Regional Problems Research Articles

China-India Bilateral Trade:

Booming bilateral trade has come to be the strongest pillar of China-India rapprochement. This has not only since overtaken the pace of political confidence-building but also has a substantial impact on their mutual perceptions. Their border trade has especially brought about a noticeable transformation in their remote and problematic border regions. This has contributed to overall tranquillity and peace in the area and has as well facilitated progress in their border negotiations. This boom in trade has also introduced new trends. The two states are no longer only recipients on foreign direct investment but have entered into a new phase of being investors, both mutually as in other regions. In this new context, the increasing deficit in the energy sector and the competition to capture new markets present major challenges to sustaining this boom in their bilateral trade.

The efficiency of Swedish regional policy

In this paper, I evaluate the efficiency of Swedish regional policy. I analyze the government’s regional policy goals and means as presented in Government Bills 1997/1998:62 and 2001/2002:4. In the light of the literature on where growth occurs as well as the results of the regional policy so far, the realism of the government’s goal of “sustainable economic growth in the whole country” could be questioned. Subsidies to companies in problematic regions have uncertain or even negative effects. The government could therefore eliminate these subsidies and replace them with venture capital loans. It could also stop its subsidies to municipal housing companies for shutting down apartments. The positive effects of the government’s tax and subsidy system for the municipalities, motivated by its distribution goal, come at the price of negative effects on incentives for a high national rate of growth. The government could replace this system with extended general subsidies. Investments in transportation projects that do not show a net benefit, such as the large Bothnia Railway in northern Sweden should be reconsidered. However, I find significant and systematic evidence that the government’s investments in regional colleges, particularly in research, have been successful.

A New Middle East? Globalization, Peace and the ‘Double Movement’

The ‘rise and fall’ of the New Middle East (NME) cannot be separated from wider global developments and must therefore be studied in relation to them, in both their ideational and material aspects. The ideological background of the NME has drawn upon the ideology of globalization and shares its underlying tenets of rationality, professionalism and virtues of market economy. In the early 1990s a discourse of globalization was set in motion, highlighting economic and technological development that supposedly rendered territory and territorial disputes marginal or irrelevant. The NME, supported by Israel's business, political and academic elites, advocated liberal economics and peace as a solution to the region's problems. But Israeli elites have failed to turn the idea of the NME into a hegemonic concept, as this attempted liberal hegemony invoked a Polanyian ‘double movement’ that undermined the peace process. The scenario of the NME and the trade-off between territorial integrity and promised regional prosperity not only met fierce ideological rejection, but, perhaps more importantly, failed to persuade the many more skeptics. Limited in its appeal and lacking sufficient legitimacy, the peace process was exposed to derailment by extremists, locking the region into cycles of violence.

Governance in Central Asia: national in form, Soviet in content

American policy toward Central Asia is based on a serious misperception of the region's problems and potential for non‐violent political change. The reality is that the five Central Asian states are not post‐Soviet but neo‐Soviet. The former Communist Party bosses retain the nomenklatura system of centralised and hierarchical rule. The regimes also resemble the clan‐based autocracies of post‐colonial Africa, but with the mechanisms of the modern police state. These countries face all the challenges common to the Third World, but are less amenable to positive external influences or to the development of pluralist politics and civil society. While the regimes have mixed prospects for retaining power, none is likely to succeed in economic development or in responding to social change.

Robust approach for disparity estimation in stereo vision

In this paper, we present a robust probabilistic method for the estimation of stereo disparity. It is based in Bayesian estimation theory, with a prior Markov random field model for the assigned disparities. The optimal estimator is computed using a Gauss-Markov random field model for the corresponding posterior marginals, which results in a diffusion process in probability space. This process, with the appropriate boundary conditions, is also used to estimate disparity in problematic regions of stereo pairs, such as occluded areas and non-textured (homogeneous) regions. Experimental comparisons of the proposed approach with other state-of-the-art methods are presented as well.

ExpressYourself: A modular platform for processing and visualizing microarray data.

