Agriculture and European Union Enlargement

Potential accession of a number of eastern and central European countries into the European Union (EU) seems destined to lead to further reforms of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). The financial costs of absorbing these countries may be extreme. This report documents the modeling framework (European Simulation Model, ESIM) used to analyze the 1992 CAP reform and discusses possible effects of EU enlargement.CAP reform, European Union, EU, European Union enlargement, Agricultural and Food Policy,

Measuring a bank’s financial health : a case study for the Greek banking sector

The main aim of this article is to demonstrate a holistic framework for measuring a bank’s financial health by classifying its main responsibilities between conformance and performance. Responsibilities are classified into five categories as follows: First, Corporate Financial Reporting (CFR) that integrates General Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), Generally Accepted Auditing Standards (GAAS), Securities Exchange Commission (SEC), Financial Services Authority (FSA), and International Accounting Standards (IAS). Second, Risk Management Procedures (RMP), that incorporates methods and directives which arise from Basel I, Basel II, Capital Adequacy frameworks or solvency ratio benchmarks. Third, Corporate Governance (CG), that integrates Sarbanes – Oxley Act, Audit Committees, and Internal Audit Mechanisms. Fourth, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), that consists of instructions and standards such as Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) – social and environmental, Social accountability (SA 8000) – working conditions, International Organization for Standardization (ISO 9000). Fifth, Stockholders Value Creation (SVC), that is a set of methodologies and ratios used in order to measure value creation for shareholders such as Strategic and Balanced scorecard, Economic Value Added EVA®, and other business performance management tools. On the other, the Rating Agencies (RA) applies various rating systems in different fields. Based on this framework, the article correlates all qualitative and quantitative components, with the banks’ ratings. The dependent variable is the bank’s financial health score, represented by a dummy variable based on the bank’s rating by the rating agencies and from the relevant value of each bank that arises from its performance in the above mentioned framework of responsibilities. The independent quantitative variables belong to a set of financial, risk and market key ratios and the qualitative variables to a set of dummy variables which describe the above framework. With the use of financial and other published data of the Greek banking sector the article proposes a new model and a procedure for the explanation, management and monitoring of a bank’s financial health.peer-reviewe

Phase-Retrieved Tomography enables imaging of a Tumor Spheroid in Mesoscopy Regime

Optical tomographic imaging of biological specimen bases its reliability on the combination of both accurate experimental measures and advanced computational techniques. In general, due to high scattering and absorption in most of the tissues, multi view geometries are required to reduce diffuse halo and blurring in the reconstructions. Scanning processes are used to acquire the data but they inevitably introduces perturbation, negating the assumption of aligned measures. Here we propose an innovative, registration free, imaging protocol implemented to image a human tumor spheroid at mesoscopic regime. The technique relies on the calculation of autocorrelation sinogram and object autocorrelation, finalizing the tomographic reconstruction via a three dimensional Gerchberg Saxton algorithm that retrieves the missing phase information. Our method is conceptually simple and focuses on single image acquisition, regardless of the specimen position in the camera plane. We demonstrate increased deep resolution abilities, not achievable with the current approaches, rendering the data alignment process obsolete.Comment: 21 pages, 5 figure

Spatiotemporal expression and transcriptional perturbations by long noncoding RNAs in the mouse brain

Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) have been implicated in numerous cellular processes including brain development. However, the in vivo expression dynamics and molecular pathways regulated by these loci are not well understood. Here, we leveraged a cohort of 13 lncRNA-null mutant mouse models to investigate the spatiotemporal expression of lncRNAs in the developing and adult brain and the transcriptome alterations resulting from the loss of these lncRNA loci. We show that several lncRNAs are differentially expressed both in time and space, with some presenting highly restricted expression in only selected brain regions. We further demonstrate altered regulation of genes for a large variety of cellular pathways and processes upon deletion of the lncRNA loci. Finally, we found that 4 of the 13 lncRNAs significantly affect the expression of several neighboring protein-coding genes in a cis-like manner. By providing insight into the endogenous expression patterns and the transcriptional perturbations caused by deletion of the lncRNA locus in the developing and postnatal mammalian brain, these data provide a resource to facilitate future examination of the specific functional relevance of these genes in neural development, brain function, and disease.National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology DBI-0905973

The Design by Molecular Dynamics Modeling and Simulations of Porous Polymer Adsorbent Media Immobilized on the throughpore Surfaces of Polymeric Monoliths

Ion-exchange porous adsorbent media having intermediate and low surface densities of dextran polymer grafted on the surface of the through pores of polymeric monoliths are constructed and characterized by a molecular dynamic modeling and simulation approach that has also been shown to be effective in the construction and characterization of porous ion-exchange adsorbent media whose number of immobilized dextran polymer chains per unit surface area is high. the activation step that prepares the surface of the pores of the dextran polymer layer for the immobilization of the charged ligands insignificantly affected the pore structure of the dextran polymer layer, while this was found to not be the case for previously studied systems that involved high dextran polymer surface densities. Compared to the high dextran polymer density system studied previously, the intermediate dextran polymer density system can generate significantly larger pores but still possesses relatively high interconnection and mutual steric support between dextran chains to exhibit similar structural characteristics and responses to charged ligand immobilization, including dextran layer thickness, stability, monomer distribution, ligand-induced compact chain structures, dextran layer shrinkage, distributions of ligands and counterions, and local Non electroneutrality. the low dextran polymer density system having relatively isolated dextran chains and insufficient mutual steric support can result in even larger pores than those obtained in the intermediate dextran polymer density system, but a significantly thinner, porous dextran polymer layer and different dextran monomer distributions are obtained in the low dextran polymer density system. More importantly, the gradient of the local Non electroneutrality after the immobilization of the charged ligands is significantly smaller in magnitude in the low dextran polymer density system than that obtained in the system having intermediate dextran polymer density, and, despite a lack of porous layer depth to accommodate adsorbate biomolecules in large amounts, it could still be useful for the effective transport and adsorption of very large biomolecules

