Testing the Effectiveness of Regulation and Competition on Cable Television Rates

Regulation of the cable television industry was marked by remarkable periods of deregulation, re-regulation, and re-deregulation during the 1980s and 1990s. Using FCC firm-level survey data spanning 1993 to 2001, we model and econometrically estimate the effect of regulation and competition on cable rates. Our calculations indicate that while regulation lowered rates for small system operators, it raised them for medium and large systems. Meanwhile, competition consistently decreased rates from 5.6 to 8.8 percent, with even larger declines during periods of regulation. Our results suggest that competition is more effective than regulation in containing cable prices.cable rates, regulation, competition

Testing the Effectiveness of Regulation and Competition on Cable Television Rates

Regulation of the cable television industry was marked by remarkable periods of deregulation, re-regulation, and re-deregulation during the 1980s and 1990s. Using FCC firm-level survey data spanning 1993 to 2001, we model and econometrically estimate the effect of regulation and competition on cable rates. Our calculations indicate that while regulation lowered rates for small system operators, it raised them for medium and large systems. Meanwhile, competition consistently decreased rates from 5.6 to 8.8 percent, with even larger declines during periods of regulation. Our results suggest that competition is more effective than regulation in containing cable prices.cable rates, regulation, competition

Raw and Count Data Comparability of Hip-Worn ActiGraph GT3X+ and Link Accelerometers

To enable inter- and intrastudy comparisons it is important to ascertain comparability among accelerometer models. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to compare raw and count data between hip-worn ActiGraph GT3X+ and GT9X Link accelerometers. Methods: Adults (n = 26 (n = 15 women); age, 49.1 T 20.0 yr) wore GT3X+ and Link accelerometers over the right hip for an 80-min protocol involving 12–21 sedentary, household, and ambulatory/exercise activities lasting 2–15 min each. For each accelerometer, mean and variance of the raw (60 Hz) data for each axis and vector magnitude (VM) were extracted in 30-s epochs. A machine learning model (Montoye 2015) was used to predict energy expenditure in METs from the raw data. Raw data were also processed into activity counts in 30-s epochs for each axis and VM, with Freedson 1998 and 2011 count-based regression models used to predictMETs. Time spent in sedentary, light, moderate, and vigorous intensities was derived from predicted METs from each model. Correlations were calculated to compare raw and count data between accelerometers, and percent agreement was used to compare epoch-by-epoch activity intensity. Results: For raw data, correlations for mean acceleration were 0.96 T 0.05, 0.89 T 0.16, 0.71 T 0.33, and 0.80 T 0.28, and those for variance were 0.98 T 0.02, 0.98 T 0.03, 0.91 T 0.06, and 1.00 T 0.00 in the X, Y, and Z axes and VM, respectively. For count data, corresponding correlations were 1.00 T 0.01, 0.98 T 0.02, 0.96 T 0.04, and 1.00 T 0.00, respectively. Freedson 1998 and 2011 count-based models had significantly higher percent agreement for activity intensity (95.1% T 5.6% and 95.5% T 4.0%) compared with theMontoye 2015 raw data model (61.5% T 27.6%; P G 0.001). Conclusions: Count data were more highly comparable than raw data between accelerometers. Data filtering and/or more robust raw data models are needed to improve raw data comparability between ActiGraph GT3X+ and Link accelerometers

Smoke-Free Men: Competing and Connecting to Quit

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to explore gender-related factors that motivate and support men’s smoking reduction and cessation to inform effective men-centered interventions. Approach or Design: Focus group design using a semi-structured interview guide. Setting: Three communities in British Columbia, Canada. Participants: A total of 56 men who currently smoked and were interested in reducing or quitting or had quit. Intervention: N/A. Methods: Data collected in 6 focus group discussions were transcribed and analyzed in accord with principles of thematic qualitative methods. Results: We report the results across 4 interconnected themes: (1) the fight to quit takes several rounds, (2) the motivation of supportive competition, (3) challenges and benefits of connecting with smoke-free peers, and (4) playing up the physical and financial gains. Conclusions: Masculine-based perspectives positioned quitting alongside fighting for self-control, competing, connecting, physical prowess, and having extra cash as motivating components of programs to engage men in efforts to be smoke-free. It may be worthwhile to consider the inclusion of gain-framed and benefit-focused messaging in programs that support men’s tobacco cessation

A qualitative study on Chinese Canadian male immigrants’ perspectives on stopping smoking: Implications for tobacco control in China

