2,325 research outputs found
Maize and beans marketing in Kenya: the interaction and effectiveness of the informal and formal marketing systems
The study analyses the functioning of the Kenyan domestic maize and Yearns marketing system with special regard to the interaction of the
formal (controlled) and informal (uncontrolled) sub-systems. It attempts
to reduce the uncertainty as to what effects relaxation of present controls
would have. The relaxation of controls has been suggested in the last
three Development Plans but no actions have yet been taken.
Initially the determinants of the marketing systems' performance —
framework for maize and beans marketing operations, structure and conduct of
the marketing systems — are described and analysed. This is followed by
an evaluation of the performance guided by the stated objectives of the
controls: to benefit producers and consumers. To this end, more specifically,
the analysis includes an evaluation of the extent to which the
marketing systems operate at lowest possible costs (achieve pricing
efficiency), prevent exploitation of farmers and consumers (achieve pricing
efficiency) and provide secure outlets for producers and sources for consumers.
Survey information of the Central Bureau of Statistics and data gathered by
a Maize and Beans Trader Survey carried out in markets of Western, Central
and Eastern Kenya with the assistance of the FAO/Kenya Government Marketing
Development Project provided the empirical base for the analysis.
In summary, the analysis suggests that the objectives of controls
are not being achieved and in fact that the present system of controls contributes
to marketing inefficiencies. The control legislation has created
a marketing framework which is conducive to low operational efficiency
as reflected in high marketing costs; low pricing efficiency as reflected in
poor market and seasonal integration and relativelv high excess profits;
and high instability of market conditions. The analysis further indicates
that those most affected by the controls are smallholders and rural and
urban low-income consumers whereas those that benefit most are large scale
farmers. The result is a negative income distribution effect. In conclusion,
it is recommended that controls be relaxed in conjunction with other measures
to improve the situation. This would further one of the major objectives of
the present development strategy to alleviate rural and urban poverty
Decontrolling the maize marketing system in Kenya
In this paper the authors assess the major deficiencies of the present
maize marketing system in Kenya, discuss the implications of a completely decontrolled
maize market, analyse the effects of different types of stabilisation
schemes, and review the Indian and Pakistani experience with private
performance and various types of government intervention in food grain marketing
systems. An alternative scheme for regulating the Kenyan maize market is
suggested and proposals are made for the implementation of such a scheme.
The most appropriate form of control of the maize marketing system
in Kenya would seem to be a price stabilisation scheme with bufferstock operations
to be carried out by the Maize and Produce Board. The Board would act as a
buyer and seller of maize to keep price fluctuations within certain limits,
and in addition keep a strategic reserve in case of drought. The implementation
of this system requires a network of rural collection centres and Maize
and Produce Board stores, located in these centres as well as in strategic
markets in deficit areas. A market information system has to be established and
movement restrictions lifted, and the price structure and rules for the Board's
operations have to be clearly defined
The PAX Toolkit and its Applications at Tevatron and LHC
At the CHEP03 conference we launched the Physics Analysis eXpert (PAX), a C++
toolkit released for the use in advanced high energy physics (HEP) analyses.
This toolkit allows to define a level of abstraction beyond detector
reconstruction by providing a general, persistent container model for HEP
events. Physics objects such as particles, vertices and collisions can easily
be stored, accessed and manipulated. Bookkeeping of relations between these
objects (like decay trees, vertex and collision separation, etc.) including
deep copies is fully provided by the relation management. Event container and
associated objects represent a uniform interface for algorithms and facilitate
the parallel development and evaluation of different physics interpretations of
individual events. So-called analysis factories, which actively identify and
distinguish different physics processes and study systematic uncertainties, can
easily be realized with the PAX toolkit.
