Pesticide Use and IPM Adoption: Does IPM Reduce Pesticide Use in the United States?

In 2001, the United States General Accounting Office issued a report entitled “Management Improvements Needed to Further Promote Integrated Pest Management.” This report documents that overall agricultural pesticide usage increased from 1992 to 2000 while the use of the most toxic levels of pesticides have decreased. The USDA suggests that these changes in pesticide use could have been caused by integrated pest management (IPM) adoption. However, the GAO maintains that there is not enough evidence to support this claim. This paper contributes to this debate by estimating the relationship between pesticide use and IPM practices adopted for number of commodities across the nation from 1996 to 2005. The paper exploits an aggregated data set that combines surveys from different crops and different years, but it also examines specific surveys conducted on cotton and corn crops to better control for other factors that could affect pesticide use. The paper applies multiple definitions of IPM and uses different spatial variables to control for environmental effects that affect pesticide use. Although some specific strategies such as GM adoption decreased the amount of active ingredients sprayed on cotton and corn, the results suggest that on average the adoption of IPM strategies lead to slightly increased pesticide spending and pounds of active ingredient sprayed per acre. This result is confirmed in both the analysis on the aggregated data as well as the analysis of the cotton and corn data. The results also suggest that fixed environmental factors explain a significant amount of chemical spending and pesticide use in the United States. The significance of these factors demonstrates the importance of research and programs that aid farmers in making intelligent pesticide use decisions at the local level.Pesticide Use, Integrated Pest Management, Corn Production, Cotton Production, Agricultural and Food Policy, Environmental Economics and Policy,

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

The Home Video Industry

The purpose of this project is two-fold. The first purpose and the one most emphasized is to examine the specific attributes of the home video market in a structure-conduct-performance framework. To accomplish this task, one has to examine historic and current trends that have affected and will potentially affect the industry. The discussion of the home video market cannot take shape without an examination on the basic economic principles of sunk costs, marginal costs, elasticities of demand, price discrimination, potential competition, risk transferring and consumer preferences that run throughout motion picture entertainment including those facets of the business that do not deal directly with home video. The final part of this first purpose will be a quantitative analysis detailing how attributes of recently released home videos affect rental revenues. One reason for this regression model is to examine the relationship between theatrical revenues and rental revenues. Also, this analysis will examine the relationship between rental revenues and whether or not customers had the capability of purchasing the video. Hopefully, regression statistics will show definite trends that can be found throughout the home video market. The goal of the first part of the paper is to use positive economic analysis to give the reader an objective portrait of the home video market. The second purpose of this project is to expand the analysis beyond the video industry and make comparisons and contrasts with other industries; in this part of the paper, normative economic analysis will be used to relay to the reader more subjective opinions about the economy as a whole. The home video industry is a complex and dynamic one that is constantly being influenced by technology and innovation, a feature that mirrors many other entertainment and information industries such as recorded music and books. The home video industry also gives a representation of many other businesses that deal with both a sell-through market and a rental/lease market like home computers, cars, and some durable goods. The fate of the home video market, especially the fate of rental firms and formats, has definite parallels with many other sectors of the economy. Many of these relationships are matters of conjecture requiring a more subjective analysis, and for this reason, this purpose will not be treated as intensely as the first part of the paper. Because of it great complexities and numerous applications, the home video industry is one that is worthy of examining in greater detail. Economist Barry Litman described the industry in this manner, (the) motion picture entertainment industry will be one of the most fascinating and dynamic industries of the twenty-first century

Pesticide Use and IPM Adoption: Does IPM Reduce Pesticide Use in the United States?

