U.S. Beer Flows & the Impact of NAFTA

After World War II and up until the 1980’s, the liberalization of trade was realized on a multilateral basis. World trade grew at twice the pace of GDP growth (Krueger, 1999). However, starting in the mid 1980’s, preferential trading arrangements (PTAs) increased in numbers. Perhaps the most influential PTA ever to be signed could be the North America Free Trade Agreement, or simply NAFTA, which came into effect January 1, 1994. The agreement established a free-trade area between its member countries- US, Canada and Mexico- in which all tariffs would be phased out between them, but each country would maintain its separate national barriers against the rest of the world. A lot of attention has been paid to the impact of NAFTA on the welfare of its member countries and on the rest of the world. This paper will focus on the impact of the agreement on the US’s beer trade flows by analyzing annual import and export data using several methods. To our knowledge there is no precedent for such research. Section II provides a brief review of the conclusions and methodology of existing works on NAFTA trade issues, as well as some important aspects of the agreement. Section III provides an overview of the world beer industry, and the NAFTA member countries beer markets. Section IV provides in great detail the methodology that we will employ. The focus of Section V is to explain the results obtained. Section VI provides conclusions and implications for further research on this subject. References and other sources can be found in Section VII.beer trade on US market, NAFTA

The emergence of modern civil police in Scotland: a case study of the police and systems of police in Edinburghshire 1800-1833

The Police in Britain have been a focus for academic research over a number of decades but there is a dearth of historic authority about the service north of the border. Lack of information is lamentable, for Scotland through its own legal institutions entrenched in the Treaty of Union, has developed a distinct system of criminal justice and a Police service with unique democratic features. Prior to the Union of the Crowns, the crowner in Scotland was the local enforcement officer under the direction of the Sheriff who apart from administrative functions, was responsible for maintaining law and order in the Shire. James VI introduced Justices of the Peace and constables in Scotland by legal transplant. As the metropolis, Edinburgh had constables appointed from 1611 before an APS in 1617 led to their introduction throughout the kingdom. For almost two centuries the traditional role and responsibilities of constables north and south of the border, developed along similar lines but under different forms of judicial control and direction. Whereas in England local judicial authority lay with JP's, in Scotland their legal status remained below that of the Sheriff in the shire and the Bailies in burgh towns. Despite the popular myth that modern Police was established by the London Metropolitan Police Act in 1829, this thesis describes how the salient features of the modern civil Police and system of police developed earlier in Scotland, primarily through a series of local Edinburgh Police Acts obtained in 1805, 1812 and 1822. On the premise that modern police are a full time paid Force; bureaucratically organised under an operational command and control structure separate from judicial direction; and subject to both the rule of law and democratic accountability. The efforts of Patrick Colquhoun as a Police reformer were more tangible in early 19th century Edinburgh than London or indeed Dublin. Although subsidiary themes such as local financing, internal management, use of informants, prisoner care and even the purpose of the uniform in a preventive Police regime are considered, the thesis concludes under a revisionist explanation that modern Police emerged as a logical outcome of the perceived need for more effective law enforcement and wider order maintenance, consequential to the process of urbanisation. Necessity coupled with increased wealth, eventually undermined resistance to introduce new local financial burdens in other areas, hence the introduction of the new Police was piecemeal and uneven throughout Britain during the 19th century

