The relationship of U.S. and Canadian Cull Cow Prices to lean beef prices: A DAG Analysis

Demand and Price Analysis,

The relationship of U.S. and Canadian Cull Cow Prices to lean beef prices: A DAG Analysis

What is the price relationship between a cull cow in San Angelo, Texas, Sioux Falls, South Dakota and other major U.S. cull cow markets and those in Ontario or Alberta Canada? How are these prices impacted by the price for lean beef trimmings or the price of imported lean beef from Australia or New Zealand? What impact did the discovery of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in North America in 2003 have on these price relationships? Answers to these and other questions are the purpose of this paper. Numerous market and price analysis studies exist on the fed cattle and feeder cattle markets in the U.S. However, there have been only a few recent studies on the U.S. cull cow market. Yager, Greer and Burt, 1980, and Tronstad and Gum, 1994, looked at optimal culling and marketing decisions, but neither of these two studies compared markets over time. While only limited research has been done on this market, it is an important part of the total U.S. beef market. Ground beef represents about 44% of all retail beef purchased and 59% of all fresh beef consumed in U.S. households. The cull cow market is a major supplier of lean beef and trimmings for the grinding industry. Beef from cull cows is also used for the low-end steak houses, for many of the thinly sliced deli beef products and for some of the other pre-cooked and further processed beef products for sale in retail grocer stores

A practical key-recovery attack on LWE-based key-encapsulation mechanism schemes using Rowhammer

Physical attacks are serious threats to cryptosystems deployed in the real world. In this work, we propose a microarchitectural end-to-end attack methodology on generic lattice-based post-quantum key encapsulation mechanisms to recover the long-term secret key. Our attack targets a critical component of a Fujisaki-Okamoto transform that is used in the construction of almost all lattice-based key encapsulation mechanisms. We demonstrate our attack model on practical schemes such as Kyber and Saber by using Rowhammer. We show that our attack is highly practical and imposes little preconditions on the attacker to succeed. As an additional contribution, we propose an improved version of the plaintext checking oracle, which is used by almost all physical attack strategies on lattice-based key-encapsulation mechanisms. Our improvement reduces the number of queries to the plaintext checking oracle by as much as $39\%$ for Saber and approximately $23\%$ for Kyber768. This can be of independent interest and can also be used to reduce the complexity of other attacks

Gender-Based Comparative Study of Type 2 Diabetes Risk Factors in Kolkata, India: A Machine Learning Approach

Type 2 diabetes mellitus represents a prevalent and widespread global health concern, necessitating a comprehensive assessment of its risk factors. This study aimed towards learning whether there is any differential impact of age, Lifestyle, BMI and Waist to height ratio on the risk of Type 2 diabetes mellitus in males and females in Kolkata, West Bengal, India based on a sample observed from the out-patient consultation department of Belle Vue Clinic in Kolkata. Various machine learning models like Logistic Regression, Random Forest, and Support Vector Classifier, were used to predict the risk of diabetes, and performance was compared based on different predictors. Our findings indicate a significant age-related increase in risk of diabetes for both males and females. Although exercising and BMI was found to have significant impact on the risk of Type 2 diabetes in males, in females both turned out to be statistically insignificant. For both males and females, predictive models based on WhtR demonstrated superior performance in risk assessment compared to those based on BMI. This study sheds light on the gender-specific differences in the risk factors for Type 2 diabetes, offering valuable insights that can be used towards more targeted healthcare interventions and public health strategies.Comment: 10 pages, 7 tables,3 figures, submitted to a conferenc

A practical key-recovery attack on LWE-based key- encapsulation mechanism schemes using Rowhammer

