Systematic Variation in Willingness to Pay for Agricultural Land Preservation and Implications for Benefit Transfer: A Meta-Analysis

Despite prior studies examining willingness to pay for farmland preservation there has been no quantitative, systematic analysis of findings across the literature. This paper presents the first statistical meta-analysis of farmland preservation values. Results confirm systematic variations in willingness to pay, with value surfaces corresponding to theoretical expectations. Findings also provide significant insight into the potential for valid meta-analytic, function based benefit transfer. Results suggest, for example, that transfer validity is critically dependent on jurisdictional scale. Transfer errors are modest for community scale farmland preservation, but large for state scale preservation policies in which per acre welfare estimates are small.Land Economics/Use,

The Adaptation Challenges and Strategies of Adolescent Aboriginal Athletes Competing Off Reserve

Within the motivation literature, it has been indicated that athletes respond more effectively to sport’s contextual challenges through effective adaptation skills. Fiske identified five core motives as facilitators of the adaptation process across cultures: belonging, understanding, controlling, self-enhancement, and trusting. Through a cultural sport psychology approach, the adaptation challenges and strategies of Canadian Aboriginal adolescent athletes from one community (Wikwemikong) are described as they traveled off reserve to compete in mainstream sporting events. Concurrently, Fiske’s core motives are considered in relation to youth sport participants from the aforementioned Aboriginal community. Culture sensitive research methods among the Wikwemikong, including community meetings, talking circles (TCs), indigenous coding, and coauthoring, were employed in this article. Data are reflected in three themes: (a) challenges pursuing sport outside of the Aboriginal community in advance of bicultural encounters, (b) challenging bicultural encounters in Canadian mainstream sport contexts, and (c) specific responses to racism and discrimination

Book reviews

Teaching/Communication/Extension/Profession,

Making stillbirths count, making numbers talk - issues in data collection for stillbirths.

BACKGROUND: Stillbirths need to count. They constitute the majority of the world's perinatal deaths and yet, they are largely invisible. Simply counting stillbirths is only the first step in analysis and prevention. From a public health perspective, there is a need for information on timing and circumstances of death, associated conditions and underlying causes, and availability and quality of care. This information will guide efforts to prevent stillbirths and improve quality of care. DISCUSSION: In this report, we assess how different definitions and limits in registration affect data capture, and we discuss the specific challenges of stillbirth registration, with emphasis on implementation. We identify what data need to be captured, we suggest a dataset to cover core needs in registration and analysis of the different categories of stillbirths with causes and quality indicators, and we illustrate the experience in stillbirth registration from different cultural settings. Finally, we point out gaps that need attention in the International Classification of Diseases and review the qualities of alternative systems that have been tested in low- and middle-income settings. SUMMARY: Obtaining high-quality data will require consistent definitions for stillbirths, systematic population-based registration, better tools for surveys and verbal autopsies, capacity building and training in procedures to identify causes of death, locally adapted quality indicators, improved classification systems, and effective registration and reporting systems

The Development Of An Interactive Industry/Academic Power Engineering Education Program At The University Of Missouri-Rolla

This paper describes the development of a unique andinno-vative program in power engineering education enhanced through an Industry/Academic interrelationship. This program is devoted to both the teaching and the practice of power engineering. The development of the Industry/Academic relationship and its value as a model for power engineering education are related. A summary of present and proposed future activities concludes the report. Copyright © 1978 by The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc

Trypsin-ligand binding free energies from explicit and implicit solvent simulations with polarizable potential