DNA microarrays are widely used in biological research; by analyzing differential hybridization on a single microarray slide, one can detect changes in mRNA expression levels, increases in DNA copy numbers and the location of transcription factor binding sites on a genomic scale. Having performed the experiments, the major challenge is to process large, noisy datasets in order to identify the specific array elements that are significantly differentially hybridized. This normally requires aggregating different, often incompatible programs into a multi-step pipeline. Here we present ExpressYourself, a fully integrated platform for processing microarray data. In completely automated fashion, it will correct the background array signal, normalize the Cy5 and Cy3 signals, score levels of differential hybridization, combine the results of replicate experiments, filter problematic regions of the array and assess the quality of individual and replicate experiments. ExpressYourself is designed with a highly modular architecture so various types of microarray analysis algorithms can readily be incorporated as they are developed; for example, the system currently implements several normalization methods, including those that simultaneously consider signal intensity and slide location. The processed data are presented using a web-based graphical interface to facilitate comparison with the original images of the array slides. In particular, Express Yourself is able to regenerate images of the original microarray after applying various steps of processing, which greatly facilities identification of position-specific artifacts. The program is freely available for use at http://bioinfo.mbb.yale.edu/expressyourself.

Energy affordability in the Sahelian region

This paper presents the work developed under the framework of a research project “Transition Scheme through a Sustainable-Energy System in Sahelian Countries”. The project ran between 1997 and 2001, involved several European Union and African entities and was coordinated by the New University of Lisbon. It was financed by the Research Directorate under the framework of INCO DC Programme. The researchers were trying to answer a multiplicity of questions and to find realistic solutions for the transitional period for one of the most problematic regions of the World, namely the Sahel Region. The present paper intends to highlight some of the aspects related to the energy affordability, e.g. income, spending, indirect costs of energy, and energy subsidies that have been revealed during the study. It considers “customer-sustainable” and “customer-affordable” energy structures and proposes measures for energy-affordability enhancement.

China, the USA and the South China Sea Conflicts

This article focuses on China's strategy in dealing with the US factor in the South China Sea conflicts. While the USA is not directly involved in the South China Sea quagmire, its concern with the security of the sea-lanes and its insistence that peaceful means must be used to solve the region's problems have cautioned China to tread carefully in its plans to recover its ‘lost territories’. China would like to see ASEAN and the individual ASEAN claimant states weanedoff their reliance on Washington. However, US surveillance and military power, particularly in the post-11 September period, play an important role in ensuring that disputes in the South China Sea do not escalate to unacceptable levels. It seems likely that the impasse in the discussions on the South China Sea will continue for some time.

Approaches to stabilization of inter-domain recombination in polyketide synthase gene expression plasmids.

Regions of extremely high sequence identity are recurrent in modular polyketide synthase (PKS) genes. Such sequences are potentially detrimental to the stability of PKS expression plasmids used in the combinatorial biosynthesis of polyketide metabolites. We present two different solutions for circumventing intra-plasmid recombination within the megalomicin PKS genes in Streptomyces coelicolor. In one example, a synthetic gene was used in which the codon usage was reengineered without affecting the primary amino acid sequence. The other approach utilized a heterologous subunit complementation strategy to replace one of the problematic regions. Both methods resulted in PKS complexes capable of 6-deoxyerythronolide B analogue biosynthesis in S. coelicolor CH999, permitting reproducible scale-up to at least 5-l stirred-tank fermentation and a comparison of diketide precursor incorporation efficiencies between the erythromycin and megalomicin PKSs.

Improved spectral quality for 3D MR spectroscopic imaging using a high spatial resolution acquisition strategy

Spectral quality in 1H MR spectroscopic imaging (MRSI) of the brain is often significantly degraded in regions subject to local magnetic susceptibility variations, which results in broadened and distorted spectral lineshapes. In this report, a modified acquisition strategy for volumetric echo-planar spectroscopic imaging (3D EPSI) is presented that extends the region of the brain that can be observed. The data are sampled at higher spatial resolution, then corrected for local B 0 shifts and reconstructed such that the final spatial resolution matches that of 3D EPSI data acquired with the conventional lower spatial resolution. Comparison of in vivo data obtained at 1.5 T with these two acquisition schemes shows that the high spatial resolution acquisition provides considerable reduction of spectral linewidths in many problematic brain regions, though with a reduction in signal-to-noise ratio by a factor of approximately 1.4 to 1.6 for the matrix sizes used in this study. However, the effect of the increased noise was largely offset by the improved spectral quality, leading to an overall improvement of the metabolite image quality obtained using automated spectral analysis.

