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

Can Sports Gambling become the Fount of Revenue Consistency?

Critics of legalization of gambling maintain that gambling revenue is at best stagnate or will eventually fall as a source of revenue. The stagnation of Lottery proceeds and casino revenue as sources of revenue seemed validate this criticism. But a new source of gambling revenue has recently been championed, namely sports gambling. So, the question this paper will attempt to answer is: Can sports gambling produce consistent and growing revenue that are needed to sustain public policy initiatives? The legalization of sports gambling in NJ occurred on June 11th, 2018 and the first bet was placed on June 14th. New Jersey saw immense tax revenue from the legalization, and many of its neighboring states (Pennsylvania, November, 2018: New York, July, 2019) were drawn in by the appeal of legalization and the potential revenue that it creates. The issue of cannibalization of revenue when a neighboring state legalizes sports gambling will be analyzed. In order to ascertain whether New Jersey’s sports revenue suffered a cannibalization effect, various time series models will be utilized to compare the projected growth of New Jersey’s revenue to the actual revenue New Jersey had after the legalization of two competitor states, Pennsylvania and New York. The paper will also examine the growth of sports gambling in both Pennsylvania and New York

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

Ocean warming and long-term change in pelagic bird abundance within the California current system

As a result of repeated sampling of pelagic bird abundance over 3 x 105 km2 of open ocean 4 times a year for 8 yr, we report that seabird abundance within the California Current system has declined by 40% over the period 1987 to 1994. This decline has accompanied a concurrent, long-term increase in sea surface temperature. The decline in overall bird abundance is largely, but not entirely, a consequence of the 90% decline of sooty shearwaters Puffinus griseus, the numerically dominant species of the California Current. Seabirds of the offshore waters we sampled showed a different pattern from seabirds of the shelf and slope waters. Leach's storm-petrels Oceanodroma leucorhoa, the commonest species offshore, significantly increased during 1987 to 1994, while sooty shearwaters and other inshore species declined. Thus the clearest pattern that emerges from our data is one of gradual but persistent changes in abundance that transpire at time scales longer than 1 yr. Nevertheless, we did find evidence of change at shorter time scales (weeks and months) that may relate to the El Niño episode of 1992 to 1993: Pronounced positive anomalies of abundance of brown pelicans Pelecanus occidentalis and Heerman's gulls Larus heermani in fall 1991, and black Oceanodroma melania andleast O. microsoma storm-petrels in late summer 1992, likely reflect northward dispersal following reproductive failure in the Gulf of California

Management of multifactorial idiopathic epilepsy in EL mice with caloric restriction and the ketogenic diet: role of glucose and ketone bodies

BACKGROUND: The high fat, low carbohydrate ketogenic diet (KD) was developed as an alternative to fasting for seizure management. While the mechanisms by which fasting and the KD inhibit seizures remain speculative, alterations in brain energy metabolism are likely involved. We previously showed that caloric restriction (CR) inhibits seizure susceptibility by reducing blood glucose in the epileptic EL mouse, a natural model for human multifactorial idiopathic epilepsy. In this study, we compared the antiepileptic and anticonvulsant efficacy of the KD with that of CR in adult EL mice with active epilepsy. EL mice that experienced at least 15 recurrent complex partial seizures were fed either a standard diet unrestricted (SD-UR) or restricted (SD-R), and either a KD unrestricted (KD-UR) or restricted (KD-R). All mice were fasted for 14 hrs prior to diet initiation. A new experimental design was used where each mouse in the diet-restricted groups served as its own control to achieve a 20–23% body weight reduction. Seizure susceptibility, body weights, and the levels of plasma glucose and β-hydroxybutyrate were measured once/week over a nine-week treatment period. RESULTS: Body weights and blood glucose levels remained high over the testing period in the SD-UR and the KD-UR groups, but were significantly (p < 0.001) reduced in the SD-R and KD-R groups. Plasma β-hydroxybutyrate levels were significantly (p < 0.001) increased in the SD-R and KD-R groups compared to their respective UR groups. Seizure susceptibility remained high in both UR-fed groups throughout the study, but was significantly reduced after three weeks in both R-fed groups. CONCLUSIONS: The results indicate that seizure susceptibility in EL mice is dependent on plasma glucose levels and that seizure control is more associated with the amount than with the origin of dietary calories. Also, CR underlies the antiepileptic and anticonvulsant action of the KD in EL mice. A transition from glucose to ketone bodies for energy is predicted to manage EL epileptic seizures through multiple integrated changes of inhibitory and excitatory neural systems

“Let’s pull these technologies out of the ivory tower”: The politics, ethos, and ironies of participant-driven genomic research

