Organizational Innovation in Russian Agriculture: The Emergence of "New Agricultural Operators" and Its Consequences

After almost a decade of downsizing, Russian agriculture has been steadily growing since the end of 90's against the background of deep organizational changes and innovations. The traditional collective farming segment is the key target and subject of innovations. Outside investors and operators have acquired control over farm assets from the primary nominal owners and possessors. As a result, exceptionally large commercial farm operations - "agroholdings" - are being created. Both inside and outside innovators are introducing organizational changes such as vertical integration, custom and contract farming, land leasing, machinery sharing and others. The paper discusses size, scope and character of the ongoing innovations and their short and long-term consequences.agroholdings, contract and custom farming, new agricultural operators, integration, Industrial Organization,

Control of vortex orientation of ultrashort optical pulses using spatial chirp

Introducing a spatial chirp into a pulse with a longitudinal vortex, such as a standard pulsed Laguerre-Gauss beam, results in a vortex pulse with an arbitrary orientation of the line phase singularity between longitudinal and transverse, depending on the amount of chirp. Analytical expressions are given for such pulses with arbitrary topological charge valid at any propagation distance.Comment: 5 pages, 6 figures, submitted for peer revie

Transverse orbital angular momentum imparted upon focusing spatiotemporally coupled ultrashort pulses

A simple focusing system such as a lens or a spherical mirror imparts intrinsic transverse orbital angular momentum (OAM) to spatiotemporal (ST) coupled fields with ST covariance, e.g., a tilted pulse. This extremely simplifies the experimental setups used to date to impart transverse OAM. The focused fields with transverse OAM include canonical, elliptical ST vortices and rotating pulses without any ST phase singularity such as the "lighthouse" pulse, whose OAM content has gone unnoticed. Closed-form expressions for these fields in full space and time are provided.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, submitted for peer revie

Recruitment of ethnic minority patients to a cardiac rehabilitation trial: The Birmingham Rehabilitation Uptake Maximisation (BRUM) study [ISRCTN72884263]

Background: Concerns have been raised about low participation rates of people from minority ethnic groups in clinical trials. However, the evidence is unclear as many studies do not report the ethnicity of participants and there is insufficient information about the reasons for ineligibility by ethnic group. Where there are data, there remains the key question as to whether ethnic minorities more likely to be ineligible (e.g. due to language) or decline to participate. We have addressed these questions in relation to the Birmingham Rehabilitation Uptake Maximisation (BRUM) study, a randomized controlled trial (RCT) comparing a home-based with a hospital-based cardiac rehabilitation programme in a multi-ethnic population in the UK. Methods: Analysis of the ethnicity, age and sex of presenting and recruited subjects for a trial of cardiac rehabilitation in the West-Midlands, UK. Participants: 1997 patients presenting post-myocardial infarction, percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty or coronary artery bypass graft surgery. Data collected: exclusion rates, reasons for exclusion and reasons for declining to participate in the trial by ethnic group. Results: Significantly more patients of South Asian ethnicity were excluded (52% of 'South Asian' v 36% 'White European' and 36% 'Other', p < 0.001). This difference in eligibility was primarily due to exclusion on the basis of language (i.e. the inability to speak English or Punjabi). Of those eligible, similar proportions were recruited from the different ethnic groups (white, South Asian and other). There was a marked difference in eligibility between people of Indian, Pakistani or Bangladeshi origin

Transportin 3 Promotes a Nuclear Maturation Step Required for Efficient HIV-1 Integration

The HIV/AIDS pandemic is a major global health threat and understanding the detailed molecular mechanisms of HIV replication is critical for the development of novel therapeutics. To replicate, HIV-1 must access the nucleus of infected cells and integrate into host chromosomes, however little is known about the events occurring post-nuclear entry but before integration. Here we show that the karyopherin Transportin 3 (Tnp3) promotes HIV-1 integration in different cell types. Furthermore Tnp3 binds the viral capsid proteins and tRNAs incorporated into viral particles. Interaction between Tnp3, capsid and tRNAs is stronger in the presence of RanGTP, consistent with the possibility that Tnp3 is an export factor for these substrates. In agreement with this interpretation, we found that Tnp3 exports from the nuclei viral tRNAs in a RanGTP-dependent way. Tnp3 also binds and exports from the nuclei some species of cellular tRNAs with a defective 3'CCA end. Depletion of Tnp3 results in a re-distribution of HIV-1 capsid proteins between nucleus and cytoplasm however HIV-1 bearing the N74D mutation in capsid, which is insensitive to Tnp3 depletion, does not show nucleocytoplasmic redistribution of capsid proteins. We propose that Tnp3 promotes HIV-1 infection by displacing any capsid and tRNA that remain bound to the pre-integration complex after nuclear entry to facilitate integration. The results also provide evidence for a novel tRNA nucleocytoplasmic trafficking pathway in human cells

Analysis of hierarchical organization in gene expression networks reveals underlying principles of collective tumor cell dissemination and metastatic aggressiveness of inflammatory breast cancer

Clusters of circulating tumor cells (CTCs), although rare, may account for more than 95% of metastases. Inflammatory breast cancer (IBC) is a highly aggressive subtype that chiefly metastasizes via CTC clusters. Theory suggests that physical systems with hierarchical organization tend to be more adaptable due to their ability to efficiently span the set of available states. We used the cophenetic correlation coefficient (CCC) to quantify the hierarchical organization in the expression of collective dissemination associated and IBC associated genes, and found that the CCC of both gene sets was higher in (a) epithelial cell lines as compared to mesenchymal cell lines and (b) IBC tumor samples as compared to non-IBC breast cancer samples. A higher CCC of both networks was also correlated with a higher rate of metastatic relapse in breast cancer patients. Gene set enrichment analysis could not provide similar insights, indicating that the CCC provides additional information regarding the organizational complexity of gene expression. These results suggest that retention of epithelial traits in disseminating tumor cells as IBC progresses promotes successful metastasis and the CCC may be a prognostic factor for IBC.Comment: 38 pages, 13 figure

LUX -- A Laser-Plasma Driven Undulator Beamline

The LUX beamline is a novel type of laser-plasma accelerator. Building on the joint expertise of the University of Hamburg and DESY the beamline was carefully designed to combine state-of-the-art expertise in laser-plasma acceleration with the latest advances in accelerator technology and beam diagnostics. LUX introduces a paradigm change moving from single-shot demonstration experiments towards available, stable and controllable accelerator operation. Here, we discuss the general design concepts of LUX and present first critical milestones that have recently been achieved, including the generation of electron beams at the repetition rate of up to 5 Hz with energies above 600 MeV and the generation of spontaneous undulator radiation at a wavelength well below 9 nm.Comment: submitte

Effects of Climate Oscillations on Wildland Fire Potential in the Continental United States

The effects of climate oscillations on spatial and temporal variations in wildland fire potential in the continental U.S. are examined from 1979 to 2015 using cyclostationary empirical orthogonal functions (CSEOFs). The CSEOF analysis isolates effects associated with the modulated annual cycle and the El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO). The results show that, in early summer, wildland fire potential is reduced in the southwest during El Nino but is increased in the northwest, with opposite trends for La Nina. In late summer, El Nino is associated with increased wildland fire potential in the southwest. Relative to the mean, the largest impacts of ENSO are observed in the northwest and southeast. Climate impacts on fire potential due to ENSO are found to be most closely associated with variations in relative humidity. The connections established here between fire potential and climate oscillations could result in improved wildland fire risk assessment and resource allocation