Annual record of science and industry.

1873

Influência do cloro, sôbre a composição do caldo da cana de açúcar Co 290, aplicado no solo, na forma de cloreto de sódio

Considering the economic importance of the sugar industry among ourselves, the authors carried out a field experiment (Latin square) with Co 290 sugar cane, on a white sandy soil of Piracicaba, State of São Paulo, Brazil, applying NaCl in increasing rates (from 6.8 to 54.5 grams per plant), in order to study the effects of chlorides, on productivity and on the composition of juice. No toxic or stimulating effect was found, and there was no change in yield, in degree of purity of the juice, in general aspect of plants or in colour of leaves and culms. No difference was observed between potassium sulphate or chloride, as source of potash for sugar cane culture. Data collected and the literature cited suggest: (a) that the use of the variety Co 290 is indicated for soils rich in chlorine, such as the saline soils of the North-east and Atlantic Coast of Brazil; (b) that it is necessary to extend studies in Research Institutes and Agricultural Experiment Stations of the country to verify the behaviour of other varieties of sugar cane in the types of soils mentioned, especially with respect their yielding capacity. The authors are already planning such investigations.

American spiders and their spinningwork. A natural history of the orbweaving spiders of the United States, with special regard to their industry and habits. By Henry C. McCook.

v.1 1889

Inventory of seeds and plants imported / U.S. Department of Agriculture, Bureau of Plant Industry.

62-73, 1923-1924

External sources of innovation and industry-university interaction:evidence from Spanish firms

This paper is about the firm innovation process and the cooperation of the innovative firms with other firms and public institutions. A special attention is paid to the cooperation with universities. We use the Technological Innovation Survey (TIS) from the Instituto Nacional de Estadística (Spain) in order to obtain data for 4,159 innovative firms. Our results show that firm's cooperation activities are closely linked to the characteristics of the industry and the firm as well as to the origin of public funds for R&D activities. Key words: Innovation, universities, Spanish economy. JEL code: O31, I20, L60

A doença de Chagas em Minas Gerais: esbôco crítico dos trabalhos publicados até 1951

O grande impulso que têm tornado, nestes últimos anos, as investigações sôbre a doença de Chagas, não sòmente em Minas Gerais, como também em outros Estados do Brasil e países do novo continente atingidos pela endemia; o interêsse cada vez mais crescente por parte dos médicos em geral e a facilidade com que vêm sendo por êles assimiladas as recentes contribuições ao estudo desta entidade mórbida; a importância médico-social e a repercussão econômica que tem sido atribuída à esquizotripanose como fator de letalidade e de incapacidade relativa ou total para o trabalho, depois de conhecidos os resultados de inquéritos clínico-epidemiológicos realizados em zonas infestadas por triatomíneos; a recente adoção, por parte das autoridades responsáveis pela saúde publica, de medidas concretas de contrôle da doença pelo combate aos seus transmissores domiciliares, por meio de inseticidas de ação residual aplicados em larga escala; e, principalmente, a escassez de trabalhos de conjunto e de fácil acesso, com referencias bibliográficas adequadas e extensas, que facilitassem aos não especializados no assunto, o conhecimento e a consulta das investigações já realizadas sôbre êste importante problema de medicina tropical; tais são os principais motivos que sugeriram a elaboração de um esbôço crítico do desenvolvimento dos trabalhos até agora publicados sôbre a esquizotripanose em Minas Gerais. De fato, foi aí descoberta a nova entidade mórbida do homem, foram aí estudados e esclarecidos problemas relativos à etiologia, epidemiologia, aspectos clínicos e anatomo-patológicos da esquizotripanose, foram aí realizadas investigações experimentais e desenvolvidos métodos de profilaxia, constituindo, em conjunto, os trabalhos realizados sôbre a esquizotripanose em Minas Gerais, fundamentados nos alicerces sólidos legados pelo seu grande descobridor, uma obra verdadeiramente monumental, que tanto orgulha e engrandece a ciência latino-americana. Os trabalhos publicados sôbre a doença de Chagas em Minas Gerais, compreendendo tôdas as inves tigações aí realizadas e as contribuições que com material procedente do Estado se realizaram fora dêle, foram divididos em cinco grandes grupos: l.º) — Trabalhos realizados em Lassance 2.º) — Trabalhos realizados em Bambuí 3.º) — Trabalhos realizados em Belo Horizonte 4.º) — Trabalhos realizados em outras zonas do Estado 5.º) — Profilaxia da doença de Chagas em larga escala. I) — Os trabalhos realizados em Lassance cobrem um longo período de quase 30 anos, período êsse que vai desde 1909, data da descoberta de um novo tripanosoma e da descrição da nova entidade mórbida do homem feita por CHAGAS, ate 1936, data da publicação de trabalhos de pesquisadores de Manguinhos, apresentados no ano anterior à Nona Reunião da Sociedade Argentina de Patologia Regional convocada em homenagem à memória do grande tropicalista brasileiro CARLOS CHAGAS. Pràticamente, as pesquisas desenvolvidas em Lassance e os trabalhos realizados com o abundante material que de lá foi canalizado para o Instituto Oswaldo Cruz — investigações condensadas em uma centena de publicações — foram feitas por CHAGAS e colaboradores durante a vida do descobridor da esquizotripanose. Neste período, CHAGAS e pesquisadores que, sob sua orientação, trabalharam em Lassance e Manguinhos, descreveram a nova doença nas suas diversas...

