Conservation Auctions and Compliance: Theory and Evidence from Laboratory Experiments

Poster prepared for presentation at the Agricultural & Applied Economics Association 2010 AAEA,CAES, & WAEA Joint Annual Meeting, Denver, Colorado, July 25-27, 2010.Auctions, Conservation contracting, Compliance, Environmental Economics and Policy, C91, D44, Q24,

Comparative studies of MRI and operative findings in rotator cuff tear.

A prospective study was performed to determine the accuracy of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) compared with operative findings in the evaluation of patients associated with rotator cuff tears. Fifty-four of 60 shoulders (58 patients) examined by MRI were confirmed as full-thickness tears and 6 as partial-thickness tears at the time of surgery. The oblique coronal, oblique sagittal, and axial planes of T2-weighted images with the 0.5 tesla MRI system were obtained preoperatively and compared with operative findings. MRI correctly identified 46 of 54 full-thickness rotator cuff tears and 5 of 6 partial-thickness tears. A comparison of MRI and operative findings in full-thickness cuff tears showed a sensitivity of 85%, a specificity of 83%, and a positive prospective value (PPV) of 99%. A comparison of partial-thickness tears showed a sensitivity of 83%, a specificity of 85%, and PPV of 39%. Linear regression analysis showed an excellent correlation between the MRI assessment and measurement at the time of surgery (r = 0.90, P &#60; 0.01). MRI was useful in evaluating large and medium-sized rotator cuff tears, but less useful in distinguishing small full-thickness tears from partial-thickness tears.</p

Auctioning Conservation Contracts and Evaluating the Risk Attitudes of Farmers: Economic Experiments in Japan

Agri-environmental programs in Japan have generally been promoted through the provision of fixed payments for certain environment-friendly farming and management practices. However, the auctioning of agrienvironmental contracts is a noteworthy alternative for the furtherance of such programs. Conservation auctions are used to enhance the cost-effectiveness of public expenses and have been employed in practice as well as tested in various pilot projects in some countries. This study uses an experimental economics method to factor the risk attitude of participants into a comparison of uniform price (UP) auctions and discriminatory price (DP) auctions. Although some studies have compared fixed payments, UP auctions, and DP auctions, the superiority or inferiority of these strategies depends on the settings of an experiment. Consequently, experiments reflecting the Japanese situation could provide further insight into the advantages of each of these methods, and be used to guide policy design. In addition, the study also examines the effects of participants’ risk attitudes on auction performance. Its principal conclusion is that DP auctions outperform UP auctions; this is in line with the findings of previous studies. This empirical research furthers our understanding of environmental auctions in a first step toward the design of such auctions, but field experiments using real farmers should be conducted in order to help corroborate research conclusions before these are applied to the real world.conservation auction, experimental economics, risk attitude, environment-friendly farming, Agribusiness, Agricultural and Food Policy, Consumer/Household Economics, Environmental Economics and Policy, Farm Management,

Creation of NV centers over a millimeter-sized region by intense single-shot ultrashort laser irradiation

一つの超短レーザーパルスでダイヤモンド量子センサ源を広領域で作製 --超短時間でダイヤモンドを超高感度量子センサに--. 京都大学プレスリリース. 2023-03-15.Recently, ultrashort laser processing has attracted attention for creating nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers because this method can create single NV centers in spatially-controlled positions, which is an advantage for quantum information devices. On the other hand, creating high-density NV centers in a wide region is also important for quantum sensing because the sensitivity is directly enhanced by increasing the number of NV centers. A recent study demonstrated the creation of high-density NV centers by irradiating femtosecond laser pulses, but the created region was limited to micrometer size, and this technique required many laser pulses to avoid graphitization of diamond. Here, we demonstrate the creation of NV centers in a wide region using only an intense single femtosecond laser pulse irradiation. We irradiated a diamond sample with a femtosecond laser with a focal spot size of 41 µm and a laser fluence of up to 54 J/cm², which is much higher than the typical graphitization threshold in multi-pulse processing. We found that single-pulse irradiation created NV centers without post-annealing for a laser fluence higher than 1.8 J/cm², and the region containing NV centers expanded with increasing laser fluence. The diameter of the area was larger than the focal spot size and reached over 100 µm at a fluence of 54 J/cm². Furthermore, we demonstrated the NV centers' creation in a millimeter-sized region by a single-shot defocused laser pulse over 1100 µm with a fluence of 33 J/cm². The demonstrated technique will bring interest in the fundamentals and applications of fabricating ultrahigh-sensitivity quantum sensors

Kinematic Structure of Molecular Gas around High-mass Star YSO, Papillon Nebula, in N159 East in the Large Magellanic Cloud

We present the ALMA Band 3 and Band 6 results of 12CO(2-1), 13$CO(2-1), H30alpha recombination line, free-free emission around 98 GHz, and the dust thermal emission around 230 GHz toward the N159 East Giant Molecular Cloud (N159E) in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). LMC is the nearest active high-mass star forming face-on galaxy at a distance of 50 kpc and is the best target for studing high-mass star formation. ALMA observations show that N159E is the complex of filamentary clouds with the width and length of ~1 pc and 5 pc - 10 pc, respectively. The total molecular mass is 0.92 x 10^5 Msun from the 13CO(2-1) intensity. N159E harbors the well-known Papillon Nebula, a compact high-excitation HII region. We found that a YSO associated with the Papillon Nebula has the mass of 35 Msun and is located at the intersection of three filamentary clouds. It indicates that the formation of the high-mass YSO was induced by the collision of filamentary clouds. Fukui et al. 2015 reported a similar kinematic structure toward a YSO in the N159 West region which is another YSO that has the mass larger than 35 Msun in these two regions. This suggests that the collision of filamentary clouds is a primary mechanism of high-mass star formation. We found a small molecular hole around the YSO in Papillon Nebula with sub-pc scale. It is filled by free-free and H30alpha emission. Temperature of the molecular gas around the hole reaches ~ 80 K. It indicates that this YSO has just started the distruction of parental molecular cloud.Comment: 28 pages, 7 figures. Submitted to Ap

