The impact of Chinese import penetration on the South African manufacturing sector

This article uses a Chenery-type decomposition and econometric estimation to evaluate the impact of Chinese trade on production and employment in South African manufacturing from 1992 to 2010. The results suggest that increased import penetration from China caused South African manufacturing output to be 5 per cent lower in 2010 than it otherwise would have been. The estimated reduction of total employment in manufacturing as a result of trade with China is larger – in 2010 about 8 per cent – because the declines in output were concentrated on labour-intensive industries and because the increase in imports raised labour productivity within industries

Using false discovery rates to benchmark SNP-callers in next-generation sequencing projects

Funding: R.A.F. was funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC). D.A.H. and M.C.F. were supported by the Wellcome Trust. No additional external funding received for this study.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Women Filmmakers in the United Arab Emirates

This entry provides an introduction to the work of and the challenges faced by women filmmakers in the United Arab Emirates while at the same time providing an overview of the emerging film industry in the country. The fact that these women claim the power of representation and start telling their stories against the backdrop of a conservative, patriarchal society, obviously opens up space for gender redefinition. Overall, it seems that their films reveal a preference for strong, interesting women that fight for a meaningful life against the backdrop of a globalized society that has left women weaker and more fragile, with less obvious choices and possibilities for fulfillment. As their female characters claim center stage, both traditional and contemporary constructions of gender are called into question and popular stereotypes about Emirati women are challenged

How Repeatable Is the Ergogenic Effect of Caffeine? Limited Reproducibility of Acute Caffeine (3 mg.kg⁻¹) Ingestion on Muscular Strength, Power, and Muscular Endurance

This study aimed to determine the effect of 3 mg.kg(−1) acute caffeine ingestion on muscular strength, power and strength endurance and the repeatability of potential ergogenic effects across multiple trials. Twenty-two university standard male rugby union players (20 ± 2 years) completed the study. Using a double-blind, randomized, and counterbalanced within-subject experimental design. Participants completed six experimental trials (three caffeine and three placebo) where force time characteristic of the Isometric Mid-Thigh Pull (IMTP), Countermovement Jump (CMJ) and Drop Jumps (DJ) were assessed followed by assessments of Chest Press (CP), Shoulder Press (SP), Squats (SQ), and Deadlifts (DL) Repetitions Until Failure (RTF at 70% 1 RM). ANOVA indicated that caffeine improved both the CMJ and DJ (p < 0.044) and increased RTF in all RTF assessments (p < 0.002). When individual caffeine trials were compared to corresponding placebo trials, effect sizes ranged from trivial-large favoring caffeine irrespective of a main effect of treatment being identified in the ANOVA. These results demonstrate for the first time that the performance enhancing effects of caffeine may not be repeatable between days, where our data uniquely indicates that this is in part attributable to between sessions variation in caffeine’s ergogenic potential

Global analysis of mutations driving microevolution of a heterozygous diploid fungal pathogen

Data deposition: The sequence reported in this paper has been deposited in the NCBI Sequence Read Archive, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/bioproject (BioProject ID PRJNA345600). This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1073/pnas.1806002115/-/DCSupplemental.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Can 3 mg·kg−1 of Caffeine Be Used as An Effective Nutritional Supplement to Enhance the Effects of Resistance Training in Rugby Union Players?

The present study uniquely examined the effect of 3 mg·kg−1 chronic caffeine consumption on training adaptations induced by 7-weeks resistance training and assessed the potential for habituation to caffeine’s ergogenicity. Thirty non-specifically resistance-trained university standard male rugby union players (age (years): 20 ± 2; height (cm): 181 ± 7; body mass (kg): 92 ± 17) completed the study), who were moderate habitual caffeine consumers (118 ± 110 mg), completed the study. Using a within-subject double-blind, placebo-controlled experimental design, the acute effects of caffeine intake on upper and lower limb maximal voluntary concentric and eccentric torque were measured using isokinetic dynamometry (IKD) prior to and immediately following a resistance training intervention. Participants were split into strength-matched groups and completed a resistance-training program for seven weeks, consuming either caffeine or a placebo before each session. Irrespective of group, acute caffeine consumption improved peak eccentric torque of the elbow extensors (p p p p p p p < 0.037) in the total work performed in the participants that consumed caffeine across the course of the intervention. These results infer that caffeine may be beneficial to evoke acute improvements in muscular strength, with acute effects prevalent following chronic exposure to the experimental dose. However, individuals that consumed caffeine during the intervention did not elicit superior post-intervention training- induced adaptations in muscular strength

ICML Exploration & Exploitation challenge: Keep it simple!

International audienceRecommendation has become a key feature in the economy of a lot of companies (online shopping, search engines...). There is a lot of work going on regarding recommender systems and there is still a lot to do to improve them. Indeed nowadays in many companies most of the job is done by hand. Moreover even when a supposedly smart recommender system is designed, it is hard to evaluate it without using real audience which obviously involves economic issues. The ICML Exploration & Exploitation challenge is an attempt to make people propose efficient recommendation techniques and particularly focuses on limited computational resources. The challenge also proposes a framework to address the problem of evaluating a recommendation algorithm with real data. We took part in this challenge and achieved the best performances; this paper aims at reporting on this achievement; we also discuss the evaluation process and propose a better one for future challenges of the same kind

Chromosomal copy number variation, selection and uneven rates of recombination reveal cryptic genome diversity linked to pathogenicity

This project was funded by the UK Natural Environmental Research Council (NERC) grant NE/E006701/1, the European Research Council (ERC) grant 260801-BIG_IDEA, the Swiss National Science Foundation grant 31-125099 and the Biodiversa project RACE: Risk Assessment of Chytridiomycosis to European Amphibian Biodiversity (http://www.bd-maps.eu). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.Peer reviewedPublisher PD