New business formation and employment growth: some evidence for the Spanish manufacturing industry

This paper explores the effects of new business formation on employment growth in Spanish manufacturing industries. New firms are believed to make an important contribution to economic growth but the extent of this contribution is unclear. We consider time lags of new firm formation as explanatory variables of employment change and identify how long the effect of new firm entries on employment lasts. Our main results show that the effects of new business formation are positive in the short term, negative in the medium term and positive in the long term, thus confirming the existence of indirect supply-side effects found in similar studies for other countries. Key words: regional growth, firm entry, time lags and Spanish economy. JEL classifications: L00, L60, R11, R12

Variações mensais da incidência das formas evolutivas do Triatoma infestans e do panstrongylus megistus no município de bambuí, Estado de Minas Gerais: (IIª nota: 1951 a 1964)

Após trabalhos semelhantes, realizados em 1955 e correspondente ao período de 1944 a 1955, foram analisadas as variações mensais da incidência das formas evolutivas do T. infestans e do P. megistus em Bambuí, M.G. São analisados 22.581 exemplares de T. infestans e 2.694 de P. megistus, capturados pelo Pôsto do I.O.C na natureza. De modo geral as variações mensais das diferentes formas evolutivas, para ambas as espécies, são as mesmas encontradas por Dias, na publicação anterior. A pequena percentagem de associação das duas espécies, nos habitadouros naturais, faz pensar na hipótese de um antagonismo biológico entre elas. As observações sugerem que o P. megistus apresenta uma geração anual em Bambuí e que o T. infestans o faz, talvez, duas vêzes. Analisando os gráficos de evolução antes e depois dos trabalhos profiláticos em Bambuí, nos anos de 1956-57, verifica-se que não parece ter havido modificações significativas nos comportamentos das referidas espécies, o que se deve provàvelmente, a novos contigentes de insetos, de evolução semelhante, vindos de municípios vizinhos, ou a "focos residuais" em Bambuí, em que as aspersões com B.H.C não influenciaram diretamente na evolução. Em relação aos índices de infecção pelo S. cruzi, êstes são semelhantes para as duas espécies (3,21% para o T. infestans e 3,25% para o P. megistus). As formas adultas apresentam-se mais infectadas e, durante o ano, não há grandes variações de positividade nos diferentes meses. Houve redução significativa dos índices de infecção de T. infestans após os trabalhos profiláticos, com pequena elevação dos de P. megistus, talvez motivada pela invasão domiciliar ocorrida para esta espécies de 1958 a 1964.

