Absence Of Structural Change Research Articles

The induction mechanism of the flavonoid-responsive regulator FrrA.

Bradyrhizobium diazoefficiens, a bacterial symbiont of soybean and other leguminous plants, enters a nodulation-promoting genetic programme in the presence of host-produced flavonoids and related signalling compounds. Here, we describe the crystal structure of an isoflavonoid-responsive regulator (FrrA) from Bradyrhizobium, as well as cocrystal structures with inducing and noninducing ligands (genistein and naringenin, respectively). The structures reveal a TetR-like fold whose DNA-binding domain is capable of adopting a range of orientations. A single molecule of either genistein or naringenin is asymmetrically bound in a central cavity of the FrrA homodimer, mainly via C-H contacts to the π-system of the ligands. Strikingly, however, the interaction does not provoke any conformational changes in the repressor. Both the flexible positioning of the DNA-binding domain and the absence of structural change upon ligand binding are corroborated by small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) experiments in solution. Together with a model of the promoter-bound state of FrrA our results suggest that inducers act as a wedge, preventing the DNA-binding domains from moving close enough together to interact with successive positions of the major groove of the palindromic operator.

The social epidemiology of Zika: stigma, transmission, and prevention in Brazil

Abstract Zika Virus continues to pose a threat to public health in Brazil. In the absence of an infrastructure-focused approach to eradication, it is crucial to understand points of intervention that may increase preventative action in the population. There has been a lack of studies on how socioeconomic and demographic factors relate to attitudes and behaviors surrounding Zika. The purpose of this study was to investigate factors influencing stigma, transmission knowledge, and prevention method use in Brazil. This study relied on nationally-representative data collected for the 2016/2017 AmericasBarometer survey. A multi-stage national probability sample design was used, yielding 1,532 participants. Items were selected representing three thematic categories: stigmatizing attitudes, accuracy of transmission knowledge, and the frequency of prevention method use. Multi-level modeling was used to assess the relationship between each item and gender, urban/rural living, income, and education, nested by region. Education level was the strongest and most common predictor overall in this study. Higher levels of education were associated with less stigma against those with Zika, t(677)= 3.41, p < 0.01, and more accurate transmission knowledge, t(1326)=5.31, p < 0.001. For prevention method use, female gender was the strongest predictor, t(1408)=4.85, p < 0.001. These relationships did not differ significantly by region. The governmental response to Zika thus far has focused primarily on vector control. This has had limited success and placed the burden of prevention primarily on women and girls. The results of this study suggest that, in the absence of structural change, targeted interventions may be necessary to increase the accuracy of Zika-related knowledge and prevention method use. In addition to community-level interventions, advocacy for equitable access to education and increased availability of comprehensive family planning are critical. Key messages There are multi-level barriers to Zika knowledge and prevention use that will require structural, community, and individual-level interventions. Severe weather events driven by climate change will further damage fragile water/sanitation infrastructures in Brazil. Multi-sector collaboration is needed for environmental and population health.

The changed and the unchanged: Peer learning for gender and development in Delhi

Peer education has become a popular strategy for promoting gender equality in recent years in response to calls for more participatory forms of development and thanks to the growing popularity of ‘social norms change’ within the development industry. However, there is some evidence that the main benefits of peer education programs are accrued by the peer educators themselves, with little change evident among the target group. This essay draws on research with peer educators working in the ‘gender and development’ sector in Delhi to make two arguments. First, peer educators expressed a sense of enhanced agency and aspirations as a result of the participation in these development initiatives. However, consistent with critiques of other forms of ‘information-centred development’, the primary outcomes of these programs were tied to the material conditions of employment for peer educators rather than entitlements for intended beneficiaries or indeed the knowledge that peer educators had received and were disbursing. Second, in addition to the the absence of structural change and collective political action, the limited outcomes of peer education programs for intended beneficiaries might also reflect the binary created within information-centred approaches to development between the changed and the unchanged. This binary resonates with the dislocations described by scholars of development categories and postcolonial feminist scholars, suggesting that the intended beneficiaries of these programs might feel alienated by their purported peers when development is conceptualized in terms of norms to be changed through information programs.

