349 research outputs found
Sheep CRC Renewal Proposal: Economic Evaluation of the Proposed Scientific Themes
The Australian sheep industry and its associated research and development agencies have developed a proposal for the CRC for Sheep Industry Innovation. “Top-down” and “bottomup” procedures were used to assess the expected economic benefits from this proposal. Formal “with-CRC” and “without-CRC” scenarios were defined for each product and each research theme. Relevant costs were similarly defined. The requested investment by the Commonwealth and the Australian sheep industry in the CRC is assessed relative to a scenario where an alternative, lower cost research program into this industry is implemented. These extra resources have a discounted value of about 518 million in present value terms, which is far in excess of the marginal investment. Thus every 15.30 to the industry in present value terms.wool, sheep meat, research and development, economic, evaluation, Australia, Agribusiness, Livestock Production/Industries, Production Economics, Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies, Q160,
Economic benefits of public investment in weed management: the case of vulpia in south-eastern Australia’s temperate pasture areas
The present paper reports an economic evaluation of the long-term benefits to Australia of research by the Cooperative Research Centre for Weed Management Systems (CRC) into the improved management of vulpia , the major annual grass weed of temperate pastures in New South Wales and Victoria. Vulpia reduces livestock production by competition with more desirable pasture species, by the production of low quality feed at critical times of the grazing cycle, and by injury to animals. A 20-year stochastic benefit-cost analysis indicated that reducing the impacts of vulpia in these pastures produced a mean net present value of # A58.3 million and a mean benefit-cost ratio of 33:1. Temperate pasture zone wool producers would capture the largest shares of these benefits, Australian consumers would gain, but wool producers in the rest of Australia would suffer welfare losses from vulpia reductions in the temperate pasture zones.Agricultural and Food Policy, Farm Management,
Home repair inspection and specifications (1999)
"Information from Human Environmental Sciences Extension.""Adapted from Home Maintenance Checklist in Maintaining the Home, Council Notes, 14 (3), Building Research Council, University of Illinois, 1995.""Housing.""This MU Extension publication is made possible by funding and cooperation of the following organizations: Missouri Rural Opportunities Council, U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Development Rural Housing Service, Partners with Missouri Department of Economic Development. The above sponsoring organizations do not accept responsibility of anything that happens on/to a property if these recommendations are followed. They are provided for guidance only and do not provide any guarantees."New 1/99/5M
Dynamic general equilibrium analysis of improved weed management in Australia's winter cropping systems
A recent analysis indicated that the direct financial cost of weeds to Australia’s winter grain sectorwas approximately 50m of R&D spread over five years is targeted at reducing the additional costs and reduced yields arising from weeds in various broadacre crops. Following this R&D effort, one-tenth of the losses arising from weeds is temporarily eliminated, with a diminishing benefit in succeeding years. At the national level, there is a welfare increase of $700m in discounted net present value terms. The regions with relatively high concentrations of winter crops experience small temporary macroeconomic gains.CGE modelling, dynamics, weed management, Crop Production/Industries,
Brazil's derivatives markets: hedging, Central Bank intervention and regulation
Includes bibliograph
Single-Scale Natural SUSY
We consider the prospects for natural SUSY models consistent with current
data. Recent constraints make the standard paradigm unnatural so we consider
what could be a minimal extension consistent with what we now know. The most
promising such scenarios extend the MSSM with new tree-level Higgs interactions
that can lift its mass to at least 125 GeV and also allow for flavor-dependent
soft terms so that the third generation squarks are lighter than current bounds
on the first and second generation squarks. We argue that a common feature of
almost all such models is the need for a new scale near 10 TeV, such as a scale
of Higgsing or confinement of a new gauge group. We consider the question
whether such a model can naturally derive from a single mass scale associated
with supersymmetry breaking. Most such models simply postulate new scales,
leaving their proximity to the scale of MSSM soft terms a mystery. This
coincidence problem may be thought of as a mild tuning, analogous to the usual
mu problem. We find that a single mass scale origin is challenging, but suggest
that a more natural origin for such a new dynamical scale is the gravitino
mass, m_{3/2}, in theories where the MSSM soft terms are a loop factor below
