CHANGING STRUCTURES IN THE BARLEY PRODUCTION AND MALTING INDUSTRIES OF THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA

Substantial changes have taken place recently in the regulation of agricultural trade in North America. The effect of these changes on trade in agricultural commodities is of particular interest to producers and policymakers in the Northern Plains and Rockies region. In this paper, we discuss specifically the malt barley production, malting, and brewing industries in light of these new trade agreements and their ramifications. We evaluate the incentives that free trade provides for mergers between barley malting firms, and then we assess the consequences of these mergers on the realized gains from trade for consumers, barley producers, and malting firms. The globalization of markets has fundamentally changed the world in which economic agents operate. Trade has been liberalized through multilateral world-wide agreements such as the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT) and through regional free trade agreements such as those within the European Union, the Canadian/United States Trade Agreement (CUSTA), and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). A striking phenomena which has accompanied trade liberalization has been the international merger of firms and the creation of many jointly owned multinational operations. There are two distinct types of malt barley that differ in their yield and in their production areas in North America. Montana and the Canadian provinces grow primarily high-quality two row barley, while North Dakota and Minnesota produce primarily six row malting varieties. Two row barley yields more malt per bushel for maltsters, but it is more prone to disease for barley producers. The opening of the border between the United States and Canada has made large quantities of two row barley available to U.S. malting firms and brewers. The trade policy literature suggests that trade liberalization will have a profound impact on domestic policy choice, making the costs of any government action to increase market prices above the prevailing world price more expensive. Open borders should also provide discipline on how industries price in the domestic market. With import restrictions such as tariffs in place, the non-competitive industry structures that raise prices in the domestic market can exist with limited fear of foreign competition. With freer trade, however, the industry faces more potential competition. When a free trade policy merges formally distinct markets for which stable industry structures exist, this creates additional incentives for mergers within the newly combined industry that reduce these gains from free trade. This analysis was motivated by observing the malting barley industry in Canada and the United States. In 1985, prior to CUSTA, the two domestic markets for barley malt were distinctly separated by import license requirements into Canada and import tariffs in the United States. As such, both countries had large malting industries, but there was little trade flow between the two countries in malting barley, in barley malt, or in beer. Four firms controlled 90 percent of the Canadian malting market, and six firms controlled over 80 percent of the U.S. malting market before CUSTA. As a result of mergers after CUSTA, five firms owned 90 percent of the malting capacity in North America. Economies of scale and elimination of high cost plants often drive industry consolidation. Interestingly enough, despite all of the merger activity among malting firms, there were very few plant closures and very little new capacity built. Even new entrants to either the United States or Canadian industries purchased the assets of existing firms, rather than building new plants. We review relevant literature for firm behavior and report the results of a model for the incentives for plant mergers in the North American malting industry following CUSTA. We evaluate malting firm profits, the changes in malting margins, the price effects, and the overall welfare effects of the creation of the free trade area and subsequent mergers within the industry. We found that free trade, in the absence of mergers, increases output in both countries and reduces malting margins leading to large gains for consumers and producers of malt barley. The agreement, however, also increases incentives for mergers. With the mergers that took place, we show that merging barley malting firms have incentives to decrease output by about 21 percent, while their producers' surplus increased by approximately 34 percent. The net benefits of free trade to consumers and input suppliers are reduced by mergers, while the profits of merging firms are increased by them. Overall, with free trade and mergers, there is still a net social gain relative to pre-CUSTA. Malt production in Canada increases by over 12 percent, while that in the U.S. is slightly lower, leaving North American consumers, firms, and barley producers better off.malting barley, industry concentration, free trade agreement, Industrial Organization, Q1, F1,

Cancer Among Arab Americans in the Metropolitan Detroit Area

Detroit is home to one of the largest populations of Arab Americans outside of the Middle East, yet little is known about the cancer distribution in this ethnic group. The authors of this study created an Arab/Chaldean surname list and matched it with the Detroit SEER Registry to identify cancer cases of probable Arabic descent. We then determined proportional incidence ratios (PIR) for specific cancer sites among metropolitan Detroit Arab Americans as compared to non-Arab Whites, and contrasted the results with Middle Eastern data. Arab/Chaldean men had greater proportions of leukemia (29%), multiple myeloma (46%), liver (64%), kidney (33%), and urinary bladder (26%) cancers. Arab/Chaldean women had greater proportions of leukemia (23%), thyroid (57%), and brain (35%) cancers as compared with non-Arab White men and women. The cancers with significantly increased PIRs in the Detroit Arab/Chaldean population also are frequently diagnosed in Middle Eastern countries

Closed-loop optimization of fast-charging protocols for batteries with machine learning.

