Development of European corn borer larvae on Event 176 Bt corn: Influence on survival and fitness

European corn borer larvae, Ostrinia nubilalis (Hübner) (Lepidoptera: Crambidae) that have completed development on Event 176 Bt corn hybrids have survived exposure to sublethal doses of the Cry1Ab Bt toxin or are exploiting plant tissues that do not express the toxin. To evaluate the impact of such exposure, diapausing larvae were collected from Event 176 and conventional hybrids and compared for rates of pupation, parasitism, fitness (pupal weight, longevity, and fecundity) and susceptibility to the Cry1Ab toxin. Larvae completing development on Event 176 corn exhibited approximately 10% higher survival rates and correspondingly lower parasitism rates than larvae completing development on conventional hybrids. No significant differences were detected in pupal weight, fecundity, longevity or susceptibility to the Cry1Ab Bt toxin. These results indicate that survival on Event 176 corn are not adversely affect fitness and does not cause increased tolerance to the Cry1Ab toxin in subsequent generations

Sand in the wheels, or oiling the wheels, of international finance? : New Labour's appeal to a 'new Bretton Woods'

Tony Blair’s political instinct typically is to associate himself only with the future. As such, his explicit appeal to ‘the past’ in his references to New Labour’s desire to establish a “new Bretton Woods” is sufficient in itself to arouse some degree of analytical curiosity (see Blair 1998a). The fact that this appeal was made specifically in relation to Bretton Woods is even more interesting. The resonant image of the international economic context established by the original Bretton Woods agreements invokes a style and content of policy-making which Tony Blair typically dismisses as neither economically nor politically consistent with his preferred vision of the future (see Blair 2000c, 2001b)

Development of European corn borer larvae on Event 176 Bt corn: Influence on survival and fitness

European corn borer larvae, Ostrinia nubilalis (Hübner) (Lepidoptera: Crambidae) that have completed development on Event 176 Bt corn hybrids have survived exposure to sublethal doses of the Cry1Ab Bt toxin or are exploiting plant tissues that do not express the toxin. To evaluate the impact of such exposure, diapausing larvae were collected from Event 176 and conventional hybrids and compared for rates of pupation, parasitism, fitness (pupal weight, longevity, and fecundity) and susceptibility to the Cry1Ab toxin. Larvae completing development on Event 176 corn exhibited approximately 10% higher survival rates and correspondingly lower parasitism rates than larvae completing development on conventional hybrids. No significant differences were detected in pupal weight, fecundity, longevity or susceptibility to the Cry1Ab Bt toxin. These results indicate that survival on Event 176 corn are not adversely affect fitness and does not cause increased tolerance to the Cry1Ab toxin in subsequent generations

Stable schedule matching under revealed preference

Baiou and Balinski (Math. Oper. Res., 27 (2002) 485) studied schedule matching where one determines the partnerships that form and how much time they spend together, under the assumption that each agent has a ranking on all potential partners. Here we study schedule matching under more general preferences that extend the substitutable preferences in Roth (Econometrica 52 (1984) 47) by an extension of the revealed preference approach in Alkan (Econom. Theory 19 (2002) 737). We give a generalization of the GaleShapley algorithm and show that some familiar properties of ordinary stable matchings continue to hold. Our main result is that, when preferences satisfy an additional property called size monotonicity, stable matchings are a lattice under the joint preferences of all agents on each side and have other interesting structural properties

Tetrachloroethylene-contaminated drinking water and the risk of breast cancer.

We conducted a population-based case-control study to evaluate the relationship between cases of breast cancer and exposure to tetrachloroethylene (PCE) from public drinking water ( n = 258 cases and 686 controls). Women were exposed to PCE when it leached from the vinyl lining of water distribution pipes. The relative delivered dose was estimated using an algorithm that accounted for residential history, water flow, and pipe characteristics. Only small increases in breast cancer risk were seen among ever-exposed women either when latency was ignored or when 5 to 15 years of latency was considered. No or small increases were seen among highly exposed women either when latency was ignored or when 5 years of latency was considered. However, the adjusted odds ratios (ORs) were more increased for highly exposed women when 7 and 9 years of latency, respectively, were considered (OR 1.5 95% CI 0.5-4.7 and OR 2.3, 95% CI 0.6-8.8 for the 75th percentile, and OR 2.7, 95% CI 0.4-15.8 and OR 7.6, 95% CI 0.9-161.3 for the 90th percentile). The number of highly exposed women was too small for meaningful analysis when more years of latency were considered. Because firm conclusions from these data are limited, we recently undertook a new study with a large number of more recently diagnosed cases

Demonstration of dynamic thermal compensation for parametric instability suppression in Advanced LIGO

Advanced LIGO and other ground-based interferometric gravitational-wave detectors use high laser power to minimize shot noise and suspended optics to reduce seismic noise coupling. This can result in an opto-mechanical coupling which can become unstable and saturate the interferometer control systems. The severity of these parametric instabilities scales with circulating laser power and first hindered LIGO operations in 2014. Static thermal tuning and active electrostatic damping have previously been used to control parametric instabilities at lower powers but are insufficient as power is increased. Here we report the first demonstration of dynamic thermal compensation to avoid parametric instability in an Advanced LIGO detector. Annular ring heaters that compensate central heating are used to tune the optical mode away from multiple problematic mirror resonance frequencies. We develop a single-cavity approximation model to simulate the optical beat note frequency during the central heating and ring heating transient. An experiment of dynamic ring heater tuning at the LIGO Livingston detector was carried out at 170 kW circulating power and, in agreement with our model, the third order optical beat note is controlled to avoid instability of the 15 and 15.5 kHz mechanical modes. We project that dynamic thermal compensation with ring heater input conditioning can be used in parallel with acoustic mode dampers to control the optical mode transient and avoid parametric instability of these modes up to Advanced LIGO\u27s design circulating power of 750 kW. The experiment also demonstrates the use of three mode interaction monitoring as a sensor of the cavity geometry, used to maintain theg-factor product tog(1)g(2)= 0.829 +/- 0.004

Compensation of Strong Thermal Lensing in High Optical Power Cavities

In an experiment to simulate the conditions in high optical power advanced gravitational wave detectors such as Advanced LIGO, we show that strong thermal lenses form in accordance with predictions and that they can be compensated using an intra-cavity compensation plate heated on its cylindrical surface. We show that high finesse ~1400 can be achieved in cavities with internal compensation plates, and that the cavity mode structure can be maintained by thermal compensation. It is also shown that the measurements allow a direct measurement of substrate optical absorption in the test mass and the compensation plate.Comment: 8 page

Feedback control of thermal lensing in a high optical power cavity

This paper reports automatic compensation of strong thermal lensing in a suspended 80 m optical cavity with sapphire test mass mirrors. Variation of the transmitted beam spot size is used to obtain an error signal to control the heating power applied to the cylindrical surface of an intracavity compensation plate. The negative thermal lens created in the compensation plate compensates the positive thermal lens in the sapphire test mass, which was caused by the absorption of the high intracavity optical power. The results show that feedback control is feasible to compensate the strong thermal lensing expected to occur in advanced laser interferometric gravitational wave detectors. Compensation allows the cavity resonance to be maintained at the fundamental mode, but the long thermal time constant for thermal lensing control in fused silica could cause difficulties with the control of parametric instabilities.This research was supported by the Australian Research Council and the Department of Education, Science and Training and by the U.S. National Science Foundation, through LIGO participation in the HOPF