Special Tax Treatment as Trade Policy: A Database on Export Processing and Special Economic Zones

Many countries treat income generated via exports favourably, especially when production takes places in special zones known as export processing zones (EPZs). EPZs can be defined as specific, geographically defined zones or areas that are subject to special administration and that generally offer tax incentives, such as duty‐free imports when producing for export, exemption from other regulatory constraints linked to import for the domestic market, sometimes favourable treatment in terms of industrial regulation, and the streamlining of border clearing procedures. We describe a database of WTO Members that employ special economic zones as part of their industrial policy mix. This is based on WTO notification and monitoring through the WTO’s trade policy review mechanism (TPRM), supplemented with information from the ILO, World Bank, and primary sources. We also provide some rough analysis of the relationship between use of EPZs and the carbon intensity of exports, and relative levels of investment across countries with and without special zones.

Generation of an hTERT-restricted, CMV-augmented oncolytic adenovirus capable of tumor-specific transgene expression: Development, characterization, and optimization

Current shortcomings in cancer therapy require the generation of new, broadly applicable, potent, targeted treatments. Here, an adenovirus is engineered to replicate specifically in cells with active human telomerase promotion using a modified hTERT promoter, fused to a CMV promoter element. The virus was also modified to contain a visible reporter transgene, GFP. The virus, Ad/hTC-GFP-E1 was characterized in vitro and demonstrated tumor specific activity both by dose and over time course experiments in a variety of cell lines. In vivo, Ad/hTC-GFP-E1 was affected at suppressing tumor growth and providing a survival benefit without causing any measurable toxicity. To increase the host range of the vector, the fiber region was modified to contain an RGD-motif. The vector, AdRGD/hTC-GFP-E1, was recharacterized in vitro, revealing heightened levels of infectivity and toxicity however maintaining a therapeutic window between cancer and normal cell toxicity. AdRGD/hTC-GFP-E1 was administered in vivo by limb perfusion and was observed to be tumor specific both in expression and replication. To further enhance the efficacy of viral vectors in lung delivery, asthma medications were investigated for their abilities to enhance transgene delivery and expression. A combination of bronchodilators, mast cell inhibitors, and mucolytic agents was devised which demonstrated fold increases in expression in immunocompetent mouse lungs as single agents and more homogenous, intense levels of expression when done in combination of all agents. To characterize the methods in which some cancers are resistant or may become resistant to oncolytic treatments, several small molecule inhibitors of metabolic pathways were applied in combination with oncolytic infection in vitro. SP600125 and PD 98059, respective JNK and ERK inhibitors, successfully suppressed oncolytic toxicity, however did not affect infectivity or transgene expression of Ad/hTC-GFP-E1. JNK and ERK inhibition did significantly suppress viral replication, however, as analyzed by lysate transfer and titration assays. In contrast, SB 203580, an inhibitor for p38, did not demonstrate any protective effects with infected cells. Flow cytometric analysis indicated a possible correlation with G1 arrest and suppressed viral production, however more compounds must be investigated to clarify this observation. ^

Design and Optimization of Four-dimensional Cone-beam Computed Tomography in Image-guided Radiation Therapy

The influence of respiratory motion on patient anatomy poses a challenge to accurate radiation therapy, especially in lung cancer treatment. Modern radiation therapy planning uses models of tumor respiratory motion to account for target motion in targeting. The tumor motion model can be verified on a per-treatment session basis with four-dimensional cone-beam computed tomography (4D-CBCT), which acquires an image set of the dynamic target throughout the respiratory cycle during the therapy session. 4D-CBCT is undersampled if the scan time is too short. However, short scan time is desirable in clinical practice to reduce patient setup time. This dissertation presents the design and optimization of 4D-CBCT to reduce the impact of undersampling artifacts with short scan times. This work measures the impact of undersampling artifacts on the accuracy of target motion measurement under different sampling conditions and for various object sizes and motions. The results provide a minimum scan time such that the target tracking error is less than a specified tolerance. This work also presents new image reconstruction algorithms for reducing undersampling artifacts in undersampled datasets by taking advantage of the assumption that the relevant motion of interest is contained within a volume-of-interest (VOI). It is shown that the VOI-based reconstruction provides more accurate image intensity than standard reconstruction. The VOI-based reconstruction produced 43% fewer least-squares error inside the VOI and 84% fewer error throughout the image in a study designed to simulate target motion. The VOI-based reconstruction approach can reduce acquisition time and improve image quality in 4D-CBCT.

