ANALYSIS OF CHANGING METHODS OF VERTICAL COORDINATION IN THE PORK INDUSTRY

This study examines the motivation behind contracts and vertical integration in the pork industry, and simulates the effects of potential improvements in coordination. Incentives related to lowering costs of measuring and sorting hogs, and protecting against opportunistic behavior associated with specific assets, can result in hog quality improvements. A framework for simulating the effects of increased coordination through contracts and vertical integration was developed and used to evaluate potential improvements in leanness. Although simulations suggest only modest changes in pork prices and supplies, gains in consumers' surplus could be substantial for larger demand shifts due to quality improvements.Contracts, Hogs, Lean pork, Simulation model, Vertical coordination, Vertical integration, Industrial Organization, Livestock Production/Industries,

Strategic Alliances in U.S. Branded Beef Programs

In this paper, we combine concepts from organizational economics to examine supply chain alliances formed to market branded beef products. To illustrate application of the framework, we examine three different types of alliances. We conclude that measuring costs associated with quality attributes have an important role in alliance structure.Agribusiness,

Effects of Leaf Diversity on Tannin Concentration and Water Quality

The abstract for this presentation can be downloaded by clicking on the blue download button

Specific targeting of cytosine methylation to DNA sequences in vivo

Development of methods that will allow exogenous imposition of inheritable gene-specific methylation patterns has potential application in both therapeutics and in basic research. An ongoing approach is the use of targeted DNA methyltransferases, which consist of a fusion between gene-targeted zinc-finger proteins and prokaryotic DNA cytosine methyltransferases. These enzymes however have so far demonstrated significant and unacceptable levels of non-targeted methylation. We now report the development of second-generation targeted methyltransferase enzymes comprising enhanced zinc-finger arrays coupled to methyltransferase mutants that are functionally dominated by their zinc-finger component. Both in vitro plasmid methylation studies and a novel bacterial assay reveal a high degree of target-specific methylation by these enzymes. Furthermore, we demonstrate for the first time transient expression of targeted cytosine methyltransferase in mammalian cells resulting in the specific methylation of a chromosomal locus. Importantly, the resultant methylation pattern is inherited through successive cell divisions

Use of altered-specificity binding Oct-4 suggests an absence of pluripotent cell-specific cofactor usage

Oct-4 is a POU domain transcription factor that is critical for maintaining pluripotency and for stem cell renewal. Previous studies suggest that transcription regulation by Oct-4 at particular enhancers requires the input of a postulated E1A-like cofactor that is specific to pluripotent cells. However, such studies have been limited to the use of enhancer elements that bind other POU-protein family members in addition to Oct-4, thus preventing a ‘clean’ assessment of any Oct-4:cofactor relationships. Other attempts to study Oct-4 functionality in a more ‘stand-alone’ situation target Oct-4 transactivation domains to DNA using heterologous binding domains, a methodology which is known to generate artificial data. To circumvent these issues, an altered-specificity binding Oct-4 (Oct-4RR) and accompanying binding site, which binds Oct-4RR only, were generated. This strategy has previously been shown to maintain Oct-1:cofactor interactions that are highly binding-site and protein/binding conformation specific. This system therefore allows a stand-alone study of Oct-4 function in pluripotent versus differentiated cells, without interference from endogenous POU factors and with minimal deviation from bound wild-type protein characteristics. Subsequently, it was demonstrated that Oct-4RR and the highly transactive regions of its N-terminus determined here, and its C-terminus, have the same transactivation profile in pluripotent and differentiated cells, thus providing strong evidence against the existence of such a pluripotent cell-specific Oct-4 cofactor

No. 3, The Hooper Site (40DV234), A Mississippian Village in Davidson County, Tennessee

https://digitalcommons.memphis.edu/govpubs-tn-dept-environment-conservation-archaeology-miscellaneous/1002/thumbnail.jp

Simulated annealing and greedy search for multi-objective optimisation

Copyright © 2009 University of ExeterSimulated annealing generalises greedy or elitist search methods by permitting states which are not an improvement over previous solutions, and for single-objective problems these exploratory moves permit escape from local minima. We examine two classes of multi-objective simulated annealing algorithm: those in which a single solution comprises the state and those in which a set of mutually non-dominating solutions form the state. We compare ways of determining the `energy' of the state in simulated annealing, including the dominated volume and we relate the greedy versions of these annealers (zero computational temperature) to well-established multi-objective optimisation algorithms. Empirical tests on the DTLZ test problems show that (a) a single solution state is often more efficient than a set-based state; and (b) that exploratory algorithms are out-performed by their greedy counterparts. These results lead to an examination of the role of local fronts. Problems for which the Pareto front cannot be located via a sequence of infinitesimal perturbations are defined to be noninfinitesimally greedy searchable. We present examples of non-infinitesimally greedy searchable test problems, which are nonetheless searchable using finite perturbations, but which may be adjusted to be arbitrarily hard even with large finite perturbations.Department of Computer Science, University of Exete

Dominance Measures for Multi-Objective Simulated Annealing

Copyright © 2004 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other users, including reprinting/ republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted components of this work in other works.Simulated annealing (SA) is a provably convergent optimiser for single-objective (SO) problems. Previously proposed MO extensions have mostly taken the form of an SO SA optimising a composite function of the objectives. We propose an MO SA utilising the relative dominance of a solution as the system energy for optimisation, eliminating problems associated with composite objective functions. We also propose a method for choosing perturbation scalings promoting search both towards and across the Pareto front.We illustrate the SA's performance on standard test problems. The new SA is shown to promote rapid convergence to the true Pareto front with a good coverage of points across it