Physical attacks are serious threats to cryptosystems deployed in the real world. In this work, we propose a microarchitectural end-to-end attack methodology on generic lattice-based post-quantum key encapsulation mechanisms to recover the long-term secret key. Our attack targets a critical component of a Fujisaki-Okamoto transform that is used in the construction of almost all lattice-based key encapsulation mechanisms. We demonstrate our attack model on practical schemes such as Kyber and Saber by using Rowhammer. We show that our attack is highly practical and imposes little preconditions on the attacker to succeed. As an additional contribution, we propose an improved version of the plaintext checking oracle, which is used by almost all physical attack strategies on lattice-based key-encapsulation mechanisms. Our improvement reduces the number of queries to the plaintext checking oracle by as much as 39% for Saber and approximately 23% for Kyber768. This can be of independent interest and can also be used to reduce the complexity of other attacks

Role of the ribosome in protein folding

In all organisms, the ribosome synthesizes and folds full length polypeptide chains into active three-dimensional conformations. The nascent protein goes through two major interactions, first with the ribosome which synthesizes the polypeptide chain and holds it for a considerable length of time, and then with the chaperones. Some of the chaperones are found in solution as well as associated to the ribosome. A number of in vitro and in vivo experiments revealed that the nascent protein folds through specific interactions of some amino acids with the nucleotides in the peptidyl transferase center (PTC) in the large ribosomal subunit. The mechanism of this folding differs from self-folding. In this article, we highlight the folding of nascent proteins on the ribosome and the influence of chaperones etc. on protein folding

Immunogenicity and safety of live attenuated hepatitis A Vaccine: a multicentric study

Objective: To evaluate immunogenicity and tolerability of single dose live attenuated injectable hepatitis A vaccine in four metropolitan cities of India. Methods: Live attenuated hepatitis A vaccine was administered to 505 children aged 18-60 months in four centers across India. Immunogenicity of the vaccine was assessed by estimation of anti-HAV antibody titer at 6 weeks and 6 months following administration of the vaccine. Safety evaluation of the vaccine was also done during the visits. Results: At 6 weeks, 480 subjects (95%) came for the follow-up and 411 (81.4%) subjects reported at the end of 6 months. The geometric mean titer (GMT) of anti-HAV antibody of the subjects who did not have the seroprotective titer at the baseline were assessed at 6 weeks and 6 months which was 81.04 mIU/ml and 150.66 mIU/ml respectively. At 6 weeks, 95.1% seroconverted and at the end of 6 months, 97.9% had seroconverted. Both solicited and unsolicited vaccine-induced local and systemic adverse events were insignificant at all the centers, except swelling and induration in a few. Conclusion: Live attenuated injectable hepatitis A vaccine was immunogenic and tolerable with minimal reactogenecity, in this study of single dose schedule. Safety profile was also satisfactory in the study population

Market and Welfare Effects of Renewable Portfolio Standard in the U.S. Compliance and Voluntary Green Power Markets

Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) has been one of the popular policy instruments adopted by many states in the U.S. to combat climate change, emissions and higher energy prices. This paper develops an applied-theoretic model to analyze the economic effects of RPS while considering the empirically relevant (i) interaction of compliance with voluntary green power markets, (ii) differences in consumer preferences, and (iii) imperfect competition among the electricity suppliers. The market and welfare effects of RPS are shown to be case-specific and dependent on the relative magnitude of the associated cost and utility effects of RPS, the strength of consumer preference for green energy, the suppliers\u27 costs before RPS, and the market power of the suppliers in compliance and voluntary markets. Simulation results indicate that regular power prices increase while green power prices decrease in NERC regions. The demand for regular and green power increase/decrease depending on the specific cases examined in the study. While welfare gains of green power consumers are evident from the study, welfare of regular power consumers is case sensitive and can increase/decrease with the policy. Green power suppliers (with/without market power) are always losers from the policy. Profits of regular power suppliers with market power are case dependent and likely to increase with higher consumer preference for regular power. Public utility firms, competitive firms or firms having Bertrand price competition, who are unable to exercise market power in the compliance market are likely to be losers from this policy. Voluntary market participation can increase with RPS. The higher the cost of the regular power with RPS, the higher is the likelihood that consumers will purchase green power and realize welfare gains from reduced price in the voluntary market