Growth, globalization, and gains from the Uruguay Round

Emphasizing the importance of evaluating the Uruguay Round in the context of a changing world economy, the authors base their projections on a model that incorporates certain economic shifts: 1) that the center of economic gravity will shift toward the South and toward Asia (a shift that is already under way and shows no signs of abating), and 2) that the pattern of comparative advantage will continue to change, with the East Asian economies gaining comparative advantage in the production of physical and human-capital-intensive products. The authors argue that these changes in the global economy significantly affect their analysis of the Uruguay round reforms, for two reasons. First, with the global distribution of trade and production shifting toward Asia, the deeper Uruguay Round cuts inthat region become more important, giving rise to a 17 percent increase in the proportionate welfare gain after implementation of tariff cuts. Second, without the Round, almost all of the bilateral quotas associated with the Multifibre Arrangement (MFA) would have become more binding and the resulting distortion would have been significantly greater. In this analysis, the global gain from MFA reform is 60 percent greater than it would have been without taking into account the effects of growth. Of course, procedures for implementation of the MFA reforms are more complex than they have conveyed for purposes of analysis. In practice, one must also consider the impact of accel quota growth under the Agreement on Textiles and Clothing. But even when the Agreement on Textiles and Clothing is implemented over the period for which projections were made, quota rents rise for many bilateral flows. This is a consequence both of shifts in comparative advantage toward the supplying countries and of simultaneous cuts in tariffs on textiles and clothing. The projections approach used here may be viewed as a logical extension of the growing econometric literature seeking to explain the determinants of economic growth through regression analysis. By offering a bridge between econometric evidence and computable general equilibrium modeling, the authors hope to combine the two approaches to help shed light on the interaction between trade reform and economic growth.Payment Systems&Infrastructure,Economic Theory&Research,Environmental Economics&Policies,Export Competitiveness,Globalization and Financial Integration,Environmental Economics&Policies,Trade and Regional Integration,Achieving Shared Growth,Economic Theory&Research,TF054105-DONOR FUNDED OPERATION ADMINISTRATION FEE INCOME AND EXPENSE ACCOUNT

A Girsanov approach to slow parameterizing manifolds in the presence of noise

We consider a three-dimensional slow-fast system with quadratic nonlinearity and additive noise. The associated deterministic system of this stochastic differential equation (SDE) exhibits a periodic orbit and a slow manifold. The deterministic slow manifold can be viewed as an approximate parameterization of the fast variable of the SDE in terms of the slow variables. In other words the fast variable of the slow-fast system is approximately "slaved" to the slow variables via the slow manifold. We exploit this fact to obtain a two dimensional reduced model for the original stochastic system, which results in the Hopf-normal form with additive noise. Both, the original as well as the reduced system admit ergodic invariant measures describing their respective long-time behaviour. We will show that for a suitable metric on a subset of the space of all probability measures on phase space, the discrepancy between the marginals along the radial component of both invariant measures can be upper bounded by a constant and a quantity describing the quality of the parameterization. An important technical tool we use to arrive at this result is Girsanov's theorem, which allows us to modify the SDEs in question in a way that preserves transition probabilities. This approach is then also applied to reduced systems obtained through stochastic parameterizing manifolds, which can be viewed as generalized notions of deterministic slow manifolds.Comment: 54 pages, 6 figure

Generalized definition of time delay in scattering theory

We advocate for the systematic use of a symmetrized definition of time delay in scattering theory. In two-body scattering processes, we show that the symmetrized time delay exists for arbitrary dilated spatial regions symmetric with respect to the origin. It is equal to the usual time delay plus a new contribution, which vanishes in the case of spherical spatial regions. We also prove that the symmetrized time delay is invariant under an appropriate mapping of time reversal. These results are also discussed in the context of classical scattering theory.Comment: 18 page

Electrophoresis of colloidal dispersions in the low-salt regime

We study the electrophoretic mobility of spherical charged colloids in a low-salt suspension as a function of the colloidal concentration. Using an effective particle charge and a reduced screening parameter, we map the data for systems with different particle charges and sizes, including numerical simulation data with full electrostatics and hydrodynamics and experimental data for latex dispersions, on a single master curve. We observe two different volume fraction-dependent regimes for the electrophoretic mobility that can be explained in terms of the static properties of the ionic double layer.Comment: Substantially revised versio

Collisional effects in the formation of cold guided beams of polar molecules

High fluxes of cold polar molecules are efficiently produced by electric guiding and velocity filtering. Here, we investigate different aspects of the beam formation. Variations of the source parameters such as density and temperature result in characteristic changes in the guided beam. These are observed in the velocity distribution of the guided molecules as well as in the dependence of the signal of guided molecules on the trapping electric field. A model taking into account velocity-dependent collisional losses of cold molecules in the region close to the nozzle accurately reproduces this behavior. This clarifies an open question on the parameter dependence of the detected signal and gives a more detailed understanding of the velocity filtering and guiding process

Asymmetrically severe internal auditory canal hypoplasia: A case report.

