From Global Savings Glut to Financing Infrastructure

This paper proposes an institutional solution that can help unlock the flow of low yielding longterm savings towards high-return infrastructure investments. The solution is to transform public-private partnerships in infrastructure and the classic model of multilateral development banks. Instead of thinking of public-private partnerships as bilateral contracts between a private concession operator and a government agency, we argue that they should be conceived as partnerships that also involve a development bank and long-term institutional investors as partners. We propose a new model for development banks, which is to transform themselves into originate-and-distribute banks for PPP infrastructure projects. This way they can conserve their valuable capital and leverage their expertise and capabilities by making them available to longterm institutional investors

Book Reviews

Book reviews by Edmund A. Stephan, Charles E. Clark, Joseph A. McClain, Roger Paul Peters, and Leon H. Wallace

How Effective is Monetary Policy in the Presence of High Informality in Nigeria

This study investigates whether the existence of high informality in Nigeria dampens effective transmission of monetary policy variation to retail rates. Using time series data from 1981-2018, the study adopts ARDL model to estimate both the long and short-run impacts of a high informal economy on the effectiveness of monetary policy. Findings reveal that changes in monetary policy rate has a significant positive impact on retail rates and that, without accounting for informality in the long-run, the transmission of monetary policy to commercial banks' average lending rate is about 95 percent. In addition, the study finds that, in the long-run, informality dampens the effectiveness of monetary policy in Nigeria through the interest rate channel by at least 72 percentage points. The authors, therefore, conclude that high presence of informality in Nigeria dampens the effectiveness of the monetary policy and that the size of the informal economy and commercial bank lending rate are positively related

UC-240 Gone Fishin\u27 VR

Gone Fishing is a VR game that allows the player to fish from the comfort of their own home. This take on a fishing simulator has creative and playful designs that are sure to surprise the players. With this game, we intend to invoke different comedic aspects found in other games such as designs, descriptions, and possible voiceovers in order to give the players a good time. This isn’t the average fishing simulator

Chemical weed control in field corn for 1982 -- part 1 : preplanting incorporated treatments

Harold D. Kerr, Joseph H. Scott, E. J. Peters, L. E. Anderson, O. Hale Fletchall, David Guethle, Zane R. Helsel and Howard Guscar (Department of Agronomy, College of Agriculture)New 1/82/15

Chemical weed control in field corn for 1982, Part 2. Pre-emergence and postemergence

Harold D. Kerr, Joseph H. Scott, E. J. Peters, L. E. Anderson, O. Hale Fletchall, David Guethle, Zane R. Helsel and Howard Guscar (Department of Agronomy, College of Agriculture)Revised 1/82/15

Using Remotely-Sensed Estimates of Soil Moisture to Infer Soil Texture and Hydraulic Properties across a Semi-arid Watershed

Near-surface soil moisture is a critical component of land surface energy and water balance studies encompassing a wide range of disciplines. However, the processes of infiltration, runoff, and evapotranspiration in the vadose zone of the soil are not easy to quantify or predict because of the difficulty in accurately representing soil texture and hydraulic properties in land surface models. This study approaches the problem of parameterizing soils from a unique perspective based on components originally developed for operational estimation of soil moisture for mobility assessments. Estimates of near-surface soil moisture derived from passive (L-band) microwave remote sensing were acquired on six dates during the Monsoon '90 experiment in southeastern Arizona, and used to calibrate hydraulic properties in an offline land surface model and infer information on the soil conditions of the region. Specifically, a robust parameter estimation tool (PEST) was used to calibrate the Noah land surface model and run at very high spatial resolution across the Walnut Gulch Experimental Watershed. Errors in simulated versus observed soil moisture were minimized by adjusting the soil texture, which in turn controls the hydraulic properties through the use of pedotransfer functions. By estimating a continuous range of widely applicable soil properties such as sand, silt, and clay percentages rather than applying rigid soil texture classes, lookup tables, or large parameter sets as in previous studies, the physical accuracy and consistency of the resulting soils could then be assessed. In addition, the sensitivity of this calibration method to the number and timing of microwave retrievals is determined in relation to the temporal patterns in precipitation and soil drying. The resultant soil properties were applied to an extended time period demonstrating the improvement in simulated soil moisture over that using default or county-level soil parameters. The methodology is also applied to an independent case at Walnut Gulch using a new soil moisture product from active (C-band) radar imagery with much lower spatial and temporal resolution. Overall, results demonstrate the potential to gain physically meaningful soils information using simple parameter estimation with few but appropriately timed remote sensing retrievals

Structural basis of transposon end recognition explains central features of Tn7 transposition systems

Tn7 is a bacterial transposon with relatives containing element-encoded CRISPR-Cas systems mediating RNA-guided transposon insertion. Here, we present the 2.7 Å cryoelectron microscopy structure of prototypic Tn7 transposase TnsB interacting with the transposon end DNA. When TnsB interacts across repeating binding sites, it adopts a beads-on-a-string architecture, where the DNA-binding and catalytic domains are arranged in a tiled and intertwined fashion. The DNA-binding domains form few base-specific contacts leading to a binding preference that requires multiple weakly conserved sites at the appropriate spacing to achieve DNA sequence specificity. TnsB binding imparts differences in the global structure of the protein-bound DNA ends dictated by the spacing or overlap of binding sites explaining functional differences in the left and right ends of the element. We propose a model of the strand-transfer complex in which the terminal TnsB molecule is rearranged so that its catalytic domain is in a position conducive to transposition

CRLX101, a Nanoparticle–Drug Conjugate Containing Camptothecin, Improves Rectal Cancer Chemoradiotherapy by Inhibiting DNA Repair and HIF1α

Novel agents are needed to improve chemoradiotherapy for locally advanced rectal cancer. In this study, we assessed the ability of CRLX101, an investigational nanoparticle-drug conjugate containing the payload camptothecin (CPT), to improve therapeutic responses as compared to standard chemotherapy. CRLX101 was evaluated as a radiosensitizer in colorectal cancer cell lines and murine xenograft models. CRLX101 was as potent as CPT in vitro in its ability to radiosensitize cancer cells. Evaluations in vivo demonstrated that the addition of CRLX101 to standard chemoradiotherapy significantly increased therapeutic efficacy by inhibiting DNA repair and HIF-1α pathway activation in tumor cells. Notably, CRLX101 was more effective than oxaliplatin at enhancing the efficacy of chemoradiotherapy, with CRLX101 and 5-fluorouracil (5-FU) producing the highest therapeutic efficacy. Gastrointestinal toxicity was also significantly lower for CRLX101 compared to CPT when combined with radiotherapy. Our results offer a preclinical proof of concept for CRLX101 as a modality to improve the outcome of neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy for rectal cancer treatment, in support of ongoing clinical evaluation of this agent (LCC1315 {"type":"clinical-trial","attrs":{"text":"NCT02010567","term_id":"NCT02010567"}}NCT02010567)