Contribution of modern biotechnology of lactic acid bacteria to development of health-promoting foods

Selostus: Terveysvaikutteisten elintarvikkeiden tuottamista edesauttavat maitohappobakteerien molekyyligeneettiset tutkimukset

Correlations derived from modern nucleon-nucleon potentials

Various modern nucleon-nucleon (NN) potentials yield a very accurate fit to the nucleon-nucleon scattering phase shifts. The differences between these interactions in describing properties of nuclear matter are investigated. Various contributions to the total energy are evaluated employing the Hellmann-Feynman theorem. Special attention is paid to the two-nucleon correlation functions derived from these interactions. Differences in the predictions of the various interactions can be traced back to the inclusion of nonlocal terms.

Cell therapies for tendons: old cell choice for modern innovation.

Although tissue engineering and cell therapies are becoming realistic approaches for medical therapeutics, it is likely that musculoskeletal applications will be among the first to benefit on a large scale. Cell sources for tissue engineering and cell therapies for tendon pathologies are reviewed with an emphasis on small defect tendon injuries as seen in the hand which could adapt well to injectable cell administration. Specifically, cell sources including tenocytes, tendon sheath fibroblasts, bone marrow or adipose-derived stem cells, amniotic cells, placenta cells and platelet-derivatives have been proposed to enhance tendon regeneration. The associated advantages and disadvantages for these different strategies will be discussed and evolving regulatory requirements for cellular therapies will also be addressed. Human progenitor tenocytes, along with their clinical cell banking potential, will be presented as an alternative cell source solution. Similar cell banking techniques have already been described with other progenitor cell types in the 1950's for vaccine production, and these "old" cell types incite potentially interesting therapeutic options that could be improved with modern innovation for tendon regeneration and repair.

Analysis, modelling and visualisation of spatiotemporal data for urban studies

The proportion of population living in or around cites is more important than ever. Urban sprawl and car dependence have taken over the pedestrian-friendly compact city. Environmental problems like air pollution, land waste or noise, and health problems are the result of this still continuing process. The urban planners have to find solutions to these complex problems, and at the same time insure the economic performance of the city and its surroundings. At the same time, an increasing quantity of socio-economic and environmental data is acquired. In order to get a better understanding of the processes and phenomena taking place in the complex urban environment, these data should be analysed. Numerous methods for modelling and simulating such a system exist and are still under development and can be exploited by the urban geographers for improving our understanding of the urban metabolism. Modern and innovative visualisation techniques help in communicating the results of such models and simulations. This thesis covers several methods for analysis, modelling, simulation and visualisation of problems related to urban geography. The analysis of high dimensional socio-economic data using artificial neural network techniques, especially self-organising maps, is showed using two examples at different scales. The problem of spatiotemporal modelling and data representation is treated and some possible solutions are shown. The simulation of urban dynamics and more specifically the traffic due to commuting to work is illustrated using multi-agent micro-simulation techniques. A section on visualisation methods presents cartograms for transforming the geographic space into a feature space, and the distance circle map, a centre-based map representation particularly useful for urban agglomerations. Some issues on the importance of scale in urban analysis and clustering of urban phenomena are exposed. A new approach on how to define urban areas at different scales is developed, and the link with percolation theory established. Fractal statistics, especially the lacunarity measure, and scale laws are used for characterising urban clusters. In a last section, the population evolution is modelled using a model close to the well-established gravity model. The work covers quite a wide range of methods useful in urban geography. Methods should still be developed further and at the same time find their way into the daily work and decision process of urban planners. La part de personnes vivant dans une région urbaine est plus élevé que jamais et continue à croître. L'étalement urbain et la dépendance automobile ont supplanté la ville compacte adaptée aux piétons. La pollution de l'air, le gaspillage du sol, le bruit, et des problèmes de santé pour les habitants en sont la conséquence. Les urbanistes doivent trouver, ensemble avec toute la société, des solutions à ces problèmes complexes. En même temps, il faut assurer la performance économique de la ville et de sa région. Actuellement, une quantité grandissante de données socio-économiques et environnementales est récoltée. Pour mieux comprendre les processus et phénomènes du système complexe "ville", ces données doivent être traitées et analysées. Des nombreuses méthodes pour modéliser et simuler un tel système existent et sont continuellement en développement. Elles peuvent être exploitées par le géographe urbain pour améliorer sa connaissance du métabolisme urbain. Des techniques modernes et innovatrices de visualisation aident dans la communication des résultats de tels modèles et simulations. Cette thèse décrit plusieurs méthodes permettant d'analyser, de modéliser, de simuler et de visualiser des phénomènes urbains. L'analyse de données socio-économiques à très haute dimension à l'aide de réseaux de neurones artificiels, notamment des cartes auto-organisatrices, est montré à travers deux exemples aux échelles différentes. Le problème de modélisation spatio-temporelle et de représentation des données est discuté et quelques ébauches de solutions esquissées. La simulation de la dynamique urbaine, et plus spécifiquement du trafic automobile engendré par les pendulaires est illustrée à l'aide d'une simulation multi-agents. Une section sur les méthodes de visualisation montre des cartes en anamorphoses permettant de transformer l'espace géographique en espace fonctionnel. Un autre type de carte, les cartes circulaires, est présenté. Ce type de carte est particulièrement utile pour les agglomérations urbaines. Quelques questions liées à l'importance de l'échelle dans l'analyse urbaine sont également discutées. Une nouvelle approche pour définir des clusters urbains à des échelles différentes est développée, et le lien avec la théorie de la percolation est établi. Des statistiques fractales, notamment la lacunarité, sont utilisées pour caractériser ces clusters urbains. L'évolution de la population est modélisée à l'aide d'un modèle proche du modèle gravitaire bien connu. Le travail couvre une large panoplie de méthodes utiles en géographie urbaine. Toutefois, il est toujours nécessaire de développer plus loin ces méthodes et en même temps, elles doivent trouver leur chemin dans la vie quotidienne des urbanistes et planificateurs.

