Milk Marketing Order Winners and Losers

Determining the impacts on consumers of government policies affecting the demand for food products requires a theoretically consistent micro-level demand model. We estimate a system of demands for weekly city-level dairy product purchases by nonlinear three stage least squares to account for joint determination between quantities and prices. We analyze the distributional effects of federal milk marketing orders, and find results that vary substantially across demographic groups. Families with young children suffer, while wealthier childless couples benefit. We also find that households with lower incomes bear a greater regulatory burden due to marketing orders than those with higher income levels.Milk, marketing orders, dairy industry regulation

Milk Marketing Order Winners and Losers

Do milk marketing orders affect various demographic groups differently? To answer this question, we use supermarket scanner data to estimate an incomplete demand system for dairy products. Based on these estimates, we simulate substitution effects among dairy products and the welfare impacts of price changes resulting from changes in milk marketing orders for various consumer groups. While we find little difference in own- and cross-price substitution elasticities of demand, the welfare effects of price changes vary substantially across demographic groups, with some losing and others winning from this government program. Families with young children suffer from marketing orders, while wealthier childless couples benefit. Additionally, we find that households with lower incomes pay a larger percentage of their income due to marketing orders than those with higher income levels.Consumer/Household Economics,

Milk Marketing Orders: Who Wins and Who Loses?

Livestock Production/Industries, Marketing, Q13, Q18,

Research applications of primary biodiversity databases in the digital age.

Our world is in the midst of unprecedented change-climate shifts and sustained, widespread habitat degradation have led to dramatic declines in biodiversity rivaling historical extinction events. At the same time, new approaches to publishing and integrating previously disconnected data resources promise to help provide the evidence needed for more efficient and effective conservation and management. Stakeholders have invested considerable resources to contribute to online databases of species occurrences. However, estimates suggest that only 10% of biocollections are available in digital form. The biocollections community must therefore continue to promote digitization efforts, which in part requires demonstrating compelling applications of the data. Our overarching goal is therefore to determine trends in use of mobilized species occurrence data since 2010, as online systems have grown and now provide over one billion records. To do this, we characterized 501 papers that use openly accessible biodiversity databases. Our standardized tagging protocol was based on key topics of interest, including: database(s) used, taxa addressed, general uses of data, other data types linked to species occurrence data, and data quality issues addressed. We found that the most common uses of online biodiversity databases have been to estimate species distribution and richness, to outline data compilation and publication, and to assist in developing species checklists or describing new species. Only 69% of papers in our dataset addressed one or more aspects of data quality, which is low considering common errors and biases known to exist in opportunistic datasets. Globally, we find that biodiversity databases are still in the initial stages of data compilation. Novel and integrative applications are restricted to certain taxonomic groups and regions with higher numbers of quality records. Continued data digitization, publication, enhancement, and quality control efforts are necessary to make biodiversity science more efficient and relevant in our fast-changing environment

Self-dual gravity and self-dual Yang-Mills in the context of Macdowell-Mansouri formalism

In this work we propose an action which unifies self-dual gravity and self-dual Yang-Mills in the context of the Macdowell-Mansouri formalism. We claim that such an action may be used to find the S-dual action for both self-dual gravity and self-dual Yang-Mills.Comment: 8 pages, Revtex, no figures, submitted to Phys. Rev.

Structural and functional differences between porcine brain and budding yeast microtubules

The cytoskeleton of eukaryotic cells relies on microtubules to perform many essential functions. We have previously shown that, in spite of the overall conservation in sequence and structure of tubulin subunits across species, there are differences between mammalian and budding yeast microtubules with likely functional consequences for the cell. Here we expand our structural and function comparison of yeast and porcine microtubules to show different distribution of protofilament number in microtubules assembled in vitro from these two species. The different geometry at lateral contacts between protofilaments is likely due to a more polar interface in yeast. We also find that yeast tubulin forms longer and less curved oligomers in solution, suggesting stronger tubulin:tubulin interactions along the protofilament. Finally, we observed species-specific plus-end tracking activity for EB proteins: yeast Bim1 tracked yeast but not mammalian MTs, and human EB1 tracked mammalian but not yeast MTs. These findings further demonstrate that subtle sequence differences in tubulin sequence can have significant structural and functional consequences in microtubule structure and behavior

What is the real impact of acute kidney injury?