Increased Separation By Variable-Temperature Stepwise Desorption In Multicomponent Adsorption Processes

When more components than desired are adsorbed, adsorption-desorption separation processes may not be satisfactory. However, in the cases of ethanol and water adsorption on activated carbon, propane and propylene adsorption on molecular sieves, and hydrogen sulfide, carbon dioxide, and propane adsorption on molecular sieves, it has been found that a variable-temperature stepwise desorption (VTSD) procedure following the adsorption stage can significantly increase the degree of separation achieved compared to a complete desorption of all adsorbed components. Studies indicate that these increased separations are in part due to nonequilibrium effects. An estimation of economic factors in separating low concentration propylene in propane indicates VTSD is favorable compared to distillation, because of lower energy costs. It appears that the VTSD method could be useful in bulk separations of multicomponent mixtures. © 1990, American Chemical Society. All rights reserved

Modeling of liquid flow in surface discontinuities

Polymer composite and metallic materials have found wide application in various industries such as aviation, rocket, car manufacturing, ship manufacturing, etc. Many design elements need permanent quality control. Ensuring high quality and reliability of products is impossible without effective nondestructive testing methods. One of these methods is penetrant testing using penetrating substances based on liquid penetration into defect cavities. In this paper, we propose a model of liquid flow to determine the rates of filling the defect cavities with various materials and, based on this, to choose optimal control modes

R & D for collider beauty physics at the LHC

We propose an R&D program for the development of a Beauty trigger and innovative elements of the associated spectrometer. A series of short test runs is proposed at the SPS p-pbar Collider with the minimal spectrometer which will allow a credible B signal to be obtained in an invariant mass spectrum of reconstructed B mesons. The program builds on the success of the recent collider run of the P238 Collaboration, in which clean signals from beam-beam interactions were observed in a large silicon strip microvertex detector running 1.5 mm from the circulating beams. A continuing successful R&D program of the type proposed could ultimately lead to a collider experiment at the LHC to study CP Violation and rare B decays

Clinical Characteristics and Treatment Patterns of Children and Adults With IgA Nephropathy or IgA Vasculitis: Findings From the CureGN Study

Introduction: The Cure Glomerulonephropathy Network (CureGN) is a 66-center longitudinal observational study of patients with biopsy-confirmed minimal change disease, focal segmental glomerulosclerosis, membranous nephropathy, or IgA nephropathy (IgAN), including IgA vasculitis (IgAV). This study describes the clinical characteristics and treatment patterns in the IgA cohort, including comparisons between IgAN versus IgAV and adult versus pediatric patients. Methods: Patients with a diagnostic kidney biopsy within 5 years of screening were eligible to join CureGN. This is a descriptive analysis of clinical and treatment data collected at the time of enrollment. Results: A total of 667 patients (506 IgAN, 161 IgAV) constitute the IgAN/IgAV cohort (382 adults, 285 children). At biopsy, those with IgAV were younger (13.0 years vs. 29.6 years, P < 0.001), more frequently white (89.7% vs. 78.9%, P = 0.003), had a higher estimated glomerular filtration rate (103.5 vs. 70.6 ml/min per 1.73 m2, P < 0.001), and lower serum albumin (3.4 vs. 3.8 g/dl, P < 0.001) than those with IgAN. Adult and pediatric individuals with IgAV were more likely than those with IgAN to have been treated with immunosuppressive therapy at or prior to enrollment (79.5% vs. 54.0%, P < 0.001). Conclusion: This report highlights clinical differences between IgAV and IgAN and between children and adults with these diagnoses. We identified differences in treatment with immunosuppressive therapies by disease type. This description of baseline characteristics will serve as a foundation for future CureGN studies

The hypoxia marker CAIX is prognostic in the UK phase III VorteX-Biobank cohort: an important resource for translational research in soft tissue sarcoma

BACKGROUND: Despite high metastasis rates, adjuvant/neoadjuvant systemic therapy for localised soft tissue sarcoma (STS) is not used routinely. Progress requires tailoring therapy to features of tumour biology, which need exploration in well-documented cohorts. Hypoxia has been linked to metastasis in STS and is targetable. This study evaluated hypoxia prognostic markers in the phase III adjuvant radiotherapy VorteX trial. METHODS: Formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded tumour biopsies, fresh tumour/normal tissue and blood were collected before radiotherapy. Immunohistochemistry for HIF-1α, CAIX and GLUT1 was performed on tissue microarrays and assessed by two scorers (one pathologist). Prognostic analysis of disease-free survival (DFS) used Kaplan-Meier and Cox regression. RESULTS: Biobank and outcome data were available for 203 out of 216 randomised patients. High CAIX expression was associated with worse DFS (hazard ratio 2.28, 95% confidence interval: 1.44-3.59, P<0.001). Hypoxia-inducible factor-1α and GLUT1 were not prognostic. Carbonic anhydrase IX remained prognostic in multivariable analysis. CONCLUSIONS: The VorteX-Biobank contains tissue with linked outcome data and is an important resource for research. This study confirms hypoxia is linked to poor prognosis in STS and suggests that CAIX may be the best known marker. However, overlap between single marker positivity was poor and future work will develop an STS hypoxia gene signature to account for tumour heterogeneity