PAX is officially released to experiments at Tevatron and LHC. Being explored
by a growing user community, it is applied in a number of complex physics
analyses, two of which are presented here. We report the successful application
in studies of t-tbar production at the Tevatron and Higgs searches in the
channel t-tbar-Higgs at the LHC and give a short outlook on further
developments
Reception of the Herzog Stjepan Vukcic Kosaca in Herzegovina in the Second Half of the 20th Century
U radu se nastoji prikazati recepcija hercega Stjepana
Vukčića Kosače u Hercegovini u drugoj polovici 20. stoljeća
s posebnim naglaskom na razdoblje u kojemu je Bosna
i Hercegovina bila jedna od republika bivše Jugoslavije. S
obzirom na činjenicu da bi se barem početno znanje o hercegu
Stjepanu trebalo steći tijekom osnovnoga i srednjoškolskoga
obrazovanja, najprije je dat osvrt na nastavne
planove i programe u kojima su, između ostaloga, naznačeni
ciljevi (zadatci) nastave povijesti, a zatim se analiziraju
tekstovi u udžbenicima povijesti koji su bili u uporabi
u bh. školama (osnovnim i gimnazijama), u kojima se u
određenim nastavnim jedinicama obrađuje djelovanje
hercega Stjepana. Sudeći prema nastavnim planovima i programima, kao i sadržaju udžbenika iz druge polovice
20. stoljeća (barem nama dostupnima), mladež u Hercegovini
u razmatranom razdoblju nije mogla mnogo saznati
i naučiti o ovoj povijesnoj osobi, s čijom je titulom povezano
ime prostora u kojemu žive. Na kraju istražuje se
hercegova prisutnost u nazivima ulica, trgova i institucija
u hercegovačkim gradovima i općinama. Istraživanje pokazuje
da je tek u novije vrijeme evidentan interes nekih
pojedinaca i institucija koje žele ovoj povijesnoj osobi dati
značenje koje joj pripada. Naime, sve ulice u Hercegovini
koje nose njegovo ime, kao i jedna institucija, imenovane
su nakon 1990. godine.With the aim of presenting the reception of the Herzog
Stjepan Vukcic Kosaca in Hercegovina in the second half
of the 20th century, the paper analyzes the contents of history
textbooks that write about the life and work of the
Herzog Stjepan and his presence in the names of streets,
squares and institutions in Herzegovinian towns and municipalities.
Considering the second half of the 20th century,
most attention is paid to the period in which Bosnia
and Herzegovina was one of the republics of the former
Yugoslavia. To illustrate the contents from medieval history,
or the ones related to Stjepan, most important are
school curricula, in which, apart from the teaching units
and lessons, the teaching of history was particularly indicative,
when during this period the constant task was
"spreading fraternity and unity" or "developing patriotic
awareness among students", the emphasis being on teaching
history of the "newer period". Judging by the curricula
and the content of textbooks from the second half
of the 20th century (at least those available to us), the youth
of Herzegovina in the mentioned period could not learn
much about this historical person whose name is associated
with the name of the area in which they live. Namely,
by looking at the texts of the textbooks up to the 90s, it
is evident that the texts in the textbooks differ, both in
scope and emphasis on certain facts. What all the authors
mention is taking of the \u27Herzog\u27 title in 1448 and the fall
of Herzegovina under the Ottoman rule, whereas all the
other facts about the Herzog Stjepan vary from one text to
another. As there were no official textbooks in the region
of Herzegovina in the 90s of the 20th century, the paper,
as an example, presents the texts only from two textbooks
(one for elementary school and the other for grammar
school) used in some schools in Herzegovina which worked
according to the Croatian curriculum, where we can
find hardly any information about the Herzog Stjepan.
Finally, the results of the research of the Herzog\u27s presence
in the names of streets, squares and institutions of the
Herzegovinian cities and municipalities show that the interest of some individuals and institutions, who want to
give this historical person the significance he deserves, has
only recently become evident. Namely, all the streets in
Herzegovina named after the Herzog, as well as one institution,
got this name after 1990
Tissue Phenomics for prognostic biomarker discovery in low- and intermediate-risk prostate cancer
Tissue Phenomics is the discipline of mining tissue images to identify patterns that are related to clinical outcome providing potential prognostic and predictive value. This involves the discovery process from assay development, image analysis, and data mining to the final interpretation and validation of the findings. Importantly, this process is not linear but allows backward steps and optimization loops over multiple sub-processes. We provide a detailed description of the Tissue Phenomics methodology while exemplifying each step on the application of prostate cancer recurrence prediction. In particular, we automatically identified tissue-based biomarkers having significant prognostic value for low-and intermediate-risk prostate cancer patients (Gleason scores 6-7b) after radical prostatectomy. We found that promising phenes were related to CD8(+) and CD68(+) cells in the microenvironment of cancerous glands in combination with the local micro-vascularization. Recurrence prediction based on the selected phenes yielded accuracies up to 83% thereby clearly outperforming prediction based on the Gleason score. Moreover, we compared different machine learning algorithms to combine the most relevant phenes resulting in increased accuracies of 88% for tumor progression prediction. These findings will be of potential use for future prognostic tests for prostate cancer patients and provide a proof-of-principle of the Tissue Phenomics approach
The full-ORF clone resource of the German cDNA Consortium
