THE EFFECT OF PERSONAL AND FARM CHARACTERISTICS UPON GRAIN MARKETING PRACTICES

A survey of Kansas, Texas, and Iowa agricultural producers was taken to examine the factors affecting their grain marketing practices. Sales indices models and models of qualitative choice are used to determine whether marketers' choices of cash market, forward contract, or futures and options oriented marketing practices are significantly affected by their personal farm business characteristics. Results indicate that geographic location, farm size, grain enterprise specialization, farming experience, use of grain storage, and use of crop insurance have significant effects upon the respondents' choice of grain marketing practices.agricultural options, cash marketing, futures, grain marketing practices, multinomial logit, Tobit, Marketing,

A Buffer Stocks Model for Stabilizing Price of Staple Food with Considering the Expectation of Non Speculative Wholesaler

This paper is a study of price stabilization in the staple food distribution system. All stakeholders experience market risks due to some possibility causes of price volatility. Many models of price stabilization had been developed by employing several approaches such as floor-ceiling prices, buffer funds, export or import taxes, and subsidies. In the previous researches, the models were expanded to increase the purchasing price for producer and decrease the selling price for consumer. Therefore, the policy can influence the losses for non-speculative wholesaler that is reflected by the descending of selling quantity and ascending of the stocks. The objective of this model is not only to keep the expectation of both producer and consumer, but also to protect non-speculative wholesaler from the undesirable result of the stabilization policy. A nonlinear programming model was addressed to determine the instruments of intervention program. Moreover, the result shows that the wholesaler behavior affects the intervention costs. Index Terms Buffer stocks, Price stabilization, Nonlinear programming, Wholesaler behavior

Radio Frequency Models of Novae in eruption. I. The Free-Free Process in Bipolar Morphologies

Observations of novae at radio frequencies provide us with a measure of the total ejected mass, density profile and kinetic energy of a nova eruption. The radio emission is typically well characterized by the free-free emission process. Most models to date have assumed spherical symmetry for the eruption, although it has been known for as long as there have been radio observations of these systems, that spherical eruptions are to simplistic a geometry. In this paper, we build bipolar models of the nova eruption, assuming the free-free process, and show the effects of varying different parameters on the radio light curves. The parameters considered include the ratio of the minor- to major-axis, the inclination angle and shell thickness (further parameters are provided in the appendix). We also show the uncertainty introduced when fitting spherical model synthetic light curves to bipolar model synthetic light curves. We find that the optically thick phase rises with the same power law ($S_{\nu} \propto t^2$) for both the spherical and bipolar models. In the bipolar case there is a "plateau" phase -- depending on the thickness of the shell as well as the ratio of the minor- to major-axis -- before the final decline, that follows the same power law ($S_{\nu} \propto t^{-3}$) as in the spherical case. Finally, fitting spherical models to the bipolar model synthetic light curves requires, in the worst case scenario, doubling the ejected mass, more than halving the electron temperature and reducing the shell thickness by nearly a factor of 10. This implies that in some systems we have been over predicting the ejected masses and under predicting the electron temperature of the ejecta.Comment: 9 pages, 6 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ, accompanying movie to figure 3 available at http://www.ast.uct.ac.za/~valerio/papers/radioI

Elm Farm Research Centre Bulletin with Technical Updates from the Organic Advisory Service 80

A collection of technical, policy and research articles on organic food and food system

Mesenchymal stem cells expressing TRAIL lead to tumour growth inhibition in an experimental lung cancer model

AbstractLung cancer is a major public health problem in the western world, and gene therapy strategies to tackle this disease systemically are often impaired by inefficient delivery of the vector to the tumour tissue. Some of the main factors inhibiting systemic delivery are found in the blood stream in the form of red and white blood cells (WBCs) and serum components. Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) have been shown to home to tumour sites and could potentially act as a shield and vehicle for a tumouricidal gene therapy vector. Here, we describe the ability of an adenoviral vector expressing TRAIL (Ad.TR) to transduce MSCs and show the apoptosis‐inducing activity of these TRAIL‐carrying MSCs on A549 lung carcinoma cells. Intriguingly, using MSCs transduced with Ad.enhanced‐green‐fluorescent‐protein (EGFP) we could show transfer of viral DNA to cocultured A549 cells resulting in transgenic protein production in these cells, which was not inhibited by exposure of MSCs to human serum containing high levels of adenovirus neutralizing antibodies. Furthermore, Ad.TR‐transduced MSCs were shown not to induce T‐cell proliferation, which may have resulted in cytotoxic T‐cell‐mediated apoptosis induction in the Ad.TR‐transduced MSCs. Apoptosis was also induced in A549 cells by Ad.TR‐transduced MSCs in the presence of physiological concentrations of WBC, erythrocytes and sera from human donors that inhibit or neutralize adenovirus alone. Moreover, we could show tumour growth reduction with TRAIL‐loaded MSCs in an A549 xenograft mouse model. This is the first study that demonstrates the potential therapeutic utility of Ad.TR‐transduced MSCs in cancer cells and the stability of this vector in the context of the blood environment.</jats:p

