Market access bargaining in the Uruguay Round - Rigid or relaxed reciprocity?

How tightly are trade negotiators held to winning a dollar of concession for each dollar of concession granted? The outcome of the Uruguay Round tariff negotiations suggests that such constraints were not tight. None of the delegations interviewed by the authors had tried to calculate for themselves the extent of concessions"received"And the surplus or deficit of concessions received (over concessions given) varied widely among countries. Measuring the"percentage point dollar"of concessions given and received (a"percentage point dollar"being a reduction of the tariff by one percentage point on $1 of imports, or by trading partners on exports), they found that the outcome of negotiations varied enormously from one country to another. For 13 of 27 countries,"net concessions"(positive or negative) were at least 75 percent of the size of concessions received. Negotiations were widely perceived to involve"equal sacrifice for the common good,"with all countries expected to cut tariffs on the same percentage of imports. Ability to pay was also a consideration: a smaller fraction of imports was liberalized for developing countries. The authors found a tendency toward equality (in percentage of imports affected) across participating countries'concessions, particularly when developing countries'unilateral liberalization was considered - including the part of it that was not bound at the Uruguay Round. Delegations emphasized how important it was for them to look after the interests of politically important sectors (including rice for Japan and the Republic of Korea and textiles for the United States and the European Union).Rules of Origin,EnvironmentalEconomics&Policies,Export Competitiveness,Economic Theory&Research,Trade Policy,Rules of Origin,Economic Theory&Research,Environmental Economics&Policies,TF054105-DONOR FUNDED OPERATION ADMINISTRATION FEE INCOME AND EXPENSE ACCOUNT,Trade and Regional Integration

Severe Traumatic Brain Injury in children—paradigm of decompressive craniectomy compared to a historic cohort

Purpose Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is one of the leading causes of death and disability in children. Medical therapy remains limited, and decompressive craniectomy (DC) is an established rescue therapy in case of elevated intracranial pressure (ICP). Much discussion deals with clinical outcome after severe TBI treated with DC, while data on the pediatric population is rare. We report our experience of treating severe TBI in two different treatment setups at the same academic institution. Methods Forty-eight patients (<= 16 years) were hospitalized with severe TBI (GCS <= 8 points) between 2008 and 2018 in a pediatric intensive care unit (ICU) at a specialized tertiary pediatric care center. Data on treatment, clinical status, and outcome was retrospectively analyzed. Outcome data included Glasgow Outcome Scale (GOS) at 3-, 12-, and 36-month follow-up. Data was compared to a historic cohort with 53 pediatric severe TBI patients treated at the same institution in a neurointensive care unit between 1996 and 2007. Ethical approval was granted (EA2/076/21). Results Between 2008 and 2018, 11 patients were treated with DC. Compared to the historic cohort, patients were younger and GCS was worse, while in-hospital mortality and clinical outcome remained similar. A trend towards more aggressive EVD placement and the internal paradigm change for treatment in a specialized pediatric ICU was observed. Conclusions In children with severe TBI treated over two decades, clinical outcome was comparable and mostly favorable in two different treatment setups. Consequent therapy is warranted to maintain the positive potential for favorable outcome in children with severe TBI

Hypoxia evokes increased PDI and PDIA6 expression in the infarcted myocardium of ex-germ-free and conventionally raised mice

