Cuba and origins of the US sugar quota

In the history of Cuban sugar industry, the most significant institutional factor after 1930 was the export quota gained in the 1934 United States market, which has been regarded in a positive perspective. This is here re-examined in the light of later events which prove that the quota system was detrimental to the island economy, particularly in the fifties. The analysis is based on the examination of sugar companies’ stock prices which are a useful indicator of investment expectations. Finally, it is concluded that the 1934 North American quota system issued from the conviction that the tariff system applied until then was not enough to protect the domestic sugar beet production.El factor institucional más importante en la historia de la industria del azúcar en Cuba después de 1930 fue la cuota de exportación que obtuvo en el mercado de los Estados Unidos en 1934. Este artículo revisa las tesis que consideran ese hecho como relativamente positivo y lo hace a la luz de los acontecimientos posteriores, que muestran que dicho sistema de cuotas perjudicó a la economía insular, sobre todo en la década de 1950, y examinando los stock prices de las empresas del sector, un buen indicador de las expectativas de retorno de las inversiones. Como conclusión afirma que el reparto del consumo azucarero norteamericano entre diferentes abastecedores fue fruto de la convicción de que el instrumento arancelario usado hasta entonces para proteger a la producción remolachera interna ya no era eficaz

Barely there: Hard-to-detect auxiliaries shed light on children’s acquisition of French

The status of children’s acquisition of grammatical categories and in particular of auxiliaries continues to be debated. On the one hand, a number of corpus studies suggest that auxiliaries and similar categories are absent early on (e.g., Wijnen 1996/1997, Schlyter 2003). On the other hand, experimental studies indicate that syntactic competence for functional categories is available to toddlers and even infants (e.g., Gerken & McIntosh 1993, Santelmann & Jusczyk 1998). This study investigates the acquisition of auxiliaries in child French and evaluates these two perspectives using a new corpus of over 5000 child utterances containing cross-sectional speech samples from 18 children, ages 1;11 – 2;11. Subjects were presented with a standardized set of props and questions designed to trigger utterances with verbs and auxiliaries. Data collection and analysis involved an innovative digital recording set-up, digital transcription technology and editing software, and more detailed data analysis, including spectrograms. The results reveal that auxiliaries and modals are evidenced in all children from the earliest ages. Children produce a variety of auxiliary/modal forms: full auxiliaries, phonetically and phonologically reduced auxiliaries, “filler” vowels standing for auxiliaries, as well as subject agreement markers that precede nonfinite verbs and that implicate the presence of a finite auxiliary/modal. These findings strengthen previous experimental results regarding children’s knowledge of functional categories by providing corroboration from a corpus study

Children's computation of complex linguistic forms: a study of frequency and imageability effects.

This study investigates the storage vs. composition of inflected forms in typically-developing children. Children aged 8-12 were tested on the production of regular and irregular past-tense forms. Storage (vs. composition) was examined by probing for past-tense frequency effects and imageability effects--both of which are diagnostic tests for storage--while controlling for a number of confounding factors. We also examined sex as a factor. Irregular inflected forms, which must depend on stored representations, always showed evidence of storage (frequency and/or imageability effects), not only across all children, but also separately in both sexes. In contrast, for regular forms, which could be either stored or composed, only girls showed evidence of storage. This pattern is similar to that found in previously-acquired adult data from the same task, with the notable exception that development affects which factors influence the storage of regulars in females: imageability plays a larger role in girls, and frequency in women. Overall, the results suggest that irregular inflected forms are always stored (in children and adults, and in both sexes), whereas regulars can be either composed or stored, with their storage a function of various item- and subject-level factors

The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Advanced Camera for Surveys Repair (ACS-R): Integrating Commercial Products in the Flight Software Environment

No abstract availabl

The effect of grain size on the twin initiation stress in a TWIP steel

The influence of grain size on the twinning stress of an Fe-15Mn-2Al-2Si-0.7C Twinning Induced Plasticity (TWIP) steel has been investigated. Five grain sizes were obtained using a combination of cold rolling and annealing. Electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) analysis revealed that the material exhibited a typical cold rolled and annealed texture. Tensile testing showed the yield stress to increase with decreasing grain size, however, the ductility of the material was not substantially affected by a reduction in grain size. Cyclic tensile testing at sub-yield stresses indicated the accumulation of plastic strain with each cycle, consequently the nucleation stress for twinning was determined. The twin stress was found to increase with decreasing grain size. Furthermore, the amount of strain accumulated was greater in the coarser grain material. It is believed that this is due to a difference in the twin thickness, which is influenced by the initial grain size of the material. SEM and TEM analysis of the material deformed to 5% strain revealed thinner primary twins in the fine grain material compared to the coarse grain. TEM examination also showed the dislocation arrangement is affected by the grain size. Furthermore, a larger fraction of stacking faults was observed in the coarse-grained material. It is concluded that the twin nucleation stress and also the thickness of the deformation twins in a TWIP steel, is influenced by the initial grain size of the material. In addition grain refinement results in a boost in strength and energy absorption capabilities in the material

Dislocation interactions and crack nucleation in a fatigued near-alpha titanium alloy

Dislocation interactions at the crack nucleation site were investigated in near-alpha titanium alloy Ti-6242Si subjected to low cycle fatigue. Cyclic plastic strain in the alloy resulted in dislocation pile-ups in the primary alpha grains, nucleated at the boundaries between the primary alpha and the two-phase regions. These two phase regions provided a barrier to slip transfer between primary alpha grains. We suggest that crack nucleation occurred near the basal plane of primary alpha grains by the subsurface double-ended pile-up mechanism first conceived by Tanaka and Mura. Superjogs on the basal dislocations were observed near the crack nucleation location. The two phase regions showed direct transmission of dislocations between secondary alpha plates, transmitted through the beta ligaments as , which then decompose into dislocation networks in the beta. The beta ligaments themselves do not appear to form an especially impenetrable barrier to slip, in agreement with the micropillar and crystal plasticity investigations of Zhang et al