m_{3/2}. As an example, we build a variant of the NMSSM where the singlet S is
composite, and the strong dynamics leading to compositeness is triggered by
masses of order m_{3/2} for some fields. Our focus is the Higgs sector, but our
model is compatible with a light stop (with the other generation squarks heavy,
or with R-parity violation or another mechanism to hide them from current
searches). All the interesting low-energy mass scales, including linear terms
for S playing a key role in EWSB, arise dynamically from the single scale
m_{3/2}. However, numerical coefficients from RG effects and wavefunction
factors in an extra dimension complicate the otherwise simple story.Comment: 32 pages, 3 figures; version accepted by JHE
CRISPR-Cas9 Knockin Mice for Genome Editing and Cancer Modeling
CRISPR-Cas9 is a versatile genome editing technology for studying the functions of genetic elements. To broadly enable the application of Cas9 in vivo, we established a Cre-dependent Cas9 knockin mouse. We demonstrated in vivo as well as ex vivo genome editing using adeno-associated virus (AAV)-, lentivirus-, or particle-mediated delivery of guide RNA in neurons, immune cells, and endothelial cells. Using these mice, we simultaneously modeled the dynamics of KRAS, p53, and LKB1, the top three significantly mutated genes in lung adenocarcinoma. Delivery of a single AAV vector in the lung generated loss-of-function mutations in p53 and Lkb1, as well as homology-directed repair-mediated Kras[superscript G12D] mutations, leading to macroscopic tumors of adenocarcinoma pathology. Together, these results suggest that Cas9 mice empower a wide range of biological and disease modeling applications.National Science Foundation (U.S.). Graduate Research Fellowship (Grant 1122374)Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation (Fellowship DRG-2117-12)Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Simons Center for the Social Brain (Postdoctoral Fellowship)European Molecular Biology Organization (Fellowship)Foundation for Polish Science (Fellowship)American Society for Engineering Education. National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate FellowshipNational Science Foundation (U.S.). Graduate Research FellowshipMassachusetts Institute of Technology (Presidential Graduate Fellowship)Human Frontier Science Program (Strasbourg, France) (Postdoctoral Fellowship)National Human Genome Research Institute (U.S.) (CEGS P50 HG006193)Howard Hughes Medical InstituteKlarman Cell ObservatoryNational Cancer Institute (U.S.) (Center of Cancer Nanotechnology Excellence Grant U54CA151884)National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (Controlled Release Grant EB000244)National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (Program of Excellence in Nanotechnology (PEN) Award Contract HHSN268201000045C)Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Poitras Gift 1631119)Stanley CenterSimons Foundation (6927482)Nancy Lurie Marks Family Foundation (6928117)United States. Public Health Service (National Institutes of Health (U.S.) R01-CA133404)David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT (Marie D. and Pierre Casimir-Lambert Fund)MIT Skoltech InitiativeNational Cancer Institute (U.S.) (Koch Institute Support (Core) Grant P30-CA14051)National Institute of Mental Health (U.S.) (Director’s Pioneer Award DP1-MH100706)National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (U.S.) (Transformative R01 Grant R01-NS 07312401)National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Waterman Award)W. M. Keck FoundationKinship Foundation. Searle Scholars ProgramKlingenstein FoundationVallee FoundationMerkin Foundatio
Bacillus cereus efflux protein BC3310 – a multidrug transporter of the unknown major facilitator family, UMF-2
Phylogenetic classification divides the major facilitator superfamily (MFS) into 82 families, including 25 families that are comprised of transporters with no characterized functions. This study describes functional data for BC3310 from Bacillus cereus ATCC 14579, a member of the “unknown major facilitator family-2” (UMF-2). BC3310 was shown to be a multidrug efflux pump conferring resistance to ethidium bromide, SDS and silver nitrate when heterologously expressed in Escherichia coli DH5α acrAB. A conserved aspartate residue (D105) in putative transmembrane helix 4 was identified, which was essential for the energy dependent ethidium bromide efflux by BC3310. Transport proteins of the MFS comprise specific sequence motifs. Sequence analysis of UMF- 2 proteins revealed that they carry a variant of the MFS motif A, which may be used as a marker to distinguish easily between this family and other MFS proteins. Genes orthologous to bc3310 are highly conserved within the B. cereus group of organisms and thus belong to the core genome, suggesting an important conserved functional role in the normal physiology of these bacteria
Large Observatory for x-ray Timing (LOFT-P): a Probe-class mission concept study
LOFT-P is a concept for a NASA Astrophysics Probe-Class (<$1B) X-ray timing
mission, based on the LOFT concept originally proposed to ESAs M3 and M4 calls.
