Performance in the Food Retailing Segment of the Agri-Food Chain

This paper sets out to measure the performance of the food-retailing sector of the Canadian economy for the period 1990 to 1998. This study was undertaken to provide a baseline study for the sector due to the major changes that took place after 1998. A second driver was to provide recent information on the sector as the last study of this type was conducted in the 1970s. The paper uses profitability as a measure of performance. The measure was chosen because most firms make business decisions based on their profitability, and profitability provides an indication on the direction of employment, investment, and growth of a sector. We find that that food retailing performed better than both non-food retailers and the general economy over the 1990s. While large retailers performed twice as well as small and medium retailers the latter categories performed better than their non-food counterparts over the period.Agribusiness,

Integration of Administrative Data With Survey and Census Data

Statistical systems are a consequence of evolution and the level of data integration that is achieved is often an indication of the degree of system development. Almost all national statistical agencies in the world integrate administrative data with their survey and census information to some degree in order to complement, supplement or replace survey information or to assist with frame maintenance. This paper reconstructs the development and evolution of the Canadian agricultural statistical system as it relates to the expanding and increasingly important role of administrative data. The degree to which administrative data are integrated depends on a number of factors, the most important being: (1) the degree of maturity of the country's statistical system, (2) the quality and the amount of information available from the government's administrative and regulatory programs, (3) well-trained and experienced staff, (4) funding, and (5) co-operation among government agencies. Most countries appear to have gone through an evolutionary process in establishing their agricultural statistical system and most systems are developed with an internal capacity for renewal and adjustment. This allows them to respond to changing conditions and needs and to remain relevant. The actual route that is followed, however, is highly dependent on the amount of resources available for the program, the availability of experienced professionals to develop and maintain the system and the statistical toolbox that they are able to use.Agricultural and Food Policy,

Transient analysis of hydride fueled pressurized water reactor cores

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Nuclear Engineering, 2004.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 132-133).This thesis contributes to the hydride nuclear fuel project led by U. C. Berkeley for which MIT is to perform the thermal hydraulic and economic analyses. A parametric study has been performed to determine the optimum combination of lattice pitch, rod diameter, and channel shape-further referred to as geometry-for maximizing power given specific transient conditions for pressurized water reactors (PWR) loaded with either U02 or UZrH1.6 fuel. Several geometries have been examined with the VIPRE subchannel analysis tool along with MATLAB scripts previously developed to automate VIPRE execution. The transients investigated were a large break loss of coolant accident (LBLOCA), am overpower transient, and a complete loss of flow accident. The maximum achievable power for each geometry is defined as the highest power that can be sustained without exceeding any of the steady state or transient limits. The limits were chosen based on technical feasibility and safety of the reference core and compared with the final safely analysis report (FSAR) of the reference core, the South Texas Project Electric Generating Station (STPEGS), whenever possible. This analysis was performed for two separate pressure drop limits of 29 and 60 psia for both a square array with grid spacers and a hexagonal array with wire wraps.(cont.) The square core geometry sustaining the highest power (4820.0 MW) for both the hydride and oxide fueled has a pitch of 9.0 mm and a rod diameter of 6.5 mm and was limited by the complete loss of flow accident. Both of these maximum power geometries occurred at the 60 psia pressure drop case. The maximum power of the 29 psia pressure drop case (4103.9 MW) for both fuel types occurred at a pitch of 9.7 mm and a rod diameter of 6.5 mm. The maximum power for the hexagonal arrayed cores occurred at the same hydrogen to heavy metal ratio as the square cores. The hydride fueled core power (5123.2 MW) was limited by the overpower transient while the oxide fueled core power (4996.1 MW) was limited by the overpower transient. The pressure drop constraint was not limiting for either fuel type for either pressure drop case for the wire wrapped cores.by Jarrod Michael Trant.S.M

Semiconductor manufacturing simulation design and analysis with limited data

This paper discusses simulation design and analysis for Silicon Carbide (SiC) manufacturing operations management at New York Power Electronics Manufacturing Consortium (PEMC) facility. Prior work has addressed the development of manufacturing system simulation as the decision support to solve the strategic equipment portfolio selection problem for the SiC fab design [1]. As we move into the phase of collecting data from the equipment purchased for the PEMC facility, we discuss how to redesign our manufacturing simulations and analyze their outputs to overcome the challenges that naturally arise in the presence of limited fab data. We conclude with insights on how an approach aimed to reflect learning from data can enable our discrete-event stochastic simulation to accurately estimate the performance measures for SiC manufacturing at the PEMC facility

Effect of Urbanization on the Adoption of Environmental Management Systems in Canadian Agriculture

This study examines the extent to which farming practices have adjusted to the presence of urbanization in Canada. In particular, we compare the adoption rates for environmental management systems (EMSs) by farmers close to urbanized areas versus those in more rural, isolated regions. Using information from a national survey of 16,053 farmers, eight EMSs are considered. We find that farmers operating close to the urban milieu demonstrate strategic behavior by selecting more environmentally-friendly farm management practices to overcome social and regulatory pressures from such communities compared to those farmers that operate in rural communities.Farm Management,

A concise synthesis of a methyl ester 2-resorcinarene: A chair-conformation macrocycle