An individual based model spatial distribution, production and biomass for Calanus finmarchicus in the Norwegian Sea

The copepod Calanus finmarchicus is the dominant species of the meso-zooplankton in the Norwegian Sea, and constitutes an important link between the phytoplankton and the higher trophic levels in the Norwegian Sea food chain. An individualbased model for C. finmarchicus, based on super-individuals and evolving traits for behaviour, stages, etc., is two-way coupled to the NORWegian ECOlogical Model system (NORWECOM). One year of modelled C. finmarchicus spatial distribution, production and biomass are found to represent observations reasonably well. High C. finmarchicus abundance is found along the Norwegian shelf-break in the early summer, while the overwintering population is found along the slope and in the deeper Norwegian Sea basins. The timing of the spring bloom is generally later than in the observations. Annual Norwegian Sea production is found to be 29 million tonnes of carbon and a production to biomass (P/B) ratio of 4.3 emerges. Sensitivity tests show that the modelling system is robust to initial values of behavioural traits and with regards to the number of super-individuals simulated given that this is above about 50,000 individuals. Experiments with the model system indicate that it provides a valuable tool for studies of ecosystem responses to causative forces such as prey density or overwintering population size. For example, introducing C. finmarchicus food limitations reduces the stock dramatically, but on the other hand, a reduced stock may rebuild in one year under normal conditions. The NetCDF file contains model grid coordinates and bottom topography.

Output processing and automatic reporting with Stata

This talk illustrates how results from various Stata commands can be processed efficiently for inclusion in customized reports. A two-step procedure is proposed in which results are gathered and archived in the first step and then tabulated in the second step. Such an approach disentangles the tasks of computing results (which may take long) and preparing results for inclusion in presentations, papers, and reports (which you may have to do over and over). Examples using results from model estimation commands and various other Stata commands such as tabulate, summarize, or correlate are presented. Users will also be shown how to dynamically link results into word processors or into LaTeX documents.

Spatial price equilibrium and the transport sector : a trade-consistent SCGE model

This paper presents a framework for an SCGE model that is compatible with the Armington assumption and explicitly considers transport activities. In the model, the trade coefficient takes the form of a potential function,and the equilibrium market price becomes similar to the price index of varietal goods in the context of new economic geography (NEG). The features of the model are investigated by using the minimal setting, which comprises two non-transport sectors and three regions. Because transport costs are given exogenously to facilitate study of their impacts, commodity prices are also determined relative to them. The model can be described as a system of homogeneous equations, where an output in one region can arbitrarily be determined similarly as a price in the Walrasian equilibrium. The model closure is sensitive to formulation consistency so that homogeneity of the system would be lost by use of an alternative form of trade coefficients.

Design and Optimization of Power Delivery and Distribution Systems Using Evolutionary Computation Techniques

Nowadays computing platforms consist of a very large number of components that require to be supplied with diferent voltage levels and power requirements. Even a very small platform, like a handheld computer, may contain more than twenty diferent loads and voltage regulators. The power delivery designers of these systems are required to provide, in a very short time, the right power architecture that optimizes the performance, meets electrical specifications plus cost and size targets. The appropriate selection of the architecture and converters directly defines the performance of a given solution. Therefore, the designer needs to be able to evaluate a significant number of options in order to know with good certainty whether the selected solutions meet the size, energy eficiency and cost targets. The design dificulties of selecting the right solution arise due to the wide range of power conversion products provided by diferent manufacturers. These products range from discrete components (to build converters) to complete power conversion modules that employ diferent manufacturing technologies. Consequently, in most cases it is not possible to analyze all the alternatives (combinations of power architectures and converters) that can be built. The designer has to select a limited number of converters in order to simplify the analysis. In this thesis, in order to overcome the mentioned dificulties, a new design methodology for power supply systems is proposed. This methodology integrates evolutionary computation techniques in order to make possible analyzing a large number of possibilities. This exhaustive analysis helps the designer to quickly define a set of feasible solutions and select the best trade-off in performance according to each application. The proposed approach consists of two key steps, one for the automatic generation of architectures and other for the optimized selection of components. In this thesis are detailed the implementation of these two steps. The usefulness of the methodology is corroborated by contrasting the results using real problems and experiments designed to test the limits of the algorithms.

Integrated program debugging, verification, and optimization using abstract interpretation (and the Ciao system preprocessor)

The technique of Abstract Interpretation has allowed the development of very sophisticated global program analyses which are at the same time provably correct and practical. We present in a tutorial fashion a novel program development framework which uses abstract interpretation as a fundamental tool. The framework uses modular, incremental abstract interpretation to obtain information about the program. This information is used to validate programs, to detect bugs with respect to partial specifications written using assertions (in the program itself and/or in system libraries), to generate and simplify run-time tests, and to perform high-level program transformations such as multiple abstract specialization, parallelization, and resource usage control, all in a provably correct way. In the case of validation and debugging, the assertions can refer to a variety of program points such as procedure entry, procedure exit, points within procedures, or global computations. The system can reason with much richer information than, for example, traditional types. This includes data structure shape (including pointer sharing), bounds on data structure sizes, and other operational variable instantiation properties, as well as procedure-level properties such as determinacy, termination, nonfailure, and bounds on resource consumption (time or space cost). CiaoPP, the preprocessor of the Ciao multi-paradigm programming system, which implements the described functionality, will be used to illustrate the fundamental ideas.