Practical application of transcriptional sequencing for GC-rich templates.

Transcriptional sequencing (TS) is a method that differs considerably from conventional sequencing methods. These differences include the use RNA polymerases with rNTPs and 3'-dNTPs as substrates and terminators respectively, and initiation from double stranded promoters on templates of ds-DNA. We used TS in an attempt to sequence 33 clones whose electropherogram peaks suddenly became absent or weak with conventional sequencing methods. All of the TS reactions overcame the difficulty in sequencing the problematic target regions of the 33 clones. Therefore, TS can be applied to sequence not only GC-rich regions, but also whole genome sequences with a high GC content.

Full Matrix Refinement as a Tool to Discover the Quality of a Refined Structure

This chapter discusses the foundations of optimization. The methods described are applicable to both least-squares and maximum-likelihood refinement protocols. These methods are also useful for studying the effects of different parameterizations of the models, including anisotropic atomic displacement parameters, rigid substructures, internal versus Cartesian coordinates, and restraints versus constraints. Full-matrix optimization methods coupled with the examination of the eigenvalues and eigenvectors of the curvature matrices provide powerful tools for the automatic identification of problematic regions in a refined structure. It provides a theoretically sound means of determining the precision of parameters at low resolution. The process can be reasonably automated. The memory requirements for full-matrix methods are proportional to the square of the number of parameters, which for macromolecular problems have been prohibitively large. Full-matrix methods retain all the correlation information. The most popular full-matrix program in crystallography is SHELXL, which has a conjugate gradients mode as well, especially designed for macromolecular refinement.

A study of damping errors in correlation-driven stochastic realizations using short data sets

A numerical study, motivated by applications in structural engineering, is conducted to investigate the effects of using short data sets for the identification of system damping in correlation-driven stochastic realizations. Sets of single-degree-of-freedom systems are excited with white noise and the eigensystem realization algorithm, with the aid of the modal confidence factor, is employed for the identification scheme. The study reveals information regarding the effects of sample size and Hankel matrix dimension on the resulting estimates of system damping. Results illustrate that significant bias is associated with using short data sets in a correlation-driven framework; in particular errors are seen to increase for high frequency, high-damping systems. Some of this error can be attributed to the inclusion of problematic regions of the correlation function in addition to leakage from the correlation estimation.

Recent segmental and gene duplications in the mouse genome.

The high quality of the mouse genome draft sequence and its associated annotations are an invaluable biological resource. Identifying recent duplications in the mouse genome, especially in regions containing genes, may highlight important events in recent murine evolution. In addition, detecting recent sequence duplications can reveal potentially problematic regions of the genome assembly. We use BLAST-based computational heuristics to identify large (>/= 5 kb) and recent (>/= 90% sequence identity) segmental duplications in the mouse genome sequence. Here we present a database of recently duplicated regions of the mouse genome found in the mouse genome sequencing consortium (MGSC) February 2002 and February 2003 assemblies. We determined that 33.6 Mb of 2,695 Mb (1.2%) of sequence from the February 2003 mouse genome sequence assembly is involved in recent segmental duplications, which is less than that observed in the human genome (around 3.5-5%). From this dataset, 8.9 Mb (26%) of the duplication content consisted of 'unmapped' chromosome sequence. Moreover, we suspect that an additional 18.5 Mb of sequence is involved in duplication artifacts arising from sequence misassignment errors in this genome assembly. By searching for genes that are located within these regions, we identified 675 genes that mapped to duplicated regions of the mouse genome. Sixteen of these genes appear to have been duplicated independently in the human genome. From our dataset we further characterized a 42 kb recent segmental duplication of Mater, a maternal-effect gene essential for embryogenesis in mice. Our results provide an initial analysis of the recently duplicated sequence and gene content of the mouse genome. Many of these duplicated loci, as well as regions identified to be involved in potential sequence misassignment errors, will require further mapping and sequencing to achieve accuracy. A Genome Browser database was set up to display the identified duplication content presented in this work. This data will also be relevant to the growing number of investigators who use the draft genome sequence for experimental design and analysis.

