NF00-425 Resistance Management for European Corn Borer and Bt Transgenic Corn: Refuge Design and Placement (Revised October 2002)

One of the key issues surrounding the use of Bt transgenic corn hybrids is resistance management. These corn hybrids have been engineered to produce a version of the insecticidal protein from the naturally occurring soil bacterium, Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), that is toxic to European corn borers and a few other insects. This NebFact discusses the important principles of resistance management for European corn borer and Bt corn and refuge considerations

Do Securities Commission Debts Survive a Bankruptcy Discharge? An Analysis of Poonian v. British Columbia (Securities Commission) (BCCA)

The Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act1 (“BIA”) allows certain debts to be discharged at the end of the bankruptcy process.2 This discharge achieves one of the BIA’s objectives by offering individual debtors a “fresh start” to rehabilitate and become productive members of society.3 However, the fresh start is not an absolute right. Parliament has enacted a series of exceptions to the discharge in section 178(1) of the BIA. As a counterweight to the fresh start principle, these exceptions ensure that debtors who engage in certain wrongful conduct do not benefit from the protections afforded by the bankruptcy regime. Interpreting these exceptions can be challenging, however, as a proper interpretation must necessarily balance the fresh start principle with creditors’ rights in order to maintain confidence in the credit system.4 This case comment considers an important relationship between the BIA objectives and provincial securities law.5 In Poonian v. British Columbia (Securities Commission),6 (“Poonian”) the British Columbia Securities Commission had obtained multimillion dollar disgorgement orders and ordered administrative penalties against the bankrupts, the Poonians, for their market manipulation. The British Columbia Court of Appeal determined that these debts survived a bankruptcy discharge under the section 178(1)(e) exception, which provides that an order of a discharge does not release the bankrupt from “any debt or liability resulting from obtaining property or services by false pretences or fraudulent misrepresentation….”.7 A similar issue arose in Alberta Securities Commission v. Hennig,8 (“Hennig”) but the Alberta Court of Appeal reached the opposite result; it discharged the debt to the Commission after emphasizing the rehabilitation function of bankruptcy.9 Leave to appeal the Poonian decision has been granted.10 Given the divergent decisions at the provincial courts of appeal on the section 178(1)(e) exception to the bankruptcy discharge,11 this is an area that could use some clarity from the Supreme Court of Canada12 though the authors of this paper argue that this matter is best resolved by Parliament in the form of a statutory amendment. This comment provides an overview of the Poonian case and discusses how the court expanded section 178(1)(e) in a way that it is inconsistent with prior case law

Metal Abundance Calibration of the Ca II Triplet Lines in RR Lyrae Stars

The GAIA satellite is likely to observe thousands of RR Lyrae stars within a small spectral window, between 8470A and 8750A, at a resolution of 11,500. In order to derive the metallicity of RR Lyrae stars from Gaia, we have obtained numerous spectra of RR Lyrae stars at a resolution of 35,000 with the Apache Point Observatory 3.5 m echelle spectrograph. We have correlated the Ca II triplet line strengths with metallicity as derived from Fe II abundances, analogous to Preston's (1959) use of the Ca II K line to estimate the metallicity of RR Lyrae stars. The Ca II line at 8498A is the least blended with neighboring Paschen lines and thus provides the best correlation.Comment: Accepted for publication in Astrophysics & Space Scienc

Inflammatory and immune system correlates of rape

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the feasibility of measuring stress hormones and immunity following rape. The long-term goal is to evaluate the predictive value of stress-immune-inflammatory responses to later health outcomes. Fifteen women reporting rape were compared with 16 control participants. Serum stress hormones, proinflammatory cytokines, acute phase proteins, functional assays, and lymphocyte subsets were measured in blood samples. Women reporting rape had higher cytotoxic cells, lower B lymphocyte counts, higher proinflammatory biomarkers, and decreased lymphocyte proliferation compared to the control group. This finding suggests that rape produces activation of the innate immunity and suppression of some aspects of adaptive immunity. If these immune changes persist, they may contribute to the pathophysiology of long-term health sequelae by provoking chronic inflammation and decreased cellular immunocompetence

Lensing in an interior Kottler solution

We derive the interior Kottler solution of the incompressible fluid and show that the bending of light in this solution does depend on the cosmological constant.Comment: The inner Kottler solution derived and used in this paper is not new. Corresponding references to Stuchlik (2000) and Boehmer (2003) are added. Also added: a numerical example and a figure. This is the version accepted by Gen. Rel. Grav. However it includes a short passage that an anonymous referee had me suppress

Why Does Inflation Start at the Top of the Hill?

We show why the universe started in an unstable de Sitter state. The quantum origin of our universe implies one must take a `top down' approach to the problem of initial conditions in cosmology, in which the histories that contribute to the path integral, depend on the observable being measured. Using the no boundary proposal to specify the class of histories, we study the quantum cosmological origin of an inflationary universe in theories like trace anomaly driven inflation in which the effective potential has a local maximum. We find that an expanding universe is most likely to emerge in an unstable de Sitter state, by semiclassical tunneling via a Hawking-Moss instanton. Since the top down view is forced upon us by the quantum nature of the universe, we argue that the approach developed here should still apply when the framework of quantum cosmology will be based on M-Theory.Comment: 21 pages, 1 figur

Eye position and word identification during reading

College students read text displayed by computer as their eyes were being monitored. On occasional fixations or saccades the text was removed and the subject reported the last word that had been read and tried to guess the next word. Distributions of the location of the last read word with respect to the last fixated word give an indication of what words are being read during a fixation. The data do not support an anticipation model of reading nor the acquisition of peripheral cues concerning upcoming words

Central Charge for AdS_2 Quantum Gravity

Two-dimensional Maxwell-dilaton quantum gravity on AdS_2 with radius $\ell$ and a constant electric field E is studied. In conformal gauge, this is equivalent to a CFT on a strip. In order to maintain consistent boundary conditions, the usual conformal diffeomorphisms must be accompanied by a certain U(1) gauge transformation. The resulting conformal transformations are generated by a twisted stress tensor, which has a central charge $c={3k E^2 \ell^4/4}$ where k is the level of the U(1) current. This is an AdS_2 analog of the Brown-Henneaux formula $c = 3\ell/2G$ for the central charge of quantum gravity on AdS_3

The Wadi Faynan Project, Southern Jordan: a Preliminary Report on Geomorphology and Landscape Archaeology

Reproduced with permission of the publisher. © 1997 Council for British Research in the Levant. Details of the publication are available at: http://www.cbrl.org.uk/Publications/publications_default.shtmThe Wadi Faynan Project of the British Institute at Amman for Archaeology and History (BIAAH) has as its principal objective the provision of a detailed case study in the relationship between environmental change and human history in the arid zone, from prehistory to the present day. This report describes the preliminary findings of an initial campaign of fieldwork in geomorphology and landscape archaeology conducted by an inter-disciplinary team in 1996. A preliminary sequence of fluvial events has been established, represented by the Ghuwayr and Shayqar Beds dated to the Late Pleistocene, and the Faynan and Dana Beds dated to the Holocene. Methodologies have been trialed for recording, dating and interpreting the ancient field system assumed to be of Nabataean, Roman and Byzantine date; initial findings confirm its longevity of use and complexity of purpose. There are also indications that floodwater farming began in the Wadi Faynan in the Chalcolithic or Early Bronze Ag