Shaping globalization for poverty alleviation and food security:

CONTENTS: Brief 1. Introduction / Eugenio Díaz-Bonilla and Sherman Robinson Brief 2. The Nature of Disagreements / Ravi Kanbur Brief 3. Growth and Poverty / Manohar Sharma, Sam Morley, and Eugenio Díaz-Bonilla Brief 4. Trade and Food Security / Eugenio Díaz-Bonilla and Marcelle Thomas Brief 5. Nutrition / Julie Babinard and Per Pinstrup-Andersen Brief 6. High-Value Agriculture / Christopher Delgado, Nicholas Minot, and Nikolas Wada Brief 7. Food Safety and Food Quality / Laurian J. Unnevehr Brief 8. Technological Change / Peter B. R. Hazell Brief 9. Intellectual Property Rights and Agricultural R&D / Philip G. Pardey and Brian D. Wright Brief 10. Environment / Stanley Wood Brief 11. Democracy and Civil Society / Marzia Fontana and Yukitsugu Yanoma Brief 12. Conflict and Food Insecurity / Ellen Messer and Marc J. Cohen Brief 13. Governments and Public Policy / Eugenio Díaz-Bonilla and Sherman RobinsonNutrition., Intellectual property., Conflict management., Food security., Poverty alleviation., Afghanistan., Globalization,

Getting ready for the millennium round trade negotiations:

Contents: 1. Overview / Eugenio Diaz-Bonilla and Sherman Robinson 2. Latin American perspective / Eugenio Diaz-Bonilla and Lucio Reca 3. Asian perspective / Marcus Noland 4. African perspective / Natasha Mukherjee and Rebecca Lee Harris 5. Transition Economies' perspective / Ulrike Grote and Peter Wehrheim 6. European Union perspective / Stefan Tangermann 7. United States of America perspective / Dale Hathaway 8. Least-developed Countries' perspective / Eugenio Diaz-Bonilla, Marcelle Thomas, and Valeria Piñeiro 9. Cairns Group perspective / Kym Anderson.World Trade Organization., Produce trade Government policy International cooperation., Tariff on farm produce International cooperation., Agricultural policy International cooperation.,

Globalization, trade reform, and the developing countries: essay in IFPRI Annual Report

This essay focuses on trends reflecting the globalization of the international economy and on changes in agricultural markets. In this context it assesses how these factors are affecting developing countries and how, in turn, those countries could affect the Millenium Round of agricultural trade agreements,International economic relations., Trade policy Developing countries Reform., Globalization, Development policies.,

Notes on a scandal: the official enquiry into deviance and corruption in New Zealand police

Since 2004, the New Zealand Police Service has been engulfed by a series of scandals relating to allegations that officers have committed rape and sexual assault and conducted inappropriate sexual relations with vulnerable people. Moreover, it has been claimed that other officers engaged in corrupt practices to thwart the investigation and prosecution of criminal behaviour of police officers. In 2007, a Commission of Inquiry report established a program of reform intended to shape the future direction of the police service. This article provides an overview of these scandals, the context in which they have emerged, and the political and policing response to them. The analysis contained in the Commission report is compared with that offered by comparable investigations of police deviance and corruption in other countries. The methodological and conceptual limitations of the Commission are outlined and the prospects of the recommendations are considered

Maternal neurofascin-specific autoantibodies bind to structures of the fetal nervous system during pregnancy, but have no long term effect on development in the rat

Neurofascin was recently reported as a target for axopathic autoantibodies in patients with multiple sclerosis (MS), a response that will exacerbate axonal pathology and disease severity in an animal model of multiple sclerosis. As transplacental transfer of maternal autoantibodies can permanently damage the developing nervous system we investigated whether intrauterine exposure to this neurofascin-specific response had any detrimental effect on white matter tract development. To address this question we intravenously injected pregnant rats with either a pathogenic anti-neurofascin monoclonal antibody or an appropriate isotype control on days 15 and 18 of pregnancy, respectively, to mimic the physiological concentration of maternal antibodies in the circulation of the fetus towards the end of pregnancy. Pups were monitored daily with respect to litter size, birth weight, growth and motor development. Histological studies were performed on E20 embryos and pups sacrificed on days 2, 10, 21, 32 and 45 days post partum. Results: Immunohistochemistry for light and confocal microscopy confirmed passively transferred anti-neurofascin antibody had crossed the placenta to bind to distinct structures in the developing cortex and cerebellum. However, this did not result in any significant differences in litter size, birth weight, or general physical development between litters from control mothers or those treated with the neurofascin-specific antibody. Histological analysis also failed to identify any neuronal or white matter tract abnormalities induced by the neurofascin-specific antibody. Conclusions: We show that transplacental transfer of circulating anti-neurofascin antibodies can occur and targets specific structures in the CNS of the developing fetus. However, this did not result in any pre- or post-natal abnormalities in the offspring of the treated mothers. These results assure that even if anti-neurofascin responses are detected in pregnant women with multiple sclerosis these are unlikely to have a negative effect on their children

