Policy Dilemmas in India - The Impact of Changes in Agricultural Prices on Rural and Urban Poverty

Trade policy reforms which lead to changes in world prices of agricultural commodities or domestic policies aimed at affecting agricultural prices are often seen as causing a policy dilemma : a fall in agricultural prices benefits poor urban consumers but hurts poor rural producers, while a rise yields the converse. Poor countries have argued that they need to be able to use import protection and/or price support policies to protect themselves against volatility in world agricultural prices in order to dampen these effects. In this paper, we explore this dilemma in a CGE model of India that uses a new social accounting matrix (SAM) developed at the Indira Ghandi Institute of Development Research (IGIDR) in Mumbai. The SAM includes extensive disaggregation of agricultural activities, commodity markets, labor markets, and rural and urban households. This SAM includes 115 commodities, 48 labor types and 352 types of households, (classified by social group, income class, region, and urban/rural). The CGE model based on this SAM can be used to explore the linkages between changes in world prices of agriculture and the incomes of poor rural and urban households, capturing rural-urban linkages in both commodity and factor markets. The results indicate that the inclusion of linkages between rural and urban labor markets is necessary to fully explore, and potentially eliminate, the dilemma. A fall in agricultural prices hurts agricultural producers, lowers wages and/or employment of rural labor, and in some cases spills over into urban labor markets, depressing wages and incomes of poor urban households as well. In these cases both rural and urban poverty increases. The paper explores the strength of these commodity and factor market linkages, and the potential spillover effects of policies affecting agricultural prices.Doha negotiations, India trade policy, World prices, Labour Market, CGE model

Mutant Tau knock-in mice display frontotemporal dementia relevant behaviour and histopathology

Peer reviewedPostprin

Transport of prion protein across the blood-brain barrier.

The cellular form of the prion protein (PrP(c)) is necessary for the development of prion diseases and is a highly conserved protein that may play a role in neuroprotection. PrP(c) is found in both blood and cerebrospinal fluid and is likely produced by both peripheral tissues and the central nervous system (CNS). Exchange of PrP(c) between the brain and peripheral tissues could have important pathophysiologic and therapeutic implications, but it is unknown whether PrP(c) can cross the blood-brain barrier (BBB). Here, we found that radioactively labeled PrP(c) crossed the BBB in both the brain-to-blood and blood-to-brain directions. PrP(c) was enzymatically stable in blood and in brain, was cleared by liver and kidney, and was sequestered by spleen and the cervical lymph nodes. Circulating PrP(c) entered all regions of the CNS, but uptake by the lumbar and cervical spinal cord, hypothalamus, thalamus, and striatum was particularly high. These results show that PrP(c) has bidirectional, saturable transport across the BBB and selectively targets some CNS regions. Such transport may play a role in PrP(c) function and prion replication

Bycatch and discard survival rate in a small-scale bivalve dredge fishery along the Algarve coast (southern Portugal)

Although the bivalve dredge used on the Algarve coast (southern Portugal) is highly selective for the target species, in some periods of the year the bycatch can exceed the catch of the commercial species. The present study aimed to quantify the bycatch and discards, estimate damage and mortality, and propose management measures to minimize discards and mortality. A total of 15 fishing surveys (60 tows) were performed using two types of dredges (“DDredge” targeting Donax trunculus and “SDredge” targeting Spisula solida and Chamelea gallina). Of the 85257 individuals (392.4 kg) of 52 taxa that were caught, 73.4% belonged to the target species, 22.1% to commercially undersized target species and 4.5% to bycatch species. Bycatch rates were lower for SDredge (13.5% in number and 6.3% in weight) than for DDredge (46.0% in number and 32.9% in weight). Damage and mortality rates were also lower using SDredge (1.3% and 1.0% of the total catches, respectively) than using DDredge (4.0% and 2.8% of the total catches). Survival experiments revealed the diverse vulnerability of the taxa and confirmed the influence of the damage score on the mortality rate. The results gathered in the present study encourage the adoption of a bycatch reduction device to reduce both direct and indirect mortality.This study was performed within the framework of the research project “Science Technology and Society Initiative to Minimize Unwanted Catches in European Fisheries (MINOUW)” funded by the Research and Innovation Action (RIA) of the EU Horizon 2020 programme.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Content Area Textbooks--Waste Not…

In helping students to read content area textbooks, there are Four Basic Areas of Concern: Word Recognition, Vocabulary, Comprehension, and Study Skills