We present a case of an otherwise healthy 20-month-old with congenital sensorineural hearing loss. CT and MR imaging demonstrated bilateral asymmetrically severe hypoplasia of the internal auditory canals and vestibulocochlear nerves. Additional developmental inner ear anomalies were present in this patient, including unilateral semicircular canal hypoplasia and suspected bilateral cochlear hypoplasia. The patient retained normal facial nerve function bilaterally. We highlight the current research and understanding of congenital IAC abnormalities

HLA gene expression is altered in whole blood and placenta from women who later developed preeclampsia

Preeclampsia is a multi-system disease that significantly contributes to maternal and fetal morbidity and mortality. In this study, we used a non-biased microarray approach to identify dysregulated genes in maternal whole blood samples which may be associated with the development of preeclampsia. Whole blood samples were obtained at 28 weeks of gestation from 5 women who later developed preeclampsia (cases) and 10 matched women with normotensive pregnancies (controls). Placenta samples were obtained from an independent cohort of 19 women with preeclampsia matched with 19 women with normotensive pregnancies. We studied gene expression profiles using Illumina microarray in blood and validated changes in gene expression in whole blood and placenta tissue by qPCR. We found a transcriptional profile differentiating cases from controls; 236 genes were significantly dysregulated in blood from women who developed preeclampsia. Functional annotation of microarray results indicated that most of the genes found to be dysregulated were involved in inflammatory pathways. Whilst general trends were preserved, only HLA-A was validated in whole blood samples from cases using qPCR (2.30 ± 0.9 fold change) whereas in placental tissue HLA-DRB1 expression was found to be significantly increased in samples from women with preeclampsia (5.88 ± 2.24 fold change). We have identified that HLA-A is up-regulated in the circulation of women who went on to develop preeclampsia. In placenta of women with preeclampsia we identified that HLA-DRB1 is up-regulated. Our data provide further evidence for involvement of the HLA gene family in the pathogenesis of preeclampsia

Characterization of the major nuclear localization signal of the Borna disease virus phosphoprotein

Borna disease virus (BDV) replicates and transcribes its negative-sense RNA genome in the nucleus. The BDV phosphoprotein (P) is localized in the nucleus of infected cells and cells transfected with P expression constructs. To identify the nuclear localization signal (NLS) of P, COS- 7 cells were transfected with wild-type or mutant forms of P fused with green fluorescent protein (GFP). Whereas GFP alone was exclusively cytoplasmic, P or P-GFP were nuclear. Analysis of carboxy- and amino- terminal truncation mutants of P indicated that amino acids (aa) 20-37 are sufficient to promote efficient nuclear accumulation of the fusion protein. Residual nuclear import of GFP was observed with portions of P including aa 33-134 or aa 134-201, suggesting the presence of additional NLS motifs. The major NLS of P appears to be bipartite. It consists of two basic aa domains, R22RER25 and R30PRKIPR36, separated by four non-basic aa, S26GSP29

Theory of the Hall effect in three-dimensional metamaterials

We apply homogenization theory to calculate the effective electric conductivity and Hall coefficient tensor of passive three-dimensionally periodic metamaterials subject to a weak external static homogeneous magnetic field. We not only allow for variations of the conductivity and the Hall coefficient of the constituent material(s) within the metamaterial unit cells, but also for spatial variations of the magnetic permeability. We present four results. First, our findings are consistent with previous numerical calculations for finite-size structures as well as with recent experiments. This provides a sound theoretical justification for describing such metamaterials in terms of effective material parameters. Second, we visualize the cofactor fields appearing in the homogenization integrals. Thereby, we identify those parts of the metamaterial structures which are critical for the observed effective metamaterial parameters, providing a unified view onto various previously introduced single-constituent/multiple-constituent and isotropic/anisotropic architectures, respectively. Third, we suggest a novel three-dimensional non-magnetic metamaterial architecture exhibiting a sign reversal of the effective isotropic Hall coefficient. It is conceptually distinct from the original chainmail-like geometry, for which the sign reversal is based on interlinked rings. Fourth, we discuss two examples for metamaterial architectures comprising magnetic materials: yet another possibility to reverse the sign of the isotropic Hall coefficient and an approach to conceptually break previous bounds for the effective mobility