ANALYSIS OF RECENT OPTIONS FOR CHANGES IN U.S. DAIRY POLICY

Agricultural and Food Policy,

Post-Retirement Adjustments of Pension Benefits

This paper examines why pension plans increased their liabflities by giving benefit increases to persons no longer working even though almost al lof them were not required to do so by any legally enforceable contract. In our model workers and firms have implicit contracts under which post-retirement increases in benefits are purchased by workers through lower wages or initial benefits. Such arrangements permit both plans and workersto share the risk of uncertain rates of return. They also allow beneficiaries to invest at a higher net rate of return than they could obtain elsewhere because of tax advantages and, in large plans, economies of scale. We also discuss how post-retirement adjustments can be used to influence turnover. Some empirical implications of the model are tested over a sample of beneficiaries of defined benefit plans. The major empirical findings are:(1) There is strong evidence of compensating differentials in final salary and initial pension benefits for beneficiaries receiving post-retirement adjustments.(2) Regardless of how the size of pension plans is measured(beneficiaries, participants, amount of benefits paid), large pension plans provide larger post-retirement benefit increases.(3) Beneficiaries of collectively bargained plans are more likelyto receive benefit increases and, among those receiving benefit increases, receive larger increases.(4) Benefit increases are larger in percentage terms for those who have been retired the longest and for those with the most years of service.

Which Triggers Produce the Most Erosive, Frequent, and Longest Runout Turbidity Currents on Deltas?

Subaerial rivers and turbidity currents are the two most voluminous sediment transport processes on our planet, and it is important to understand how they are linked offshore from river mouths. Previously, it was thought that slope failures or direct plunging of river floodwater (hyperpycnal flow) dominated the triggering of turbidity currents on delta fronts. Here we reanalyze the most detailed time‐lapse monitoring yet of a submerged delta; comprising 93 surveys of the Squamish Delta in British Columbia, Canada. We show that most turbidity currents are triggered by settling of sediment from dilute surface river plumes, rather than landslides or hyperpycnal flows. Turbidity currents triggered by settling plumes occur frequently, run out as far as landslide‐triggered events, and cause the greatest changes to delta and lobe morphology. For the first time, we show that settling from surface plumes can dominate the triggering of hazardous submarine flows and offshore sediment fluxes

Associations between adjustment disorder and hospital-based infections in the Danish population.

OBJECTIVE:There is some evidence that posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is associated with increased risk of infections, and it is unknown whether adjustment disorder is as well. We assessed the association between adjustment disorder and subsequent infections, and assessed additive interaction with sex. METHODS:The study population included a nationwide cohort of all Danish-born residents of Denmark diagnosed with adjustment disorder between 1995 and 2011, and an age- and sex-matched general population comparison cohort. We compared rates of infections requiring inpatient or outpatient hospitalization in the two cohorts. We fit Cox proportional hazards models to compute adjusted hazard ratios (aHR) for the associations between adjustment disorder and 32 types of infections, and calculated interaction contrasts to assess interaction between adjustment disorder and sex. RESULTS:Adjustment disorder was associated with increased rates of infections overall (n = 19,838 infections, aHR = 1.8, 95% confidence interval = 1.8. 1.9), and increased rates of each individual infection type (aHRs for 30 infections ranged from 1.5 to 2.3), adjusting for baseline psychiatric and somatic comorbidities and marital status. For many infection types (e.g., skin infections, pneumonia), interaction contrasts indicated rate differences were greater among men than women, while for two (urinary tract infections and sexually transmitted infections), rate differences were greater for women. CONCLUSIONS:These findings are consistent with studies examining the relationship between psychological stress and infections, and between PTSD and infections. They may be explained by a combination of the triggering of unhealthy behaviors as well as immune responses to stress

Energetic and Environmental Constraints on the Community Structure of Benthic Microbial Mats in Lake Fryxell, Antarctica.

Ecological communities are regulated by the flow of energy through environments. Energy flow is typically limited by access to photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) and oxygen concentration (O2). The microbial mats growing on the bottom of Lake Fryxell, Antarctica, have well-defined environmental gradients in PAR and (O2). We analyzed the metagenomes of layers from these microbial mats to test the extent to which access to oxygen and light controls community structure. We found variation in the diversity and relative abundances of Archaea, Bacteria and Eukaryotes across three (O2) and PAR conditions: high (O2) and maximum PAR, variable (O2) with lower maximum PAR, and low (O2) and maximum PAR. We found distinct communities structured by the optimization of energy use on a millimeter-scale across these conditions. In mat layers where (O2) was saturated, PAR structured the community. In contrast, (O2) positively correlated with diversity and affected the distribution of dominant populations across the three habitats, suggesting that meter-scale diversity is structured by energy availability. Microbial communities changed across covarying gradients of PAR and (O2). The comprehensive metagenomic analysis suggests that the benthic microbial communities in Lake Fryxell are structured by energy flow across both meter- and millimeter-scales

Improved Simulation of the Mass Charging for ASTROD I

The electrostatic charging of the test mass in ASTROD I (Astrodynamical Space Test of Relativity using Optical Devices I) mission can affect the quality of the science data as a result of spurious Coulomb and Lorentz forces. To estimate the size of the resultant disturbances, credible predictions of charging rates and the charging noise are required. Using the GEANT4 software toolkit, we present a detailed Monte Carlo simulation of the ASTROD I test mass charging due to exposure of the spacecraft to galactic cosmic-ray (GCR) protons and alpha particles (3He, 4He) in the space environment. A positive charging rate of 33.3 e+/s at solar minimum is obtained. This figure reduces by 50% at solar maximum. Based on this charging rate and factoring in the contribution of minor cosmic-ray components, we calculate the acceleration noise and stiffness associated with charging. We conclude that the acceleration noise arising from Coulomb and Lorentz effects are well below the ASTROD I acceleration noise limit at 0.1 mHz both at solar minimum and maximum. The coherent Fourier components due to charging are investigated, it needs to be studied carefully in order to ensure that these do not compromise the quality of science data in the ASTROD I mission.Comment: 20 pages, 14 figures, submitted to International Journal of Modern Physics

LAP3, a novel plant protein required for pollen development, is essential for proper exine formation

We isolated lap3-1 and lap3-2 mutants in ascreen for pollen that displays abnormal stigma binding.Unlike wild-type pollen, lap3-1 and lap3-2 pollen exine isthinner, weaker, and is missing some connections betweentheir roof-like tectum structures. We describe the mappingand identification of LAP3 as a novel gene that contains arepetitive motif found in b-propeller enzymes. Insertionmutations in LAP3 lead to male sterility. To investigatepossible roles for LAP3 in pollen development, we assayedthe metabolite profile of anther tissues containing developingpollen grains and found that the lap3-2 defect leadsto a broad range of metabolic changes. The largest changeswere seen in levels of a straight-chain hydrocarbon nonacosaneand in naringenin chalcone, an obligate compoundin the flavonoid biosynthesis pathway