Global bifurcation of homoclinic solutions of hamiltonian systems

We provide global bifurcation results for a class of nonlinear hamiltonian systemsComment: 25 page

How Disease Burden Influences Medication Patterns for Medicare Beneficiaries: Implications for Policy

Provides benchmarks for assessing the quality of pharmaceutical care under the Medicare Part D prescription drug benefit. Examines how the beneficiaries? medication regimens evolve in the context of multiple chronic conditions and accumulating morbidity

AGRICULTURAL POLICY REFORM IN THE UNITED STATES: AN UNFINISHED AGENDA

The paper is divided into three sections: a discussion of the major provisions of the FAIR act of 1996 [Federal Agriculture Improvement and Reform Act of 1996]; a review of the political forces leading up to it; and a discussion of reforms that could extend the incipient agenda that it represents.Agricultural and Food Policy,

A new genus and species of sabretooth, Oriensmilus liupanensis (Barbourofelinae, Nimravidae, Carnivora), from the middle Miocene of China suggests barbourofelines are nimravids, not felids

Since the early 2000s, a revival of a felid relationship for barbourofeline sabretooths has become popular due to recent discoveries of fragmentary fossils from Africa. According to this view, barbourofelines trace their common ancestor with felids through shared similarities in dental morphology going back to the early Miocene of Africa and Europe. However, whether or not such an idea is represented in the basicranial morphology, a conservative area of high importance in family-level relationships, is yet to be tested. A nearly complete skull of Oriensmilus liupanensis gen. and sp. nov. from the middle Miocene Tongxin Basin of northern China represents the most primitive known barbourofeline with an intact basicranial region, affording an opportunity to re-examine the relationship of felids and nimravines. We also present an update on East Asian records of barbourofelines. The new skull of Oriensmilus possesses a suite of characters shared with nimravines, such as the lack of an ossified (entotympanic) bullar floor, absence of an intrabullar septum, lack of a ventral promontorial process of the petrosal, presence of a small rostral entotympanic on the dorsal side of the caudal entotympanic, and a distinct caudal entry of the internal carotid artery and nerve that pierces the caudal entotympanic at the junction of the ossified and unossified caudal entotympanics. The absence of an ossified bullar floor in O. liupanensis and its presence in those from the middle Miocene of Sansan, France thus help to bracket the transition of this character, which must have happened in the early part of the middle Miocene. Spatial relationships between bullar construction and the middle ear configuration of the carotid artery in Oriensmilus strongly resemble those in nimravines but are distinctly different from felids and other basal feliforms. Despite the attractive notion that early barbourofelines arose from a Miocene ancestor that also gave rise to felids, the basicranial evidence argues against this view. http://zoobank.org/urn:http://lsid:zoobank.org:pub:2DE98DBC-4D02-4E18-9788-0B0D8587E73F

Agricultural policy reform in the United States: an unfinished agenda

The 1996 Federal Agriculture Improvement and Reform Act (FAIR) contained important breaks with a tradition of crop-by-crop subsidies dating back to the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933. Farmers with recorded base acres were given the opportunity (which nearly all accepted) to sign a seven-year `contract' with the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), under which payments will be continued on the merged base acres on a declining schedule until the year 2002. FAIR is an unfinished agenda. First, the coverage of `freedom to farm' is only partial, with numerous commodities left out of the decoupling programme. Second, the largest producers will augment their already significant receipts with generous lump sum transfers from USDA. This will further reinforce the concentration of roughly 90 per cent of receipts and payments in the hands of the 100 000 to 200 000 largest producers of field crops. An alternative would be to make payments in times of low marketing receipts which recede when prices are high.Agricultural and Food Policy,