DID THE 1995 FARM BILL ADDRESS THE CRITICAL ISSUES? DISCUSSION

In 1995, for the first time since the 1930s, the United States failed to pass new farm program legislation. The inability to pass farm legislation occurred despite bipartisan agreement that farm programs should continue the trend over the past decade of less government intervention. This paper discusses the sequence of events, the role of agricultural economists, the major issues, and the lessons learned from the 1995 Farm Bill debate. The trend toward declining government intervention in agriculture will require that the profession look increasingly to the private sector for solutions to the problems facing agriculture in the twenty-first century.Agricultural policy, Congressional debate, Equity, Farm programs, Policy analysis, Price and income support, Agricultural and Food Policy,

IMPACT OF ELIMINATION OF THE FOOD STAMP PROGRAM'S PURCHASE REQUIREMENT ON PARTICIPANTS' FOOD PURCHASES

Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety,

IMPLICATIONS OF RAISING THE NONFAT SOLIDS STANDARDS FOR BEVERAGE MILK

An econometric model of the dairy industry was used to estimate the effects on farmers, consumers, and taxpayers of nationwide adoption of the California nonfat solids standards for fluid milk. It was estimated that adoption of the California standards would raise farm-level milk prices by 1 to 5 percent in the short run and by 1 to 2 percent in the long run. The average retail price of fluid milk would rise by 9 to 13 cents per gallon. Dairy program costs fall under most scenarios, but could rise if surpluses fall to levels that would trigger increases in the support price.Agricultural and Food Policy,

Soluble adenylyl cyclase mediates hydrogen peroxide-induced changes in epithelial barrier function

BACKGROUND: Elevated H(2)O(2) levels are associated with inflammatory diseases and H(2)O(2) exposure is known to disrupt epithelial barrier function, leading to increased permeability and decreased electrical resistance. In normal human bronchial epithelial (NHBE) cells, fully differentiated at the air liquid interface (ALI), H(2)O(2) activates an autocrine prostaglandin pathway that stimulates transmembrane adenylyl cyclase (tmAC) as well as soluble adenylyl cyclase (sAC), but the role of this autocrine pathway in H(2)O(2)-mediated barrier disruption is not entirely clear. METHODS: To further characterize the mechanism of H(2)O(2)-induced barrier disruption, NHBE cultures were treated with H(2)O(2) and evaluated for changes in transepithelial resistance and mannitol permeability using agonist and inhibitors to dissect the pathway. RESULTS: A short (<10 min) H(2)O(2) treatment was sufficient to induce resistance and permeability changes that occurred 40 min to 1 h later and the changes were partially sensitive to EP1 but not EP4 receptor antagonists. EP1 receptors were localized to the apical compartment of NHBE. Resistance and permeability changes were sensitive to inhibition of sAC but not tmAC and were partially blocked by PKA inhibition. Pretreatment with a PLC inhibitor or an IP3 receptor antagonist reduced changes in resistance and permeability suggesting activation of sAC occurred through increased intracellular calcium. CONCLUSION: The data support an important role for prostaglandin activation of sAC and PKA in H(2)O(2)-induced barrier disruption. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12931-016-0329-4) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users

Is Gastroparesis Found More Frequently in Patients with Cystic Fibrosis? A Systematic Review

Cystic fibrosis (CF) is associated with different gastrointestinal motility disturbances and syndromes. We aim to assess gastric emptying in patients with CF compared to healthy controls by a systematic review of existing literature. Medical databases and abstracts from major gastroenterology and CF meetings were reviewed. Emptying times in CF patients were compared with healthy controls using random effects models. Subgroup analysis stratified results by age and diagnostic modality. Nineteen studies from 7 countries included 574 subjects (359 CF patients and 215 controls). Using pooled analysis frequency of gastroparesis was high (38%, 95% CI 30–45%) but results were highly dependent on the diagnostic modality. Delayed gastric emptying is more common in CF compared to general population. Scintigraphy identified rapid gastric emptying in a subgroup of CF patients, but this finding disappeared with adequate pancreatic enzyme replacement and after other diagnostic modalities were included

