Foreign aid encourages trade liberalization when given topolitically insecure leaders

Can foreign aid be a useful tool to promote trade liberalization? In new research which studies 66 autocracies over two decades, Daniel Yuichi Kono and Gabriella R. Montinola find that foreign aid does encourage trade liberalization – but only in countries where leaders are politically insecure. They write that the less chance that an autocratic leader has of staying in power, the greater the effect of aid on tariff reductions

High-pressure droplet combustion studies

This is a joint research program, pursued by investigators at the University of Tokyo, UCSD, and NASA Lewis Research Center. The focus is on high-pressure combustion of miscible binary fuel droplets. It involves construction of an experimental apparatus in Tokyo, mating of the apparatus to a NASA-Lewis 2.2-second drop-tower frame in San Diego, and performing experiments in the 2.2-second tower in Cleveland, with experimental results analyzed jointly by the Tokyo, UCSD, and NASA investigators. The project was initiated in December, 1990 and has now involved three periods of drop-tower testing by Mikami at Lewis. The research accomplished thus far concerns the combustion of individual fiber-supported droplets of mixtures of n-heptane and n-hexadecane, initially about 1 mm diameter, under free-fall microgravity conditions. Ambient pressures ranged up to 3.0 MPa, extending above the critical pressures of both pure fuels, in room-temperature nitrogen-oxygen atmospheres having oxygen mole fractions X of 0.12 and 0.13. The general objective is to study near-critical and super-critical combustion of these droplets and to see whether three-stage burning, observed at normal gravity, persists at high pressures in microgravity. Results of these investigations will be summarized here; a more complete account soon will be published

Foreign Aid and Climate Change Policy: What Can(’t) the Data Tell Us?

Climate-related foreign aid is on the rise, with signatories to the Paris Climate agreement pledging $100 billion annually to promote mitigation and adaptation in recipient countries. While this seems like a welcome development, we have little evidence that climate aid actually encourages recipients to adopt climate legislation. In this article, we examine the relationship between climate aid and recipient climate policy. Using multiple measures of each, we find no evidence that the former is systematically related to the latter. Although this suggests that climate aid is ineffective, this conclusion must be qualified due to the poor quality of both climate aid and climate policy data. More definitive conclusions will require more accurate coding of climate aid as well as better climate policy measures that distinguish truly consequential policies from less consequential ones

Terahertz Time-Domain Magnetospectroscopy of a High-Mobility Two-Dimensional Electron Gas

We have observed cyclotron resonance in a high-mobility GaAs/AlGaAs two-dimensional electron gas by using the techniques of terahertz time-domain spectroscopy combined with magnetic fields. From this, we calculate the real and imaginary parts of the diagonal elements of the magnetoconductivity tensor, which in turn allows us to extract the concentration, effective mass, and scattering time of the electrons in the sample. We demonstrate the utility of ultrafast terahertz spectroscopy, which can recover the true linewidth of cyclotron resonance in a high-mobility ($>{10}^{6} \mathrm{cm^{2} V^{-1} s^{-1}}$) sample without being affected by the saturation effect.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

High-pressure combustion of binary fuel sprays

The ultimate objective of this study is to obtain fundamental information relevant to combustion processes that occur in fuel sprays of practical interest at high pressures in internal combustion engines. Since practical fuels are multicomponent and derived from petroleum, the present work involves the model alkane mixture of n-heptane and n-hexadecane. Since burning droplets in sprays can interact with each other, the present work involves investigation of the effects of this interaction on flame shapes and droplet burning times. The small droplets in practical combustion chambers are not significantly influenced by buoyancy. Since such small droplets are difficult to study experimentally, the present work takes advantage of microgravity to lessen buoyancy and enable information about droplet interactions to be obtained by studying larger droplets. The results are intended to provide fundamental understanding that can be used in improving descriptions of practical spray combustion

Think globally, buy locally: International agreements and government procurement

Abstract Do international treaties constrain national governments? The answer appears to be "yes" when it comes to the use of traditional barriers to trade, such as tariffs. Yet, while many governments have cut tariffs to comply with international agreements, they have often raised non-tariff barriers in their place. One increasingly prominent non-tariff barrier is discrimination in public procurement. Governments frequently discriminate against foreign suppliers in favor of domestic ones when buying goods and services. In an attempt to reduce procurement discrimination, international organizations, such as the World Trade Organization, have devoted ever more attention to members' procurement practices. Additionally, a growing number of preferential trade agreements seek to regulate public procurement. It remains unclear, however, whether international rules are effective in changing governments' purchasing behavior. Using original data, we find that neither multilateral nor preferential procurement agreements substantially reduce governments' propensity to "buy national." These results illustrate the difficulty of regulating non-transparent policy areas via international treaties