Background: Acute kidney injury (AKI) is a common clinical problem. Studies have documented the incidence of AKI in a variety of populations but to date we do not believe the real incidence of AKI has been accurately documented in a district general hospital setting. The aim here was to describe the detected incidence of AKI in a typical general hospital setting in an unselected population, and describe associated short and long-term outcomes. Methods: A retrospective observational database study from secondary care in East Kent (adult catchment population of 582,300). All adult patients (18 years or over) admitted between 1st February 2009 and 31st July 2009, were included. Patients receiving chronic renal replacement therapy (RRT), maternity and day case admissions were excluded. AKI was defined by the acute kidney injury network (AKIN) criteria. A time dependent risk analysis with logistic regression and Cox regression was used for the analysis of in-hospital mortality and survival. Results: The incidence of AKI in the 6 month period was 15,325 pmp/yr (adults) (69% AKIN1, 18% AKIN2 and 13% AKIN3). In-hospital mortality, length of stay and ITU utilisation all increased with severity of AKI. Patients with AKI had an increase in care on discharge and an increase in hospital readmission within 30 days. Conclusions: This data comes closer to the real incidence and outcomes of AKI managed in-hospital than any study published in the literature to date. Fifteen percent of all admissions sustained an episode of AKI with increased subsequent short and long term morbidity and mortality, even in those with AKIN1. This confers an increased burden and cost to the healthcare economy, which can now be quantified. These results will furnish a baseline for quality improvement projects aimed at early identification, improved management, and where possible prevention, of AKI

Effective metrics in the non-minimal Einstein-Yang-Mills-Higgs theory

We formulate a self-consistent non-minimal five-parameter Einstein-Yang-Mills-Higgs (EYMH) model and analyse it in terms of effective (associated, color and color-acoustic) metrics. We use a formalism of constitutive tensors in order to reformulate master equations for the gauge, scalar and gravitational fields and reconstruct in the algebraic manner the so-called associated metrics for the Yang-Mills field. Using WKB-approximation we find color metrics for the Yang-Mills field and color-acoustic metric for the Higgs field in the framework of five-parameter EYMH model. Based on explicit representation of these effective metrics for the EYMH system with uniaxial symmetry, we consider cosmological applications for Bianchi-I, FLRW and de Sitter models. We focus on the analysis of the obtained expressions for velocities of propagation of longitudinal and transversal color and color-acoustic waves in a (quasi)vacuum interacting with curvature; we show that curvature coupling results in time variations of these velocities. We show, that the effective metrics can be regular or can possess singularities depending on the choice of the parameters of non-minimal coupling in the cosmological models under discussion. We consider a physical interpretation of such singularities in terms of phase velocities of color and color-acoustic waves, using the terms ``wave stopping'' and ``trapped surface''.Comment: 25 pages, no figures, accepted to Annals of Physic

Measurement of Spin Transfer Observables in Antiproton-Proton -> Antilambda-Lambda at 1.637 GeV/c

Spin transfer observables for the strangeness-production reaction Antiproton-Proton -> Antilambda-Lambda have been measured by the PS185 collaboration using a transversely-polarized frozen-spin target with an antiproton beam momentum of 1.637 GeV/c at the Low Energy Antiproton Ring at CERN. This measurement investigates observables for which current models of the reaction near threshold make significantly differing predictions. Those models are in good agreement with existing measurements performed with unpolarized particles in the initial state. Theoretical attention has focused on the fact that these models produce conflicting predictions for the spin-transfer observables D_{nn} and K_{nn}, which are measurable only with polarized target or beam. Results presented here for D_{nn} and K_{nn} are found to be in disagreement with predictions from existing models. These results also underscore the importance of singlet-state production at backward angles, while current models predict complete or near-complete triplet-state dominance.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure

Born-Infeld Theory and Stringy Causality

Fluctuations around a non-trivial solution of Born-Infeld theory have a limiting speed given not by the Einstein metric but the Boillat metric. The Boillat metric is S-duality invariant and conformal to the open string metric. It also governs the propagation of scalars and spinors in Born-Infeld theory. We discuss the potential clash between causality determined by the closed string and open string light cones and find that the latter never lie outside the former. Both cones touch along the principal null directions of the background Born-Infeld field. We consider black hole solutions in situations in which the distinction between bulk and brane is not sharp such as space filling branes and find that the location of the event horizon and the thermodynamic properties do not depend on whether one uses the closed or open string metric. Analogous statements hold in the more general context of non-linear electrodynamics or effective quantum-corrected metrics. We show how Born-Infeld action to second order might be obtained from higher-curvature gravity in Kaluza-Klein theory. Finally we point out some intriguing analogies with Einstein-Schr\"odinger theory.Comment: 31 pages, 4 figures, LaTex; Some comments and references adde