Cereal mycorrhiza: an ancient symbiosis in modern agriculture.

The majority of terrestrial plants live in association with symbiotic fungi that facilitate mineral nutrient uptake. The oldest and most prevalent of these associations are the arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) symbioses that first evolved approximately 400 million years ago, coinciding with the appearance of the first land plants. Crop domestication, in comparison, is a relatively recent event, beginning approximately 10000 years ago. How has the dramatic change from wild to cultivated ecosystems impacted AM associations, and do these ancient symbioses potentially have a role in modern agriculture? Here, we review recent advances in AM research and the use of breeding approaches to generate new crop varieties that enhance the agronomic potential of AM associations.

Looking for orders of magnitude : five essays in trade and the environment and economic geography

General Summary Although the chapters of this thesis address a variety of issues, the principal aim is common: test economic ideas in an international economic context. The intention has been to supply empirical findings using the largest suitable data sets and making use of the most appropriate empirical techniques. This thesis can roughly be divided into two parts: the first one, corresponding to the first two chapters, investigates the link between trade and the environment, the second one, the last three chapters, is related to economic geography issues. Environmental problems are omnipresent in the daily press nowadays and one of the arguments put forward is that globalisation causes severe environmental problems through the reallocation of investments and production to countries with less stringent environmental regulations. A measure of the amplitude of this undesirable effect is provided in the first part. The third and the fourth chapters explore the productivity effects of agglomeration. The computed spillover effects between different sectors indicate how cluster-formation might be productivity enhancing. The last chapter is not about how to better understand the world but how to measure it and it was just a great pleasure to work on it. "The Economist" writes every week about the impressive population and economic growth observed in China and India, and everybody agrees that the world's center of gravity has shifted. But by how much and how fast did it shift? An answer is given in the last part, which proposes a global measure for the location of world production and allows to visualize our results in Google Earth. A short summary of each of the five chapters is provided below. The first chapter, entitled "Unraveling the World-Wide Pollution-Haven Effect" investigates the relative strength of the pollution haven effect (PH, comparative advantage in dirty products due to differences in environmental regulation) and the factor endowment effect (FE, comparative advantage in dirty, capital intensive products due to differences in endowments). We compute the pollution content of imports using the IPPS coefficients (for three pollutants, namely biological oxygen demand, sulphur dioxide and toxic pollution intensity for all manufacturing sectors) provided by the World Bank and use a gravity-type framework to isolate the two above mentioned effects. Our study covers 48 countries that can be classified into 29 Southern and 19 Northern countries and uses the lead content of gasoline as proxy for environmental stringency. For North-South trade we find significant PH and FE effects going in the expected, opposite directions and being of similar magnitude. However, when looking at world trade, the effects become very small because of the high North-North trade share, where we have no a priori expectations about the signs of these effects. Therefore popular fears about the trade effects of differences in environmental regulations might by exaggerated. The second chapter is entitled "Is trade bad for the Environment? Decomposing worldwide SO2 emissions, 1990-2000". First we construct a novel and large database containing reasonable