LOFT-P requires very large collecting area (>6 m^2, >10x RXTE), high time
resolution, good spectral resolution, broad-band spectral coverage (2-30 keV),
highly flexible scheduling, and an ability to detect and respond promptly to
time-critical targets of opportunity. It addresses science questions such as:
What is the equation of state of ultra dense matter? What are the effects of
strong gravity on matter spiraling into black holes? It would be optimized for
sub-millisecond timing to study phenomena at the natural timescales of neutron
star surfaces and black hole event horizons and to measure mass and spin of
black holes. These measurements are synergistic to imaging and high-resolution
spectroscopy instruments, addressing much smaller distance scales than are
possible without very long baseline X-ray interferometry, and using
complementary techniques to address the geometry and dynamics of emission
regions. A sky monitor (2-50 keV) acts as a trigger for pointed observations,
providing high duty cycle, high time resolution monitoring of the X-ray sky
with ~20 times the sensitivity of the RXTE All-Sky Monitor, enabling
multi-wavelength and multi-messenger studies. A probe-class mission concept
would employ lightweight collimator technology and large-area solid-state
detectors, technologies which have been recently greatly advanced during the
ESA M3 study. Given the large community interested in LOFT (>800 supporters,
the scientific productivity of this mission is expected to be very high,
similar to or greater than RXTE (~2000 refereed publications). We describe the
results of a study, recently completed by the MSFC Advanced Concepts Office,
that demonstrates that LOFT-P is feasible within a NASA probe-class mission
budget.Comment: Proc. SPIE 9905, Space Telescopes and Instrumentation 2016:
Ultraviolet to Gamma Ray, 99054Y (July 18, 2016
An Overview of the 2014 ALMA Long Baseline Campaign
A major goal of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) is to
make accurate images with resolutions of tens of milliarcseconds, which at
submillimeter (submm) wavelengths requires baselines up to ~15 km. To develop
and test this capability, a Long Baseline Campaign (LBC) was carried out from
September to late November 2014, culminating in end-to-end observations,
calibrations, and imaging of selected Science Verification (SV) targets. This
paper presents an overview of the campaign and its main results, including an
investigation of the short-term coherence properties and systematic phase
errors over the long baselines at the ALMA site, a summary of the SV targets
and observations, and recommendations for science observing strategies at long
baselines. Deep ALMA images of the quasar 3C138 at 97 and 241 GHz are also
compared to VLA 43 GHz results, demonstrating an agreement at a level of a few
percent. As a result of the extensive program of LBC testing, the highly
successful SV imaging at long baselines achieved angular resolutions as fine as
19 mas at ~350 GHz. Observing with ALMA on baselines of up to 15 km is now
possible, and opens up new parameter space for submm astronomy.Comment: 11 pages, 7 figures, 2 tables; accepted for publication in the
Astrophysical Journal Letters; this version with small changes to
affiliation
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