Decadal changes of the Western Arabian sea ecosystem

Historical data from oceanographic expeditions and remotely sensed data on outgoing longwave radiation, temperature, wind speed and ocean color in the western Arabian Sea (1950–2010) were used to investigate decadal trends in the physical and biochemical properties of the upper 300 m. 72 % of the 29,043 vertical profiles retrieved originated from USA and UK expeditions. Increasing outgoing longwave radiation, surface air temperatures and sea surface temperature were identified on decadal timescales. These were well correlated with decreasing wind speeds associated with a reduced Siberian High atmospheric anomaly. Shoaling of the oxycline and nitracline was observed as well as acidification of the upper 300 m. These physical and chemical changes were accompanied by declining chlorophyll-a concentrations, vertical macrofaunal habitat compression, declining sardine landings and an increase of fish kill incidents along the Omani coast

Institutionalizing Provider-Initiated HIV Testing and Counselling for Children: An Observational Case Study from Zambia

Background: Provider-initiated testing and counselling (PITC) is a priority strategy for increasing access for HIV-exposed children to prevention measures, and infected children to treatment and care interventions. This article examines efforts to scale-up paediatric PITC at a second-level hospital located in Zambia’s Southern Province, and serving a catchment area of 1.2 million people. Methods and Principal Findings: Our retrospective case study examined best practices and enabling factors for rapid institutionalization of PITC in Livingstone General Hospital. Methods included clinical observations, key informant interviews with programme management, and a desk review of hospital management information systems (HMIS) uptake data following the introduction of PITC. After PITC roll-out, the hospital experienced considerably higher testing uptake. In a 36-month period following PITC institutionalization, of total inpatient children eligible for PITC (n = 5074), 98.5 % of children were counselled, and 98.2 % were tested. Of children tested (n = 4983), 15.5 % were determined HIVinfected; 77.6 % of these results were determined by DNA polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing in children under the age of 18 months. Of children identified as HIV-infected in the hospital’s inpatient and outpatient departments (n = 1342), 99.3 % were enrolled in HIV care, including initiation on co-trimoxazole prophylaxis. A number of good operational practices and enabling factors in the Livingstone General Hospital experience can inform rapid PIT

Wheat-barley hybridization – the last forty years

Abstract Several useful alien gene transfers have been reported from related species into wheat (Triticum aestivum), but very few publications have dealt with the development of wheat/barley (Hordeum vulgare) introgression lines. An overview is given here of wheat 9 barley hybridization over the last forty years, including the development of wheat 9 barley hybrids, and of addition and translocation lines with various barley cultivars. A short summary is also given of the wheat 9 barley hybrids produced with other Hordeum species. The meiotic pairing behaviour of wheat 9 barley hybrids is presented, with special regard to the detection of wheat– barley homoeologous pairing using the molecular cytogenetic technique GISH. The effect of in vitro multiplication on the genome composition of intergeneric hybrids is discussed, and the production and characterization of the latest wheat/barley translocation lines are presented. An overview of the agronomical traits (b-glucan content, earliness, salt tolerance, sprouting resistance, etc.) of the newly developed introgression lines is given. The exploitation and possible use of wheat/barley introgression lines for the most up-to-date molecular genetic studies (transcriptome analysis, sequencing of flow-sorted chromosomes) are also discussed

Building the Future Therapies for Down Syndrome: The Third International Conference of the T21 Research Society

Research focused on Down syndrome has increased in the last several years to advance understanding of the consequences of trisomy 21 (T21) on molecular and cellular processes and, ultimately, on individuals with Down syndrome. The Trisomy 21 Research Society (T21RS) is the premier scientific organization for researchers and clinicians studying Down syndrome. The Third International Conference of T21RS, held June 6–9, 2019, in Barcelona, Spain, brought together 429 scientists, families, and industry representatives to share the latest discoveries on underlying cellular and molecular mechanisms of T21, define cognitive and behavioral challenges and better understand comorbidities associated with Down syndrome, including Alzheimer’s disease and leukemia. Presentation of cutting-edge results in neuroscience, neurology, model systems, psychology, cancer, biomarkers and molecular and phar­ma­cological therapeutic approaches demonstrate the compelling interest and continuing advancement in all aspects of understanding and ameliorating conditions associated with T21

Pan-Cancer Analysis of lncRNA Regulation Supports Their Targeting of Cancer Genes in Each Tumor Context

Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) are commonly dys-regulated in tumors, but only a handful are known toplay pathophysiological roles in cancer. We inferredlncRNAs that dysregulate cancer pathways, onco-genes, and tumor suppressors (cancer genes) bymodeling their effects on the activity of transcriptionfactors, RNA-binding proteins, and microRNAs in5,185 TCGA tumors and 1,019 ENCODE assays.Our predictions included hundreds of candidateonco- and tumor-suppressor lncRNAs (cancerlncRNAs) whose somatic alterations account for thedysregulation of dozens of cancer genes and path-ways in each of 14 tumor contexts. To demonstrateproof of concept, we showed that perturbations tar-geting OIP5-AS1 (an inferred tumor suppressor) andTUG1 and WT1-AS (inferred onco-lncRNAs) dysre-gulated cancer genes and altered proliferation ofbreast and gynecologic cancer cells. Our analysis in-dicates that, although most lncRNAs are dysregu-lated in a tumor-specific manner, some, includingOIP5-AS1, TUG1, NEAT1, MEG3, and TSIX, synergis-tically dysregulate cancer pathways in multiple tumorcontexts