In 2001, the United States General Accounting Office issued a report entitled “Management Improvements Needed to Further Promote Integrated Pest Management.” This report documents that overall agricultural pesticide usage increased from 1992 to 2000 while the use of the most toxic levels of pesticides have decreased. The USDA suggests that these changes in pesticide use could have been caused by integrated pest management (IPM) adoption. However, the GAO maintains that there is not enough evidence to support this claim. This paper contributes to this debate by estimating the relationship between pesticide use and IPM practices adopted for number of commodities across the nation from 1996 to 2005. The paper exploits an aggregated data set that combines surveys from different crops and different years, but it also examines specific surveys conducted on cotton and corn crops to better control for other factors that could affect pesticide use. The paper applies multiple definitions of IPM and uses different spatial variables to control for environmental effects that affect pesticide use. Although some specific strategies such as GM adoption decreased the amount of active ingredients sprayed on cotton and corn, the results suggest that on average the adoption of IPM strategies lead to slightly increased pesticide spending and pounds of active ingredient sprayed per acre. This result is confirmed in both the analysis on the aggregated data as well as the analysis of the cotton and corn data. The results also suggest that fixed environmental factors explain a significant amount of chemical spending and pesticide use in the United States. The significance of these factors demonstrates the importance of research and programs that aid farmers in making intelligent pesticide use decisions at the local level

Preliminary Investigation of Candidate Materials for Use in Accident Resistant Fuel

As part of a Collaborative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) with industry, Idaho National Laboratory (INL) is investigating several options for accident resistant uranium compounds including silicides, and nitrides for use in future light water reactor (LWR) fuels. This work is part of a larger effort to create accident tolerant fuel forms where changes to the fuel pellets, cladding, and cladding treatment are considered. The goal fuel form should have a resistance to water corrosion comparable to UO2, have an equal to or larger thermal conductivity than uranium dioxide, a melting temperature that allows the material to stay solid under power reactor conditions, and a uranium loading that maintains or improves current LWR power densities. During the course of this research, fuel fabricated at INL will be characterized, irradiated at the INL Advanced Test Reactor, and examined after irradiation at INL facilities to help inform industrial partners on candidate technologies

A charge-modified general amber force field for phospholipids: improved structural properties in the tensionless ensemble

<div><p>Accurately predicting the structural properties of phospholipid with a fully atomistic molecular model is critical for the study of pure phospholipid bilayers, mixed bilayer systems and bilayers containing proteins. The general amber force field (GAFF) has traditionally required the presence of a surface tension parameter to correctly model phospholipid bilayer properties such as area per lipid and order parameters. In this work, the GAFF partial charges for 1-palmitoyl-2-oleoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphate (POPA), 1-palmitoyl-2-oleoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphochiline (POPC) and 1-palmitoyl-2-oleoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphoglycerol (POPG) were re-parameterised utilising high-level ab initio calculations and the restrained electrostatic potential method. Simulations of pure POPA, POPC and POPG bilayers using the charge-modified GAFF and no applied surface tension are compared with available experimental data, the original GAFF model and the recent Lipid14 variant. The results indicate a significant improvement in the accuracy of the lipid model for reproducing experimental observables without the need for a surface tension parameter. The successful application of modifying the lipid charge distributions represents an alternative to the use of a surface tension parameter within GAFF, and highlights the importance of the partial charge calculations when modelling lipid bilayers.</p></div

Isolation of a Spotted Fever Group Rickettsia, Rickettsia peacockii, in a Rocky Mountain Wood Tick, Dermacentor andersoni, Cell Line

An embryonic cell line (DAE100) of the Rocky Mountain wood tick, Dermacentor andersoni, was observed by microscopy to be chronically infected with a rickettsialike organism. The organism was identified as a spotted fever group (SFG) rickettsia by PCR amplification and sequencing of portions of the 16S rRNA, citrate synthase, Rickettsia genus-specific 17-kDa antigen, and SFG-specific 190-kDa outer membrane protein A (rOmpA) genes. Sequence analysis of a partial rompA gene PCR fragment and indirect fluorescent antibody data for rOmpA and rOmpB indicated that this rickettsia was a strain (DaE100R) of Rickettsia peacockii, an SFG species presumed to be avirulent for both ticks and mammals. R. peacockii was successfully maintained in a continuous culture of DAE100 cells without apparent adverse effects on the host cells. Establishing cell lines from embryonic tissues of ticks offers an alternative technique for isolation of rickettsiae that are transovarially transmitted