China has the largest number of smokers in the world; more than half of adult men smoke. Chinese immigrants smoke at lower rates than the mainstream population and other immigrant groups do. This qualitative study was to explore the influence of denormalization in Canada on male Chinese immigrant smoking after migration. Semistructured interviews were conducted with 22 male Chinese Canadian immigrants who were currently smoking or had quit smoking in the past 5 years. The study identified that, while becoming a prospective/father prompted the Chinese smokers to quit or reduce their smoking due to concern of the impacts of their smoking on the health of their young children, changes in smoking were also associated with the smoking environment. Four facilitators were identified which were related to the denomormalized smoking environment in Canada: (a) the stigma related to being a smoker in Canada, (b) conformity with Canadian smoking bans in public places, (c) the reduced social function of smoking in Canadian culture, and (d) the impact of graphic health messages on cigarette packs. Denormalization of tobacco in Canada in combination with collectivist values among Chinese smokers appeared to contribute to participants’ reducing and quitting smoking. Although findings of the study cannot be claimed as generalizable to the wider population of Chinese Canadian immigrants due to the small number of the participants, this study provides lessons for the development of tobacco control measures in China to reverse the current prosmoking social environment

Day and night heat stress trigger different transcriptomic responses in green and ripening grapevine (vitis vinifera) fruit

Background: Global climate change will noticeably affect plant vegetative and reproductive development. The recent increase in temperatures has already impacted yields and composition of berries in many grapevine-growing regions. Physiological processes underlying temperature response and tolerance of the grapevine fruit have not been extensively investigated. To date, all studies investigating the molecular regulation of fleshly fruit response to abiotic stress were only conducted during the day, overlooking possible critical night-specific variations. The present study explores the night and day transcriptomic response of grapevine fruit to heat stress at several developmental stages. Short heat stresses (2 h) were applied at day and night to vines bearing clusters sequentially ordered according to the developmental stages along their vertical axes. The recently proposed microvine model (DRCF-Dwarf Rapid Cycling and Continuous Flowering) was grown in climatic chambers in order to circumvent common constraints and biases inevitable in field experiments with perennial macrovines. Post-véraison berry heterogeneity within clusters was avoided by constituting homogenous batches following organic acids and sugars measurements of individual berries. A whole genome transcriptomic approach was subsequently conducted using NimbleGen 090818 Vitis 12X (30 K) microarrays. Results: Present work reveals significant differences in heat stress responsive pathways according to day or night treatment, in particular regarding genes associated with acidity and phenylpropanoid metabolism. Precise distinction of ripening stages led to stage-specific detection of malic acid and anthocyanin-related transcripts modulated by heat stress. Important changes in cell wall modification related processes as well as indications for heat-induced delay of ripening and sugar accumulation were observed at véraison, an effect that was reversed at later stages. Conclusions: This first day - night study on heat stress adaption of the grapevine berry shows that the transcriptome of fleshy fruits is differentially affected by abiotic stress at night. The present results emphasize the necessity of including different developmental stages and especially several daytime points in transcriptomic studies

Is transcriptomic regulation of berry development more important at night than during the day?

Diurnal changes in gene expression occur in all living organisms and have been studied on model plants such as Arabidopsis thaliana. To our knowledge the impact of the nycthemeral cycle on the genetic program of fleshly fruit development has been hitherto overlooked. In order to circumvent environmental changes throughout fruit development, young and ripening berries were sampled simultaneously on continuously flowering microvines acclimated to controlled circadian light and temperature changes. Gene expression profiles along fruit development were monitored during both day and night with whole genome microarrays (Nimblegen® vitis 12x), yielding a total number of 9273 developmentally modulated probesets. All day-detected transcripts were modulated at night, whereas 1843 genes were night-specific. Very similar developmental patterns of gene expression were observed using independent hierarchical clustering of day and night data, whereas functional categories of allocated transcripts varied according to time of day. Many transcripts within pathways, known to be up-regulated during ripening, in particular those linked to secondary metabolism exhibited a clearer developmental regulation at night than during the day. Functional enrichment analysis also indicated that diurnally modulated genes considerably varied during fruit development, with a shift from cellular organization and photosynthesis in green berries to secondary metabolism and stress-related genes in ripening berries. These results reveal critical changes in gene expression during night development that differ from daytime development, which have not been observed in other transcriptomic studies on fruit development thus far. © 2014 Rienth et al.This work is part of the DURAVITIS program which is financially supported by the ANR (Agence national de la recherche) -Genopole (project ANR-2010-GENM-004-01) and the Jean Poupelain foundation (30 Rue Gâte Chien, 16100 Javrezac, France).Peer Reviewe