Functional Plasticity in the Absence of Structural Change

This work presents a case of a young woman with apraxia and a severe body scheme disorder, 10 years after a childhood frontal and occipitoparietal brain injury. Despite specific limitations, she is independent in performing all activities of daily living. A battery of tests was administered to evaluate praxis and body representations. Specifically, the Hand Laterality Test was used to compare RS's dynamic body representation to that of healthy controls (N = 14). Results demonstrated RS's severe praxis impairment, and the Hand Laterality Test revealed deficits in accuracy and latency of motor imagery, suggesting a significant impairment in dynamic body representation. However, semantic and structural body representations were intact. These results, coupled with frequent use of verbalizations as a strategy, suggest a possible ventral compensatory mechanism (top-down processing) for dorsal stream deficits, which may explain RS's remarkable recovery of activities of daily living. The link between praxis and dynamic body representation is discussed.

Southern Europe in crisis: industrial policy lessons from Italy and Portugal

Italy and Portugal have characteristics in common and some relevant differences, both of which provide useful inputs for a comparative analysis. Lucchese et al. (Industrial policy and technology in Italy, 2016) argue that deindustrialization in Italy stems partially from the shortcomings of industrial policy, which has been unable to promote the development of more knowledge-intensive activities. In contrast, our assessment of industrial policy in Portugal indicates that the absence of structural change towards more knowledge-intensive activities does not seem to result from the absence of adequate industrial policy measures. Even though most of the policy instruments that have been put in place in Portugal being of a ‘horizontal’ nature, support has been unevenly distributed across industries, often being concentrated in more technology-intensive industries. We conclude that despite existing room for improvements in the industrial policies, overcoming the current crisis in the Southern belt of the euro zone will require decisive changes in macroeconomic policies.

Growth, industrialisation and inequality in India

The Indian growth process has been marked by the relative absence of structural change and the inability of faster output expansion to shift people out of low-productivity activities into higher value ones. Recent rapid growth has also been based on and resulted in growing inequalities. Private accumulation has relied upon existing social inequalities that create segmented labour markets that keep wages of certain social categories low, and on types of exclusion that allow large-scale displacement and dispossession without adequate compensation. The associated boom has required debt-driven bubbles to provide domestic demand since incomes of the masses have not risen in tandem, but such a strategy is inherently unsustainable. This growth process is now reaching the limits of its viability and is facing constraints posed by economic, social, political and environmental challenges.

Accumulation Strategies and Human Development in India

India is frequently cited as one of the ‘success stories’ of globalization, with respect to its economic growth performance, during the past two and half decades. However, the very pattern of recent growth resulted in regional imbalances, greater inequalities in the control over assets and incomes, dispossession and displacement without adequate compensation and rehabilitation. Apart from this, there are clear failures of this growth process, even from a long-run perspective. An important failure is the worrying absence of structural change, in terms of the ability to shift the labour force out of low-productivity activities, especially in agriculture, to higher productivity and better remunerated activities. Furthermore, it is evident that the relatively rapid economic growth has not translated into better human development conditions for a large proportion of the population.

Structural Change in the Two-Sector Model with Endogenous Technological Progress

We analyze the steady state and transitional dynamics of two-sector model with structural change and horizontal innovation. There are three main economic forces could drive structural change: technological progress in one sector, technological progress in the other sector, and capital deepening. When the exogenous parameters satisfy some conditions, the present model could generate aggregate balanced growth with non-balanced sectoral growth, in which case structural change would be an eternal phenomenon. However, while the exogenous parameters satisfy other conditions, the present model could generate aggregate balanced growth with balanced sectoral growth, but under the circumstances structural change could take place only during a (perhaps prolonged) transitional dynamic phase. These exogenous parameters include the capital intensity, the elasticity of intermediated input substitution, and the spillover effects in technology progress in the two sectors. Finally, we also show that the occurrence or the absence of structural change and endogenous non-balanced sectoral growth has nothing to dowith capital deepening in the present model, but depends on the sectoral differences in endogenous technological progress rate adjusted by the capital intensity and the elasticity of intermediated input in that sector.