Involvement of NMDAR2A tyrosine phosphorylation in depression‐related behaviour

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/102200/1/embj2009300-sup-0001.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/102200/2/embj2009300.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/102200/3/embj2009300-sup-0003.pd

Dense Clumps in Giant Molecular Clouds in the Large Magellanic Cloud: Density and Temperature Derived from 13^{13}CO(J=3−2J=3-2) Observations

In order to precisely determine temperature and density of molecular gas in the Large Magellanic Cloud, we made observations of optically thin $^{13}$CO($J=3-2$) transition by using the ASTE 10m telescope toward 9 peaks where $^{12}$CO($J=3-2$) clumps were previously detected with the same telescope. The molecular clumps include those in giant molecular cloud (GMC) Types I (with no signs of massive star formation), II (with HII regions only), and III (with HII regions and young star clusters). We detected $^{13}$CO($J=3-2$) emission toward all the peaks and found that their intensities are 3 -- 12 times lower than those of $^{12}$CO($J=3-2$). We determined the intensity ratios of $^{12}$CO($J=3-2$) to $^{13}$CO($J=3-2$), $R^{12/13}_{3-2}$, and $^{13}$CO($J=3-2$) to $^{13}$CO($J=1-0$), $R^{13}_{3-2/1-0}$, at 45\arcsec resolution. These ratios were used for radiative transfer calculations in order to estimate temperature and density of the clumps. The parameters of these clumps range kinetic temperature $T\mathrm{_{kin}}$ = 15 -- 200 K, and molecular hydrogen gas density $n(\mathrm{H_2})$ = 8$\times 10^2$ -- 7$\times 10^3$ cm$^{-3}$. We confirmed that the higher density clumps show higher kinetic temperature and that the lower density clumps lower kinetic temperature at a better accuracy than in the previous work. The kinetic temperature and density increase generally from a Type I GMC to a Type III GMC. We interpret that this difference reflects an evolutionary trend of star formation in molecular clumps. The $R^{13}_{3-2/1-0}$ and kinetic temperature of the clumps are well correlated with H$\alpha$ flux, suggesting that the heating of molecular gas $n(\mathrm{H_2})$ = $10^3$ -- $10^4$ cm$^{-3}$ can be explained by stellar FUV photons.Comment: 39 pages, 7 figures, 4 tables. Accepted for publication in The Astronomical Journa

Japanese subpopulation analysis of MONARCH 2: phase 3 study of abemaciclib plus fulvestrant for treatment of hormone receptor-positive, human epidermal growth factor receptor 2-negative breast cancer that progressed on endocrine therapy

BACKGROUND: This was a Japanese subpopulation analysis of MONARCH 2, a double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled, phase 3 study of abemaciclib plus fulvestrant in patients with hormone receptor-positive, human epidermal growth factor receptor 2-negative advanced breast cancer (ABC). METHODS: Eligible women had progressed on (neo)adjuvant endocrine therapy (ET),  ≤ 12 months from end of adjuvant ET, or on first-line ET for ABC, and had not received chemotherapy for ABC. Patients were randomized 2:1 to receive abemaciclib or placebo plus fulvestrant. The primary endpoint was progression-free survival (PFS). Secondary endpoints included overall survival (OS), pharmacokinetics (PK), health-related quality of life (HRQoL), and safety. RESULTS: In Japan, 95 patients were randomized (abemaciclib, n = 64; placebo, n = 31). At final PFS analysis (February 14, 2017), median PFS was 21.2 and 14.3 months, respectively, in the abemaciclib and placebo groups (hazard ratio: 0.672; 95% confidence interval: 0.380-1.189). Abemaciclib had a higher objective response rate (37.5%) than placebo (12.9%). PK and safety profiles for Japanese patients were consistent with those of the overall population, without clinically meaningful differences across most HRQoL dimensions evaluated. The most frequent adverse events in the abemaciclib versus placebo groups were diarrhea (95.2 versus 25.8%), neutropenia (79.4 versus 0%), and leukopenia (66.7 versus 0%). At a second data cutoff (June 20, 2019), median OS was not reached with abemaciclib and 47.3 months with placebo (hazard ratio: 0.755; 95% confidence interval: 0.390-1.463). CONCLUSIONS: Results of the Japanese subpopulation were consistent with the improved clinical outcomes and manageable safety profile observed in the overall population. CLINICAL TRIAL REGISTRATION: NCT02107703; U.S. National Library of Medicine: https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02107703

The Hippo Signaling Pathway Components Lats and Yap Pattern Tead4 Activity to Distinguish Mouse Trophectoderm from Inner Cell Mass

Outside cells of the preimplantation mouse embryo form the trophectoderm (TE), a process requiring the transcription factor Tead4. Here, we show that transcriptionally active Tead4 can induce Cdx2 and other trophoblast genes in parallel in embryonic stem cells. In embryos, the Tead4 coactivator protein Yap localizes to nuclei of outside cells, and modulation of Tead4 or Yap activity leads to changes in Cdx2 expression. In inside cells, Yap is phosphorylated and cytoplasmic, and this involves the Hippo signaling pathway component Lats. We propose that active Tead4 promotes TE development in outside cells, whereas Tead4 activity is suppressed in inside cells by cell contact- and Lats-mediated inhibition of nuclear Yap localization. Thus, differential signaling between inside and outside cell populations leads to changes in cell fate specification during TE formation