Fertilization and Tree Species Influence on Stable Aggregates in Forest Soil

Abstract: Background and objectives: aggregation and structure play key roles in the water-holding capacity and stability of soils and are important for the physical protection and storage of soil carbon (C). Forest soils are an important sink of ecosystem C, though the capacity to store C may be disrupted by the elevated atmospheric deposition of nitrogen (N) and sulfur (S) compounds by dispersion of soil aggregates via acidification or altered microbial activity. Furthermore, dominant tree species and the lability of litter they produce can influence aggregation processes. Materials and methods: we measured water-stable aggregate size distribution and aggregate-associated organic matter (OM) content in soils from two watersheds and beneath four hardwood species at the USDA Forest Service Fernow Experimental Forest in West Virginia, USA, where one watershed has received (NH4)2SO4 fertilizer since 1989 and one is a reference/control of similar stand age. Bulk soil OM, pH, and permanganate oxidizable carbon (POXC) were also measured. Research highlights: fertilized soil exhibited decreased macro-aggregate formation and a greater proportion of smaller micro-aggregates or unassociated clay minerals, particularly in the B-horizon. This shift in aggregation to soil more dominated by the smallest (\u3c53 μm) fraction is associated with both acidification (soil pH) and increased microbially processed C (POXC) in fertilized soil. Intra-aggregate OM was also depleted in the fertilized soil (52% less OM in the 53–2000 μm fractions), most strongly in subsurface B-horizon soil. We also document that tree species can influence soil aggregation, as soil beneath species with more labile litter contained more OM in the micro-aggregate size class (\u3c250 μm), especially in the fertilized watershed, while species with more recalcitrant litter promoted more OM in the macro- aggregate size classes (500–2000 μm) in the reference watershed. Conclusions: long-term fertilization, and likely historic atmospheric deposition, of forest soils has weakened macro-aggregation formation, with implications for soil stability, hydrology, and storage of belowground C

Physical activity counseling in overweight and obese primary care patients: Outcomes of the VA-STRIDE randomized controlled trial.

The purpose of this 2-arm randomized clinical trial was to evaluate the effectiveness of a 12-month, expert system-based, print-delivered physical activity intervention in a primary care Veteran population in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Participants were not excluded for many health conditions that typically are exclusionary criteria in physical activity trials. The primary outcome measures were physical activity reported using the Community Healthy Activities Model Program for Seniors (CHAMPS) questionnaire and an accelerometer-based activity assessment at baseline, 6, and 12 months. Of the 232 Veterans enrolled in the study, 208 (89.7%) were retained at the 6-month follow-up and 203 (87.5%) were retained at 12 months. Compared to the attention control, intervention participants had significantly increased odds of meeting the U.S. recommended guideline of ≥ 150 min/week of at least moderate-intensity physical activity at 12 months for the modified CHAMPS (odds ratio [OR] = 2.86; 95% CI: 1.03-7.96; p = 0.04) but not at 6 months (OR = 1.54; 95% CI: 0.56-4.23; p = 0.40). Based on accelerometer data, intervention participants had significantly increased odds of meeting ≥ 150 min/week of moderate-equivalent physical activity at 6 months (OR = 6.26; 95% CI: 1.26-31.22; p = 0.03) and borderline significantly increased odds at 12 months (OR = 4.73; 95% CI: 0.98-22.76; p = 0.053). An expert system physical activity counseling intervention can increase or sustain the proportion of Veterans in primary care meeting current recommendations for moderate-intensity physical activity. Trial Registration Clinical trials.gov identifier: NCT00731094 URL: http://www.clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT00731094

Assimilating Remote Sensing Observations of Leaf Area Index and Soil Moisture for Wheat Yield Estimates: An Observing System Simulation Experiment

Observing system simulation experiments were used to investigate ensemble Bayesian state updating data assimilation of observations of leaf area index (LAI) and soil moisture (theta) for the purpose of improving single-season wheat yield estimates with the Decision Support System for Agrotechnology Transfer (DSSAT) CropSim-Ceres model. Assimilation was conducted in an energy-limited environment and a water-limited environment. Modeling uncertainty was prescribed to weather inputs, soil parameters and initial conditions, and cultivar parameters and through perturbations to model state transition equations. The ensemble Kalman filter and the sequential importance resampling filter were tested for the ability to attenuate effects of these types of uncertainty on yield estimates. LAI and theta observations were synthesized according to characteristics of existing remote sensing data, and effects of observation error were tested. Results indicate that the potential for assimilation to improve end-of-season yield estimates is low. Limitations are due to a lack of root zone soil moisture information, error in LAI observations, and a lack of correlation between leaf and grain growth