Negotiating the Korea-United States Free Trade Agreement

Difficult and sensitive issues will command the attention of US and Korean officials as they negotiate a bilateral free trade agreement (FTA). The United States will have to put long-standing US barriers to Korean exports of textiles, apparel, and steel on the table and resolve problems with South Korean access to the US visa waiver program. In turn, South Korea will have to open new opportunities for US goods and services, including autos, beef, and rice. Such a deal will pose a stiff political challenge for Korean officials. However, they will be under pressure in any event to reform their farm programs--either in the context of a final deal in the WTO talks or in response to Chinese initiatives in the region, which Korea will need to match. Both Korea and the United States also have important foreign policy interests in the FTA, particularly enhanced security on the Korean peninsula. South Korea would like the FTA to promote the policy of constructive engagement with North Korea, which the former has been pursuing by extending trade preferences to goods produced in the Kaesong industrial complex in North Korea. However, such a request would put the entire negotiation in jeopardy since the US Congress would reject preferences for the North Korean regime.

The Effect of Inheritance Receipt on Retirement

This paper uses the receipt of an inheritance to measure the effect of wealth shocks on retirement. Using the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), we first document that inheritance receipt is common among older workers %u2013 one in five households receives an inheritance over an eight-year period, with a median value of about $30,000. We find that inheritance receipt is associated with a significant increase in the probability of retirement. In particular, we find that receiving an inheritance increases the probability of retiring earlier than expected by 4.4 percentage points, or 12 percent relative to the baseline retirement rate, over an eight-year period. Importantly, this effect is stronger when the inheritance is unexpected and thus more likely to represent an exogenous shock to wealth.

Eye-CU: Sleep Pose Classification for Healthcare using Multimodal Multiview Data

Manual analysis of body poses of bed-ridden patients requires staff to continuously track and record patient poses. Two limitations in the dissemination of pose-related therapies are scarce human resources and unreliable automated systems. This work addresses these issues by introducing a new method and a new system for robust automated classification of sleep poses in an Intensive Care Unit (ICU) environment. The new method, coupled-constrained Least-Squares (cc-LS), uses multimodal and multiview (MM) data and finds the set of modality trust values that minimizes the difference between expected and estimated labels. The new system, Eye-CU, is an affordable multi-sensor modular system for unobtrusive data collection and analysis in healthcare. Experimental results indicate that the performance of cc-LS matches the performance of existing methods in ideal scenarios. This method outperforms the latest techniques in challenging scenarios by 13% for those with poor illumination and by 70% for those with both poor illumination and occlusions. Results also show that a reduced Eye-CU configuration can classify poses without pressure information with only a slight drop in its performance.Comment: Ten-page manuscript including references and ten figure

Effectiveness of Deer Repellents in Connecticut

Browsing by overabundant herds of white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) can cause significant economic damage to agricultural crops and landscape plantings. In many instances, for both commercial growers and homeowners, commercially available repellents may be an appealing alternative to physical exclusion and lethal control of animals. We tested 10 different commercially-available repellents (Chew-Not®, Deer Off®, Deer-Away® Big Game Repellent, Plantskydd®, Bobbex®, Liquid Fence®, Deer Solution®, Hinder®, Repellex® systemic tablets, and coyote urine) on yews (Taxus cuspidata Densiformis) at 2 different locations in Connecticut. The study included both positive (fence) and negative (no treatment) controls. We planted yews in 2 blocks at each location in the spring of 2006; each block had 12 groups of 6 yews. We randomly assigned one of the 12 treatments to each group of yews within each block. We applied repellents based on manufacturers’ label recommendations for the 2006 and 2007 growing seasons and recorded application costs. We derived a protection index based on plant size and dry needle weights at the end of the 2007 growing season. In general, repellents that required more frequent application performed better. Bobbex® ranked highest, but was the most expensive repellent treatment. Hinder® performed nearly as well at a fraction of the cost. Yews protected by Repellex®, Deer Solution®, coyote urine, and Plantskydd® were the same size as unprotected controls at both sites and did not have significantly more needles. No repellents prevented 100% of browse damage. The choice of repellent usage is a trade-off among effectiveness, cost, ability to follow recommended reapplication interval, and plant to be protected

Cell wall protection by the Candida albicans class I chitin synthases

Open Access funded by Medical Research Council Acknowledgments We thank Kevin Mackenzie in the Microscopy and Histology Core Facility (Institute of Medical Sciences, University of Aberdeen), and Donna MacCallum for helpful statistical advice. This work was supported by grants from the Wellcome Trust (0868827 and 080088) including a Wellcome Trust Strategic Award (097377) and an Investigator Award to NG (101873), an MRC New Investigator Award to ML (MR/J008230/1) and a PhD scholarship awarded to KP from the Ministry of Sciences and Technology and Chiang Mai University, Thailand. Author contributions are as follows: KP constructed strains, performed the majority of the experiments, analyzed the data and contributed to the preparation of the manuscript. JA produced Fig. S1 using the data from the phosphoproteomic analysis conducted by SP and AB. NG conceived and designed experiments, analyzed data and commented on drafts of the manuscript. ML constructed strains, conceived, designed and performed experiments, analyzed data and wrote the manuscript.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

TRIP13 is a protein-remodeling AAA+ ATPase that catalyzes MAD2 conformation switching.

The AAA+ family ATPase TRIP13 is a key regulator of meiotic recombination and the spindle assembly checkpoint, acting on signaling proteins of the conserved HORMA domain family. Here we present the structure of the Caenorhabditis elegans TRIP13 ortholog PCH-2, revealing a new family of AAA+ ATPase protein remodelers. PCH-2 possesses a substrate-recognition domain related to those of the protein remodelers NSF and p97, while its overall hexameric architecture and likely structural mechanism bear close similarities to the bacterial protein unfoldase ClpX. We find that TRIP13, aided by the adapter protein p31(comet), converts the HORMA-family spindle checkpoint protein MAD2 from a signaling-active 'closed' conformer to an inactive 'open' conformer. We propose that TRIP13 and p31(comet) collaborate to inactivate the spindle assembly checkpoint through MAD2 conformational conversion and disassembly of mitotic checkpoint complexes. A parallel HORMA protein disassembly activity likely underlies TRIP13's critical regulatory functions in meiotic chromosome structure and recombination

Insecticide Toxicity, Synergism, and Resistance in the German Cockroach (Dictyoptera: Blattellidae)

The toxicity of, synergism of, and resistance to insecticides in four strains of German cockroach, Blattella germanica (L.), were investigated. Toxicity of nine insecticides by topical application to the susceptible strain varied \u3e2,000-fold, with deltamethrin (LD50 = 0.004 μg per cockroach) and malathion (LD50 = 8.4 μg per cockroach) being the most and least toxic, respectively. Resistance to pyrethrins (9.5-fold) in the Kenly strain was unaffected by the synergists piperonyl butoxide (PBO) or S,S,S-tributylphosphorotrithioate( DEE), suggesting that metabolism is not involved in this case. Malathion resistance in the Rutgers strain was suppressible with PBO, implicating oxidative metabolism as a resistance mechanism. The Ectiban-R strain was resistant to all the pyrethroids tested, and cypermethrin resistance was not suppressible with PBO or DEE. These findings support results of previous studies that indicated this strain has a kdr-like mechanism. Bendiocarb resistance in both the Kenly and Rutgers strains was partially suppressed by either PBO or DEE, suggesting that oxidative and hydrolytic metabolism are involved in the resistance. Trends between the effects of the synergists on the susceptible versus resistant strains are discussed