Organization and Strategy of Farmer Specialized Cooperatives in China

A description and analysis of China's Farmer Specialized Cooperatives is presented. Data is presented regarding the historical development of farmer cooperatives in China, the membership composition of a sample of 66 farmer cooperatives in the Zhejiang province, and the various attributes (governance, quality control system, and strategy) of a watermelon cooperative in this province. Many cooperatives are being transformed in organizations with a market orientation. These cooperatives exhibit substantial heterogeneity, in terms of farmers being member and skewness in the distribution of control rights. Human asset specificity in terms of establishing and maintaining relations and access to markets seems to be more important than physical asset specificity in accounting for governance structure choice in the current institutional setting.Farmer Cooperative, China, Governance Structure, Business Strategy, Agribusiness, Q13,

Is There a Valence-Specific Pattern in Emotional Conflict in Major Depressive Disorder? An Exploratory Psychological Study

Objective: Patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) clinically exhibit a deficit in positive emotional processing and are often distracted by especially negative emotional stimuli. Such emotional-cognitive interference in turn hampers the cognitive abilities of patients in their ongoing task. While the psychological correlates of such emotional conflict have been well identified in healthy subjects, possible alterations of emotional conflict in depressed patients remain to be investigated. We conducted an exploratory psychological study to investigate emotional conflict in MDD. We also distinguished depression-related stimuli from negative stimuli in order to check whether the depression-related distractors will induce enhanced conflict in MDD. Methods: A typical word-face Stroop paradigm was adopted. In order to account for valence-specificities in MDD, we included positive and general negative as well as depression-related words in the study. Results: MDD patients demonstrated a specific pattern of emotional conflict clearly distinguishable from the healthy control group. In MDD, the positive distractor words did not significantly interrupt the processing of the negative target faces, while they did in healthy subjects. On the other hand, the depression-related distractor words induced significant emotional conflict to the positive target faces in MDD patients but not in the healthy control group. Conclusion: Our findings demonstrated for the first time an altered valence-specific pattern in emotional conflict in MD

Identification and Characterization of Paramyosin from Cyst Wall of Metacercariae Implicated Protective Efficacy against Clonorchis sinensis Infection

Human clonorchiasis has been increasingly prevalent in recent years and results in a threat to the public health in epidemic regions, motivating current strategies of vaccines to combat Clonorchis sinensis (C. sinensis). In this study, we identified C. sinensis paramyosin (CsPmy) from the cyst wall proteins of metacercariae by proteomic approaches and characterized the expressed recombinant pET-26b-CsPmy protein (101 kDa). Bioinformatics analysis indicated that full-length sequences of paramyosin are conserved in helminthes and numerous B-cell/T-cell epitopes were predicted in amino acid sequence of CsPmy. Western blot analysis showed that CsPmy was expressed at four life stages of C. sinensis, both cyst wall proteins and soluble tegumental components could be probed by anti-CsPmy serum. Moreover, immunolocalization results revealed that CsPmy was specifically localized at cyst wall and excretory bladder of metacercaria, as well as the tegument, oral sucker and vitellarium of adult worm. Both immunoblot and immunolocalization results demonstrated that CsPmy was highly expressed at the stage of adult worm, metacercariae and cercaria, which could be supported by real-time PCR analysis. Both recombinant protein and nucleic acid of CsPmy showed strong immunogenicity in rats and induced combined Th1/Th2 immune responses, which were reflected by continuous high level of antibody titers and increased level of IgG1/IgG2a subtypes in serum. In vaccine trials, comparing with control groups, both CsPmy protein and DNA vaccine exhibited protective effect with significant worm reduction rate of 54.3% (p<0.05) and 36.1% (p<0.05), respectively. In consistence with immune responses in sera, elevated level of cytokines IFN-γ and IL-4 in splenocytes suggested that CsPmy could induce combined cellular immunity and humoral immunity in host. Taken together, CsPmy could be a promising vaccine candidate in the prevention of C. sinensis regarding its high immunogenicity and surface localization

ANALYSIS AND APPLICATION OF INDUCTANCE IN CLOCK DISTRIBUTION NETWORKS

With better manufacturing technologies, each generation of processors grows smaller, faster, and consumes more power. As microprocessors are operating at multi-GHz speed, power consumption has become a major concern in modern processor design. Especially in portabledevices which are battery operated, low power design becomes extreme important.The on-chip clock distribution network (CDN) consumes in excess of 35% of total chip power and occasionally as much as 70% [61]. Most of this power is due to the dynamic switching of the large number of sequential element clock pins that span the entire chip. Clock distribution using inductance (Resonant clock ) has a potential to reduce the maximum power consumption without degrading the clock network performance. Some previous research works demonstrated power savings by connecting extra inductors to clock network. Compared with clock trees, clock grids are often used in high performance processors which operate at higher frequency and consume more power. Previous resonant works either assume simplified clock network or only consider a small sector of the clock network. Inductance is often used in RF designs. In digital circuits, designers usually try to minimize the inductance effect of long interconnections. So the resonant clock synthesis which is related to both digital and analogy design has not been well studied.In this thesis, a methodology to design low power resonant clock grid is described. The key synthesis procedures involved in resonant clock grid design are discussed. The CDN which has a top-level tree driving a resonant grid shows at least 40% power savings and 53% buffer area reduction while using only 30% of a single metal layer for inductors on average. With more advanced on-chip inductor integration techniques, resonant clock grids hold the potential to save up to 90% of the clock grid power. The automated methods can make these multi-disciplinary clocking techniques practical for use in high-performance ASIC designs. At the end of the thesis, the practical issues of resonant clock will be discussed