estimates of SO2 emission intensities per unit labor that vary across countries, periods and manufacturing sectors. Then we use these original data (covering 31 developed and 31 developing countries) to decompose the worldwide SO2 emissions into the three well known dynamic effects (scale, technique and composition effect). We find that the positive scale (+9,5%) and the negative technique (-12.5%) effect are the main driving forces of emission changes. Composition effects between countries and sectors are smaller, both negative and of similar magnitude (-3.5% each). Given that trade matters via the composition effects this means that trade reduces total emissions. We next construct, in a first experiment, a hypothetical world where no trade happens, i.e. each country produces its imports at home and does no longer produce its exports. The difference between the actual and this no-trade world allows us (under the omission of price effects) to compute a static first-order trade effect. The latter now increases total world emissions because it allows, on average, dirty countries to specialize in dirty products. However, this effect is smaller (3.5%) in 2000 than in 1990 (10%), in line with the negative dynamic composition effect identified in the previous exercise. We then propose a second experiment, comparing effective emissions with the maximum or minimum possible level of SO2 emissions. These hypothetical levels of emissions are obtained by reallocating labour accordingly across sectors within each country (under the country-employment and the world industry-production constraints). Using linear programming techniques, we show that emissions are reduced by 90% with respect to the worst case, but that they could still be reduced further by another 80% if emissions were to be minimized. The findings from this chapter go together with those from chapter one in the sense that trade-induced composition effect do not seem to be the main source of pollution, at least in the recent past. Going now to the economic geography part of this thesis, the third chapter, entitled "A Dynamic Model with Sectoral Agglomeration Effects" consists of a short note that derives the theoretical model estimated in the fourth chapter. The derivation is directly based on the multi-regional framework by Ciccone (2002) but extends it in order to include sectoral disaggregation and a temporal dimension. This allows us formally to write present productivity as a function of past productivity and other contemporaneous and past control variables. The fourth chapter entitled "Sectoral Agglomeration Effects in a Panel of European Regions" takes the final equation derived in chapter three to the data. We investigate the empirical link between density and labour productivity based on regional data (245 NUTS-2 regions over the period 1980-2003). Using dynamic panel techniques allows us to control for the possible endogeneity of density and for region specific effects. We find a positive long run elasticity of density with respect to labour productivity of about 13%. When using data at the sectoral level it seems that positive cross-sector and negative own-sector externalities are present in manufacturing while financial services display strong positive own-sector effects. The fifth and last chapter entitled "Is the World's Economic Center of Gravity Already in Asia?" computes the world economic, demographic and geographic center of gravity for 1975-2004 and compares them. Based on data for the largest cities in the world and using the physical concept of center of mass, we find that the world's economic center of gravity is still located in Europe, even though there is a clear shift towards Asia. To sum up, this thesis makes three main contributions. First, it provides new estimates of orders of magnitudes for the role of trade in the globalisation and environment debate. Second, it computes reliable and disaggregated elasticities for the effect of density on labour productivity in European regions. Third, it allows us, in a geometrically rigorous way, to track the path of the world's economic center of gravity.

