The Impact of Agricultural Technology Adoption of Income Inequality in Rural China

This study analyzes the impact of government efforts to increase agricultural incomes on income inequality in rural China. It collects and analyzes survey data from 473 households in Yunnan, China in 2004. In particular, it investigates the effects of government efforts to promote improved upland rice technologies. Our analysis shows that farmers who adopted these technologies had incomes approximately 32 percent higher than non-adopters. While much of this came from increased incomes from the selling of upland rice, adopters also enjoyed higher incomes from other cash crops. We attribute this to technology spillovers. Despite substantial increases associated with the adoption of improved upland rice technologies, we estimate that the impact on income inequality was relatively slight. This is primarily due to the fact that low income farmers had relatively high rates of technology adoption.Rural economic development; Chinese economic development; upland rice; rural-urban income inequality; agricultural income policy

A knowledge analytics portal for agile programming

iii, 76 leaves : ill. (some col.) ; 29 cmIncludes abstract.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 72-76).Agile programming has been widely adopted for software development. One criticism on agile programming is the lack of documentation and knowledge sharing in the software development process. This thesis proposes a novel knowledge management approach for creating, managing, and sharing various types of documents for agile software development. The proposed approach divides software developers into two groups, masters and apprentices. Masters are senior software developers who are primarily responsible for agile software development. Masters avoid document writing as advocated in the agile manifesto for software development. Apprentices are junior software developers who are mainly responsible for creating, managing and sharing various types of documents for the agile software development process. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is investigated and validated through a prototype of a knowledge analytics portal. This thesis concludes that the proposed knowledge analytics portal increases the knowledge sharing for the agile software development process

Coping with Drought in Rice Farming in Asia: Insights from a Cross-Country Comparative Study

Drought is a major constraint affecting rice production especially in rainfed areas of Asia. Despite its importance in rice growing areas, the magnitude of economic losses arising from drought, its impact on farm households and farmers' drought coping mechanisms are poorly understood. This paper provides insights into these aspects of drought based on a cross-country comparative analysis of rainfed rice growing areas in China, India and Thailand. The economic cost of drought is found to be substantially higher in eastern India than in the other two countries. Higher probability and greater spatial covariance of drought and less diversified farming systems with rice accounting for a large r share of household income are likely to be the main reasons for this higher cost of drought in eastern India. Farmers deploy various coping mechanisms but such mechanisms are largely unable to prevent a reduction in income and consumption, especially in eastern India. As a result, welfare consequences on poor farmers are substantial with a large number of people falling back into poverty during drought years. The overall implications for technology design and for policy improvements for drought mitigation and drought relief are discussed in the light of the empirical findings of the study.Drought, Economic cost, Coping mechanisms, Poverty, Crop Production/Industries, D1, I3, Q1,

蛋白质多肽氨基端乙酰化酶NatB介导底物特异性乙酰化反应的分子基础

文章简介蛋白质多肽氨基端乙酰化(N-terminal acetylation)发生在蛋白质或多肽的氨基端第一个氨基酸的(N端)α氨基上,是真核生物中一种最常见的蛋白质翻译后修饰方式。该修饰是由6类N端乙酰转移酶(NAT)来完成的(Nat A至Nat F),而每一种都只作用于其特异的蛋白国家自然科学基金委;;科技部的经费支

Periostin identified as a potential biomarker of prostate cancer by iTRAQ-proteomics analysis of prostate biopsy

