IMPACT OF CFTA/NAFTA ON U.S. AND CANADIAN AGRICULTURE

CFTA/NAFTA is estimated annually to add $1,430 million of U.S. agricultural exports to Canada and$1,884 million of Canadian agricultural exports to the United States. Thus CFTA/NAFTA contributed an estimated 25 percent of the $5.8 billion of U.S. agricultural exports to Canada in 1995. Classical welfare analysis was used to estimate the implications of free trade in the dairy, poultry, sugar, and other industries that continue to be protected. In aggregate, consumers benefit from liberalization by nearly$1 billion per year in each country. Losses to Canadian producers are absolutely and relatively greater than to U.S. producers. Overall deadweight gains are positive to each country. The annual combined two-country addition to national income ($292 million) totals a present value of$5.8 billion when discounted in perpetuity at a 5 percent rate.International Relations/Trade,

Chemical composition and origin of nebulae around Luminous Blue Variables

We use the analysis of the heavy element abundances (C, N, O, S) in circumstellar nebulae around Luminous Blue Variables to infer the evolutionary phase in which the material has been ejected. (1) We discuss the different effects that may have changed the gas composition of the nebula since it was ejected (2) We calculate the expected abundance changes at the stellar surface due to envelope convection in the red supergiant phase. If the observed LBV nebulae are ejected during the RSG phase, the abundances of the LBV nebulae require a significantly smaller amount of mass to be lost than assumed in evolutionary models. (3) We calculate the changes in the surface composition during the main sequence phase by rotation induced mixing. If the nebulae are ejected at the end of the MS-phase, the abundances in LBV nebulae are compatible with mixing times between 5 x 10^6 and 1 x 10^7 years. The existence of ON stars supports this scenario. (4) The predicted He/H ratio in the nebulae are significantly smaller than the current observed photospheric values of their central stars. Combining various arguments we show that the LBV nebulae are ejected during the blue SG phase and that the stars have not gone through a RSG phase. The chemical enhancements are due to rotation induced mixing, and the ejection is possibly triggered by near-critical rotation. During the ejection, the outflow was optically thick, which resulted in a large effective radius and a low effective temperature. This also explains the observed properties of LBV dust.Comment: 18 pages, 4 figures, to be published in The Astrophysical Journal, April 20, 200

Randomized Algorithms Considered Harmful

Recent advances in distributed communication and omniscient algorithms cooperate in order to achieve operating systems. Given the current status of relational information, cyberinformaticians dubiously desire the visualization of randomized algorithms, which embodies the confirmed principles of loss-less software engineering. We argue that the lookaside buffer can be made pseudorandom, “smart”, and client-server

Attitudes Toward Breast Cancer Genetic Testing in Five Special Population Groups

Purpose: This study examined interest in and attitudes toward genetic testing in 5 different population groups. Methods: The survey included African American, Asian American, Latina, Native American, and Appalachian women with varying familial histories of breast cancer. A total of 49 women were interviewed in person. Descriptive and nonparametric statistical techniques were used to assess ethnic group differences. Results: Overall, interest in testing was high. All groups endorsed more benefits than risks. There were group differences regarding endorsement of specific benefits and risks: testing to “follow doctor recommendations” (p=0.017), “concern for effects on family” (p=0.044), “distrust of modern medicine” (p=0.036), “cost” (p=0.025), and “concerns about communication of results to others” (p=0.032). There was a significant inverse relationship between interest and genetic testing cost (p Conclusion: Cost may be an important barrier to obtaining genetic testing services, and participants would benefit by genetic counseling that incorporates the unique cultural values and beliefs of each group to create an individualized, culturally competent program. Further research about attitudes toward genetic testing is needed among Asian Americans, Native Americans, and Appalachians for whom data are severely lacking. Future study of the different Latina perceptions toward genetic testing are encouraged

A Unified Account of the Moral Standing to Blame

Recently, philosophers have turned their attention to the question, not when a given agent is blameworthy for what she does, but when a further agent has the moral standing to blame her for what she does. Philosophers have proposed at least four conditions on having “moral standing”: 1. One’s blame would not be “hypocritical”. 2. One is not oneself “involved in” the target agent’s wrongdoing. 3. One must be warranted in believing that the target is indeed blameworthy for the wrongdoing. 4. The target’s wrongdoing must some of “one’s business”. These conditions are often proposed as both conditions on one and the same thing, and as marking fundamentally different ways of “losing standing.” Here I call these claims into question. First, I claim that conditions (3) and (4) are simply conditions on different things than are conditions (1) and (2). Second, I argue that condition (2) reduces to condition (1): when “involvement” removes someone’s standing to blame, it does so only by indicating something further about that agent, viz., that he or she lacks commitment to the values that condemn the wrongdoer’s action. The result: after we clarify the nature of the non-hypocrisy condition, we will have a unified account of moral standing to blame. Issues also discussed: whether standing can ever be regained, the relationship between standing and our "moral fragility", the difference between mere inconsistency and hypocrisy, and whether a condition of standing might be derived from deeper facts about the "equality of persons"