Annex 65, Long-Term Performance of Super-Insulating-Materials in Building Components and Systems. Report of Subtask I: State of the Art and Case Studies

The objective of this subtask I is to present the main characteristic of SIM (Super Insulating Materials) compared to traditional materials.Two main SIM are considered:- VIP (Vacuum Insulation Panel)- APM (Advanced Porous Materials).Moreover, the present report provides an up-to-date catalogue of commercially available materials & components with technical description and data of each product and information about the application domains and the implementation rules.An overview on all the application areas such as external & internal wall insulation, roofs, floors, ceilings …are investigated through a few case studies.Finally, preliminary results about Life Cycle Assessment of SIM are presented at the end of the report

Crecimiento, evolución y estrategia de la empresa Erie

El documento a continuación presenta la toma de decisiones durante un periodo de ocho años simulados de la mesa directiva de la empresa Erie conformada por los autores del mismo, dentro de la industria de sensores del simulador de negocios Capstone, con la finalidad de obtener el grado de maestros en administración. El capítulo primero presenta el marco teórico utilizado para este trabajo, explicando a través de casos empresariales los conceptos de planeación estratégica, liderazgo, disciplinas de valor, estrategias de crecimiento, modelos de negocio, entre otros. El segundo explica el funcionamiento del simulador de negocios Capstone, las características de la industria de sensores, la estructura directiva de Erie, la estrategia que se va a seguir, así como los objetivos propuestos para el BSC. Los capítulos del tres al seis analizan los ocho años de operación de la mesa directiva presentando los resultados obtenidos y su comparativa con los objetivos planeados y las demás empresas de la industria. El capítulo siete contiene las conclusiones personales del equipo directivo sobre el desarrollo del simulador, así como la experiencia vivida dentro del programa de la maestría en administración del ITESO. En resumen, este documento reúne los conocimientos y experiencias obtenidas en la maestría de administración, aplicadas a una modalidad práctica como lo es el simuladorITESO, A.C

Hedgehog Promotes Neovascularization in Pancreatic Cancers by Regulating Ang-1 and IGF-1 Expression in Bone-Marrow Derived Pro-Angiogenic Cells

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ PublisherBackground: The hedgehog (Hh) pathway has been implicated in the pathogenesis of cancer including pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC). Recent studies have suggested that the oncogenic function of Hh in PDAC involves signaling in the stromal cells rather than cell autonomous effects on the tumor cells. However, the origin and nature of the stromal cell type(s) that are responsive to Hh signaling remained unknown. Since Hh signaling plays a crucial role during embryonic and postnatal vasculogenesis, we speculated that Hh ligand may act on tumor vasculature specifically focusing on bone marrow (BM)-derived cells. Methodology/Principal Findings: Cyclopamine was utilized to inhibit the Hh pathway in human PDAC cell lines and their xenografts. BM transplants, co-culture systems of tumor cells and BM-derived pro-angiogenic cells (BMPCs) were employed to assess the role of tumor-derived Hh in regulating the BM compartment and the contribution of BM-derived cells to angiogenesis in PDAC. Cyclopamine administration attenuated Hh signaling in the stroma rather than in the cancer cells as reflected by decreased expression of full length Gli2 protein and Gli1 mRNA specifically in the compartment. Cyclopamine inhibited the growth of PDAC xenografts in association with regression of the tumor vasculature and reduced homing of BM-derived cells to the tumor. Host-derived Ang-1 and IGF-1 mRNA levels were downregulated by cyclopamine in the tumor xenografts. In vitro co-culture and matrigel plug assays demonstrated that PDAC cell-derived Shh induced Ang-1 and IGF-1 production in BMPCs, resulting in their enhanced migration and capillary morphogenesis activity. Conclusions/Significance: We identified the BMPCs as alternative stromal targets of Hh-ligand in PDAC suggesting that the tumor vasculature is an attractive therapeutic target of Hh blockade. Our data is consistent with the emerging concept that BM-derived cells make important contributions to epithelial tumorigenesis