Gerald W. Johnson: from Southern liberal to national conscience

Fitzpatrick, Vincent. Gerald W. Johnson: From Southern Liberal to National Conscience. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2002. 310 pp. $39.95. Gerald Johnson belonged to the first generation of modern Southern journalists: men and women who viewed their region's problems as realists rather than as apologists and who looked outward on the American experience for answers. Unabashedly liberal and devoted to civil liberties, Johnson epitomized the courage and reformist nature of these writers, while writing long enough and well enough to transcend his regional identity to become an honored national figure. Like his mentor, H.L. Mencken, he thundered in all directions from his perch in Baltimore. But unlike the vituperative Sage, Johnson felt comfortable with the New Deal and defended it. He grew intellectually with his times and remained remarkably fresh as a thinker until the infirmities of old age silenced his prodigious writing. Scholars such as Fred Hobson and John T. Kneebone have helped modern readers appreciate Johnson's place within his generation. Now Vincent Fitzpatrick gives us the first full-length biography. As curator of the Mencken papers at the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore and a biographer as well of the Sage, Fitzpatrick presents Johnson as an independent thinker and iconoclast within his own right-indeed, he considers him an important figure within the adversary culture that challenged American smugness and complacency before and after World War II. Never one to ossify in his thinking nor pine for some mythical golden age, Johnson wrote long enough to oppose America's involvement in Vietnam and to lament the corruption that infested the presidency of Richard Nixon. His oppositionist views contrasted with his advocacy decades earlier for the New Deal, which he viewed as a proper and necessary expansion of government power. Johnson grew up in rural North Carolina within a well-educated and public-minded family. He flourished as a student of history and literature at Wake Forest College and served on the front after America's entry into World War I. His military experience in France contributed to his internationalist outlook as well as his commitment to Wilsonian idealism. Upon returning, he distinguished himself at the Greensboro Daily News, earning Mencken's praise for being the South's finest editorial writer. He assailed lynching, Fundamentalism, and similar evils associated with the benighted South, and he continued to pound away at his region's mobs and bigots after he accepted an editorial chair at the Baltimore Evening Sun in 1926. …

Latin America's tottering economies

The frailties of Latin America's leading economies have become abundantly clear. With the effects of Argentina's financial crisis of 2001-02 barely absorbed, Brazil is seemingly edging towards a precipice of its own. Few countries in the region have escaped the resulting shockwaves. Economic stresses have produced - and to some extent been caused by - political uncertainties, but on balance it seems unlikely that region will experience a serious backlash against orthodox economic policies. Still, there is a credible risk that the region's problems could deepen significantly, challenging key outside actors - especially the United States - to devise a coordinated response.

Automatic segmentation and skeletonization of neurons from confocal microscopy images based on the 3-D wavelet transform

In this work, we focus on methods for the preprocessing of neurons from three-dimensional (3-D) confocal microscopy images, which are needed for a subsequent detailed morphologic analysis. Due to the specific image properties of confocal microscopy scans, we had to include several heuristic approaches which are based on multiscale edges to guarantee meaningful results: (1) a reliable segmentation of objects of different sizes independent of image contrast, and, based on it, (2) the computation of skeleton points along the branch central axes, and (3) the reliable detection of branching points and of problematic regions. These are preprocessing steps to gather information which is needed by the subsequent construction of a graph representing the geometry of the neuron and a final surface reconstruction.