ANALYSIS AND APPLICATION OF INDUCTANCE IN CLOCK DISTRIBUTION NETWORKS

With better manufacturing technologies, each generation of processors grows smaller, faster, and consumes more power. As microprocessors are operating at multi-GHz speed, power consumption has become a major concern in modern processor design. Especially in portabledevices which are battery operated, low power design becomes extreme important.The on-chip clock distribution network (CDN) consumes in excess of 35% of total chip power and occasionally as much as 70% [61]. Most of this power is due to the dynamic switching of the large number of sequential element clock pins that span the entire chip. Clock distribution using inductance (Resonant clock ) has a potential to reduce the maximum power consumption without degrading the clock network performance. Some previous research works demonstrated power savings by connecting extra inductors to clock network. Compared with clock trees, clock grids are often used in high performance processors which operate at higher frequency and consume more power. Previous resonant works either assume simplified clock network or only consider a small sector of the clock network. Inductance is often used in RF designs. In digital circuits, designers usually try to minimize the inductance effect of long interconnections. So the resonant clock synthesis which is related to both digital and analogy design has not been well studied.In this thesis, a methodology to design low power resonant clock grid is described. The key synthesis procedures involved in resonant clock grid design are discussed. The CDN which has a top-level tree driving a resonant grid shows at least 40% power savings and 53% buffer area reduction while using only 30% of a single metal layer for inductors on average. With more advanced on-chip inductor integration techniques, resonant clock grids hold the potential to save up to 90% of the clock grid power. The automated methods can make these multi-disciplinary clocking techniques practical for use in high-performance ASIC designs. At the end of the thesis, the practical issues of resonant clock will be discussed

Ranking and averaging independent component analysis by reproducibility (RAICAR)

Independent component analysis (ICA) is a data-driven approach that has exhibited great utility for functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Standard ICA implementations, however, do not provide the number and relative importance of the resulting components. In addition, ICA algorithms utilizing gradient-based optimization give decompositions that are dependent on initialization values, which can lead to dramatically different results. In this work, a new method, RAICAR (Ranking and Averaging Independent Component Analysis by Reproducibility), is introduced to address these issues for spatial ICA applied to fMRI. RAICAR utilizes repeated ICA realizations and relies on the reproducibility between them to rank and select components. Different realizations are aligned based on correlations, leading to aligned components. Each component is ranked and thresholded based on between-realization correlations. Furthermore, different realizations of each aligned component are selectively averaged to generate the final estimate of the given component. Reliability and accuracy of this method are demonstrated with both simulated and experimental fMRI data.Independent component analysis (ICA) is a data-driven approach that has exhibited great utility for functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Standard ICA implementations, however, do not provide the number and relative importance of the resulting components. In addition, ICA algorithms utilizing gradient-based optimization give decompositions that are dependent on initialization values, which can lead to dramatically different results. In this work, a new method, RAICAR (Ranking and Averaging Independent Component Analysis by Reproducibility), is introduced to address these issues for spatial ICA applied to fMRI. RAICAR utilizes repeated ICA realizations and relies on the reproducibility between them to rank and select components. Different realizations are aligned based on correlations, leading to aligned components. Each component is ranked and thresholded based on between-realization correlations. Furthermore, different realizations of each aligned component are selectively averaged to generate the final estimate of the given component. Reliability and accuracy of this method are demonstrated with both simulated and experimental fMRI data

Organization and Strategy of Farmer Specialized Cooperatives in China

A description and analysis of China's Farmer Specialized Cooperatives is presented. Data is presented regarding the historical development of farmer cooperatives in China, the membership composition of a sample of 66 farmer cooperatives in the Zhejiang province, and the various attributes (governance, quality control system, and strategy) of a watermelon cooperative in this province. Many cooperatives are being transformed in organizations with a market orientation. These cooperatives exhibit substantial heterogeneity, in terms of farmers being member and skewness in the distribution of control rights. Human asset specificity in terms of establishing and maintaining relations and access to markets seems to be more important than physical asset specificity in accounting for governance structure choice in the current institutional setting

Comparisons of effects of emotional conflict between MDD patients and healthy controls.

<p>The emotional conflict effect induced by the traditional emotional incongruent (EI) trials (i.e., positive word distractor and negative face target, negative distractor - positive target) and emotional congruent (EC) trials (i.e., positive distractor - positive target, negative distractor - negative target) was illustrated in (A) (negative target) and (B) (positive target). The emotional conflict effect induced by the special EI (i.e., depression-related distractor - positive target) trials and EC (i.e., depression-related distractor - negative target) trials associated with the depression-related words was shown in (C) (negative target) and (D) (positive target). Error bars show standard errors. <i>* p</i><.05, ** <i>p</i><.01.</p

Experimental paradigm. Following a 500 ms warning signal (+), the Stroop stimuli was presented.

<p>The distractor word (positive, negative or depression-related) was presented for 200 ms, and the target face (positive or negative) was present for no more than 1000 ms. Subjects were asked to identify the valence of faces while ignoring words overlaid on them within 2000 ms. The target face and the following blank will disappear after the response. The inter-stimulus interval (ISI) was 1000 ms. Emotional incongruent (EI) trials consisted of faces and words with opposing valence, and emotional congruent (EC) trials consisted of faces and words with identical valence. Faces were presented in color and words in blue.</p