Multiple-Access Bosonic Communications

The maximum rates for reliably transmitting classical information over Bosonic multiple-access channels (MACs) are derived when the transmitters are restricted to coherent-state encodings. Inner and outer bounds for the ultimate capacity region of the Bosonic MAC are also presented. It is shown that the sum-rate upper bound is achievable with a coherent-state encoding and that the entire region is asymptotically achievable in the limit of large mean input photon numbers.Comment: 11 pages, 5 figures, corrected two figures, accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.

Herculin, a Fourth Member of the MyoD Family of Myogenic Regulatory Genes

We have identified and cloned herculin, a fourth mouse muscle regulatory gene. Comparison of its DNA and deduced amino acid sequences with those of the three known myogenic genes (MyoD, myogenin, and Myf-5) reveals scattered short spans with similarity to one or more of these genes and a long span with strong similarity to all three. This long span includes a sequence motif that is also present in proteins of the myc, achaete-scute, and immunoglobulin enhancer-binding families. The herculin gene is physically linked to the Myf-5 gene on the chromosome; only 8.5 kilobases separate their translational start sites. A putative 27-kDa protein is encoded by three exons contained within a 1.7-kilobase fragment of the herculin gene. When expressed under the control of the simian virus 40 early promoter, transfected herculin renders murine NIH 3T3 and C3H/10T1/2 fibroblasts myogenic. In doing so, it also activates expression of myogenin, MyoD, and endogenous herculin in NIH 3T3 recipients. In adult mice, herculin is expressed in skeletal muscle but is absent from smooth muscle, cardiac muscle, and all nonmuscle tissues assayed. Direct comparison of the four known myogenic regulators in adult muscle showed that herculin is expressed at a significantly higher level than is any of the others. This quantitative dominance suggests an important role in the establishment or maintenance of adult skeletal muscle

The Global Employer: The Labor Relations and Collective Agreements Issue

[Excerpt] Baker & McKenzie’s Global Employment Practice Group is pleased to present its 56th issue of The Global Employer™ entitled “The Labor Relations and Collective Agreements Issue.” In this issue you will find the first report from our Future of Work Series. Labor Relations Report - Brand Attack: How to avoid becoming the target of a corporate campaign and what actions to take if you do. The Future of Work is a series of client reports based on panel discussions at our Global Employer Forum, a two-day thought leadership conference. During the forum, nearly 70 clients, academics and consultants gathered with our employment partners to discuss pressing workplace topics like talent shortages, data privacy, global mobility assignments, globalization of unions and managing the employment aspects of M&A deals. Rather than the traditional “how to” legal format of most law firm conferences, the Global Employer Forum features panel discussions of in-house counsel and senior-level executives from some of the world’s largest multinational organizations who discussed their personal experiences addressing these challenges and the solutions they have found to overcome them. Following the Labor Relations Report, you will also find information pertaining to the current state of labor relations and union negotiations in Argentina and a general overview of the current state of collective bargaining in Brazil. In Germany, we take a look at some of the numbers behind collective bargaining agreements; and a review of the impacts on labor benefits of the January 2014, Income Tax Law reform in Mexico. From Spain we bring you articles that discuss negotiating with representatives bodies in collective lay-offs and the new role of company level collective bargaining agreements; and from the US, recent efforts by the NLRB as it Targets Successor Issues in US Mergers and Acquisitions

Exporting Telecommunications Regulation: The U.S.-Japan Negotiations on Interconnection Pricing

Since 1997, the U.S. government has attempted to use the World Trade Organization (WTO) agreement on telecommunications services as a vehicle for 'exporting' American principles of telecommunications regulation to other nations. The United States took the position in 1997 that the WTO telecommunications agreement requires its signatory nations to follow the practices of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on telecommunications regulatory policy. Subsequently, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) has sought to influence, under the implicit threat of trade sanctions, Japan's domestic regulatory policy on the pricing of mandatory competitor access to the unbundled elements of the local network belonging to the operating companies of Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT). In this Article, we examine the substantive difficulties of engrafting the FCC's interconnection policy onto the telecommunications marketplace of another nation. For more than five years, many American experts on telecommunications policy have disagreed whether American consumers have benefited from the very FCC policies that the USTR would have Japanese regulators emulate. The USTR's initiative appears to ignore that the transition to costoriented rates for interconnection and retail telecommunications services has been a difficult and unfinished process in the United States; that the cost models used by the FCC to set interconnection prices have significant deficiencies; that actual interconnection prices both within and outside the United States diverge considerably from the estimates of the FCC's cost models; that variations across countries in the prices of inputs have a significant effect on the costs of interconnection; and that, with respect to depreciation in particular, regulators treat this cost differently'and, from an economic perspective, more reasonably'in Japan than in the United States. Such substantive economic considerations suggest why the FCC's policy in this area has generated continuous litigation, including two Supreme Court cases, since 1996 and consequently is too unresolved at this point in the American experience for the United States to force on its trading partners. Next, we ask whether the USTR has the detailed knowledge required to negotiate trade agreements on interconnection pricing. We question the propriety of using the USTR to influence the domestic regulatory policy of another country on a topic as complex as the efficient pricing of mandatory access to unbundled network elements. The USTR's power to formulate trade policy on this subject resides in officials who are unlikely to possess the economic expertise and resources necessary to evaluate the consumer-welfare implications of the policies that they would have Japan and other nations adopt. For these reasons, the USTR cannot credibly make the interconnection pricing policies of another nation a legitimate concern of U.S. trade policy.

