The New Political Economy of EU State Aid Policy

Despite its importance and singularity, the EU’s state aid policy has attracted less scholarly attention than other elements of EU competition policy. Introducing the themes addressed by the special issue, this article briefly reviews the development of EU policy and highlights why the control of state aid matters. The Commission’s response to the current economic crisis notably in banking and the car industry is a key concern, but the interests of the special issue go far beyond. They include: the role of the European Commission in the development of EU policy, the politics of state aid, and a clash between models of capitalism. The special issue also examines the impact of EU policy. It investigates how EU state aid decisions affect not only industrial policy at the national level (and therefore at the EU level), but the welfare state and territorial relations within federal member states, the external implications of EU action and the strategies pursued by the Commission to limit any potential disadvantage to European firms, and the conflict between the EU’s expanding legal order and national

Molecular marker-assisted selection: a novel approach for host plant resistance to insects in grain legumes

Grain such as chickpea, pigeonpea, cowpea, fieldpea, lentil, grams, beans, soybean, and groundnut play an important role in "the daily diets the people worldwide. Being a rich source of protein, they are damaged by. a large number of insect pests such as legume pod borer, corn earworm, pod borer, aphids, white fly, tobacco caterpillar, leafhoppers, thrips and bruchids. of resistance to insects in grain legumes have been identified long ago, but these have not been used. effectively in crop improvement because of the difficulties involved in screening and selection of the test material under conditions. Molecular markers can play an important role in accelerating the introgresslOn of genes conferring to target insects into high-yielding cultivars, understanding the nature of gene action, and reducing the deleterious effects introgressing unwanted genes from wild species through linkage drag. Molecular breeding also offers the opportunity to pyramid different sources of resistance that could not be effectively selected through conventional breeding due to identical phenotypes and thereby accumulate levels of resistance and/or create potentially more durable resistant cultivars. Considerable has been made in developing genetic linkage maps of chickpea, cowpea, and soybean, while much remains to be done in pigeonpea, beans, lentil, and fieldpea. Preliminary identification of molecular markers resistance to insects in soybean, chickpea, mungbean, fieldpea, and cowpea has been reported. However, no distinct advantage has been observed by using assisted selection resistance to insect pests over the conventional approach, and in most cases, the epistatic are also quite high. Thus, a new paradigm approach may be required to combine conventional approaches and marker-assisted selection in such way as to create systems better than either approach. This paper reviews current state-of-the-art concerning conventional and molecular breeding for pest resistance, and highlight the opportunities and con~traints for use of molecular markers for accelerating the pace of development of insectresistant culrivars in grain legumes

Implementation, impact and costs of policies for safe staffing in acute NHS trusts

The aim of this research has been to describe the implementation of safe staffing policies in NHS general acute Trusts in England looking at costs and consequences, and examining the factors that have influenced implementation. A mix of qualitative and quantitative methods were used (national survey, analysis of national data, four case studies, realist evaluation) to examine the impact of policies nationally, and explore commonality and variation in local responses to safe staffing policies. The report is based on independent research commissioned and funded by the NIHR Policy Research Programme (“Implementation, Impact and Costs of Policies for Safe Staffing in Acute NHS Trusts”, PR-ST-1115-10017). The views expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the NIHR, the Department of Health and Social Care, ‘arm’s length bodies’ or other government departments

The Effects of Immobility on Long Bone Remodelling in the Rhesus Monkey

Using Frost\u27s method for undecalcified bone sections, long bones of the lower extremities of ten rhesus monkeys were examined following two months\u27 immobilization and compared with thirteen controls. A decrease in appositional rate and in the surface extent of the ossification process were noted in the immobilized animals. No typical change in resorption was noted. The immobilized animals showed a decreased cortical-total area ratio. These findings suggest that a decrease in activity affects bone by depressing functions mediated by the osteoblast without necessarily evoking an Increased remodelling response

Coulomb blockade of strongly coupled quantum dots studied via bosonization of a channel with a finite barrier

A pair of quantum dots, coupled through a point contact, can exhibit Coulomb blockade effects that reflect an oscillatory term in the dots' total energy whose value depends on whether the total number of electrons on the dots is even or odd. The effective energy associated with this even-odd alternation is reduced, relative to the bare Coulomb blockade energy for uncoupled dots, by a factor (1-f) that decreases as the interdot coupling is increased. When the transmission coefficient for interdot electronic motion is independent of energy and the same for all channels within the point contact (which are assumed uncoupled), the factor (1-f) takes on a universal value determined solely by the number of channels and the dimensionless conductance g of each individual channel. This paper studies corrections to the universal value of (1-f) that result when the transmission coefficent varies over energy scales of the size of the bare Coulomb blockade energy. We consider a model in which the point contact is described by a single orbital channel containing a parabolic barrier potential, and we calculate the leading correction to (1-f) for one-channel (spin-split) and two-channel (spin-degenerate) point contacts in the limit where the single orbital channel is almost completely open. By generalizing a previously used bosonization technique, we find that, for a given value of the dimensionless conductance g, the value of (1-f) is increased relative to its value for a zero-thickness barrier, but the absolute value of the increase is small in the region where our calculations apply.Comment: 13 pages, 3 Postscript figure