<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>With the completion of the human genome sequence the functional analysis and characterization of the encoded proteins has become the next urging challenge in the post-genome era. The lack of comprehensive ORFeome resources has thus far hampered systematic applications by protein gain-of-function analysis. Gene and ORF coverage with full-length ORF clones thus needs to be extended. In combination with a unique and versatile cloning system, these will provide the tools for genome-wide systematic functional analyses, to achieve a deeper insight into complex biological processes.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Here we describe the generation of a full-ORF clone resource of human genes applying the Gateway cloning technology (Invitrogen). A pipeline for efficient cloning and sequencing was developed and a sample tracking database was implemented to streamline the clone production process targeting more than 2,200 different ORFs. In addition, a robust cloning strategy was established, permitting the simultaneous generation of two clone variants that contain a particular ORF with as well as without a stop codon by the implementation of only one additional working step into the cloning procedure. Up to 92 % of the targeted ORFs were successfully amplified by PCR and more than 93 % of the amplicons successfully cloned.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The German cDNA Consortium ORFeome resource currently consists of more than 3,800 sequence-verified entry clones representing ORFs, cloned with and without stop codon, for about 1,700 different gene loci. 177 splice variants were cloned representing 121 of these genes. The entry clones have been used to generate over 5,000 different expression constructs, providing the basis for functional profiling applications. As a member of the recently formed international ORFeome collaboration we substantially contribute to generating and providing a whole genome human ORFeome collection in a unique cloning system that is made freely available in the community.</p
Polymorphisms in the Mitochondrial Genome Are Associated With Bullous Pemphigoid in Germans
Bullous pemphigoid (BP) is the most prevalent autoimmune skin blistering disease and is characterized by the generation of autoantibodies against the hemidesmosomal proteins BP180 (type XVII collagen) and BP230. Most intriguingly, BP is distinct from other autoimmune diseases because it predominantly affects elderly individuals above the age of 75 years, raising the question why autoantibodies and the clinical lesions of BP emerges mostly in this later stage of life, even in individuals harboring known putative BP-associated germline gene variants. The mitochondrial genome (mtDNA) is a potential candidate to provide additional insights into the BP etiology; however, the mtDNA has not been extensively explored to date. Therefore, we sequenced the whole mtDNA of German BP patients (n = 180) and age- and sex-matched healthy controls (n = 188) using next generation sequencing (NGS) technology, followed by the replication study using Sanger sequencing of an additional independent BP (n = 89) and control cohort (n = 104). While the BP and control groups showed comparable mitochondrial haplogroup distributions, the haplogroup T exhibited a tendency of higher frequency in BP patients suffering from neurodegenerative diseases (ND) compared to BP patients without ND (50%; 3 in 6 BP with haplogroup T). A total of four single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in the mtDNA, namely, m.16263T>C, m.16051A>G, and m.16162A>G in the D-loop region of the mtDNA, and m.11914G>A in the mitochondrially encoded NADH:ubiquinone oxidoreductase core subunit 4 gene (MT-ND4), were found to be significantly associated with BP based on the meta-analysis of our NGS data and the Sanger sequencing data (p = 0.0017, p = 0.0129, p = 0.0076, and p = 0.0132, respectively, Peto's test). More specifically, the three SNPs in the D-loop region were negatively, and the SNP in the MT-ND4 gene was positively associated with BP. Our study is the first to interrogate the whole mtDNA in BP patients and controls and to implicate multiple novel mtDNA variants in disease susceptibility. Studies using larger cohorts and more diverse populations are warranted to explore the functional consequences of the mtDNA variants identified in this study on immune and skin cells to understand their contributions to BP pathology
Forward pi^0 Production and Associated Transverse Energy Flow in Deep-Inelastic Scattering at HERA
Deep-inelastic positron-proton interactions at low values of Bjorken-x down
to x \approx 4.10^-5 which give rise to high transverse momentum pi^0 mesons
are studied with the H1 experiment at HERA. The inclusive cross section for
pi^0 mesons produced at small angles with respect to the proton remnant (the
forward region) is presented as a function of the transverse momentum and
energy of the pi^0 and of the four-momentum transfer Q^2 and Bjorken-x.
Measurements are also presented of the transverse energy flow in events
containing a forward pi^0 meson. Hadronic final state calculations based on QCD
models implementing different parton evolution schemes are confronted with the
data.Comment: 27 pages, 8 figures and 3 table
Multi-Jet Event Rates in Deep Inelastic Scattering and Determination of the Strong Coupling Constant
Jet event rates in deep inelastic ep scattering at HERA are investigated
applying the modified JADE jet algorithm. The analysis uses data taken with the
H1 detector in 1994 and 1995. The data are corrected for detector and
hadronization effects and then compared with perturbative QCD predictions using
next-to-leading order calculations. The strong coupling constant alpha_S(M_Z^2)
is determined evaluating the jet event rates. Values of alpha_S(Q^2) are
extracted in four different bins of the negative squared momentum
transfer~\qq in the range from 40 GeV2 to 4000 GeV2. A combined fit of the
renormalization group equation to these several alpha_S(Q^2) values results in
alpha_S(M_Z^2) = 0.117+-0.003(stat)+0.009-0.013(syst)+0.006(jet algorithm).Comment: 17 pages, 4 figures, 3 tables, this version to appear in Eur. Phys.
J.; it replaces first posted hep-ex/9807019 which had incorrect figure 4
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