Millennial Rust

Millennial Rust is a one-artist anthology comic, consisting of the first chapter of a serialized story, The Turkey Avenger, a series of autobiographical comic strips, and a collection of developmental material from the two projects. The Turkey Avenger follows the exploits of the Turkey Avenger, a self-styled superhero with no discernable superpowers who hopes to “do good” in the best way he knows how: fighting crime. Unfortunely for him, the Turkey Avenger has no idea where to begin his quest for justice, stumbles into what appears to be a kidnapping, and is soon drawn into a conspiracy that’s clearly over his head. This comic book contains the first chapter of the story, beginning right in the heart of a vague Western New York city. It ends with the set-up of a four-part story. The autobiographical comics, Belted, are drawn from my senior year journal and chronicle the thoughts, frustrations, and struggles encountered while I attempt to create the Capstone project itself. The two projects are included simultaneously because the autobiographical strips became a way to test and explore the medium of comics in a more informal way, explain some of the process of making the story, and helped me to grow as an artist. The center of the book, between the two sections, there are two drawings of the Turkey Avenger: the first drawing of the character, from 2006, and the final drawing of the character pre-Millennial Rust, from 2013. All material within Millennial Rust was created using a brush and ink to draw the comics by hand, and then digitally putting in color and the lettering for some of the comics

The Effect of Synthetic Aperture Radar Image Resolution on Target Discrimination

This research details the effect of spatial resolution on target discrimination in Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) images. Multiple SAR image chips containing targets and non-targets are used to test a baseline Automatic Target Recognition (ATR) system with reduced spatial resolution. Spatial resolution is reduced by lowering the pixel count or synthesizing a degraded image by filtering and reducing the pixel count. A two-parameter Constant False Alarm Rate (CFAR) detector is tested, and three feature sets, size, contrast, and texture, are used to train a linear classifier and to estimate probability density functions for the two classes. The results are scored using Area Under the Receiver Operating Characteristic (AUROC) curve. The CFAR detector is shown to perform better at a lower resolution. All three feature sets perform well together with degradation of resolution; separately the sets have different performances. The texture features perform the best because they do not depend on the number of pixels on the target; the size features perform the worst for the same reason. The contrast features yield improved performance when the resolution is slightly reduced

Ernst Toller : from Einheitsfront to Volksfront. The development of Toller's political ideology (1919-1939)

This thesis examines the development of the political outlook of the German author and revolutionary politician, Ernst Toller. It begins by looking at Toller's early years and explains how his experience as a front-line soldier during the First World war transformed his views, causing him to reject the conservative-nationalist ethos he had grown up with and to become, in his own description, a revolutionary pacifist. It then looks at his involvement in the revolutionary events which took place in Bavaria at the end of the First World War, the so-called Räterepublik, examines how they affected his understanding of social and political reality and traces their artistic reflection in the plays he wrote in the following period. A recurrent theme in Toller's political thinking throughout the years of the Weimar Republic was the idea of an Einheitsfront, a defence block of workers' organisations, which he advocated as the only means of halting the rise of National Socialism. Unfortunately, Toller's appeals to the main workers' parties to form such a block went unheard, yet they are significant all the same in that they reveal the acute political insight of a man whom many of his contemporaries dismissed as a hopeless utopian. Interestingly, and a point often missed in studies of his politics, Toller abandoned the Einheitsfront after he went into exile in 1933 and came to favour instead the creation of a Volksfront a broad, cross-party anti-fascist coalition which the Soviet Union vigorously promoted all through the 1930s until the signing of the Stalin-Hitler Pact in 1940. Toller's support for this idea, in part a corollary of his support for the Soviet Union itself, had a profound impact on his political outlook in exile, and caused him to close his eyes to the repression suffered by the opponents of the Stalin regime both inside and outside Russia, and, most significantly, led him to ignore the nascent socialist revolution which flourished in Spain after the defeat of Franco's coup d'etat in 1936. This study examines in some detail, therefore, Toller's involvement in the Volksfront, redefines his attitude towards Communist Russia and shows how his efforts to suppress his revolutionary beliefs and to become instead a mere anti-fascist affected his creative spirit during his years of exile

Competition, Regulation, and Performance in Television Broadcasting

In this Article, Professor John McGowan provides a detailed description of the television industry\u27s structure and the effects of competition on programming policy. McGowan offers ways in which FCC regulation of industry structure may promote diversity of programming without controlling the content of individual programs or broadcasters\u27 programming policies

Harmony and discord within the English ‘counter-culture’, 1965-1975, with particular reference to the ‘rock operas’ Hair, Godspell, Tommy and Jesus Christ Superstar

