Romania's evolving legal framework for private sector development

As the economies of Central and Eastern Europe move from central planning and state ownership to market-driven development of private sector activity, they are undertaking comprehensive change in the"rules of the game", the legal framework for economic activity. The authors analyze the evolving legal framework for private sector development in Romania. The government has worked intensively in the last two years to create a legal framework for a market economy. It has adopted not only a new constitution but also extensive new legislation covering real and intellectual property, companies, and foreign investment. It has revived the pre-war civil code as a basis for contract law, and is moving to modernize its bankruptcy code. The only area surveyed in which little legal reform has occurred is antimonopoly law. Challenges remain in both law and practice. The broad principles of private ownership, free market exchange, and equal treatment of public and private firms are well recognized and have been largely achieved. But a tendency towards centralized, bureaucratic control remains in excessive requirements for approval and uneconomic limits on certain activities. Moreover, implementation will take a long time because there is little or no institutional framework for enforcement and dispute resolution. Developing a body of regulation and case practice will take time.Environmental Economics&Policies,National Governance,Legal Products,Banks&Banking Reform,Real&Intellectual Property Law

The legal framework for private sector development in a transitional economy : the case of Poland

The economies of Central and Eastern Europe are in the midst of a historic transition from central planning and state ownership to development of a market-driven private sector. This transition requires comprehensive changes in"rules of the game"- including the legal framework for economic activity. A market economy presupposes a set of property rights and a system of laws or customs that allow the exchange of those rights. The legal framework in a market economy has at least three basic functions: defining the universe of property rights; setting the rules for entry into and exit from productive activities; and setting the rules of market exchange. These legal tasks are accomplished by areas of law such as: company, foreign investment, bankruptcy, contract and competition law. Poland has a rich legal tradition dating from pre-socialist times, which was suppressed but not eliminated during its forty years of socialism. This tradition is being revised as the country moves toward a private market economy. The current legal framework in Poland closely follows other continental jurisdictions and has a clear and reasonable internal logic. Many of the laws are old, but most are flexible enough to permit a wide range of modern, market-oriented activity. Property law, however, remains a"jungle". The wide discretion and general lack of precedent create tremendous legal uncertainty that is sure to hamper private sector development.Environmental Economics&Policies,Banks&Banking Reform,Municipal Housing and Land,Legal Products,Land and Real Estate Development

Symptoms of Nitrogen Saturation in a Riparian Wetland

Riparian forests are in a unique position in the landscape since they form a transition between uplands and aquatic systems. These ecosystems may be highly susceptible to nitrogen (N) saturation since they may be subject to high inputs of N from upland areas. We measured potential net N mineralization and nitrification, soil inorganic N levels, microbial biomass carbon (C) and N content, and the N content of litter as indicators of N saturation in two riparian zones on the eastern and western sides of a stream. The sites had similar soils, vegetation, and hydrology, but differing upland land use. The eastern or enriched site was downgradient of a dense residential housing development (built in the 1950s) that produced high groundwater nitrate (NO3—) concentrations. The western or control site had an undeveloped upland. Our objectives were (1) to evaluate if groundwater NO3— loading had induced changes in surface soil N—cycle processes that are symptoms of N saturation in the enriched site and (2) to evaluate these changes in relation to inputs and outputs of N to the site. Soil inorganic—N levels, litter N content, and potential net N mineralization and nitrification were significantly higher on the enriched site relative to the control site, suggesting that the enriched site and N saturated. However, input—output analysis indicated that the enriched site was still a sink for upland derived NO3—. High rates of denitrification and storage of N in soil organic matter appear to moderate N saturation on the enriched site

