1,680 research outputs found
AGRICULTURAL COOPERATIVE ENTERPRISE IN THE TRANSITION FROM SOCIALIST COLLECTIVE FARMING
Cooperative enterprise has appeal as a means of filling gaps in the economic institutions of the rural sectors of the transition economies of Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. But in addition to problems that have faced cooperatives in the West because of their inherent characteristics, the Soviet-era legacy created cultural burdens that cooperatives will have to overcome. A review of countries’ experiences since 1989 indicates some commonalities in attempts to create “new cooperatives,” but also instructive differences across countries. The evidence so far is unfavorable for cooperatives in agricultural production. In marketing and input supply the current situation is more promising. In both production and marketing, the economic institutions remain in flux. Unique approaches involving cooperatives may take permanent root, but their long-term prospects are in doubt.Agribusiness,
Agricultural Cooperative Enterprise in the Transition from Socialist Collective Farming
Cooperative enterprise has appeal as a means of filling gaps in the economic institutions of the rural sectors of the transition economies of Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. But in addition to problems that have faced cooperatives in the West because of their inherent characteristics, the Soviet-era legacy created cultural burdens that cooperatives will have to overcome. A review of countries’ experiences since 1989 indicates some commonalities in attempts to create “new cooperatives,†but also instructive differences across countries. The evidence so far is unfavorable for cooperatives in agricultural production. In marketing and input supply the current situation is more promising. In both production and marketing, the economic institutions remain in flux. Unique approaches involving cooperatives may take permanent root, but their long-term prospects are in doubt.Agribusiness,
Twistor-Inspired Construction of Electroweak Vector Boson Currents
We present an extension of the twistor-motivated MHV vertices and
accompanying rules presented by Cachazo, Svrvcek and Witten to the construction
of vector-boson currents coupling to an arbitrary source. In particular, we
give rules for constructing off-shell vector-boson currents with one fermion
pair and n gluons of arbitrary helicity. These currents may be employed
directly in the computation of electroweak amplitudes. The rules yield
expressions in agreement with previously-obtained results for Z,W,\gamma^* -->
qbar q + n gluons (analytically up to n=3, beyond via the Berends--Giele
recursion relations). We also confirm that the contribution to a seven-point
amplitude containing the non-abelian triple vector-boson coupling obtained
using the next-to-MHV currents matches the previous result in the literature.Comment: 22 pages, 4 figures, v2 minor corrections and added commentary on
multiple vector boson
Generalized Unitarity and Six-Dimensional Helicity
We combine the unitarity method with the six-dimensional helicity formalism
of Cheung and O'Connell to construct loop-level scattering amplitudes. As a
first example, we construct dimensionally regularized QCD one-loop four-point
amplitudes. As a nontrivial multiloop example, we confirm that the recently
constructed four-loop four-point amplitude of N=4 super-Yang-Mills theory,
including nonplanar contributions, is valid for dimensions less than or equal
to six. We comment on the connection of our approach to the recently discussed
Higgs infrared regulator and on dual conformal properties in six dimensions.Comment: 38 pages, 7 figures, typos correcte
Power assignment problems in wireless communication
A fundamental class of problems in wireless communication is concerned with the assignment of suitable transmission powers to wireless devices/stations such that the resulting communication graph satisfies certain desired properties and the overall energy consumed is minimized. Many concrete communication tasks in a wireless network like broadcast, multicast, point-to-point routing, creation of a communication backbone, etc. can be regarded as such a power assignment problem. This paper considers several problems of that kind; for example one problem studied before in (Vittorio Bil{\`o} et al: Geometric Clustering to Minimize the Sum of Cluster Sizes, ESA 2005) and (Helmut Alt et al.: Minimum-cost coverage of point sets by disks, SCG 2006) aims to select and assign powers to of the stations such that all other stations are within reach of at least one of the selected stations. We improve the running time for obtaining a -approximate solution for this problem from as reported by Bil{\`o} et al. (see Vittorio Bil{\`o} et al: Geometric Clustering to Minimize the Sum of Cluster Sizes, ESA 2005) to that is, we obtain a running time that is \emph{linear} in the network size. Further results include a constant approximation algorithm for the TSP problem under squared (non-metric!) edge costs, which can be employed to implement a novel data aggregation protocol, as well as efficient schemes to perform -hop multicasts
Mutual learning in a tree parity machine and its application to cryptography
Mutual learning of a pair of tree parity machines with continuous and
discrete weight vectors is studied analytically. The analysis is based on a
mapping procedure that maps the mutual learning in tree parity machines onto
mutual learning in noisy perceptrons. The stationary solution of the mutual
learning in the case of continuous tree parity machines depends on the learning
rate where a phase transition from partial to full synchronization is observed.
In the discrete case the learning process is based on a finite increment and a
full synchronized state is achieved in a finite number of steps. The
synchronization of discrete parity machines is introduced in order to construct
an ephemeral key-exchange protocol. The dynamic learning of a third tree parity
machine (an attacker) that tries to imitate one of the two machines while the
two still update their weight vectors is also analyzed. In particular, the
synchronization times of the naive attacker and the flipping attacker recently
introduced in [1] are analyzed. All analytical results are found to be in good
agreement with simulation results
24R,25-Dihydroxyvitamin D3 Protects against Articular Cartilage Damage following Anterior Cruciate Ligament Transection in Male Rats
Osteoarthritis (OA) in humans is associated with low circulating 25-hydroxyvitamin D3 [25 (OH)D3]. In vitamin D replete rats, radiolabeled 24R,25-dihydroxyvitamin D3 [24R,25 (OH)2D3] accumulates in articular cartilage following injection of [3 H]-25(OH)D3. Previously, we showed that 24R,25(OH)2D3 blocks chondrocyte apoptosis via phospholipase D and p53, suggesting a role for 24R,25(OH)2D3 in maintaining cartilage health. We examined the ability of 24R,25(OH)2D3 to prevent degenerative changes in articular cartilage in an OAlike environment and the potential mechanisms involved. In vitro, rat articular chondrocytes were treated with IL-1β with and without 24R,25(OH)2D3 or 1α,25(OH)2D3. 24R,25(OH)2D3 but not 1α,25(OH)2D3 blocked the effects of IL-1β in a dose-dependent manner, and its effect was partially mediated through the TGF-β1 signaling pathway. In vivo, unilateral anterior cruciate ligament transections were performed in immunocompetent rats followed by intra-articular injections of 24R,25(OH)2D3 or vehicle (t = 0, 7, 14, 21 days). Tissues were harvested on day 28. Joints treated with vehicle had changes typical of OA whereas joints treated with 24R,25(OH)2D3 had less articular cartilage damage and levels of inflammatory mediators. These results indicate that 24R,25(OH)2D3 protects against OA, and suggest that it may be a therapeutic approach for preventing trauma-induced osteoarthritis
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