Responses of Hyalella azteca and Ceridaphnia dubia to reservoir sediments following Chelated Copper Herbicide Applications

In response to nuisance growths of algae and vascular plants, such as dioecious hydrilla ( Hydrilla verticillata L.f. Royle), copper formulations have been applied in lakes and reservoirs for a number of years. Concerns have arisen regarding the long-term consequences of copper applications and those concerns have appropriately focused on sediment residues. In this study, we evaluated the toxicity of sediments from treated (for a decade) and untreated areas in Lake Murray, South Carolina and estimated the capacity of those sediments to bind additional copper. Two sentinel aquatic invertebrates, Hyalella azteca Saussure and Ceriodaphnia dubia Richard, were used to measure residual toxicity of treated and untreated sediments from the field and after laboratory amendments. (PDF has 5 pages.

The Global Employer: The Employment Law Review and Reform Issue

[Excerpt] Although the economies of many jurisdictions are improving, there is still some lingering global economic uncertainty. It is no surprise that governments the world over continue to revisit their employment laws to see what else, if anything, can be done to further stimulate their economies. 2013 was another busy year for employment law reform. Baker & McKenzie’s Global Employment Practice Group is pleased to present its 55th issue of The Global Employer™ entitled “The Employment Law Review and Reform Issue.” In this issue, we review changes to the law in 2013 and a look at pending changes for 2014. Included, you will find information pertaining to the leasing of employees in Germany; new measures in Spain intended to promote employment among young people under 30 and employee privacy rights over employers\u27 controls; challenges to the applicable interest rate to worker\u27s claims in Argentina; how employment law reforms will significantly impact employers in Mexico and in some specific cases, may considerably elevate increase the cost of formal employment; and controversy around making the Colombian Social Security System more progressive. We also review several significant legal developments in China during 2013 that impact employers operating there; legislative changes that were expected in Hong Kong in 2013 that may be implemented in 2014 including a focus on discrimination in the coming years; and welcome changes to TUPE and automatic pension plan enrollment in the United Kingdom

Were Trade and Factor Mobility Substitutes in History?

Trade theorists have come to understand that their theory is ambiguous on the question: Are trade and factor flows substitutes? While this sounds like an open invitation for empirical research, hardly any serious econometric work has appeared in the literature. This paper uses history to fill the gap. It treats the experience of the Atlantic economy between 1870 and 1940 as panel data with almost seven hundred observations. When shorter run business cycles and long swings' are extracted from the panel data, substitutability is soundly rejected. When secular relationships are extracted over longer time periods and across trading partners, once again substitutability is soundly rejected. Finally, the paper explores immigration policy and finds that policy makers never behaved as if they viewed trade and immigration as substitutes.

Immigration and African-American Employment Opportunities: The Response of Wages, Employment, and Incarceration to Labor Supply Shocks

The employment rate of black men, and particularly of low-skill black men, fell precipitously from 1960 to 2000. At the same time, the incarceration rate of black men rose markedly. This paper examines the relation between immigration and these trends in black employment and incarceration. Using data drawn from the 1960-2000 U.S. Censuses, we find a strong correlation between immigration, black wages, black employment rates, and black incarceration rates. As immigrants disproportionately increased the supply of workers in a particular skill group, the wage of black workers in that group fell, the employment rate declined, and the incarceration rate rose. Our analysis suggests that a 10-percent immigrant-induced increase in the supply of a particular skill group reduced the black wage by 4.0 percent, lowered the employment rate of black men by 3.5 percentage points, and increased the incarceration rate of blacks by almost a full percentage point.