Perspectives on the Competitiveness of EU Dairy Farming Perspektiven für die Wettbewerbsfähigkeit der europäischen Milchwirtschaft Perspectives sur la compétitivité de la production laitière de l’UE

SummaryPerspectives on the Competitiveness of EU Dairy FarmingThis article considers the challenges that may lie ahead for dairy producers over the next ten years, such as trade policy reform, other market developments and changes in input costs. It examines the present competitive position of the dairy sector in a number of EU Member States. Milk price and input cost projections are developed using the FAPRI‐Ireland, FAPRI EU GOLD model and FADN data on farm level costs. In turn these allow the projection of how cost to output price ratios might evolve over the next ten years in the absence of structural change, thereby indicating the extent of structural change required. The results suggest that the phasing out of export subsidies, a reduction in import tariffs for dairy products and rising input costs would have serious ramifications for the viability of dairy farming across the EU. Furthermore, the results suggest that significant structural change will need to occur in dairy farming sectors across the EU. It is concluded that the future ability of many EU Member States to sustain current milk production levels will be largely dependent on the efficient transfer of resources between exiting farmers and those wishing to expand production.

On the Line: Worker Democracy and the Struggle Over Occupational Health and Safety

In this article we present a qualitative analysis of worker involvement in a participatory project to improve occupational health and safety at a Canadian manufacturing site. Based on interviews with workers in the plant, we consider the manner and degree to which workers experienced meaningful participation in the intervention process and some of the main barriers to worker participation. Findings emphasize the importance of the social and political context in conditioning the dynamics of joint management labor ventures specifically in relation to health initiatives. Interviews revealed few instances in which workers felt included in the participatory initiative; most often they felt marginalized. In the absence of structural change in the plant, workers described the health initiative as seriously limited in its ability to render meaningful worker participation. These results extend beyond this analysis of a participatory workplace health initiative, offering insights into the dynamics of institutional participatory process, and into participatory research practice generally.

Quasi purchasing power parity

Several recent studies have found evidence of purchasing power parity by using long time series of data to combat the low power of unit root tests. The ability to reject unit roots in real exchange rates, however, only implies that PPP holds in the absence of structural change. We test for multiple structural changes in six real exchange rates, and find strong evidence against both the unit root and the no-structural-change hypotheses. We call this result quasi purchasing power parity. When structural change is accounted for, real exchange rates display mean reversion that is much faster than previously calculated. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

FROM CONSUMER CHOICE PROCESS TO AGGREGATE ANALYSIS: MARKETING INSIGHTS FOR MODELS OF MEAT DEMAND

The presence or absence of structural change in meat demand is critical to marketing decision making. If change is present, marketing bodies need to know what underlies the change so that the most appropriate response can be identified. Marketing theory is considered as a possible source of more explicit models of demand which may lead to a better understanding of consumption patterns and structural change.

Contemporary Approaches to Political Stability

The concept of is an excellent illustration of the fuzziness and confusion existing in political science research regarding concept formation, operationalization, and measurement. The concept of stability means all things as various individuals attempt to measure the degree or amount of present in their particular universe. This review essay will attempt to delineate the major approaches to the term. The concept of stability is approached by most political scientists from the behavioral point of view, in the sense that the concept can be defined and measured through reproducible and verifiable techniques. Although there are strands of common agreement in most of the literature as to the basic broad meaning of the term, confusion abounds due to the lack of agreement concerning the meaning of the terms employed to define stability; and there is also a lack of consensus regarding the operationalization of these latter terms. The differing views and approaches to political stability are seen to be: (a) the absence of violence; (b) governmental longevity/duration; (c) the existence of a legitimate constitutional regime; (d) the absence of structural change; and (e) a multifaceted societal attribute.

Physical and psychological evaluation of 'non-organic' abdominal pain.

EDITORIALCOMMENT A study ofthepsychiatric background ofpatients withabdominal pain without demonstrable physical disease. Thepatients came fromsignificantly larger sibships than a control population andscored highfor'neuroticism'. Thepatients' symptomsoften beganina setting ofbereavement orsome other upheaval intheir lives. Anumber ofpatients wereconsiderably depressed whenseenandtreatment fordepression was followed bydisappearance ofpain. This offers an important therapeutic approach inmany patients. A considerable proportion ofthepatients atany medical out-patient clinic havenoorganic lesion to account fortheir symptoms (see review byMcClay, 1965). Oneofthecommonest complaints inthis category ispain andwhenthis occurs intheabdomen itmaywellgive rise todifficulty indiagnosis and treatment. Theabsence oforganic disease insuchapatient implies anincreased likelihood thatpsychological factors mayplay animportant partintheaetiology ofthepatient's symptoms. Inorder toexplore this possibility andalso toattempt totrytodefine the clinical picture ofabdominal painoccurring inthe absence ofstructural change, a groupofthese patients wascarefully investigated bothfromthe clinical andpsychological points ofview. STUDYAND METHOD