Similar mortality and reduced loss to follow-up in integrated compared with vertical programs providing antiretroviral treatment in sub-saharan Africa.

BACKGROUND: Vertical HIV programs have achieved good results but may not be feasible or appropriate in many resource-limited settings. Médecins sans Frontières has treated HIV in vertical programs since 2000 and over time integrated HIV treatment into general health care services using simplified protocols. We analyzed the survival probability among patients receiving antiretroviral therapy (ART) from 2003 to 2010 in integrated versus vertical programs in 9 countries in sub-Saharan Africa. METHODS AND FINDINGS: Cox regression assessed mortality and program design association, adjusting for baseline age, body mass index, clinical WHO stage, tuberculosis, program age and setting. The analysis included 15,403 HIV-positive adults on ART in 7 vertical (14,124 patients) and 10 integrated (1279 patients) programs. Cox regression including 14,523 patients followed for up to 30 months ART showed similar outcomes for mortality (adjusted hazard ratio (aHR) 1.02; 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.83 to 1.24) and lower risk of loss to follow-up (aHR: 0.71; 95% CI: 0.61 to 0.83) in integrated compared with vertical programs. The greatest risk of death was from initiating ART at WHO stage 4 (aHR 1.99, 95% CI: 1.74 to 2.29), although greater program experience was protective (aHR: 0.77, 95% CI: 0.66 to 0.89). Risk of loss to follow-up was greater in experienced programs (aHR: 3.33; 95% CI: 2.92 to 3.79) and rural settings (aHR: 3.82; 95% CI: 3.49 to 4.20). CONCLUSIONS: ART delivery in integrated general health care programs results in good outcomes. Compared with vertical HIV programs, patients initiated ART in integrated programs at more advanced stages of clinical immunosuppression yet had similar risk of death and lower risk of loss to follow-up

The Distance to Nova V959 Mon from VLA Imaging

Determining reliable distances to classical novae is a challenging but crucial step in deriving their ejected masses and explosion energetics. Here we combine radio expansion measurements from the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array with velocities derived from optical spectra to estimate an expansion parallax for nova V959 Mon, the first nova discovered through its gamma-ray emission. We spatially resolve the nova at frequencies of 4.5-36.5 GHz in nine different imaging epochs. The first five epochs cover the expansion of the ejecta from 2012 October to 2013 January, while the final four epochs span 2014 February to 2014 May. These observations correspond to days 126 through 199 and days 615 through 703 after the first detection of the nova. The images clearly show a non-spherical ejecta geometry. Utilizing ejecta velocities derived from 3D modelling of optical spectroscopy, the radio expansion implies a distance between 0.9 +/- 0.2 and 2.2 +/- 0.4 kpc, with a most probable distance of 1.4 +/- 0.4 kpc. This distance implies a gamma-ray luminosity much less than the prototype gamma-ray-detected nova, V407 Cyg, possibly due to the lack of a red giant companion in the V959 Mon system. V959 Mon also has a much lower gamma-ray luminosity than other classical novae detected in gamma-rays to date, indicating a range of at least a factor of 10 in the gamma-ray luminosities for these explosions.Comment: 11 pages, 8 figures, 3 tables, submitted to ApJ 2015-01-21, under revie

The Environmental Context and Function of Burnt-Mounds : New Studies of Irish Fulachtaí Fiadh

The authors acknowledge funding from The Leverhulme Trust (F/00144/AI) and assistance from a large number of individuals including; Margaret Gowen (access to sites and assistance throughout),A. Ames, H, Essex (pollen processing), S. Rouillard & R. Smith (illustrations), C. McDermott, S. Bergerbrandt, all the staff of Margaret Gowen & Co. Ltd, TVAS Ireland and CRDS. Excavation works and some post-excavation analysis was paid for my Bord Gáis and the National Roads Authority (now Transport Infrastructure Ireland). Thanks also to David Smith for access to the Maureen Girling collection and assistance with identifications.Peer reviewedPostprintPostprin