We have calculated the binding free energies of a series of benzamidine-like inhibitors to trypsin with a polarizable force field using both explicit and implicit solvent approaches. Free energy perturbation has been performed for the ligands in bulk water and in protein complex with molecular dynamics simulations. The calculated binding free energies are well within the accuracy of experimental measurement and the direction of change is predicted correctly in call cases. We analyzed the molecular dipole moments of the ligands in gas, water and protein environments. Neither binding affinity nor ligand solvation free energy in bulk water shows much dependence on the molecular dipole moments of the ligands. Substitution of the aromatic or the charged group in the ligand results in considerable change in the solvation energy in bulk water and protein whereas the binding affinity varies insignificantly due to cancellation. The effect of chemical modification on ligand charge distribution is mostly local. Replacing benzene with diazine has minimal impact on the atomic multipoles at the amidinium group. We have also utilized an implicit solvent based end-state approach to evaluate the binding free energies of these inhibitors. In this approach, the polarizable multipole model combined with Poisson-Boltzmann/surface area (PMPB/SA) provides the electrostatic interaction energy and the polar solvation free energy. Overall the relative binding free energies obtained from the PMPB/SA model are in good agreement with the experimental data

MAP3K4 Controls the Chromatin Modifier HDAC6 during Trophoblast Stem Cell Epithelial-to-Mesenchymal Transition

The first epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT) occurs in trophoblast stem (TS) cells during implantation. Inactivation of the serine/threonine kinase MAP3K4 in TS cells (TSKI4 cells) induces an intermediate state of EMT, where cells retain stemness, lose epithelial markers, and gain mesenchymal characteristics. Investigation of relationships among MAP3K4 activity, stemness, and EMT in TS cells may reveal key regulators of EMT. Here, we show that MAP3K4 activity controls EMT through the ubiquitination and degradation of HDAC6. Loss of MAP3K4 activity in TSKI4 cells results in elevated HDAC6 expression and the deacetylation of cytoplasmic and nuclear targets. In the nucleus, HDAC6 deacetylates the promoters of tight junction genes, promoting the dissolution of tight junctions. Importantly, HDAC6 knockdown in TSKI4 cells restores epithelial features, including cell-cell adhesion and barrier formation. These data define a role for HDAC6 in regulating gene expression during transitions between epithelial and mesenchymal phenotypes

Pliocene deglacial event timelines and the biogeochemical response offshore Wilkes Subglacial Basin, East Antarctica

Significantly reduced ice coverage in Greenland and West Antarctica during the warmer-than-present Pliocene could account for ∼10m of global mean sea level rise. Any sea level increase beyond this would require contributions from the East Antarctic Ice Sheet (EAIS). Previous studies have presented low-resolution geochemical evidence from the geological record, suggesting repeated ice advance and retreat in low-lying areas of the EAIS such as the Wilkes Subglacial Basin. However, the rates and mechanisms of retreat events are less well constrained. Here we present orbitally-resolved marine detrital sediment provenance data, paired with ice-rafted debris and productivity proxies, during three time intervals from the middle to late Pliocene at IODP Site U1361A, offshore of the Wilkes Subglacial Basin. Our new data reveal that Pliocene shifts in sediment provenance were paralleled by increases in marine productivity, while the onset of such changes was marked by peaks in ice-rafted debris mass accumulation rates. The coincidence of sediment provenance and marine productivity change argues against a switch in sediment delivery between ice streams, and instead suggests that deglacial warming triggered increased rates of iceberg calving, followed by inland retreat of the ice margin. Timescales from the onset of deglaciation to an inland retreated ice margin within the Wilkes Subglacial Basin are on the order of several thousand years. This geological evidence corroborates retreat rates determined from ice sheet modeling, and a contribution of ∼3 to 4m of equivalent sea level rise from one of the most vulnerable areas of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet during interglacial intervals throughout the middle to late Pliocene.Provenance analysis was supported by a Kristian Gerhard Jeb-sen PhD Scholarship and NERC UK IODP grants (NE/H025162/1 and NE/H014144/1). Biogenic silica data was supported by a Royal So-ciety of New Zealand Marsden FastStart grant (#UOO-1315) and a University of Otago PhD Scholarship. Support for sedimentol-ogyanalysis was provided by the Royal Society of New ZealandRutherford Discovery Fellowship (RDF-13-VUW-003). XRF work was supported by the Ministry of Science and Innovation Grant CTM2014-60451-C2-1-P co-financed by the European Regional De-velopment Fund (FEDER). Samples were provided by the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program