Simultaneously optimizing many design parameters in time-consuming experiments causes bottlenecks in a broad range of scientific and engineering disciplines1,2. One such example is process and control optimization for lithium-ion batteries during materials selection, cell manufacturing and operation. A typical objective is to maximize battery lifetime; however, conducting even a single experiment to evaluate lifetime can take months to years3-5. Furthermore, both large parameter spaces and high sampling variability3,6,7 necessitate a large number of experiments. Hence, the key challenge is to reduce both the number and the duration of the experiments required. Here we develop and demonstrate a machine learning methodology  to efficiently optimize a parameter space specifying the current and voltage profiles of six-step, ten-minute fast-charging protocols for maximizing battery cycle life, which can alleviate range anxiety for electric-vehicle users8,9. We combine two key elements to reduce the optimization cost: an early-prediction model5, which reduces the time per experiment by predicting the final cycle life using data from the first few cycles, and a Bayesian optimization algorithm10,11, which reduces the number of experiments by balancing exploration and exploitation to efficiently probe the parameter space of charging protocols. Using this methodology, we rapidly identify high-cycle-life charging protocols among 224 candidates in 16 days (compared with over 500 days using exhaustive search without early prediction), and subsequently validate the accuracy and efficiency of our optimization approach. Our closed-loop methodology automatically incorporates feedback from past experiments to inform future decisions and can be generalized to other applications in battery design and, more broadly, other scientific domains that involve time-intensive experiments and multi-dimensional design spaces

APOE and FABP2 Polymorphisms and History of Myocardial Infarction, Stroke, Diabetes, and Gallbladder Disease

Dysfunctional lipid metabolism plays a central role in pathogenesis of major chronic diseases, and genetic factors are important determinants of individual lipid profiles. We analyzed the associations of two well-established functional polymorphisms (FABP2 A54T and APOE isoforms) with past and family histories of 1492 population samples. FABP2-T54 allele was associated with an increased risk of past history of myocardial infarction (odds ratio (OR) = 1.51). Likewise, the subjects with APOE4, compared with E2 and E3, had a significantly increased risk of past history myocardial infarction (OR = 1.89). The OR associated with APOE4 was specifically increased in women for past history of myocardial infarction but decreased for gallstone disease. Interactions between gender and APOE isoforms were also significant or marginally significant for these two conditions. FABP2-T54 allele may be a potential genetic marker for myocardial infarction, and APOE4 may exert sex-dependent effects on myocardial infarction and gallbladder disease

Monitoring cryptic amphibians and reptiles in a Florida state park

We monitored cryptic herpetofauna at Savannas Preserve State Park, Florida, by combining artificial cover counts with a quantitative paradigm for constructing and calculating population indices. Weekly indices were calculated from two consecutive days of data collection each week for 7 months from mid-winter to mid-summer in three habitats. Seventeen species were observed at least once, and time trends using index values were followed for six species. Among these, abundance and seasonal pattern information were obtained for an exotic species (greenhouse frog) and a species identified by the Florida Committee on Rare and Endangered Plants and Animals as threatened (Florida scrub lizard). We identified winter as the optimal time in this area to monitor populations for conducting annual assessments. This combined observation and indexing approach could provide managers or researchers with an economical means to quantitatively index population trends for multiple cryptic herpetofauna species simultaneously. Using artificial cover to sample within a population indexing design can be generalized beyond monitoring herpetofauna. Other forms of artificial cover that can be used as observation stations include aquatic artificial substrates, artificial tree cavities, artificial reefs, and other artificial aquatic structures and artificial sea grass units, among many others, and a wide range of taxa are suitable for population monitoring using artificial cover as observation stations in the approach we present, including insects, soil invertebrates, micro and macro aquatic invertebrates, fish, crustaceans, and small mammals

Genome-wide association analysis implicates dysregulation of immunity genes in chronic lymphocytic leukaemia

Several chronic lymphocytic leukaemia (CLL) susceptibility loci have been reported; however, much of the heritable risk remains unidentified. Here we perform a meta-analysis of six genome-wide association studies, imputed using a merged reference panel of 1,000 Genomes and UK10K data, totalling 6,200 cases and 17,598 controls after replication. We identify nine risk loci at 1p36.11 (rs34676223, P=5.04 × 10−13), 1q42.13 (rs41271473, P=1.06 × 10−10), 4q24 (rs71597109, P=1.37 × 10−10), 4q35.1 (rs57214277, P=3.69 × 10−8), 6p21.31 (rs3800461, P=1.97 × 10−8), 11q23.2 (rs61904987, P=2.64 × 10−11), 18q21.1 (rs1036935, P=3.27 × 10−8), 19p13.3 (rs7254272, P=4.67 × 10−8) and 22q13.33 (rs140522, P=2.70 × 10−9). These new and established risk loci map to areas of active chromatin and show an over-representation of transcription factor binding for the key determinants of B-cell development and immune response