription start sites. It is also able to correlate related tracks and analyze them for saturation–i.e. how much of a certain feature is covered with each new succeeding experiment. The ACT site contains downloadable code in a variety of formats, interactive web servers (for use on small quantities of data), example datasets, documentation and a gallery of outputs. Here, we explain the components of the toolbox in more detail and apply them in various contexts

Cosmological test of the Yilmaz theory of gravity

We test the Yilmaz theory of gravitation by working out the corresponding Friedmann-type equations generated by assuming the Friedmann-Robertson-Walker cosmological metrics. In the case that space is flat the theory is consistent only with either a completely empty universe or a negative energy vacuum that decays to produce a constant density of matter. In both cases the total energy remains zero at all times, and in the latter case the acceleration of the expansion is always negative. To obtain a more flexible and potentially more realistic cosmology, the equation of state relating the pressure and energy density of the matter creation process must be different from the vacuum, as for example is the case in the steady-state models of Gold, Bondi, Hoyle and others. The theory does not support the cosmological principle for curved space K =/= 0 cosmological metrics

Interplay between pleiotropy and secondary selection determines rise and fall of mutators in stress response

Dramatic rise of mutators has been found to accompany adaptation of bacteria in response to many kinds of stress. Two views on the evolutionary origin of this phenomenon emerged: the pleiotropic hypothesis positing that it is a byproduct of environmental stress or other specific stress response mechanisms and the second order selection which states that mutators hitchhike to fixation with unrelated beneficial alleles. Conventional population genetics models could not fully resolve this controversy because they are based on certain assumptions about fitness landscape. Here we address this problem using a microscopic multiscale model, which couples physically realistic molecular descriptions of proteins and their interactions with population genetics of carrier organisms without assuming any a priori fitness landscape. We found that both pleiotropy and second order selection play a crucial role at different stages of adaptation: the supply of mutators is provided through destabilization of error correction complexes or fluctuations of production levels of prototypic mismatch repair proteins (pleiotropic effects), while rise and fixation of mutators occur when there is a sufficient supply of beneficial mutations in replication-controlling genes. This general mechanism assures a robust and reliable adaptation of organisms to unforeseen challenges. This study highlights physical principles underlying physical biological mechanisms of stress response and adaptation

Immunoreactive trypsinogen levels in newborn screened infants with an inconclusive diagnosis of cystic fibrosis.

BACKGROUND: Newborn screening (NBS) for cystic fibrosis (CF) not only identifies infants with a diagnosis of CF, but also those with an uncertain diagnosis of cystic fibrosis (CF), i.e. CF transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR)-related metabolic syndrome (CRMS) or CF screen positive inconclusive diagnosis (CFSPID). These infants have an uncertain long-term outcome and it is currently unclear around time of diagnosis, which infants are at higher risk of later fulfilling a CF diagnosis. In this study, we hypothesised that immunoreactive trypsinogen (IRT) levels, used in NBS as a marker of pancreatic disease and function, may reflect the degree of CFTR dysfunction in each individual and therefore would help to identify those with CRMS/CSPID who are later at risk for meeting the criteria of CF. METHODS: In this longitudinal, prospective study, infants with CRMS/CFSPID and CF were recruited and followed in 9 CF clinics (Canada and Italy). We compared NBS IRT levels between CF and CRMS/CFSPID, and between children with CRMS/CFSPID→CF and CRMS/CFSPID→CRMS/CFSPID during the period of June 2007 to April 2016. RESULTS: Ninety eight CRMS/CFSPID and 120 CF subjects were enrolled. During the study period, 14 (14.3%) CRMS/CFSPID subjects fulfilled the diagnostic criteria for CF (CRMS/CFSPID→CF), while the diagnosis remained uncertain (CRMS/CFSPID→ CRMS/CFSPID) in 84 (85.7%) subjects. Significantly higher NBS IRT concentrations (ng/ml) were present in CF than CRMS/CFPSID (median (interquartile range): 143.8 (99.8-206.2) vs. 75.0 (61.0-105.9); P \u3c 0.0001). Infants with CRMS/CFSPID→CF (n = 14) had significantly higher NBS IRT concentrations (ng/ml) than CRMS/CFSPID→ CRMS/CFSPID (n = 83) (median (interquartile range): 108.9 (72.3-126.8) vs. 73.7(60.0-96.0); P = 0.02). CONCLUSIONS: Amongst infants who tested positive on NBS for CF, there is a gradation of elevated NBS IRT concentrations. Infants with CF have higher NBS IRT levels than CRMS/CFPSID, and higher NBS IRT concentrations were present in infants with CRMS/CFSPID→CF than CRMS/CFSPID→ CRMS/CFSPID. NBS IRT concentrations, in concert with other factors, may have the potential to predict the likelihood of CF amongst infants with CRMS/CFSPID