HEDGING CLASS I MILK: THE "ACCELERATION" AND "MOVER" EFFECT

A volatile closing basis prevents class I hedgers from locking in a minimum price. The closing basis is composed of an "acceleration" and "mover" effect. The mover effect always works to the producer's advantage unlike the acceleration effect. This research discusses hedging strategies to minimize the acceleration effect.Marketing,

Structured Exercise During Neo-Adjuvant Chemotherapy in Patients with Operable Adenocarcinoma of the Oesophagus and Gastro-Oesophageal Junction

Neo-adjuvant chemotherapy (NAC) results in physical deconditioning prior to high-risk surgery in patients diagnosed with oesophageal adenocarcinoma but remains the gold standard of care for patients with operable disease. Overall, physical and mental decline has been reported in patients, with a delayed return to baseline health-related quality of life (HRQL) following treatment. Exercise has been shown to improve fitness in patients undergoing non-cancer elective surgery. Furthermore, improved cancer control and immune function has been reported in exercising mice under laboratory conditions. Aim: The aim of this thesis is to examine the feasibility of a structured exercise prehabilitation program commencing prior to chemotherapy and continuing during treatment and the impact on outcomes for cancer patients. Methods: Patients were invited to participate in a clinical trial of exercise prehabilitation concomitant with standard care versus standard care alone. Following informed and written consent, patients were enrolled into the Pre-EMPT study and clinical data collection commenced. Post-operative tumour histopathology assessment was carried out according to Royal College of Pathology guidelines. Cardiopulmonary exercise testing was performed during treatment. CT scans were assessed for body composition changes post-NAC. Immunity and Inflammatory bloods were assessed. HRQL was measured using validated patient reported outcomes. Results: A decline in patient fitness following NAC, measured by VO2peak, was blunted by 7% in patients undergoing the structured exercise prehabilitation program (-19% Control vs -12% Intervention). Overall length of hospital stay was lower than the national average in both groups, as were post-operative complications. Improved cancer control was evident in the Intervention group, measured by pathological evidence of disease regression in both primary tumour and lymph nodes. There was reversal of sarcopenic obesity with improved visceral /subcutaneous fat ratios in patients undergoing exercise prehabilitation. In addition, immune function was significantly improved with greater regulation of inflammatory markers (i.e. Interleukin-6). Overall mental wellbeing, measured using the Shortened Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-Being Scale, was less perturbed in the Intervention group, also showing a recovery to baseline at 12 months after surgery. Conclusions: A structured exercise prehabilitation program during neo-adjuvant chemotherapy and prior to surgery is feasible and beneficial to patients with operable oesophageal adenocarcinoma. A structured exercise intervention reduces physical decline and improves cancer control in patients undergoing NAC

RISK BALANCING STRATEGIES IN THE FLORIDA DAIRY INDUSTRY: AN APPLICATION OF CONDITIONAL VALUE AT RISK

Legislation has prompted changes in milk price volatility. Milk price volatility impacts the producer's exposure to business risk which is compound by the firms financial risk. Financial risk is a function of the firms capital structure. In the short run it is difficult for the producer to significantly change the firms capital structure and therefore balance increased business risk with reduced financial risk. The producer can however reduce financial and business risk by using futures contracts to lock in a price for milk produced. The producer's risk preferences dictate the producer's hedge ratio. Using the return on equity as a profitability measure and the conditional value at risk as a risk measure the optimal hedge ratio is derived for various probabilities of negative returns on equity.Conditional Value at Risk, cVaR, Risk Management, Futures, Dairy, Agricultural and Food Policy, Livestock Production/Industries, Risk and Uncertainty,

Self-similar structure and experimental signatures of suprathermal ion distribution in inertial confinement fusion implosions

The distribution function of suprathermal ions is found to be self-similar under conditions relevant to inertial confinement fusion hot-spots. By utilizing this feature, interference between the hydro-instabilities and kinetic effects is for the first time assessed quantitatively to find that the instabilities substantially aggravate the fusion reactivity reduction. The ion tail depletion is also shown to lower the experimentally inferred ion temperature, a novel kinetic effect that may explain the discrepancy between the exploding pusher experiments and rad-hydro simulations and contribute to the observation that temperature inferred from DD reaction products is lower than from DT at National Ignition Facility.Comment: Revised version accepted for publication in PRL. "Copyright (2015) by the American Physical Society.

Characterization of a novel angular dioxygenase from fluorene-degrading Sphingomonas sp. strain LB126

In this study, the genes involved in the initial attack on fluorene by Sphingomonas sp. LB126 were investigated. The ? and ? subunits of a dioxygenase complex (FlnA1A2), showing 63% and 51% sequence identity respectively, with the subunits of an angular dioxygenase from Gram-positive Terrabacter sp. DBF63, were identified. When overexpressed in E. coli, FlnA1A2 was responsible for the angular oxidation of fluorene, fluorenol, fluorenone, dibenzofuran and dibenzo-p-dioxin. Moreover, FlnA1A2 was able to oxidize polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and heteroaromatics, some of which were not oxidized by the dioxygenase from Terrabacter sp. DBF63. Quantification of resulting oxidation products showed that fluorene and phenanthrene were preferred substrates

Assessment of ion kinetic effects in shock-driven inertial confinement fusion implosions using fusion burn imaging

The significance and nature of ion kinetic effects in D3He-filled, shock-driven inertial confinement fusion implosions are assessed through measurements of fusion burn profiles. Over this series of experiments, the ratio of ion-ion mean free path to minimum shell radius (the Knudsen number, NK) was varied from 0.3 to 9 in order to probe hydrodynamic-like to strongly kinetic plasma conditions; as the Knudsen number increased, hydrodynamic models increasingly failed to match measured yields, while an empirically-tuned, first-step model of ion kinetic effects better captured the observed yield trends [Rosenberg et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 112, 185001 (2014)]. Here, spatially resolved measurements of the fusion burn are used to examine kinetic ion transport effects in greater detail, adding an additional dimension of understanding that goes beyond zero-dimensional integrated quantities to one-dimensional profiles. In agreement with the previous findings, a comparison of measured and simulated burn profiles shows that models including ion transport effects are able to better match the experimental results. In implosions characterized by large Knudsen numbers (NK3), the fusion burn profiles predicted by hydrodynamics simulations that exclude ion mean free path effects are peaked far from the origin, in stark disagreement with the experimentally observed profiles, which are centrally peaked. In contrast, a hydrodynamics simulation that includes a model of ion diffusion is able to qualitatively match the measured profile shapes. Therefore, ion diffusion or diffusion-like processes are identified as a plausible explanation of the observed trends, though further refinement of the models is needed for a more complete and quantitative understanding of ion kinetic effects