Transferring QTL technology to the pig breeding industry (PigQTech) - a demonstration project

The aim of the project has been to demonstrate how the farm animal breeding industry can utilise gene mapping technology to accelerate genetic improvement. Previous theoretical studies had suggested that the use of marker assisted selection could potentially increase the annual improvement for quantitative traits like backfat with about 10% and for more difficult traits such as meat quality and reproduction by as much as 40-60% compared with existing technology. The work has comprised two major tasks: 1. Commercially relevant populations have been screened for segregation at QTLs identified in experimental populations. The aim has been to establish optimal strategies for QTL detection in commercial pig populations and the extent to which QTLs explaining major phenotypic differences between divergent lines used in experimental studies also explain quantitative variation within commercial lines. The results are important for specifying future strategies for finding economically valuable QTLs. 2. Marker assisted backcrossing has been used to demonstrate how a QTL allele can be introgressed from one breed to another. The work has focused on the major fatness QTL on pig chromosome 4 previously identified in a wild pig/Large White intercross. The end result was not designed to be a commercially viable product in its own right, but the process has validated a number of points of major importance for the exploitation of QTLs in livestock.

Changes in the demand for private medical insurance following a shift in tax incentives

The 1998 Spanish reform of the Personal Income Tax eliminated the 15% deduction for private medical expenditures including payments on private health insurance (PHI) policies. To avoid an undesirable increase in the demand for publicly funded health care, tax incentives to buy PHI were not completely removed but basically shifted from individual to group employer-paid policies. In a unique fiscal experiment, at the same time that the tax relief for individually purchased policies was abolished, the government provided for tax allowances on policies taken out through employment. Using a bivariate probit model on data from National Health Surveys, we estimate the impact of said reform on the demand for PHI and the changes occurred within it. Our findings suggest that the total probability of buying PHI was not significantly affected. Indeed, the fall in the demand for individual policies (by 10% between 1997 and 2001) was offset by an increase in the demand for group employer-paid ones, so that the overall size of the market remained virtually unchanged. We also briefly discuss the welfare effects on the state budget, the industry and society at large.

The intra-industry trade for a high-income country: new empirical evidence for Italy

This paper examines the determinants of Italian intra-industry trade in horizontally and vertically differentiated products, using a dataset which eliminates the effects linked to the hypothesis of homogeneity both between countries - when specific industry characteristics are analysed - and between sectors - within the same country. In this way, within limits, we have tried to address an issue raised by Greenaway et al. in 1999 which, in the light of the current state of the literature on intra-industry trade, does not seem to have been explicitly dealt with. Our paper highlights how strong the impact of this hypothesis could be in the analyses of the determinants of intraindustry trade in the case of Italy.

Financial Distress in Chinese Industry: Microeconomic, Macroeconomic and Institutional Infuences

We study the impact of both microeconomic factors and the macroeconomy on the financial distress of Chinese listed companies over a period of massive economic transition, 1995 to 2006. Based on an economic model of financial distress under the institutional setting of state protection against exit, and using our own firm-level measure of distress, we find important impacts of firm characteristics, macroeconomic instability and institutional factors on the hazard rate of financial distress. The results are robust to unobserved heterogeneity at the firm level, as well as those shared by firms in similar macroeconomic founding conditions. Comparison with related studies for other economies highlights important policy implications.

The Changing Inter-Industry Wage Structure of the Organised Manufacturing Sector in India, 1973-74 to 2003-04

This study examines the inter-industry wage structure of the organised manufacturing sector in India for the period 1973-74 to 2003-04 by estimating the growth of average real wages for production workers by industry. In order to estimate the growth rates, the study adopts a methodological framework that differs from other studies in that the time series properties of the concerned variables are closely considered in order to obtain meaningful estimates of growth that are unbiased and (asymptotically) efficient. Using wage data on 51 manufacturing industries at three digit level of the National Industrial Classification 1998 (India), our estimation procedure obtains estimates of growth of real wages per worker that are deterministic in nature by accounting for any potential structural break(s). Our findings show that the inter-industry wage structure in India has changed a lot in the period 1973-74 to 2003-04 and that it provides some evidence that the inter-industry wage differences have become more pronounced in the post-reforms period. Thus this paper provides new evidence from India on the need to consider the hypothesis that industry affiliation is potentially an important determinant of wages when studying any relationship between reforms and wages.