Anions are important hydrogen bond acceptors in a range of biological, chemical, environ-mental and medical molecular recognition processes. These interactions have been exploited for the design and synthesis of ditopic resorcinarenes as the hydrogen bond strength can be tuned through the modification of the substituent at the 2-position. However, many potentially useful compounds, especially those incorporating electron-withdrawing functionalities, have not been prepared due to the challenge of their synthesis: their incorporation slows resorcinarene formation that is accessed by electrophilic aromatic substitution. As part of our broader campaign to employ resorcinarenes as selective recognition elements, we need access to these specialized materials. In this article, we report a straightforward synthetic pathway for obtaining a 2-(carboxymethyl)-resorcinarene, and resorcinarene esters in general. We discuss the unusual conformation it adopts and propose that this arises from the electron-withdrawing nature of the ester substituents that renders them better hydrogen bond acceptors than the phenols, ensuring that each of them acts as a donor only. Density Functional Theory (DFT) calculations show that this conformation arises as a consequence of the unusual configurational isomerism of this compound and interruption of the archetypal hydrogen bonding by the ester functionality

Toward the synthesis of an acetal-free Tn antigen anti-cancer vaccine candidate

Cancer vaccines are a promising approach to cancer treatment by activating the immune system towards cancer cells. The challenge, however, comes with the identification of biomarkers correlated with cancer. Unfortunately, many oncotargets are simply upregulated in cancer; these are inappropriate vaccine targets as they are also present on healthy cells and therefore would ultimately initiate a very dangerous systemic immune response. In contrast, Tumor-Associated Carbohydrate Antigens (TACAs) are not found in healthy adult tissue but are found on over 90% of biopsied carcinomas. When incorporated into glycopeptides or other immunogenic scaffolds, these carbohydrate antigens have formed the basis of the development of anti-tumor immunotherapies through the induction of a specific immune response against cancer cells. However, despite promising preliminary data, none of these candidates have reached the clinic. Our hypothesis is that the carbohydrates on the vaccines may not survive antigen processing, and so more stable versions of these materials are required to create viable vaccines. Our approach is to incorporate TACAs lacking the labile glycosidic bond: acetal-free carbohydrates (AFCs). This project aims to remove the unstable acetal functional group to yield a more robust carbohydrate structure that can then be incorporated into a vaccine candidate. In this presentation, two synthetic pathways will be described: conversion of a carbohydrate to a carbasugar through a rearrangement, and de novo synthesis from noncarbohydrate materials

Differential expression of glucose transporters and hexokinases in prostate cancer with a neuroendocrine gene signature: A mechanistic perspective for 18 F-FDG imaging of PSMA-suppressed tumors

Although the incidence of de novo neuroendocrine prostate cancer (PC) is rare, recent data suggest that low expression of prostatespecific membrane antigen (PSMA) is associated with a spectrum of neuroendocrine hallmarks and androgen receptor (AR) suppression in PC. Previous clinical reports indicate that PCs with a phenotype similar to neuroendocrine tumors can be more amenable to imaging by 18F-FDG than by PSMA-targeting radioligands. In this study, we evaluated the association between neuroendocrine gene signature and 18F-FDG uptake-associated genes including glucose transporters (GLUTs) and hexokinases, with the goal of providing a genomic signature to explain the reported 18F-FDG avidity of PSMA suppressed tumors. Methods: Data-mining approaches, cell lines, and patient-derived xenograft models were used to study the levels of 14 members of the SLC2A family (encoding GLUT proteins), 4 members of the hexokinase family (genes HK1-HK3 and GCK), and PSMA (FOLH1 gene) after AR inhibition and in correlation with neuroendocrine hallmarks. Also, we characterize a neuroendocrine-like PC (NELPC) subset among a cohort of primary and metastatic PC samples with no neuroendocrine histopathology. We measured glucose uptake in a neuroendocrine-induced in vitro model and a zebrafish model by nonradioactive imaging of glucose uptake using a fluorescent glucose bioprobe, GB2-Cy3. Results: This work demonstrated that a neuroendocrine gene signature associates with differential expression of genes encoding GLUT and hexokinase proteins. In NELPC, elevated expression of GCK (encoding glucokinase protein) and decreased expression of SLC2A12 correlated with earlier biochemical recurrence. In tumors treated with AR inhibitors, high expression of GCK and low expression of SLC2A12 correlated with neuroendocrine histopathology and PSMA gene suppression. GLUT12 suppression and upregulation of glucokinase were observed in neuroendocrine- induced PC cell lines and patient-derived xenograft models. A higher glucose uptake was confirmed in low-PSMA tumors using a GB2-Cy3 probe in a zebrafish model. Conclusion: A neuroendocrine gene signature in neuroendocrine PC and NELPC associates with a distinct transcriptional profile of GLUTs and hexokinases. PSMA suppression correlates with GLUT12 suppression and glucokinase upregulation. Alteration of 18F-FDG uptake-associated genes correlated positively with higher glucose uptake in AR- and PSMA-suppressed tumors. Zebrafish xenograft tumor models are an accurate and efficient preclinical method for monitoring nonradioactive glucose uptake

Performance in the Food Retailing Segment of the Agri-Food Chain

This paper sets out to measure the performance of the food-retailing sector of the Canadian economy for the period 1990 to 1998. This study was undertaken to provide a baseline study for the sector due to the major changes that took place after 1998. A second driver was to provide recent information on the sector as the last study of this type was conducted in the 1970s. The paper uses profitability as a measure of performance. The measure was chosen because most firms make business decisions based on their profitability, and profitability provides an indication on the direction of employment, investment, and growth of a sector. We find that that food retailing performed better than both non-food retailers and the general economy over the 1990s. While large retailers performed twice as well as small and medium retailers the latter categories performed better than their non-food counterparts over the period