Three Dimensional MHD Wave Propagation and Conversion to Alfven Waves near the Solar Surface. I. Direct Numerical Solution

The efficacy of fast/slow MHD mode conversion in the surface layers of sunspots has been demonstrated over recent years using a number of modelling techniques, including ray theory, perturbation theory, differential eigensystem analysis, and direct numerical simulation. These show that significant energy may be transferred between the fast and slow modes in the neighbourhood of the equipartition layer where the Alfven and sound speeds coincide. However, most of the models so far have been two dimensional. In three dimensions the Alfven wave may couple to the magneto-acoustic waves with important implications for energy loss from helioseismic modes and for oscillations in the atmosphere above the spot. In this paper, we carry out a numerical ``scattering experiment'', placing an acoustic driver 4 Mm below the solar surface and monitoring the acoustic and Alfvenic wave energy flux high in an isothermal atmosphere placed above it. These calculations indeed show that energy conversion to upward travelling Alfven waves can be substantial, in many cases exceeding loss to slow (acoustic) waves. Typically, at penumbral magnetic field strengths, the strongest Alfven fluxes are produced when the field is inclined 30-40 degrees from the vertical, with the vertical plane of wave propagation offset from the vertical plane containing field lines by some 60-80 degrees.Comment: Accepted for the HELAS II/ SOHO 19/ GONG 2007 Topical Issue of Solar Physic

NEXUS/Physics: An interdisciplinary repurposing of physics for biologists

In response to increasing calls for the reform of the undergraduate science curriculum for life science majors and pre-medical students (Bio2010, Scientific Foundations for Future Physicians, Vision & Change), an interdisciplinary team has created NEXUS/Physics: a repurposing of an introductory physics curriculum for the life sciences. The curriculum interacts strongly and supportively with introductory biology and chemistry courses taken by life sciences students, with the goal of helping students build general, multi-discipline scientific competencies. In order to do this, our two-semester NEXUS/Physics course sequence is positioned as a second year course so students will have had some exposure to basic concepts in biology and chemistry. NEXUS/Physics stresses interdisciplinary examples and the content differs markedly from traditional introductory physics to facilitate this. It extends the discussion of energy to include interatomic potentials and chemical reactions, the discussion of thermodynamics to include enthalpy and Gibbs free energy, and includes a serious discussion of random vs. coherent motion including diffusion. The development of instructional materials is coordinated with careful education research. Both the new content and the results of the research are described in a series of papers for which this paper serves as an overview and context.Comment: 12 page

Resolving the Azimuthal Ambiguity in Vector Magnetogram Data with the Divergence-Free Condition: Application to Discrete Data

We investigate how the divergence-free property of magnetic fields can be exploited to resolve the azimuthal ambiguity present in solar vector magnetogram data, by using line-of-sight and horizontal heliographic derivative information as approximated from discrete measurements. Using synthetic data we test several methods that each make different assumptions about how the divergence-free property can be used to resolve the ambiguity. We find that the most robust algorithm involves the minimisation of the absolute value of the divergence summed over the entire field of view. Away from disk centre this method requires the sign and magnitude of the line-of-sight derivatives of all three components of the magnetic field vector.Comment: Solar Physics, in press, 20 pages, 11 figure

Genetic Transformation of Crops for Insect Resistance: Potential and Limitations

Transgenic resistance to insects has been demonstrated in plants expressing insecticidal genes such as δ -endotoxins from Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), protease inhibitors, enzymes, secondary plant metabolites, and plant lectins. While transgenic plants with introduced Bt genes have been deployed in several crops on a global scale, the alternative genes have received considerably less attention. The protease inhibitor and lectin genes largely affect insect growth and development and, in most instances, do not result in insect mortality. The effective concentrations of these proteins are much greater than the Bt toxin proteins. Therefore, the potential of some of the alternative genes can only be realized by deploying them in combination with conventional host plant resistance and Bt genes. Genes conferring resistance to insects can also be deployed as multilines or synthetic varieties. Initial indications from deployment of transgenics with insect resistance in diverse cropping systems in USA, Canada, Argentina, China, India, Australia, and South Africa suggest that single transgene products in standard cultivar backgrounds are not a recipe for sustainable pest management. Instead, a much more complex approach may be needed, one which may involve deployment of a combination of different transgenes in different backgrounds. Under diverse climatic conditions and cropping systems of tropics, the success in the utilization of transgenics for pest management may involve decentralized national breeding programs and several small-scale seed companies. While several transgenic crops with insecticidal genes have been introduced in the temperate regions, very little has been done to use this technology for improving crop productivity in the harsh environments of the tropics, where the need for increasing food production is most urgent. There is a need to develop appropriate strategies for deployment of transgenics for pest management, keeping in view the pest spectrum involved, and the effects on nontarget organisms in the ecosyste