The First World War and coal trade geography in Latin America and the Caribbean (1890-1930)

This paper aims to illustrate the dynamics of coal trade between Latin America and its main trade partners, i.e. the USA, Great Britain and Germany, before and after the enormous disruption caused by the First World War. The coal trade was used as an indicator of modernization for Latin American countries, given that oil was at that time of secondary importance. Energy imports have determined the possibilities of each Latin American country in its process of development. Here we address this question and place special emphasis on supply channels, concluding that the trade link with main suppliers was of key significance. Although this was very clear by the end of the period, the process had started well before the First World War, at least for the majority of LA&C countries. These points are developed through a gravity model applied to the bilateral coal trade. The importance of the market supplier share is addressed through cluster methodologies.

Were Spanish migrants attracted by industrial agglomerations?: an analysis for the interwar years in the light of the new economic geography

In this paper we examine whether access to markets had a significant influence onmigration choices of Spanish internal migrants in the inter-war years. We perform astructural contrast of a New Economic Geography model that focus on the forwardlinkage that links workers location choice with the geography of industrial production,one of the centripetal forces that drive agglomeration in the NEG models. The resultshighlight the presence of this forward linkage in the Spanish economy of the inter-warperiod. That is, we prove the existence of a direct relation between workers¿ localizationdecisions and the market potential of the host regions. In addition, the direct estimationof the values associated with key parameters in the NEG model allows us to simulatethe migratory flows derived from different scenarios of the relative size of regions andthe distances between them. We show that in Spain the power of attraction of theagglomerations grew as they increased in size, but the high elasticity estimated for themigration costs reduced the intensity of the migratory flows. This could help to explainthe apparently low intensity of internal migrations in Spain until its upsurge during the1920s. This also explains the geography of migrations in Spain during this period,which hardly affected the regions furthest from the large industrial agglomerations (i.e.,regions such as Andalusia, Estremadura and Castile-La Mancha) but had an intenseeffect on the provinces nearest to the principal centres of industrial development.

El Prat de Llobregat de fa un segle segons una topografia mèdica: 1904

Aquest llibre va lligat a l'estudi que un dels seus autors, el doctor Vallribera i Puig, havia fet prèviament sobre els 145 treballs que restaven inèdits i que havien estat presentats al concurs de Topografies Mèdiques a la Reial Acadèmia de Medicina de Catalunya, on restaven conservats. Aquí es recupera un d'aquest treballs, datat el 1904 i aquí atribuït a Segimon Salgot i Baucells. Aquest treball centra el seu estudi a les topografies mèdiques a la comarca del Baix Llobregat.

European integration, FDI and the internal geography of trade : evidence from Western European border regions

In this paper we use a gravity model to study the trade performance of French and Spanishborder regions relatively to non-border regions, over the past two decades. We find that,controlling for their size, proximity and location characteristics, border regions trade onaverage between 62% and 193% more with their neighbouring country than other regions,and twice as much if they are endowed with good cross border transport infrastructures.Despite European integration, however, this trade outperformance has fallen for the mostperipheral regions within the EU. We show that this trend was linked in part to a shift in the propensity of foreign investors to move their affiliates from the regions near their home market to the regions bordering the EU core.

Were Spanish migrants attracted by industrial agglomerations?: an analysis for the interwar years in the light of the new economic geography

In this paper we examine whether access to markets had a significant influence onmigration choices of Spanish internal migrants in the inter-war years. We perform astructural contrast of a New Economic Geography model that focus on the forwardlinkage that links workers location choice with the geography of industrial production,one of the centripetal forces that drive agglomeration in the NEG models. The resultshighlight the presence of this forward linkage in the Spanish economy of the inter-warperiod. That is, we prove the existence of a direct relation between workers¿ localizationdecisions and the market potential of the host regions. In addition, the direct estimationof the values associated with key parameters in the NEG model allows us to simulatethe migratory flows derived from different scenarios of the relative size of regions andthe distances between them. We show that in Spain the power of attraction of theagglomerations grew as they increased in size, but the high elasticity estimated for themigration costs reduced the intensity of the migratory flows. This could help to explainthe apparently low intensity of internal migrations in Spain until its upsurge during the1920s. This also explains the geography of migrations in Spain during this period,which hardly affected the regions furthest from the large industrial agglomerations (i.e.,regions such as Andalusia, Estremadura and Castile-La Mancha) but had an intenseeffect on the provinces nearest to the principal centres of industrial development.