Working-Land Conservation Structures: Evidence on Program and Non-Program Participants

In recent years, the Federal government has placed more emphasis on working-land conservation programs. Farmers can be reimbursed for adopting certain conservation practices, such as the installation of in-field or perimeter conservation structures, to enhance water quality and soil productivity. In an effort to better understand the relationships between operator motivations, program incentives, and the environmental benefits of conservation programs, a multi-agency survey, the Conservation Effects Assessment Project-Agricultural Resources Management Survey (CEAP-ARMS), was conducted in 2004 across 16 states representing more than one-million farmers growing wheat. The nationally representative survey integrates Natural Resources Inventory (NRI) data on field-level physical characteristics, program information, farm-level costs of production, and farm household information. This objective of this paper is twofold. First, using the CEAP-ARMS, farm structure, household, and operator characteristics of farmers participating in one or more conservation programs are compared with farmers not participating in a conservation program. Second, an impact model is specified to test whether program participants allocated more acres to in-field or perimeter conservation structures than nonparticipants, holding other factors constant. Evidence suggests that program participants allocate more field acres to vegetative conservation structures than nonparticipants with in-field or perimeter conservation structures.Environmental Economics and Policy,

Generalized Nash Equilibrium and Market Coupling in the European Power System

Market Coupling'' is currently seen as the most advanced market design in the restructuring of the European electricity market. Market coupling, by construction, introduces what is generally referred to as an incomplete market: it leaves several constraints out of the market and hence avoids pricing them. This may or may not have important consequences in practice depending on the case on hand. QuasiVariational Inequality problems. We apply one of these methods to a subproblem of market coupling namely the coordination of counter-trading. This problem is an illustration of a more general question encountered for instance in hierarchical planning in production management. We first discuss the economic interpretation of the Quasi-Variational Inequality problem. We then apply the algorithmic approach to a set of stylized case studies in order to illustrate the impact of different organizations of counter-trading. The paper emphazises the structuring of the problem. A companion paper considers the full problem of market coupling and counter-trading and presents a more extensive numerical analysis

New challenges in studying nutrition-disease interactions in the developing world.

Latest estimates indicate that nutritional deficiencies account for 3 million child deaths each year in less-developed countries. Targeted nutritional interventions could therefore save millions of lives. However, such interventions require careful optimization to maximize benefit and avoid harm. Progress toward designing effective life-saving interventions is currently hampered by some serious gaps in our understanding of nutrient metabolism in humans. In this Personal Perspective, we highlight some of these gaps and make some proposals as to how improved research methods and technologies can be brought to bear on the problems of undernourished children in the developing world

Urban Versus Rural Differences in Insurance Coverage and Impact on Employment Among Families Caring for a Child With Cerebral Palsy

Background: The purpose of this study was to examine urban vs. rural differences on the relationship between family contextual variables and adequacy of insurance coverage and impact on employment for among families with a child with Cerebral Palsy from a nationally representative sample. Methods: A retrospective, observational study was carried out using data from the National Survey of Children with Special Healthcare Needs. Results: A total of 744 participants reported as having a child with a diagnosis of Cerebral Palsy and were included in the sample. Logistic regression analyses, adjusting for urban and rural setting revealed different predictors of adequacy of insurance coverage and impact on employment. Among urban respondents, three variables with odds ratios ranging from 1.33 to 1.58 served as protective factors, increasing the likelihood of adequate insurance coverage. Four variables with odds ratios ranging from 1.41 to 1.79 decreased the likelihood of negatively impacting employment. Among rural families, there was only one significant protective factor for adequacy of insurance coverage (odds ratio 1.80) and one for decreasing the chances of impact on employment (odds ratio 2.53). Conclusion: Families in rural areas caring for a child with CP have few protective factors for adequate insurance coverage and impact on familial employment

Enhanced tenacity of mycobacterial aerosols from necrotic neutrophils

The tuberculosis agent Mycobacterium tuberculosis is primarily transmitted through air, but little is known about the tenacity of mycobacterium-containing aerosols derived from either suspensions or infected neutrophils. Analysis of mycobacterial aerosol particles generated from bacterial suspensions revealed an average aerodynamic diameter and mass density that may allow distant airborne transmission. The volume and mass of mycobacterial aerosol particles increased with elevated relative humidity. To more closely mimic aerosol formation that occurs in active TB patients, aerosols from mycobacterium-infected neutrophils were analysed. Mycobacterium-infected intact neutrophils showed a smaller particle size distribution and lower viability than free mycobacteria. In contrast, mycobacterium-infected necrotic neutrophils, predominant in M. tuberculosis infection, revealed particle sizes and viability rates similar to those found for free mycobacteria, but in addition, larger aggregates of viable mycobacteria were observed. Therefore, mycobacteria are shielded from environmental stresses in multibacillary aggregates generated from necrotic neutrophils, which allows improved tenacity but emphasizes short distance transmission between close contacts

