Toward a Unified Timestamp with explicit precision

Demographic and health surveillance (DS) systems monitor and document individual- and group-level processes in well-defined populations over long periods of time. The resulting data are complex and inherently temporal. Established methods of storing and manipulating temporal data are unable to adequately address the challenges posed by these data. Building on existing standards, a temporal framework and notation are presented that are able to faithfully record all of the time-related information (or partial lack thereof) produced by surveillance systems. The Unified Timestamp isolates all of the inherent complexity of temporal data into a single data type and provides the foundation on which a Unified Timestamp class can be built. The Unified Timestamp accommodates both point- and interval-based time measures with arbitrary precision, including temporal sets. Arbitrary granularities and calendars are supported, and the Unified Timestamp is hierarchically organized, allowing it to represent an unlimited array of temporal entities.demographic surveillance, standardization, temporal databases, temporal integrity, timestamp, valid time

Overview of special issue from the 2009 ICABR Conference

Until the recent financial crisis, biology-based industries were some of the most rapidly growing sectors of the world economy—the biofuels business was booming, agriculture commodity prices were high, agricultural biotechnology firms were making record profits, and the pharmaceutical industry was increasingly based on biologics. A recent European Union report has estimated that the contribution of modern biotechnology to the European Union’s gross value added is just under 2%, about the same size as the contribution of all agriculture or the chemical industry. The financial crisis has had impacts on the bio-economy, and these impacts will continue. The bio-economy has been ‘emerging’ for some time now and questions about what exactly fits into the bioeconomy, how important it is, and how large it will be in the future are important topics for debate. Within the bioeconomy, some components are emerging, but several major constraints to further growth still exist. These aspects and a few more were discussed at the 13th International Consortium on Agricultural Biotechnology Research (ICABR) conference on ‘The Emerging Bioeconomy.’1 This special issue includes a selection of 10 articles presented at the conference. The issue further includes a summary of the key findings from the conference as well as the Santaniello Memorial Lecture given by Odin Knudsen, Managing Director of Environmental Markets at J.P. Morgan.bioeconomy; technical change

The Formation of GM-free and GM Coasean Clubs : Will They Form and If So How Much Can They Achieve?

The unintended presence of traces of genetically modified (GM) crops in the harvests of non-GM crops plays a prominent role in the debate over the coexistence of GM and non-GM crops. One way to address the issue is the formation of GM-free or GM-only clubs. We model the decisions of individual farmers to cultivate either GM or non-GM crops and combine this with a game theoretic model of club formation to investigate the feasibility of such clubs. We consider two liability regimes: GM farmers are liable or they are not. We consider two benchmarks: Nash equilibrium without negotiations and the efficient allocation and compare those with partial co-operation through a Coasean club. We find that in both regimes a relatively large club can form but they are not always necessary to reach the efficient allocation. In fact, if farmers can freely decide under profit maximisation what to cultivate, they reach 95% of an efficient allocation. This holds independent of the property rights system and provides strong support for coexistence policies based on ex-post liability such as in the US and Spain.</p

Education and Health: The Role of Cognitive Ability

We aim to disentangle the relative contributions of (i) cognitive ability, and (ii) education on health and mortality using a structural equation model suggested by Conti et al. (2010). We extend their model by allowing for a duration dependent variable, and an ordinal educational variable. Data come from a Dutch cohort born around 1940, including detailed measures of cognitive ability and family background at age 12. The data are subsequently linked to the mortality register 1995-2011, such that we observe mortality between ages 55 and 75. The results suggest that the treatment effect of education (i.e. the effect of entering secondary school as opposed to leaving school after primary education) is positive and amounts to a 4 years gain in life expectancy, on average. Decomposition results suggest that the raw survival differences between educational groups are about equally split between a 'treatment effect' of education, and a 'selection effect' on basis of cognitive ability and family background

Water-quality Effects on Phytoplankton Species and Density and Trophic State Indices at Big Base and Little Base Lakes, Little Rock Air Force Base, Arkansas, June through August, 2015

Big Base and Little Base Lakes are located on Little Rock Air Force Base, Arkansas, and their close proximity to a dense residential population and an active military/aircraft installation make the lakes vulnerable to water-quality degradation. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) conducted a study from June through August 2015 to investigate the effects of water quality on phytoplankton species and density and trophic state in Big Base and Little Base Lakes, with particular regard to nutrient concentrations. Nutrient concentrations, trophic-state indices, and the large part of the phytoplankton biovolume composed of cyanobacteria, indicate eutrophic conditions were prevalent for Big Base and Little Base Lakes, particularly in August 2015. Cyanobacteria densities and biovolumes measured in this study likely pose a low to moderate risk of adverse algal toxicity, and the high proportion of filamentous cyanobacteria in the lakes, in relation to other algal groups, is important from a fisheries standpoint because these algae are a poor food source for many aquatic taxa. In both lakes, total nitrogen to total phosphorus (N:P) ratios declined over the sampling period as total phosphorus concentrations increased relative to nitrogen concentrations. The N:P ratios in the August samples (20:1 and 15:1 in Big Base and Little Base Lakes, respectively) and other indications of eutrophic conditions are of concern and suggest that exposure of the two lakes to additional nutrients could cause unfavorable dissolved-oxygen conditions and increase the risk of cyanobacteria blooms and associated cyanotoxin issues

Unequal changes on the transitional labour market, the case of the Netherlands.

The emergence of a transitional labour market offers new opportunities to workers, but at the same time bears the risk of (new) inequalities. This paper deals with unequal chances on the transitional labour market in the Netherlands, in particular for workers from the four largest immigrant groups: Turks, Moroccans, Surinamese and Antilleans. The data used are from the SPVA, the survey `Social Position and Use of Public Utilities by Migrants' for the years 1998 and 2002. These are based on stock sampling. Since for some individuals labour market transitions occur at a very low rate, these individuals may stay in their current state till they reach the retirement age of 65. We estimate hazard rate models that account for both the stock-sampling and the possible maximum duration for the transitions from unemployment, household care and disability to employment. Then we decompose the difference in expected duration between the immigrant groups and the Dutch into the contribution of differences in observable characteristics, coefficient estimates and baseline hazard parameters. The main results of the analyses are that unequal chances exist, but to a different degree for the various groups and with variations per transition type

Immigrant gender convergence in education and on the labor market

Immigration tends to have a mitigating effect on the socioeconomic gender gap among immigrants. To explain this finding, we propose a gender convergence hypothesis that states that migration to a modern ‘open’ society offers women the opportunity to improve their position relative to that of men. In such a society, there are (almost) equal chances to participate in education and paid labor. The equalizing effect will be larger if the immigrants come from less developed regions, since women then have more room to improve their position. However, there may also be countervailing cultural powers within the immigrant group. The gender convergence hypothesis proposed here is tested for immigrants in the Netherlands. Using survey data, we investigate the educational and labor market position of Turkish, Moroccan, Surinamese, and Antillean males and females. We find convergent trends, particularly among Moroccan immigrants who come from less developed regions in their country of origin and who meet less cultural in-group barriers than, for example, Turkish immigrants