Decision Making in Turkish Foreign Policy: The Caspian Oil Pipeline Issue

Being located in one of the most strategic and problematic regions of the world, Turkey has attracted the interest of foreign policy analysts from all around the world. The multi-dimensional nature of Turkish foreign policy has always provided researchers with a vast subject for research.' However, a cursory glance at existing literature on Turkish foreign policy shows that these studies have concentrated either on descriptive or historical analyses. Hardly any work has been done on the decision and policy-making mechanisms and processes of Turkish foreign policy. Thus, the central aim of the present article is to shed light on this rather neglected aspect of Turkish foreign policy in the context of the Caspian Sea oil pipelines project. Here, our main concern will be to analyse the decision and policy-making process rather than to explain Turkish foreign policy on this specific issue. The reasons for choosing the oil pipelines issue are manifold. First of all, the primary institutions involved in decisions and policy making in Turkish foreign policy have always been the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) and the Turkish Armed Forces General Staff (GS). The other institutions involved in the processes have mostly assumed a secondary role. Perhaps, however, for the first time in the oil pipeline issue, beside those traditionally involved in Turkish foreign policy, others - like the Ministry of Energy and its semi-independent sub-units - have become influential in the process. In this context, we believe that the traditional decision and policy-making system of Turkish foreign policy is being challenged, and this deserves to be analysed. Second, the number of external participants involved in the oil pipeline issue is unusually big and diverse. A number of states and unofficial operators (such as the powerful oil companies) have increased the challenge which Turkish foreign policy has to face. Moreover, the oil pipeline issue has not only a political but also an economic dimension that further complicates the foreign policy environment for the Turks. The emergence of independent Turkic states in the Caucasus and Central Asia as a result of the sudden disintegration of the Soviet Union has forced Turkish policy makers to establish close political, economic, and cultural

Improvement of perineal wound healing by local administration of gentamicin-impregnated collagen fleeces after abdominoperineal excision of rectal cancer

Background: Despite significant advancements in rectal surgery, poor perineal wound healing after abdominoperineal resection (APR) of the anorectum continues to be a potential complication of the procedure. The aim of this prospective randomized multicenter study was to investigate the efficacy of a new mode of local antibiotic administration. Patients and methods: Ninety-seven patients who had to undergo APR for low rectal carcinoma either received sacral drainage plus primary wound closure (control group, n = 48) or the same treatment and supplementary application of three resorbable gentamicin-impregnated collagen fleeces (Septocoll; Merck Biomaterial GmbH, Darmstadt, Germany; Genta group, 49). The following target criteria were investigated: bacteriologic efficacy with respect to the eradication of Enterobacteriaceae, Staphylococcus, and Pseudomonas organisms, and clinical efficacy with respect to perineal wound healing. Results: The Genta group showed a marked reduction in the investigated pathogens from the secretion obtained by sacral drainage on days 1 and 3, as well as high gentamicin concentrations (day 1, median 126.2 μg/mL; day 3, median 97.6 μg/mL). In total, bacteriologic efficacy amounted to 83.7% in the Genta group (41 of 49 patients) versus 60.4% (29 of 48 patients) in controls ( P = 0.013). In concurrence with these bacteriologic results, the postoperative infection rate was significantly higher in controls: 10 patients (20.83%) in the control group versus 3 (6.1%) in the Genta group developed perineal or sacral infection ( P <0.05). Postoperative complications in the recruited patients revealed no indication of gentamicin-induced adverse reactions. Conclusions: The results of the study show that the specified dose of 3 Septocoll fleeces in patients with APR is liable to significantly eliminate enterobacteria, staphylococci, and pseudomonads. The clinical course is improved as a result of the bactericidal effect exerted by the gentamicin fleece. The use of Septocoll reduced the incidence of postoperative perineal and sacral infections. Local antibiotic carriers seem to be of great advantage in poorly perfused areas such as the sacral cavity or anatomically problematic regions as the rima ani. In locally contaminated or infected areas, local antibiotic carriers achieve greater concentrations of the active substance than those achieved with systemic antibiotics, even if the latter are administered by the parenteral route.

Collaboration and Partnering for the Development, Transfer and Application of Environmental Technologies for Contaminated Site Remediation

International cooperation in the field of contaminated sitemanagement has resulted in the formation of collaborations,partnerships and networks. The key benefits of increasedcooperation are in the reduction of duplication in efforts,which is of particular importance to industry, in theco-ordination of contaminated site research, improved synergyand definition of needs, policy development, information dissemination and technology transfer. The paperintroduces and briefly discusses key collaborations, partnerships and networksthroughout the world relating to contaminated site managementand remediation. The key value of these partnerships lies inconnecting and sharing with them. In addition, the work thatthese organizations are involved with provides a usefulindication of important issues in contaminated site remediationat a global level. The experience shared within these groupsshould prove useful to the application of similar problemsin regions where cooperation has been less evident, such asChina and the Asia-Pacific region. This paper has been writtenfor the purpose of providing a resource for workers in the fieldof contaminated site remediation.