The Impact of Structural Reforms on Environmental Problems in Agriculture

With the technological advancement in almost every sphere of human life, there has been an increased tendency to focus on the conservation of scarce resources by acquiring higher levels of resource use efficiency in the production process. However, there also remains a visible element of haste in policy planning towards the achievement of these goals, particularly in the developing world. The economic viability of such haste would have been positive had this helped in reducing the social cost of delayed policy actions taken in the preceding period. Conversely, the policy planning efforts continue to be ignorant of long-term consequences of current actions, as well as deficient in integrating various components of the sector or sub-sector of the economy which can not be viewed in isolation. These design defects in policies are largely ignored in post-impact evaluations of programmes, and failures are often incorrectly attributed to implementation, or simply referred to as managerial snags. Nevertheless, these inherent design defects become the primary contributors towards non-sustainability of development programmes. Pakistan’s agriculture, with its declining share in the economy over time, is still the single largest sector accounting for 23 percent in the GDP. Whereas its share has steadily declined in favour of rising manufacturing and services sectors, its rate of growth has remained rather erratic.

Selective delivery of arsenic trioxide to HPV positive cervical cancer cells with targeted liposomes

Infection with high risk human papilloma viruses (HPVs) is directly associated with the occurrence and development of cervical cancer, however, currently there is no specific anti-HPV drug available for cancer treatment. Arsenic trioxide (ATO) has been shown to induce apoptosis in HPV-infected cervical cancer cells in vitro but its wider clinical applications have been compromised by its toxicity and poor pharmacokinetics. This research explores an optimized drug delivery system for ATO using liposomal nanotechnology with the aim of enhancing its potential as a cervical cancer treatment. The size and surface charge of liposomes were optimised and 100nm neutral liposomes demonstrated maximum stability, least intrinsic toxicity and highest loading efficiency among all the tested formulations. Furthermore, both free and chosen liposomal-ATO were exposed to two cervical cancer cell lines (HeLa and HT-3, with and without HPV) and control cells. Liposomal-ATO was most effective in inducing toxic response in HPV+ ve HeLa cells, followed by HT-3 and control cells. These cells were then screened for different surface markers in order to identify the best ligand for selectively targeting HPV positive cells. Folate receptor (FR) was found as the most abundantly expressed receptor on HeLa cells, therefore, folic acid (FA) was chosen as the targeting ligand. FA-liposomal-ATO were synthesised by linking liposomal-ATO to FA using 5000kDa PEG spacer, which was shown to be most efficient and specific in enhancing the cellular uptake of ATO in FR positive cells. Finally, FA-liposomal-ATO were examined for their effectiveness in reducing HPV oncogenes and the possible mechanisms. Results showed that FA-liposomal-ATO induced higher cell death in HPV cells than free ATO per unit arsenic and also demonstrated higher selectivity and efficiency in inducing cell apoptosis, downregulating oncogenes and upregulating the tumour suppressors in HPV positive cells. These findings provide a promising therapeutic strategy in managing HPV-associated cancers

Causality, Input Price Variability, and Structural Changes in the U.S. Livestock- Meat Industry

Industrial Organization, Livestock Production/Industries,

FLASH: ultra-fast protocol to identify RNA-protein interactions in cells

Determination of the in vivo binding sites of RNA-binding proteins (RBPs) is paramount to understanding their function and how they affect different aspects of gene regulation. With hundreds of RNA-binding proteins identified in human cells, a flexible, high-resolution, high-throughput, highly multiplexible and radioactivity-free method to determine their binding sites has not been described to date. Here we report FLASH (Fast Ligation of RNA after some sort of Affinity Purification for High-throughput Sequencing), which uses a special adapter design and an optimized protocol to determine protein-RNA interactions in living cells. The entire FLASH protocol, starting from cells on plates to a sequencing library, takes 1.5 days. We demonstrate the flexibility, speed and versatility of FLASH by using it to determine RNA targets of both tagged and endogenously expressed proteins under diverse conditions in vivo

The Impact of Structural Reforms on Environmental Problems in Agriculture

With the technological advancement in almost every sphere of human life, there has been an increased tendency to focus on the conservation of scarce resources by acquiring higher levels of resource use efficiency in the production process. However, there also remains a visible element of haste in policy planning towards the achievement of these goals, particularly in the developing world. The economic viability of such haste would have been positive had this helped in reducing the social cost of delayed policy actions taken in the preceding period. Conversely, the policy planning efforts continue to be ignorant of long-term consequences of current actions, as well as deficient in integrating various components of the sector or sub-sector of the economy which can not be viewed in isolation. These design defects in policies are largely ignored in post-impact evaluations of programmes, and failures are often incorrectly attributed to implementation, or simply referred to as managerial snags. Nevertheless, these inherent design defects become the primary contributors towards non-sustainability of development programmes