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Proteomics may help us better understand the changes of multiple proteins involved in oncogenesis and progression of prostate cancer(PCa) and identify more diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers. The aim of this study was to screen biomarkers of PCa by the proteomics analysis using isobaric tags for relative and absolute quantification(iTRAQ).</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>The patients undergoing prostate biopsies were classified into 3 groups according to pathological results: benign prostate hyperplasia (BPH, n = 20), PCa(n = 20) and BPH with local prostatic intraepithelial neoplasm(PIN, n = 10). Then, all the specimens from these patients were analyzed by iTRAQ and two-dimensional liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (2DLC-MS/MS). The Gene Ontology(GO) function and the transcription regulation networks of the differentially expressed were analyzed by MetaCore software. Western blotting and Immunohistochemical staining were used to analyze the interesting proteins.</p> <p>Result</p> <p>A total of 760 proteins were identified from 13787 distinct peptides, including two common proteins that enjoy clinical application: prostate specific antigen (PSA) and prostatic acid phosphatase(PAP). Proteins that expressed differentially between PCa and BPH group were further analyzed. Compared with BPH, 20 proteins were significantly differentially up-regulated (>1.5-fold) while 26 were significantly down-regulated in PCa(<0.66-fold). In term of GO database, the differentially expressed proteins were divided into 3 categories: cellular component(CC), molecular function (MF) and biological process(BP). The top 5 transcription regulation networks of the differentially expressed proteins were initiated through activation of SP1, p53, YY1, androgen receptor(AR) and c-Myc The overexpression of periostin in PCa was verified by western blotting and immunohistochemical staining.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Our study indicates that the iTRAQ technology is a new strategy for global proteomics analysis of the tissues of PCa. A significant up-regulation of periostin in PCa compared to BPH may provide clues for not only a promising biomarker for the prognosis of PCa but also a potential target for therapeutical intervention.</p

Adaptive Vague Preference Policy Learning for Multi-round Conversational Recommendation

Conversational recommendation systems (CRS) effectively address information asymmetry by dynamically eliciting user preferences through multi-turn interactions. Existing CRS widely assumes that users have clear preferences. Under this assumption, the agent will completely trust the user feedback and treat the accepted or rejected signals as strong indicators to filter items and reduce the candidate space, which may lead to the problem of over-filtering. However, in reality, users' preferences are often vague and volatile, with uncertainty about their desires and changing decisions during interactions. To address this issue, we introduce a novel scenario called Vague Preference Multi-round Conversational Recommendation (VPMCR), which considers users' vague and volatile preferences in CRS.VPMCR employs a soft estimation mechanism to assign a non-zero confidence score for all candidate items to be displayed, naturally avoiding the over-filtering problem. In the VPMCR setting, we introduce an solution called Adaptive Vague Preference Policy Learning (AVPPL), which consists of two main components: Uncertainty-aware Soft Estimation (USE) and Uncertainty-aware Policy Learning (UPL). USE estimates the uncertainty of users' vague feedback and captures their dynamic preferences using a choice-based preferences extraction module and a time-aware decaying strategy. UPL leverages the preference distribution estimated by USE to guide the conversation and adapt to changes in users' preferences to make recommendations or ask for attributes. Our extensive experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of our method in the VPMCR scenario, highlighting its potential for practical applications and improving the overall performance and applicability of CRS in real-world settings, particularly for users with vague or dynamic preferences

Genome-wide QTL mapping for three traits related to teat number in a White Duroc × Erhualian pig resource population

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Teat number is an important fertility trait for pig production, reflecting the mothering ability of sows. It is also a discrete and often canalized trait presenting bilateral symmetry with minor differences between the two sides, providing a potential power to evaluate fluctuating asymmetry and developmental instability. The knowledge of its genetic control is still limited. In this study, a genome-wide scan was performed with 183 microsatellites covering the pig genome to identify quantitative trait loci (QTL) for three traits related to teat number including the total teat number (TTN), the teat number at the left (LTN) and right (RTN) sides in a large scale White Duroc × Erhualian resource population.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>A sex-average linkage map with a total length of 2350.3 cM and an average marker interval of 12.84 cM was constructed. Eleven genome-wide significant QTL for TTN were detected on 8 autosomes including pig chromosomes (SSC) 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 12. Six suggestive QTL for this trait were detected on SSC6, 9, 13, 14 and 16. Eight chromosomal regions each on SSC1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 12 showed significant associations with LTN. These regions were also evidenced as significant QTL for RTN except for those on SSC6 and SSC8. The most significant QTL for the 3 traits were all located on SSC7. Erhualian alleles at most of the identified QTL had positive additive effects except for three QTL on SSC1 and SSC7, at which White Duroc alleles increased teat numbers. On SSC1, 6, 9, 13 and 16, significant dominance effects were observed on TTN, and predominant imprinting effect on TTN was only detected on SSC12.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The results not only confirmed the QTL regions from previous experiments, but also identified five new QTL for the total teat number in swine. Minor differences between the QTL regions responsible for LTN and RTN were validated. Further fine mapping should be focused on consistently identified regions with small confidence intervals, such as those on SSC1, SSC7 and SSC12.</p