The prototypic protein disulfide isomerase (PDI), encoded by the P4HB gene, has been described as a survival factor in ischemic cardiomyopathy. However, the role of protein disulfide isomerase associated 6 (PDIA6) under hypoxic conditions in the myocardium remains enigmatic, and it is unknown whether the gut microbiota influences the expression of PDI and PDIA6 under conditions of acute myocardial infarction. Here, we revealed that, in addition to the prototypic PDI, the PDI family member PDIA6, a regulator of the unfolded protein response, is upregulated in the mouse cardiomyocyte cell line HL-1 when cultured under hypoxia. In vivo, in the left anterior descending artery (LAD) ligation mouse model of acute myocardial infarction, similar to PDI, PDIA6 protein expression was enhanced in the infarcted area (LAD ) relative to uninfarcted sham tissue or the neighbouring area at risk (LAD–) of C57BL/6J mice. Interestingly, we found that ex-germ-free (ex-GF) mice subjected to the LAD ligation model for 24 h had a reduced ejection fraction compared with their conventionally raised (CONV-R) SPF controls. Furthermore, the LAD area in the infarcted heart of ex-GF mice showed reduced PDIA6 expression relative to CONV-R controls, suggesting that the presence of a gut microbiota enhanced LAD ligation-triggered PDIA6 expression. Collectively, our results demonstrate that PDIA6 is upregulated in cardiomyocytes as a consequence of hypoxia. In the LAD mouse model, PDIA6 was also increased in the infarcted area under in vivo conditions, but this increase was suppressed in ex-GF mice relative to CONV-R controls

Supporting 'design for reuse' with modular design

Engineering design reuse refers to the utilization of any knowledge gained from the design activity to support future design. As such, engineering design reuse approaches are concerned with the support, exploration, and enhancement of design knowledge prior, during, and after a design activity. Modular design is a product structuring principle whereby products are developed with distinct modules for rapid product development, efficient upgrades, and possible reuse (of the physical modules). The benefits of modular design center on a greater capacity for structuring component parts to better manage the relation between market requirements and the designed product. This study explores the capabilities of modular design principles to provide improved support for the engineering design reuse concept. The correlations between modular design and 'reuse' are highlighted, with the aim of identifying its potential to aid the little-supported process of design for reuse. In fulfilment of this objective the authors not only identify the requirements of design for reuse, but also propose how modular design principles can be extended to support design for reuse

A low complex and efficient coexistence approach for non-coherent multiband impulse radio UWB

When bringing a high data rate multiband impulse radio UWB system to the market it has to coexist with other already existing UWB technologies such as multiband OFDM UWB. This paper analyzes the interference impact of a multiband OFDM UWB system on a non-coherent multiband impulse radio UWB system. It is shown that the impact can be so dominant that communication within the impulse based multiband UWB system gets worse. For this reason a static as well as a dynamic coexistence approach are considered. The dynamic approach uses an efficient, robust and easy to realize pixel based interference detection algorithm in conjunction with an adapted bandplan array. In comparison to the static approach, the dynamic coexistence approach allows higher data rates during data transmission phases without significant losses in bit error rate performance

Технология и техника сооружения поисково-оценочных скважин на участке "Водораздельный" Алгаинско-Березовского золоторудного проявления (Кузбасс)

Целью работы является геологическое изучение объекта, разработка технологии и техники сооружения скважины. Объектом исследования являются поисковые скважины на Алгаинско-Березовском золоторудном проявлении. Специальная часть заключается в анализе критериев оптимизации параметров бурения.The purpose of the work is geological study of the facility, development of technology and technology of the well construction. The object of the study are exploratory wells at the Algaino-Berezovsky gold ore occurrence. A special part is to analyze the criteria for optimizing drilling parameters

Energy Spectra of Elemental Groups of Cosmic Rays: Update on the KASCADE Unfolding Analysis

The KASCADE experiment measures extensive air showers induced by cosmic rays in the energy range around the so-called knee. The data of KASCADE have been used in a composition analysis showing the knee at 3-5 PeV to be caused by a steepening in the light-element spectra. Since the applied unfolding analysis depends crucially on simulations of air showers, different high energy hadronic interaction models (QGSJet and SIBYLL) were used. The results have shown a strong dependence of the relative abundance of the individual mass groups on the underlying model. In this update of the analysis we apply the unfolding method with a different low energy interaction model (FLUKA instead of GHEISHA) in the simulations. While the resulting individual mass group spectra do not change significantly, the overall description of the measured data improves by using the FLUKA model. In addition data in a larger range of zenith angle are analysed. The new results are completely consistent, i.e. there is no hint to any severe problem in applying the unfolding analysis method to KASCADE data.Comment: accepted for publication in Astroparticle Physic