This paper investigates how groups of ‘citizen scientists’ in non-traditional settings and primarily online networks claim to be challenging conventional genomic research processes and norms. Although these groups are highly diverse, they all distinguish their efforts from traditional university- or industry-based genomic research as being ‘participant-driven’ in one way or another. Participant-driven genomic research (PDGR) groups often work from ‘labs’ that consist of servers and computing devices as much as wet lab apparatus, relying on information-processing software for data-driven, discovery-based analysis rather than hypothesis-driven experimentation. We interviewed individuals from a variety of efforts across the expanding ecosystem of PDGR, including academic groups, start-ups, activists, hobbyists, and hackers, in order to compare and contrast how they relate their stated objectives, practices, and political and moral stances to institutions of expert scientific knowledge production. Results reveal that these groups, despite their diversity, share commitments to promoting alternative modes of housing, conducting, and funding genomic research and, ultimately, sharing knowledge. In doing so, PDGR discourses challenge existing approaches to research governance as well, especially the regulation, ethics, and oversight of human genomic information management. Interestingly, the reaction of the traditional genomics research community to this revolutionary challenge has not been negative: in fact, the community seems to be embracing the ethos espoused by PDGR, at the highest levels of science policy. As conventional genomic research assimilates the ethos of PDGR, the movement’s ‘democratizing’ views on research governance are likely to become normalized as well, creating new tensions for science policy and research ethics

Comparative Genomic and Proteomic Analyses of Three Widespread Phytophthora Species: Phytophthora chlamydospora, Phytophthora gonapodyides and Phytophthora pseudosyringae

The genus includes some of the most devastating plant pathogens. Here we report draft genome sequences for three ubiquitous species-, , and . is an important forest pathogen that is abundant in Europe and North America. and are globally widespread species often associated with aquatic habitats. They are both regarded as opportunistic plant pathogens. The three sequenced genomes range in size from 45 Mb to 61 Mb. Similar to other oomycete species, tandem gene duplication appears to have played an important role in the expansion of effector arsenals. Comparative analysis of carbohydrate-active enzymes (CAZymes) across 44 oomycete genomes indicates that oomycete lifestyles may be linked to CAZyme repertoires. The mitochondrial genome sequence of each species was also determined, and their gene content and genome structure were compared. Using mass spectrometry, we characterised the extracellular proteome of each species and identified large numbers of proteins putatively involved in pathogenicity and osmotrophy. The mycelial proteome of each species was also characterised using mass spectrometry. In total, the expression of approximately 3000 genes per species was validated at the protein level. These genome resources will be valuable for future studies to understand the behaviour of these three widespread species

Comparative Genomic and Proteomic Analyses of Three Widespread Phytophthora Species: Phytophthora chlamydospora, Phytophthora gonapodyides and Phytophthora pseudosyringae

The genus includes some of the most devastating plant pathogens. Here we report draft genome sequences for three ubiquitous species-, , and . is an important forest pathogen that is abundant in Europe and North America. and are globally widespread species often associated with aquatic habitats. They are both regarded as opportunistic plant pathogens. The three sequenced genomes range in size from 45 Mb to 61 Mb. Similar to other oomycete species, tandem gene duplication appears to have played an important role in the expansion of effector arsenals. Comparative analysis of carbohydrate-active enzymes (CAZymes) across 44 oomycete genomes indicates that oomycete lifestyles may be linked to CAZyme repertoires. The mitochondrial genome sequence of each species was also determined, and their gene content and genome structure were compared. Using mass spectrometry, we characterised the extracellular proteome of each species and identified large numbers of proteins putatively involved in pathogenicity and osmotrophy. The mycelial proteome of each species was also characterised using mass spectrometry. In total, the expression of approximately 3000 genes per species was validated at the protein level. These genome resources will be valuable for future studies to understand the behaviour of these three widespread species

Chesapeake Bay Fish–Osprey (\u3ci\u3ePandion Haliaetus\u3c/i\u3e) Food Chain: Evaluation Of Contaminant Exposure And Genetic Damage

From 2011 to 2013, a large-scale ecotoxicological study was conducted in several Chesapeake Bay (USA) tributaries (Susquehanna River and flats, the Back, Baltimore Harbor/Patapsco Rivers, Anacostia/ middle Potomac, Elizabeth and James Rivers) and Poplar Island as a mid-Bay reference site. Osprey (Pandion haliaetus) diet and the transfer of contaminants from fish to osprey eggs were evaluated. The most bioaccumulative compounds (biomagnification factor\u3e5) included p,p’-dichlorodiphenyldichloroethylene (DDE), total polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), total polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), and bromodiphenyl ether (BDE) congeners 47, 99, 100, and 154. This analysis suggested that alternative brominated flame retardants and other compounds (methoxytriclosan) are not appreciably biomagnifying. A multivariate analysis of similarity indicated that major differences in patterns among study sites were driven by PCB congeners 105, 128, 156, 170/190, and 189, and PBDE congeners 99 and 209. An integrative redundancy analysis showed that osprey eggs from Baltimore Harbor/Patapsco River and the Elizabeth River had high residues of PCBs and p,p’-DDE, with PBDEs making a substantial contribution to overall halogenated contamination on the Susquehanna and Anacostia/middle Potomac Rivers. The redundancy analysis also suggested a potential relation between PBDE residues in osprey eggs and oxidative DNA damage in nestling blood samples. The results also indicate that there is no longer a discernible relation between halogenated contaminants in osprey eggs and their reproductive success in Chesapeake Bay. Osprey populations are thriving in much of the Chesapeake, with productivity rates exceeding those required to sustain a stable population