The Twitter of Babel: Mapping World Languages through Microblogging Platforms

Large scale analysis and statistics of socio-technical systems that just a few short years ago would have required the use of consistent economic and human resources can nowadays be conveniently performed by mining the enormous amount of digital data produced by human activities. Although a characterization of several aspects of our societies is emerging from the data revolution, a number of questions concerning the reliability and the biases inherent to the big data “proxies” of social life are still open. Here, we survey worldwide linguistic indicators and trends through the analysis of a large-scale dataset of microblogging posts. We show that available data allow for the study of language geography at scales ranging from country-level aggregation to specific city neighborhoods. The high resolution and coverage of the data allows us to investigate different indicators such as the linguistic homogeneity of different countries, the touristic seasonal patterns within countries and the geographical distribution of different languages in multilingual regions. This work highlights the potential of geolocalized studies of open data sources to improve current analysis and develop indicators for major social phenomena in specific communities

Comparison of contact patterns relevant for transmission of respiratory pathogens in Thailand and the Netherlands using respondent-driven sampling

Understanding infection dynamics of respiratory diseases requires the identification and quantification of behavioural, social and environmental factors that permit the transmission of these infections between humans. Little empirical information is available about contact patterns within real-world social networks, let alone on differences in these contact networks between populations that differ considerably on a socio-cultural level. Here we compared contact network data that were collected in the Netherlands and Thailand using a similar online respondent-driven method. By asking participants to recruit contact persons we studied network links relevant for the transmission of respiratory infections. We studied correlations between recruiter and recruited contacts to investigate mixing patterns in the observed social network components. In both countries, mixing patterns were assortative by demographic variables and random by total numbers of contacts. However, in Thailand participants reported overall more contacts which resulted in higher effective contact rates. Our findings provide new insights on numbers of contacts and mixing patterns in two different populations. These data could be used to improve parameterisation of mathematical models used to design control strategies. Although the spread of infections through populations depends on more factors, found similarities suggest that spread may be similar in the Netherlands and Thailand

Soluble Adenylyl Cyclase Is Localized to Cilia and Contributes to Ciliary Beat Frequency Regulation via Production of cAMP

Ciliated airway epithelial cells are subject to sustained changes in intracellular CO2/HCO3− during exacerbations of airway diseases, but the role of CO2/HCO3−-sensitive soluble adenylyl cyclase (sAC) in ciliary beat regulation is unknown. We now show not only sAC expression in human airway epithelia (by RT-PCR, Western blotting, and immunofluorescence) but also its specific localization to the axoneme (Western blotting and immunofluorescence). Real time estimations of [cAMP] changes in ciliated cells, using FRET between fluorescently tagged PKA subunits (expressed under the foxj1 promoter solely in ciliated cells), revealed CO2/HCO3−-mediated cAMP production. This cAMP production was specifically blocked by sAC inhibitors but not by transmembrane adenylyl cyclase (tmAC) inhibitors. In addition, this cAMP production stimulated ciliary beat frequency (CBF) independently of intracellular pH because PKA and sAC inhibitors were uniquely able to block CO2/HCO3−-mediated changes in CBF (while tmAC inhibitors had no effect). Thus, sAC is localized to motile airway cilia and it contributes to the regulation of human airway CBF. In addition, CO2/HCO3− increases indeed reversibly stimulate intracellular cAMP production by sAC in intact cells

The lactoperoxidase system links anion transport to host defense in cystic fibrosis

Chronic respiratory infections in cystic fibrosis result from CFTR channel mutations but how these impair antibacterial defense is less clear. Airway host defense depends on lactoperoxidase (LPO) that requires thiocyanate (SCN−) to function and epithelia use CFTR to concentrate SCN− at the apical surface. To test whether CFTR mutations result in impaired LPO-mediated host defense, CF epithelial SCN− transport was measured. CF epithelia had significantly lower transport rates, did not accumulate SCN− in the apical compartment. The lower CF [SCN−] did not support LPO antibacterial activity. Modeling of airway LPO activity suggested that reduced transport impairs LPO-mediated defense and cannot be compensated by LPO or H2O2 upregulation

Time-domain characterization and correction of on-chip distortion of control pulses in a quantum processor

We introduce Cryoscope, a method for sampling on-chip baseband pulses used to dynamically control qubit frequency in a quantum processor. We specifically use Cryoscope to measure the step response of the dedicated flux control lines of two-junction transmon qubits in circuit QED processors with the temporal resolution of the room-temperature arbitrary waveform generator producing the control pulses. As a first application, we iteratively improve this step response using optimized real-time digital filters to counter the linear-dynamical distortion in the control line, as needed for high-fidelity, repeatable one- and two-qubit gates based on dynamical control of qubit frequency