The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP): In Brief

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a proposed free trade agreement (FTA) among 12 Asia-Pacific countries, with both economic and strategic significance for the United States. If approved, it would be the largest FTA in which the United States participates. The 12 countries announced the conclusion of the TPP negotiations on October 5, 2015, after several years of ongoing talks. The President released the text of the agreement and notified Congress of his intent to sign on November 5, 2015. Congress would need to pass implementing legislation for a final TPP agreement to enter into force for the United States. Such legislation would be eligible to receive expedited legislative consideration under the recent grant of Trade Promotion Authority (TPA), P.L. 114-26, if Congress determines the Administration has advanced the TPA negotiating objectives, and met various notification and consultation requirements. TPP negotiating parties include Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United States, and Vietnam. Through the TPP, the participating countries seek to liberalize trade and investment and establish new rules and disciplines in the region beyond what exists in the World Trade Organization (WTO). The FTA is envisioned as a living agreement that will be open to future members and may become a vehicle to advance a wider Asia-Pacific free trade area. It is a U.S. policy response to the rapidly increasing economic and strategic linkages among Asian-Pacific nations and has become the economic centerpiece of the Administration’s “rebalance” to the region. The TPP has slowly evolved from a more limited agreement among four countries concluded in 2006 into the current 12-country FTA agreement, with the United States joining the negotiations in 2008. Japan, the most recent country to participate, joined the negotiations in 2013. This significantly increased the potential economic significance of the agreement to the United States, because Japan is the largest economy and trading partner without an existing U.S. FTA among TPP negotiating partners (thus having greater scope for trade liberalization with the United States). The United States already has FTAs with 6 of the 11 other countries participating. Malaysia and Vietnam also stand out among the TPP countries without existing U.S. FTAs, given the rapid growth in U.S. trade with the two nations over the past three decades and substantial presence of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) that will be affected by the TPP’s SOE provisions. Views on the potential impact of the agreement vary. Proponents argue that the TPP has the opportunity to boost economic growth and jobs through expanded trade and investment opportunities with negotiating partners that currently make up 37% of total U.S. goods and services trade, involves writing new trade rules and disciplines, and deepening U.S. trade and investment integration in what many see as the world’s most economically vibrant region. The agreement would eventually eliminate all tariffs on manufactured products and most agricultural goods. It also includes new trade disciplines on issues such as digital trade barriers, state-owned enterprises (SOEs), and regulatory coherence, among other provisions. Opponents voice concerns over potential job loss and competition in import-sensitive industries, and how a TPP agreement might limit U.S. ability to regulate in areas such as health, food safety, and the environment, among other concerns. The Obama Administration, joined by many analysts as well as many policymakers in the region, has argued that the strategic value of a potential TPP agreement parallels its economic value, contending that the agreement would strengthen U.S. allies and partners and reaffirm U.S. economic leadership in the region. The President has repeatedly highlighted the importance of maintaining U.S. leadership in crafting global trade rules, notably with reference to potentially alternative Chinese initiatives. China is not a party to the TPP. Others argue that past trade pacts have had a limited impact on broad foreign policy dynamics

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP): Negotiations and Issues for Congress

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a potential free trade agreement (FTA) among 12, and perhaps more, countries (Figure 1). The United States and 11 other countries o f the Asia-Pacific region—Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam—are negotiating the text of the FTA. With over 20 chapters under negotiation, the TPP partners envision the agreement to be “comprehensive and high-standard,” in that they seek to eliminate tariffs and nontariff barriers to trade in goods, services, and agriculture, and to establish or expand rules on a wide range of issues including intellectual property rights, foreign direct investment, and other trade-related issues. They also strive to create a “21st-century agreement” that addresses new and cross-cutting issues presented by an increasingly globalized economy. The TPP draws congressional interest on a number of fronts. Congress would have to approve implementing legislation for U.S. commitments under the agreement to enter into force. In addition, under long-established executive-legislative practice, the Administration notifies and consults with congressional leaders, before, during, and after trade agreements have been negotiated. Furthermore, the TPP will likely affect a range of sectors and regions of the U.S. economy of direct interest to Members of Congress and could influence the shape and path of U.S. trade policy for the foreseeable future. This report examines the issues related to the proposed TPP, the state and substance of the negotiations (to the degree that the information is publicly available), the specific areas under negotiation, the policy and economic contexts in which the TPP would fit, and the issues for Congress that the TPP presents. The report will be revised and updated as events warrant