Deterministic delivery of remote entanglement on a quantum network

Large-scale quantum networks promise to enable secure communication, distributed quantum computing, enhanced sensing and fundamental tests of quantum mechanics through the distribution of entanglement across nodes. Moving beyond current two-node networks requires the rate of entanglement generation between nodes to exceed their decoherence rates. Beyond this critical threshold, intrinsically probabilistic entangling protocols can be subsumed into a powerful building block that deterministically provides remote entangled links at pre-specified times. Here we surpass this threshold using diamond spin qubit nodes separated by 2 metres. We realise a fully heralded single-photon entanglement protocol that achieves entangling rates up to 39 Hz, three orders of magnitude higher than previously demonstrated two-photon protocols on this platform. At the same time, we suppress the decoherence rate of remote entangled states to 5 Hz by dynamical decoupling. By combining these results with efficient charge-state control and mitigation of spectral diffusion, we are able to deterministically deliver a fresh remote state with average entanglement fidelity exceeding 0.5 at every clock cycle of $\sim$100 ms without any pre- or post-selection. These results demonstrate a key building block for extended quantum networks and open the door to entanglement distribution across multiple remote nodes.Comment: v2 - updated to include relevant citatio

Exploring Agricultural Production Systems and Their Fundamental Components with System Dynamics Modelling

Agricultural production in the United States is undergoing marked changes due to rapid shifts in consumer demands, input costs, and concerns for food safety and environmental impact. Agricultural production systems are comprised of multidimensional components and drivers that interact in complex ways to influence production sustainability. In a mixed-methods approach, we combine qualitative and quantitative data to develop and simulate a system dynamics model that explores the systemic interaction of these drivers on the economic, environmental and social sustainability of agricultural production. We then use this model to evaluate the role of each driver in determining the differences in sustainability between three distinct production systems: crops only, livestock only, and an integrated crops and livestock system. The result from these modelling efforts found that the greatest potential for sustainability existed with the crops only production system. While this study presents a stand-alone contribution to sector knowledge and practice, it encourages future research in this sector that employs similar systems-based methods to enable more sustainable practices and policies within agricultural production

Entanglement between a diamond spin qubit and a photonic time-bin qubit at telecom wavelength

We report on the realization and verification of quantum entanglement between an NV electron spin qubit and a telecom-band photonic qubit. First we generate entanglement between the spin qubit and a 637 nm photonic time-bin qubit, followed by photonic quantum frequency conversion that transfers the entanglement to a 1588 nm photon. We characterize the resulting state by correlation measurements in different bases and find a lower bound to the Bell state fidelity of F = 0.77 +/- 0.03. This result presents an important step towards extending quantum networks via optical fiber infrastructure

Comparative transcriptome analysis of obligately asexual and cyclically sexual rotifers reveals genes with putative functions in sexual reproduction, dormancy, and asexual egg production

© The Author(s), 2013. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in BMC Genomics 14 (2013): 412, doi:10.1186/1471-2164-14-412.Sexual reproduction is a widely studied biological process because it is critically important to the genetics, evolution, and ecology of eukaryotes. Despite decades of study on this topic, no comprehensive explanation has been accepted that explains the evolutionary forces underlying its prevalence and persistence in nature. Monogonont rotifers offer a useful system for experimental studies relating to the evolution of sexual reproduction due to their rapid reproductive rate and close relationship to the putatively ancient asexual bdelloid rotifers. However, little is known about the molecular underpinnings of sex in any rotifer species. We generated mRNA-seq libraries for obligate parthenogenetic (OP) and cyclical parthenogenetic (CP) strains of the monogonont rotifer, Brachionus calyciflorus, to identify genes specific to both modes of reproduction. Our differential expression analysis identified receptors with putative roles in signaling pathways responsible for the transition from asexual to sexual reproduction. Differential expression of a specific copy of the duplicated cell cycle regulatory gene CDC20 and specific copies of histone H2A suggest that such duplications may underlie the phenotypic plasticity required for reproductive mode switch in monogononts. We further identified differential expression of genes involved in the formation of resting eggs, a process linked exclusively to sex in this species. Finally, we identified transcripts from the bdelloid rotifer Adineta ricciae that have significant sequence similarity to genes with higher expression in CP strains of B. calyciflorus. Our analysis of global gene expression differences between facultatively sexual and exclusively asexual populations of B. calyciflorus provides insights into the molecular nature of sexual reproduction in rotifers. Furthermore, our results offer insight into the evolution of obligate asexuality in bdelloid rotifers and provide indicators important for the use of monogononts as a model system for investigating the evolution of sexual reproduction.This work was funded by National Institutes of Health Institute of General Medical Sciences (grant number 5R01GM079484, to JML and DMW)