213 research outputs found
Farm Commodity Policy and Obesity
Many commentators have claimed that farm subsidies have contributed significantly to the “obesity epidemic” by making fattening foods relatively cheap and abundant and, symmetrically, that taxing “unhealthy” commodities or subsidizing “healthy” commodities would contribute to reducing obesity rates. This paper makes three contributions. First, we review evidence from the literature on the impacts on food consumption and obesity resulting from subsidies applied in the past to production or consumption of farm commodities. Second, we develop and present new arguments and preliminary evidence on the impacts of past government investments in agricultural R&D on food consumption and obesity—through research-induced increases in agricultural productivity and the consequences for prices, production, and consumption of farm commodities. Third, we consider and compare the economic efficiency of hypothetical agricultural research policies (changing the orientation of agricultural research investments) versus hypothetical agricultural commodity subsidies and taxes as alternative mechanisms for encouraging consumption of healthy food or discouraging consumption of unhealthy food, or both.Demand and Price Analysis, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, Health Economics and Policy,
The Demand for Food in the United States: A Review of the Literature, Evaluation of Previous Estimates, and Presentation of New Estimates of Demand
Demand and Price Analysis, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety,
Feasibility study of high performance hydrogen-oxygen fuel cells Final technical report
Engineering analysis for evaluating moving bed and mediator hydrogen-oxygen fuel cell conceptual design
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Negative regulation of germination-arrest factor production in Pseudomonas fluorescens WH6 by a putative extracytoplasmic function sigma factor
Pseudomonas fluorescens WH6 secretes a germination-arrest factor (GAF) that we have
identified previously as 4-formylaminooxyvinylglycine. GAF irreversibly inhibits germination of the
seeds of numerous grassy weeds and selectively inhibits growth of the bacterial plant pathogen
Erwinia amylovora. WH6-3, a mutant that has lost the ability to produce GAF, contains a Tn5
insertion in prtR, a gene that has been described previously in some strains of P. fluorescens as
encoding a transmembrane regulator. As in these other pseudomonads, in WH6, prtR occurs
immediately downstream of prtI, which encodes a protein homologous to extracytoplasmic
function (ECF) sigma factors. These two genes have been proposed to function as a dicistronic
operon. In this study, we demonstrated that deletion of prtI in WT WH6 had no effect on GAF
production. However, deletion of prtI in the WH6-3 mutant overcame the effects of the Tn5
insertion in prtR and restored GAF production in the resulting double mutant. Complementation of
the double prtIR mutant with prtI suppressed GAF production. This overall pattern of prtIR
regulation was also observed for the activity of an AprX protease. Furthermore, reverse
transcription quantitative real-time PCR analysis demonstrated that alterations in GAF production
were mirrored by changes in the transcription of two putative GAF biosynthetic genes. Thus, we
concluded that PrtI exerted a negative regulatory effect on GAF production, although the
mechanism has not yet been determined. In addition, evidence was obtained that the transcription
of prtI and prtR in WH6 may be more complex than predicted by existing models
Making Sense of Akrasia
There are two extreme poles in the literature on akrasia. Internalists hold that it's impossible to act intentionally against your better judgment, because there's a necessary internal relation between judgment and intentional action. To the contrary, externalists maintain that we can act intentionally against our better judgment, because the will operates independently of judgment. Critics of internalism argue that it fails a realism test—most people seem to think that we can and do act intentionally against our better judgment. And critics of externalism argue that it flirts with incoherence by severing the intimate link between judgment and action. Drawing on resources from phenomenology, the cognitive sciences, analytic action theory, and recent “hybrid models” of skilled action, I argue that one route beyond this theoretical impasse is to understand akrasia as a form of skillful pre-reflective intentional action. This strategy, I argue, preserves the internalist insight that there is indeed an intimate relation between judgment and intentional action; and it also confirms the externalist claim that this relation is defeasible, but it does so without falling into incoherence
A Novel Tool for Studying Auxin-Metabolism: The Inhibition of Grapevine Indole-3-Acetic Acid-Amido Synthetases by a Reaction Intermediate Analogue
An important process for the regulation of auxin levels in plants is the inactivation of indole-3-acetic acid (IAA) by conjugation to amino acids. The conjugation reaction is catalysed by IAA-amido synthetases belonging to the family of GH3 proteins. Genetic approaches to study the biological significance of these enzymes have been hampered by large gene numbers and a high degree of functional redundancy. To overcome these difficulties a chemical approach based on the reaction mechanism of GH3 proteins was employed to design a small molecule inhibitor of IAA-amido synthetase activity. Adenosine-5′-[2-(1H-indol-3-yl)ethyl]phosphate (AIEP) mimics the adenylated intermediate of the IAA-conjugation reaction and was therefore proposed to compete with the binding of MgATP and IAA in the initial stages of catalysis. Two grapevine IAA-amido synthetases with different catalytic properties were chosen to test the inhibitory effects of AIEP in vitro. GH3-1 has previously been implicated in the grape berry ripening process and is restricted to two amino acid substrates, whereas GH3-6 conjugated IAA to 13 amino acids. AIEP is the most potent inhibitor of GH3 enzymes so far described and was shown to be competitive against MgATP and IAA binding to both enzymes with Ki-values 17-68-fold lower than the respective Km-values. AIEP also exhibited in vivo activity in an ex planta test system using young grape berries. Exposure to 5–20 µM of the inhibitor led to decreased levels of the common conjugate IAA-Asp and reduced the accumulation of the corresponding Asp-conjugate upon treatment with a synthetic auxin. AIEP therefore represents a novel chemical probe with which to study IAA-amido synthetase function
Perspectives on Risk Perceptions
Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/72341/1/j.1539-6924.1981.tb01409.x.pd
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