A Statement on the Appropriate Role for Research and Development in Climate Policy

This statement is issued by a group of economists and scientists which met at Stanford University on October 18, 2008 to discuss the role of research and development (R&D) in developing effective policies for addressing the adverse potential consequences of climate change. We believe that climate change is a serious issue that governments need to address. We also believe that research and development needs to be a central part of governments’ strategies for responding to this challenge. Solutions to manage long-term risks will require the development and global deployment of a range of technologies for energy supply and end-use, land-use, agriculture and adaptation that are not currently commercial. A key potential benefit of focused scientific and technological research and development investment is that it could dramatically reduce the cost of restricting greenhouse gas emissions by encouraging the development of more affordable, better performing technologies.

Discontinuities Concentrate Mobile Predators: Quantifying Organism-Environment Interactions at a Seascape Scale

Understanding environmental drivers of spatial patterns is an enduring ecological problem that is critical for effective biological conservation. Discontinuities (ecologically meaningful habitat breaks), both naturally occurring (e.g., river confluence, forest edge, drop-off) and anthropogenic (e.g., dams, roads), can influence the distribution of highly mobile organisms that have land- or seascape scale ranges. A geomorphic discontinuity framework, expanded to include ecological patterns, provides a way to incorporate important but irregularly distributed physical features into organism–environment relationships. Here, we test if migratory striped bass (Morone saxatilis) are consistently concentrated by spatial discontinuities and why. We quantified the distribution of 50 acoustically tagged striped bass at 40 sites within Plum Island Estuary, Massachusetts during four-monthly surveys relative to four physical discontinuities (sandbar, confluence, channel network, drop-off), one continuous physical feature (depth variation), and a geographic location variable (region). Despite moving throughout the estuary, striped bass were consistently clustered in the middle geographic region at sites with high sandbar area, close to channel networks, adjacent to complex confluences, with intermediate levels of bottom unevenness, and medium sized drop-offs. In addition, the highest striped bass concentrations occurred at sites with the greatest additive physical heterogeneity (i.e., where multiple discontinuities co-occurred). The need to incorporate irregularly distributed features in organism–environment relationships will increase as high-quality telemetry and GIS data accumulate for mobile organisms. The spatially explicit approach we used to address this challenge can aid both researchers who seek to understand the impact of predators on ecosystems and resource managers who require new approaches for biological conservation

The charges for ESRD treatment of diabetics

To evaluate the differential charges for treating end-stage renal disease (ESRD) associated with diabetes mellitus, Medicare billing data are analyzed. The charges of 244 patients in the Michigan Kidney Registry identified as having (ESRD) from diabetes are compared with charges of 902 nondiabetic patients. Average annual charges for ESRD treatment for diabetics are $29,671 (+/-27,662) which are$4695 (+/-1344) higher than charges for nondiabetics. The majority of the difference (84.3%) is attributable to higher inpatient hospital charges. Most of the remainder (14.5%) is attributable to higher physician and medical supply charges. Charges for treatment of diabetics are higher on all modalities of treatment, but differences are not significant among modalities.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/28133/1/0000584.pd

Reproducibility and a unifying explanation: Lessons from the shape bias

The goal of science is to advance our understanding of particular phenomena. However, in the field of development, the phenomena of interest are complex, multifaceted, and change over time. Here, we use three decades of research on the shape bias to argue that while replication is clearly an important part of the scientific process, integration across the findings of many studies that include variations in procedure is also critical to create a coherent understanding of the thoughts and behaviors of young children. The “shape bias,” or the tendency to generalize a novel label to novel objects of the same shape, is a reliable and robust behavioral finding and has been shown to predict future vocabulary growth and possible language disorders. Despite the robustness of the phenomenon, the way in which the shape bias is defined and tested has varied across studies and laboratories. The current review argues that differences in performance that come from even seemingly minor changes to the participants or task can offer critical insight to underlying mechanisms, and that working to incorporate data from multiple labs is an important way to reveal how task variation and a child’s individual pathway creates behavior—a key issue for understanding developmental phenomena