PhDThis thesis considers the discrete, historically-specific theatrical and musical sub-genre of ‘Rock Opera’ as a lens through which to examine the cultural, political and social changes that are widely assumed to have characterised ‘The Sixties’ in Britain. The musical and dramatic texts, creation and production of Hair (1967), Tommy (1969), Godspell (1971), Jesus Christ Superstar (1970) and other neglected ‘Rock Operas’ of the period are analysed. Their great popularity with ‘mainstream’ audiences is considered and contrasted with the overwhelmingly negative and often internally contradictory reaction towards them from the English ‘counter-culture’. This examination offers new insights into both the ‘counter-culture’ and the ‘mainstream’ against which it claimed to define and differentiate itself. The four ‘Rock Operas’, two of which are based upon Christian scriptures, are considered as narratives of spiritual quest. The relationship between the often controversial quests for re-defined forms of faith and the apparently precipitous ‘secularization’ and ‘de-Christianization’ of British society during the 1960s and 1970s is considered. The thesis therefore analyses the ‘Rock Operas’ as significant, enlightening prisms through which to view many of the profound societal debates – over ‘faith’ and ‘belief’ in the widest senses, sexuality, the Vietnam war, generational conflict, drugs and ‘spiritual enlightenment’, and race – which were, to some considerable extent, elevated onto the national, political agenda by the activities of the broadly-defined ‘counter-culture’. It considers subsequent representations of the ‘counter-culture’ as the root of a contested but enduring popular legacy of ‘The Sixties' as a period of profound cultural change

Regulation Of Protein Synthesis By Leucine And Amino Acid Balance.

The effects of a physiologically balanced mixture of amino acids on the synthesis of proteins has been investigated. The roles of leucine and tryptophan, both implicated in the regulation of protein synthesis, were also studied. The balance of amino acids is important under specific rate-limiting conditions; the physiological balance protects the protein synthesizing system from the stressed condition of leucine limitation. Leucine is an important regulator of protein synthesis and the tryptophan effect on translation is dependent on the concentration of leucine. Thus tryptophan is a secondary regulator. The relative concentration of amino acids, described as balance, alterned the synthesis of protein in cell-free and intact cell culture experiments, when leucine was limiting. Both qualitative and quantitative differences were observed. The effect of the amino acid mixture decreased when the concentration of leucine was physiological. Two different components were sensitive to added leucine. This sensitivity was indicated by different kinetics; one component showed low Km and Vmax values while the other showed high Km and Vmax values. The initial rate of protein synthesis was first order with respect to leucine when it was limiting and mixed order when it was physiological. The effect of tryptophan on stimulation of protein synthesis was small in comparison to the effect of leucine, and was dependent on the ooncentration of leucine. The incorporation of leucine into protein was changed as the tryptophan concentration changed when leucine was limiting; synthesis of albumin was slightly stimulated. The ribosome distribution did not change as indicated by polysome analysis. The incorporation of leucine into protein did not change when· leucine was physiological and tryptophan was. varied. However, the ribosome distribution was altered. A low molecular weight inhibitor of protein synthesis was found in cell extracts which acted independently of amino acid or leucine concentrations. It could be partially removed by treatment with G-25 Sephadex, but has not been purified. Several nucleotide effects independent of amino acid concentration were also observed. ATP, at increasing concentrations, significantly depressed levels of synthesis and concentrations greater than 4 mM caused 100% inhibition of the protein synthesizing system. The phosphodiesterase inhibitor, theophyllin~ enhanced synthesis of albumin, although the cyclic nucleotide, cAMP, did not itself alter synthesis of protein. Finally, the concentrations of amino acids in plasma of C3HeB/FeJ mice were determined. The two amino acids examined in the protein synthesis experiments, tryptophan and leucine, were found to remain relatively constant, regardless of the fed or fasted condition of the animals, but showed changes with the age of the animals