Experiencing time in the early English East India Company

The structuring of time in the early modern period has traditionally been associated with a broad, European-led shift towards ‘accuracy’, and with it connotations of ‘modernity’. Yet, a fuller examination of the temporal world of early modern merchants challenges such a teleology. Taking as its focus the English East India Company, this article situates concerns for accuracy in the management of time (and with it profit) within a broader spectrum of temporal influences, including seasonal, indigenous, and embodied time. It draws upon the experiences of the merchant Isaac Lawrence (1639-1679), whose trade began around the Mediterranean Sea but ended in the service of the EIC in Persia. Like many of his contemporaries in the Company, Lawrence died relatively young and in obscure circumstances; however, the survival of his personal papers through his brother William Lawrence affords vital insights into how time was observed, measured, and felt within mobile early modern lives. Read alongside Company records, Lawrence’s experience makes clear the necessity of reading subjective temporalities into historical understandings of time within global frameworks

The devotional landscape of the royalist exile, 1649-1660

This study aims both to build upon and to challenge recent historiographical interest in the cultural origins and religious associations of royalism in the midseventeenth century by examining the devotional character of the exiled royalist community of the 1650s. Focusing primarily upon those royalists closely affiliated with the court of Charles II, it assesses the impact of disillusionment, dislocation, penury, and forced mobility upon the subsequent framings and reframings of religious identities. It considers the multiple venues in which these articulations appeared and were negotiated— through personal correspondence, print, diplomacy, rumor, and conversion—in order to illuminate the challenges posed to the maintenance of clear confessional boundaries and community ideals. In doing so, this article argues for the incorporation of a much broader sense of the impact of the “English Revolution” that considers the full geographical, chronological, and cultural scope of these upheavals across Britain, Ireland, and Continental Europe

Automated, high accuracy classification of Parkinsonian disorders: a pattern recognition approach

Progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), multiple system atrophy (MSA) and idiopathic Parkinson’s disease (IPD) can be clinically indistinguishable, especially in the early stages, despite distinct patterns of molecular pathology. Structural neuroimaging holds promise for providing objective biomarkers for discriminating these diseases at the single subject level but all studies to date have reported incomplete separation of disease groups. In this study, we employed multi-class pattern recognition to assess the value of anatomical patterns derived from a widely available structural neuroimaging sequence for automated classification of these disorders. To achieve this, 17 patients with PSP, 14 with IPD and 19 with MSA were scanned using structural MRI along with 19 healthy controls (HCs). An advanced probabilistic pattern recognition approach was employed to evaluate the diagnostic value of several pre-defined anatomical patterns for discriminating the disorders, including: (i) a subcortical motor network; (ii) each of its component regions and (iii) the whole brain. All disease groups could be discriminated simultaneously with high accuracy using the subcortical motor network. The region providing the most accurate predictions overall was the midbrain/brainstem, which discriminated all disease groups from one another and from HCs. The subcortical network also produced more accurate predictions than the whole brain and all of its constituent regions. PSP was accurately predicted from the midbrain/brainstem, cerebellum and all basal ganglia compartments; MSA from the midbrain/brainstem and cerebellum and IPD from the midbrain/brainstem only. This study demonstrates that automated analysis of structural MRI can accurately predict diagnosis in individual patients with Parkinsonian disorders, and identifies distinct patterns of regional atrophy particularly useful for this process

Near-Infrared Variability Study of the Central 2.3 arcmin x 2.3 arcmin of the Galactic Centre II. Identification of RR Lyrae Stars in the Milky Way Nuclear Star Cluster

Because of strong and spatially highly variable interstellar extinction and extreme source crowding, the faint (K>15) stellar population in the Milky Way's nuclear cluster is still poorly studied. RR Lyrae stars provide us with a tool to estimate the mass of the oldest, relative dim stellar population. Recently, we analyzed HST/WFC3/IR observations of the central 2.3'x2.3' of the Milky Way and found 21 variable stars with periods between 0.2 and 1d. Here, we present a further comprehensive analysis of these stars. The period-luminosity relationship of RR Lyrae is used to derive their extinctions and distances. Using multiple approaches, we classify our sample as four RRc, four RRab and three candidates, ten binaries. Especially, the four RRabs show sawtooth light curves and fall exactly onto the Oosterhoff I division in the Bailey diagram. Compared to the RRabs reported by Minniti et al, 2016, our new RRabs have higher extinction (A_K>1.8) and should be closer to the Galactic Centre. The extinction and distance of one RRab match those for the nuclear star cluster given in previous works. We perform simulations and find that after correcting for incompleteness, there could be no more than 40 RRabs within the nuclear star cluster and in our field-of-view. Through comparing with the known globular clusters of the Milky Way, we estimate that if there exists an old, metal-poor (-1.5<[Fe/H]<-1) stellar population in the Milky Way nuclear star cluster on a scale of 5x5pc, then it contributes at most 4.7x10^5 solar mass, i.e., ~18% of the stellar mass.Comment: 33 pages, 10 figures. The paper has been accepted to be published in MNRA

