National and international agricultural research and rural poverty: the case of rice research in India and China

The study attempts to measure the total benefits from rice varietal improvement research in China and India using variety adoption and performance data over the last two decades. It then uses genetic or pedigree information to partition the total benefits between these two countries and IRRI. Finally, the study uses reported elasticity of poverty reduction with respect to agricultural output growth to assess the effects of national and international research on poverty reduction in rural India and China. The results indicate that rice varietal improvement research has contributed tremendously to increase in rice production, accounting for 14-23 percent of total production value over the last two decades in both countries. Rice research has also helped reduce large numbers of rural poor. IRRI played a crucial role in these successes. In 1999, for every $1 million invested at IRRI, more than 800 and 15,000 rural poor were lifted above the poverty line in China and India, respectively. These poverty-reduction effects were even larger in the earlier years." Authors' AbstractRice Asia., Rice Research., Rice Varieties., Rice Yields., Poverty alleviation., genetically modified organisms,

Cognitive skills and literacy performance of Chinese adolescents with and without dyslexia

The present study sought to identify cognitive abilities that might distinguish Hong Kong Chinese adolescents with dyslexia and to assess how these abilities were associated with Chinese word reading, word dictation, and reading comprehension. The cognitive skills of interest were morphological awareness, visual-orthographic knowledge, rapid naming, and verbal working memory. A total of 90 junior secondary school students, 30 dyslexic, 30 chronological age controls, and 30 reading level controls was tested on a range of cognitive and literacy tasks. Dyslexic students were less competent than the control students in all cognitive and literacy measures. The regression analyses also showed that verbal working memory, rapid naming, morphological awareness, and visual-orthographic knowledge were significantly associated with literacy performance. Findings underscore the importance of these cognitive skills for Chinese literacy acquisition. Overall, this study highlights the persistent difficulties of Chinese dyslexic adolescents who seem to have multiple causes for reading and spelling difficulties

The genetic architecture of the human cerebral cortex

The cerebral cortex underlies our complex cognitive capabilities, yet little is known about the specific genetic loci that influence human cortical structure. To identify genetic variants that affect cortical structure, we conducted a genome-wide association meta-analysis of brain magnetic resonance imaging data from 51,665 individuals. We analyzed the surface area and average thickness of the whole cortex and 34 regions with known functional specializations. We identified 199 significant loci and found significant enrichment for loci influencing total surface area within regulatory elements that are active during prenatal cortical development, supporting the radial unit hypothesis. Loci that affect regional surface area cluster near genes in Wnt signaling pathways, which influence progenitor expansion and areal identity. Variation in cortical structure is genetically correlated with cognitive function, Parkinson's disease, insomnia, depression, neuroticism, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead

31st Annual Meeting and Associated Programs of the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC 2016) : part two

