195 research outputs found
Biotechnology, Schismogenesis, and the Demise of Uncertainty
One of the most fundamental aspects of science is uncertainty. Uncertainty fuels scientists to research, experiment, and draw conclusions. Interestingly, both sides of the current âGMO-warâ are alleging certainty where it simply does not exist. Through the use of a case study of Bt in India, this Article addresses the irony inherent in both the pro- and anti-GMO arguments based on science that is allegedly foolproof
Governing Agricultural Biotechnologies in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany: A Trans-decadal Study of Regulatory Cultures
Comparative studies of agricultural biotechnology regulation have highlighted differences in the roles that science and politics play in decision-making. Drawing on documentary and interview evidence in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany, we consider how the "regulatory cultures" that guided national responses to earlier generations of agricultural biotechnology have developed, alongside the emergence of genome editing in food crops. We find that aspects of the "product-based" regulatory approach have largely been maintained in US biosafety frameworks and that the British and German approaches have at different stages combined "process-based" and "programmatic" elements that address the scientific and sociopolitical novelty of genome editing to varying degrees. We seek to explain these patterns of stability and change by exploring how changing opportunity structures in each jurisdiction have enabled or constrained public reasoning around emerging agricultural biotechnologies. By showing how opportunity structures and regulatory cultures interact over the long-term, we provide insights that help us to interpret current and evolving dynamics in the governance of genome editing and the longer-term development of agricultural biotechnology
Heirloom rice in Ifugao: an âanti-commodityâ in the process of commodification
We analyse the marketing of âheirloom ricesâ produced in the Cordillera mountains of northern Luzon, the Philippines, as the commodification of a historical âanti-commodityâ. We contend that, historically, rice was produced for social, cultural and spiritual purposes but not primarily for sale or trade. The Ifugaos were able to sustain terraced wet-rice cultivation within a system of âescape agricultureâ because they were protected from Spanish interference by the friction of terrain and distance. âHeirloom riceâ is a boundary concept that enables social entrepreneurs to commodify traditional landraces. We analyse the implications for local rice production and conservation efforts.Templeton Foundatio
The baroclinic adjustment of time-dependent shear flows
Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2010. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Physical Oceanography 40 (2010): 1851-1865, doi:10.1175/2010JPO4217.1.Motivated by the fact that time-dependent currents are ubiquitous in the ocean, this work studies the two-layer Phillips model on the beta plane with baroclinic shear flows that are steady, periodic, or aperiodic in time to understand their nonlinear evolution better. When a linearly unstable basic state is slightly perturbed, the primary wave grows exponentially until nonlinear advection adjusts the growth. Even though for long time scales these nearly two-dimensional motions predominantly cascade energy to large scales, for relatively short times the waveâmean flow and waveâwave interactions cascade energy to smaller horizontal length scales. The authors demonstrate that the manner through which these mechanisms excite the harmonics depends significantly on the characteristics of the basic state. Time-dependent basic states can excite harmonics very rapidly in comparison to steady basic states. Moreover, in all the simulations of aperiodic baroclinic shear flows, the barotropic component of the primary wave continues to grow after the adjustment by the nonlinearities. Furthermore, the authors find that the correction to the zonal mean flow can be much larger when the basic state is aperiodic compared to the periodic or steady limits. Finally, even though time-dependent baroclinic shear on an f plane is linearly stable, the authors show that perturbations can grow algebraically in the linear regime because of the erratic variations in the aperiodic flow. Subsequently, baroclinicity adjusts the growing wave and creates a final state that is more energetic than the nonlinear adjustment of any of the unstable steady baroclinic shears that are considered.FJP was supported by NSERC
and JP was supported by NSF OCE 0925061 during the
research and writing of this manuscript
Fungal Endophyte Diversity in Sarracenia
Fungal endophytes were isolated from 4 species of the carnivorous pitcher plant genus Sarracenia: S. minor, S. oreophila, S. purpurea, and S. psittacina. Twelve taxa of fungi, 8 within the Ascomycota and 4 within the Basidiomycota, were identified based on PCR amplification and sequencing of the internal transcribed spacer sequences of nuclear ribosomal DNA (ITS rDNA) with taxonomic identity assigned using the NCBI nucleotide megablast search tool. Endophytes are known to produce a large number of metabolites, some of which may contribute to the protection and survival of the host. We speculate that endophyte-infected Sarracenia may benefit from their fungal associates by their influence on nutrient availability from within pitchers and, possibly, by directly influencing the biota within pitchers
Observation of Two Narrow States Decaying into and
We report the first observation of two narrow charmed strange baryons
decaying to and , respectively, using data from
the CLEO II detector at CESR. We interpret the observed signals as the
and , the symmetric partners
of the well-established antisymmetric and .
The mass differences and
are measured to be and
, respectively.Comment: 11 pages, postscript file also available through
http://w4.lns.cornell.edu/public/CLN
Improved Measurement of the Pseudoscalar Decay Constant
We present a new determination of the Ds decay constant, f_{Ds} using 5
million continuum charm events obtained with the CLEO II detector. Our value is
derived from our new measured ratio of widths for Ds -> mu nu/Ds -> phi pi of
0.173+/- 0.021 +/- 0.031. Taking the branching ratio for Ds -> phi pi as (3.6
+/- 0.9)% from the PDG, we extract f_{Ds} = (280 +/- 17 +/- 25 +/- 34){MeV}. We
compare this result with various model calculations.Comment: 23 page postscript file, postscript file also available through
http://w4.lns.cornell.edu/public/CLN
First Observation of and Decays
We have observed new channels for decays with an in the final
state. We study 3-prong tau decays, using the and
\eta\to 3\piz decay modes and 1-prong decays with two \piz's using the
channel. The measured branching fractions are
\B(\tau^{-}\to \pi^{-}\pi^{-}\pi^{+}\eta\nu_{\tau})
=(3.4^{+0.6}_{-0.5}\pm0.6)\times10^{-4} and \B(\tau^{-}\to
\pi^{-}2\piz\eta\nu_{\tau}
=(1.4\pm0.6\pm0.3)\times10^{-4}. We observe clear evidence for
substructure and measure \B(\tau^{-}\to
f_1\pi^{-}\nu_{\tau})=(5.8^{+1.4}_{-1.3}\pm1.8)\times10^{-4}. We have also
searched for production and obtain 90% CL upper limits
\B(\tau^{-}\to \pi^{-}\eta'\nu_\tau)<7.4\times10^{-5} and \B(\tau^{-}\to
\pi^{-}\piz\eta'\nu_\tau)<8.0\times10^{-5}.Comment: 11 page postscript file, postscript file also available through
http://w4.lns.cornell.edu/public/CLN
Further Search for the Two-Photon Production of the Glueball Candidate
The CLEOII detector at the Cornell e+ e- storage ring CESR has been used to
search for the two-photon production of the decaying into pi+ pi-.
No evidence for a signal is found in data corresponding to an integrated
luminosity of 4.77/fb and a 95% CL upper limit on of 2.5 eV is set. If this result is combined with the BES Collaboration's
measurement of in radiative decay, a 95% CL
lower limit on the stickiness of the of 73 is obtained. If the
recent CLEO result for \Gamma_{two-photon} * BR{\K_S K_S} is combined with
the present result, the stickiness of the is found to be larger
than 102 at the 95% CL. These results for the stickiness (the ratio of the
probabilities for two-gluon coupling and two-photon coupling) provide further
support for a substantial neutral parton content in the .Comment: 8 pages, postscript file also available through
http://w4.lns.cornell.edu/public/CLN
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