Adverse aerodynamics effects of a high speed train under the influence of cross winds, analysis and optimization of wind fence

The research work that here is summarized, it is classed on the area of dynamics and measures of railway safety, specifically in the study of the influence of the cross wind on the high-speed trains as well as the study of new mitigation measures like wind breaking structures or wind fences, with optimized shapes. The work has been developed in the Research Center in Rail Technology (CITEF), and supported by the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain.

Processing and adsorption control in ZnO single nanowire photodetectors

ZnO single nanowire photodetectors have been measured in different ambient conditions in order to understand and control adsorption processes on the surface. A decrease in the conductivity has been observed as a function of time when the nanowires are exposed to air, due to adsorbed O2/H2O species at the nanowire surface. In order to have a device with stable characteristics in time, thermal desorption has been used to recover the original conductivity followed by PMMA coating of the exposed nanowire surface.

Analyzing Query Success and User Context

This paper describes the participation of DAEDALUS at the LogCLEF lab in CLEF 2011. This year, the objectives of our participation are twofold. The first topic is to analyze if there is any measurable effect on the success of the search queries if the native language and the interface language chosen by the user are different. The idea is to determine if this difference may condition the way in which the user interacts with the search application. The second topic is to analyze the user context and his/her interaction with the system in the case of successful queries, to discover out any relation among the user native language, the language of the resource involved and the interaction strategy adopted by the user to find out such resource. Only 6.89% of queries are successful out of the 628,607 queries in the 320,001 sessions with at least one search query in the log. The main conclusion that can be drawn is that, in general for all languages, whether the native language matches the interface language or not does not seem to affect the success rate of the search queries. On the other hand, the analysis of the strategy adopted by users when looking for a particular resource shows that people tend to use the simple search tool, frequently first running short queries build up of just one specific term and then browsing through the results to locate the expected resource

Analysis and optimization of propagation losses in LiNbO3 optical waveguides produced by swift heavy-ion irradiation

The propagation losses (PL) of lithium niobate optical planar waveguides fabricated by swift heavy-ion irradiation (SHI), an alternative to conventional ion implantation, have been investigated and optimized. For waveguide fabrication, congruently melting LiNbO3 substrates were irradiated with F ions at 20 MeV or 30 MeV and fluences in the range 1013–1014 cm−2. The influence of the temperature and time of post-irradiation annealing treatments has been systematically studied. Optimum propagation losses lower than 0.5 dB/cm have been obtained for both TE and TM modes, after a two-stage annealing treatment at 350 and 375∘C. Possible loss mechanisms are discussed.

Towards description and optimization of abstract machines in an extension of prolog

Competitive abstract machines for Prolog are usually large, intricate, and incorpórate sophisticated optimizations. This makes them difñcult to code, optimize, and, especially, maintain and extend. This is partly due to the fact that efñciency considerations make it necessary to use low-level languages in their implementation. Writing the abstract machine (and ancillary code) in a higher-level language can help harness this inherent complexity. In this paper we show how the semantics of basic components of an efficient virtual machine for Prolog can be described using (a variant of) Prolog which retains much of its semantics. These descriptions are then compiled to C and assembled to build a complete bytecode emulator. Thanks to the high level of the language used and its closeness to Prolog the abstract machine descriptions can be manipulated using standard Prolog compilation and optimization techniques with relative ease. We also show how, by applying program transformations selectively, we obtain abstract machine implementations whose performance can match and even exceed that of highly-tuned, hand-crafted emulators.

Program analysis, debugging and optimization using the ciao system preprocessor

We present a tutorial overview of Ciaopp, the Ciao system preprocessor. Ciao is a public-domain, next-generation logic programming system, which subsumes ISO-Prolog and is specifically designed to a) be highly extensible via librarles and b) support modular program analysis, debugging, and optimization. The latter tasks are performed in an integrated fashion by Ciaopp. Ciaopp uses modular, incremental abstract interpretation to infer properties of program predicates and literals, including types, variable instantiation properties (including modes), non-failure, determinacy, bounds on computational cost, bounds on sizes of terms in the program, etc. Using such analysis information, Ciaopp can find errors at compile-time in programs and/or perform partial verification. Ciaopp checks how programs cali system librarles and also any assertions present in the program or in other modules used by the program. These assertions are also used to genérate documentation automatically. Ciaopp also uses analysis information to perform program transformations and optimizations such as múltiple abstract specialization, parallelization (including granularity control), and optimization of run-time tests for properties which cannot be checked completely at compile-time. We illustrate "hands-on" the use of Ciaopp in all these tasks. By design, Ciaopp is a generic tool, which can be easily tailored to perform these and other tasks for different LP and CLP dialects.