Author Correction: Enhanced tenacity of mycobacterial aerosols from necrotic neutrophils

The original version of this Article contained errors within the affiliations section. Affiliation 4 was incorrectly given as ‘Leibniz Research Alliance INFECTIONS’21, Leipzig, Germany’. The correct affiliation is listed below: Leibniz Research Alliance INFECTIONS’21, Borstel, 23845, Germany Also, Affiliation 5 was incorrectly given as ‘German Center for Infection Research, TTU-TB, Borstel, 23845, Germany’. The correct affiliation is listed below: German Center for Infection Research (DZIF), Partner Site Hamburg-Lübeck-Borstel, Germany. Finally, the original HTML version of this Article omitted an affiliation for G. Gabriel. The correct affiliations for G. Gabriel are listed below: Heinrich Pette Institute, Leibniz Institute for Experimental Virology, Hamburg, 20251, Germany. Leibniz Research Alliance INFECTIONS’21, Borstel, 23845, Germany. German Center for Infection Research (DZIF), Partner Site Hamburg-Lübeck-Borstel, Germany. These errors have now been corrected in the PDF and HTML versions of the Article

Performance of chemically modified reduced graphene oxide (CMrGO) in electrodynamic dust shield (EDS) applications

Electrodynamic Dust Shield (EDS) technology is a dust mitigation strategy that is commonly studied for applications such as photovoltaics or thermal radiators where soiling of the surfaces can reduce performance. The goal of the current work was to test the performance of a patterned nanocomposite EDS system produced through spray-coating and melt infiltration of chemically modified reduced graphene oxide (CMrGO) traces with thermoplastic high-density polyethylene (HDPE). The EDS performance was tested for a dusting of lunar regolith simulant under high vacuum conditions (~10-6 Torr) using both 2-phase and 3-phase configurations. Uncapped (bare) devices showed efficient dust removal at moderate voltages (1000 V) for both 2-phase and 3-phase designs, but the performance of the devices degraded after several sequential tests due to erosion of the traces caused by electric discharges. Further tests carried out while illuminating the dust surface with a UV excimer lamp showed that the EDS voltage needed to reach the maximum cleanliness was reduced by almost 50% for the 2-phase devices (500 V minimum for rough and 1000 V for smooth), while the 3-phase devices were unaffected by the application of UV. Capping the CMrGO traces with low-density polyethylene (LDPE) eliminated breakdown of the materials and device degradation, but larger voltages (3000 V) coupled with UV illumination were required to remove the grains from the capped devices.Comment: 22 pages, 7 figure

Mycobacterium tuberculosis Responds to Chloride and pH as Synergistic Cues to the Immune Status of its Host Cell

PubMed ID: 23592993This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited

Mutations in the SLC2A9 Gene Cause Hyperuricosuria and Hyperuricemia in the Dog

Allantoin is the end product of purine catabolism in all mammals except humans, great apes, and one breed of dog, the Dalmatian. Humans and Dalmatian dogs produce uric acid during purine degradation, which leads to elevated levels of uric acid in blood and urine and can result in significant diseases in both species. The defect in Dalmatians results from inefficient transport of uric acid in both the liver and renal proximal tubules. Hyperuricosuria and hyperuricemia (huu) is a simple autosomal recessive trait for which all Dalmatian dogs are homozygous. Therefore, in order to map the locus, an interbreed backcross was used. Linkage mapping localized the huu trait to CFA03, which excluded the obvious urate transporter 1 gene, SLC22A12. Positional cloning placed the locus in a minimal interval of 2.5 Mb with a LOD score of 17.45. A critical interval of 333 kb containing only four genes was homozygous in all Dalmatians. Sequence and expression analyses of the SLC2A9 gene indicated three possible mutations, a missense mutation (G616T;C188F) and two promoter mutations that together appear to reduce the expression levels of one of the isoforms. The missense mutation is associated with hyperuricosuria in the Dalmatian, while the promoter SNPs occur in other unaffected breeds of dog. Verification of the causative nature of these changes was obtained when hyperuricosuric dogs from several other breeds were found to possess the same combination of mutations as found in the Dalmatian. The Dalmatian dog model of hyperuricosuria and hyperuricemia underscores the importance of SLC2A9 for uric acid transport in mammals