Dynamic communities in multichannel data: An application to the foreign exchange market during the 2007--2008 credit crisis

We study the cluster dynamics of multichannel (multivariate) time series by representing their correlations as time-dependent networks and investigating the evolution of network communities. We employ a node-centric approach that allows us to track the effects of the community evolution on the functional roles of individual nodes without having to track entire communities. As an example, we consider a foreign exchange market network in which each node represents an exchange rate and each edge represents a time-dependent correlation between the rates. We study the period 2005-2008, which includes the recent credit and liquidity crisis. Using dynamical community detection, we find that exchange rates that are strongly attached to their community are persistently grouped with the same set of rates, whereas exchange rates that are important for the transfer of information tend to be positioned on the edges of communities. Our analysis successfully uncovers major trading changes that occurred in the market during the credit crisis.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figures, accepted for publication in Chao

High Resolution Infrared Imaging and Spectroscopy of the Pistol Nebula: Evidence for Ejection

We present new NICMOS/HST infrared images and CGS4/UKIRT Br-alpha (4.05 um) spectroscopy of the Pistol Star and its associated nebula, finding strong evidence to support the hypothesis that the Pistol Nebula was ejected from the Pistol Star. The Pa-alpha NICMOS image shows that the nebula completely surrounds the Pistol Star, although the line intensity is much stronger on its northern and western edges. The Br-alpha spectra show the classical ring-like signature of quasi-spherical expansion, with weak blueshifted emission (V_max approx -60 km/s) and strong redshifted emission (V_max approx +10 km/s), where the velocities are with respect to the velocity of the Pistol Star; further, the redshifted emission appears to be "flattened" in the position-velocity diagram. These data suggest that the nebula was ejected from the star several thousand years ago, with a velocity between the current terminal velocity of the stellar wind (95 km/s) and the present expansion velocity of gas in the outer shell of the nebula (60 km/s). The Pa-alpha image reveals several emission-line stars in the region, including two newly-identified emission-line stars north of the Pistol Star with spectral types earlier than WC8 (T_eff > 50,000 K). The presence of these stars, the morphology of the Pa-alpha emission, and the velocity field in the gas suggest that the side of the nebula furthest from us is approaching, and being ionized by, the hot stars of the Quintuplet, and that the highest velocity redshifted gas has been decelerated by winds from the Quintuplet stars. We also discuss the possibility that the nebular gas might be magnetically confined by the ambient magnetic field delineated by the nearby nonthermal filaments.Comment: Figure 1 is included as a JPG file. Figure 1 and 2 also available at ftp://quintup.astro.ucla.edu/pistol2

Near-Infrared Variability Study of the Central 2.3 arcmin x 2.3 arcmin of the Galactic Centre I. Catalog of Variable Sources

We used four-year baseline HST/WFC3 IR observations of the Galactic Centre in the F153M band (1.53 micron) to identify variable stars in the central ~2.3'x2.3' field. We classified 3845 long-term (periods from months to years) and 76 short-term (periods of a few days or less) variables among a total sample of 33070 stars. For 36 of the latter ones, we also derived their periods (<3 days). Our catalog not only confirms bright long period variables and massive eclipsing binaries identified in previous works, but also contains many newly recognized dim variable stars. For example, we found \delta Scuti and RR Lyrae stars towards the Galactic Centre for the first time, as well as one BL Her star (period < 1.3 d). We cross-correlated our catalog with previous spectroscopic studies and found that 319 variables have well-defined stellar types, such as Wolf-Rayet, OB main sequence, supergiants and asymptotic giant branch stars. We used colours and magnitudes to infer the probable variable types for those stars without accurately measured periods or spectroscopic information. We conclude that the majority of unclassified variables could potentially be eclipsing/ellipsoidal binaries and Type II Cepheids. Our source catalog will be valuable for future studies aimed at constraining the distance, star formation history and massive binary fraction of the Milky Way nuclear star cluster.Comment: has been accepted to be published in MNRAS, 64 pages, 26 figures. The complete lists of table 3, 4, 8 and 9 will be published onlin

Detecting a Currency's Dominance or Dependence using Foreign Exchange Network Trees

In a system containing a large number of interacting stochastic processes, there will typically be many non-zero correlation coefficients. This makes it difficult to either visualize the system's inter-dependencies, or identify its dominant elements. Such a situation arises in Foreign Exchange (FX) which is the world's biggest market. Here we develop a network analysis of these correlations using Minimum Spanning Trees (MSTs). We show that not only do the MSTs provide a meaningful representation of the global FX dynamics, but they also enable one to determine momentarily dominant and dependent currencies. We find that information about a country's geographical ties emerges from the raw exchange-rate data. Most importantly from a trading perspective, we discuss how to infer which currencies are `in play' during a particular period of time