Background The immunological escape of tumors represents one of the main ob- stacles to the treatment of malignancies. The blockade of PD-1 or CTLA-4 receptors represented a milestone in the history of immunotherapy. However, immune checkpoint inhibitors seem to be effective in specific cohorts of patients. It has been proposed that their efficacy relies on the presence of an immunological response. Thus, we hypothesized that disruption of the PD-L1/PD-1 axis would synergize with our oncolytic vaccine platform PeptiCRAd. Methods We used murine B16OVA in vivo tumor models and flow cytometry analysis to investigate the immunological background. Results First, we found that high-burden B16OVA tumors were refractory to combination immunotherapy. However, with a more aggressive schedule, tumors with a lower burden were more susceptible to the combination of PeptiCRAd and PD-L1 blockade. The therapy signifi- cantly increased the median survival of mice (Fig. 7). Interestingly, the reduced growth of contralaterally injected B16F10 cells sug- gested the presence of a long lasting immunological memory also against non-targeted antigens. Concerning the functional state of tumor infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs), we found that all the immune therapies would enhance the percentage of activated (PD-1pos TIM- 3neg) T lymphocytes and reduce the amount of exhausted (PD-1pos TIM-3pos) cells compared to placebo. As expected, we found that PeptiCRAd monotherapy could increase the number of antigen spe- cific CD8+ T cells compared to other treatments. However, only the combination with PD-L1 blockade could significantly increase the ra- tio between activated and exhausted pentamer positive cells (p= 0.0058), suggesting that by disrupting the PD-1/PD-L1 axis we could decrease the amount of dysfunctional antigen specific T cells. We ob- served that the anatomical location deeply influenced the state of CD4+ and CD8+ T lymphocytes. In fact, TIM-3 expression was in- creased by 2 fold on TILs compared to splenic and lymphoid T cells. In the CD8+ compartment, the expression of PD-1 on the surface seemed to be restricted to the tumor micro-environment, while CD4 + T cells had a high expression of PD-1 also in lymphoid organs. Interestingly, we found that the levels of PD-1 were significantly higher on CD8+ T cells than on CD4+ T cells into the tumor micro- environment (p < 0.0001). Conclusions In conclusion, we demonstrated that the efficacy of immune check- point inhibitors might be strongly enhanced by their combination with cancer vaccines. PeptiCRAd was able to increase the number of antigen-specific T cells and PD-L1 blockade prevented their exhaus- tion, resulting in long-lasting immunological memory and increased median survival

National and international agricultural research and rural poverty: the case of rice research in India and China

We measure the total benefits from rice varietal improvement research in China and India, using variety adoption and performance data over the last two decades. Genetic or pedigree information is used to partition the total benefits between these two countries and International Rice Research Institute (IRRI). Finally, reported elasticities of poverty reduction with respect to agricultural output growth are used to assess the effects of national and international research on poverty reduction in rural India and China. The results indicate that rice varietal improvement research has contributed tremendously to increase in rice production, accounting for 14% to 24% of the total production value over the last two decades in both countries. Rice research has also helped reduce large numbers of rural poor. IRRI played a crucial role in these successes. In 1999, for every US$1 million invested at IRRI, more than 800 and 15,000 rural poor were lifted above the poverty line in China and India, respectively. These poverty reduction effects were even larger in the earlier years. Copyright 2005 International Association of Agricultural Economics.

NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH AND RURAL POVERTY: THE CASE OF RICE RESEARCH IN INDIA AND CHINA

The study attempts to measure the total benefits from rice varietal improvement research in China and India using variety adoption and performance data over the last two decades. It then uses genetic or pedigree information to partition the total benefits between these two countries and IRRI. Finally, the study uses reported elasticity of poverty reduction with respect to agricultural output growth to assess the effects of national and international research on poverty reduction in rural India and China. The results indicate that rice varietal improvement research has contributed tremendously to increase in rice production, accounting for 14-23 percent of total production value over the last two decades in both countries. Rice research has also helped reduce large numbers of rural poor. IRRI played a crucial role in these successes. In 1999, for every $1 million invested at IRRI, more than 800 and 15,000 rural poor were lifted above the poverty line in China and India, respectively. These poverty-reduction effects were even larger in the earlier years

AND RURAL POVERTY: THE CASE OF RICE RESEARCH IN

EPTD Discussion Papers contain preliminary material and research results, and are circulated prior to a full peer review in order to stimulate discussion and critical comment. It is expected that most Discussion Papers will eventually be published in some other form, and that their content may also be revised. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This project entailed the assistance of a number of people in collecting the data and in revising earlier versions. We wish to thank Professor Wang Shumin (Crop Institute), Guixia Qian and Chunghong Qu (Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences) for compiling the data we needed and aiding the interpretation of these data. We also thank Professor Yuan Long Ping (China National Hybrid Rice Research and Development Centre) and Graham McLaren (IRRI) for their guidance, council, and practical assistance. We are most grateful to Peter Hazell (IFPRI), Philip Pardey (University of Minnesota), Jock Anderson (World Bank), Melinda Smale (IFPRI), David Dawe (IRRI), and Jikun Huang (CCAP) for their useful comments in earlier drafts.