The Empirical Analysis of Cigarette Tax Avoidance and Illicit Trade in Vietnam, 1998-2010

Illicit trade carries the potential to magnify existing tobacco-related health care costs through increased availability of untaxed and inexpensive cigarettes. What is known with respect to the magnitude of illicit trade for Vietnam is produced primarily by the industry, and methodologies are typically opaque. Independent assessment of the illicit cigarette trade in Vietnam is vital to tobacco control policy. This paper measures the magnitude of illicit cigarette trade for Vietnam between 1998 and 2010 using two methods, discrepancies between legitimate domestic cigarette sales and domestic tobacco consumption estimated from surveys, and trade discrepancies as recorded by Vietnam and trade partners. The results indicate that Vietnam likely experienced net smuggling in during the period studied. With the inclusion of adjustments for survey respondent under-reporting, inward illicit trade likely occurred in three of the four years for which surveys were available. Discrepancies in trade records indicate that the value of smuggled cigarettes into Vietnam ranges from $100 million to $300 million between 2000 and 2010 and that these cigarettes primarily originate in Singapore, Hong Kong, Macao, Malaysia, and Australia. Notable differences in trends over time exist between the two methods, but by comparison, the industry estimates consistently place the magnitude of illicit trade at the upper bounds of what this study shows. The unavailability of annual, survey-based estimates of consumption may obscure the true, annual trend over time. Second, as surveys changed over time, estimates relying on them may be inconsistent with one another. Finally, these two methods measure different components of illicit trade, specifically consumption of illicit cigarettes regardless of origin and smuggling of cigarettes into a particular market. However, absent a gold standard, comparisons of different approaches to illicit trade measurement serve efforts to refine and improve measurement approaches and estimates.     

Methods for computing the standard errors of branching points in an evolutionary tree and their application to molecular data from humans and apes

Statistical methods for computing the standard errors of the branching points of an evolutionary tree are developed. These methods are for the unweighted pair-group method-determined (UPGMA) trees reconstructed from molecular data such as amino acid sequences, nucleotide sequences, restriction-sites data, and electrophoretic distances. They were applied to data for the human, chimpanzee, gorilla, orangutan, and gibbon species. Among the four different sets of data used, DNA sequences for an 895-nucleotide segment of mitochondrial DNA (Brown et al. 1982) gave the most reliable tree, whereas electrophoretic data (Bruce and Ayala 1979) gave the least reliable one. The DNA sequence data suggested that the chimpanzee is the closest and that the gorilla is the next closest to the human species. The orangutan and gibbon are more distantly related to man than is the gorilla. This topology of the tree is in agreement with that for the tree obtained from chromosomal studies and DNA-hybridization experiments. However, the difference between the branching point for the human and the chimpanzee species and that for the gorilla species and the human-chimpanzee group is not statistically significant. In addition to this analysis, various factors that affect the accuracy of an estimated tree are discussed.      

A highly conserved nuclear gene for low-level phylogenetics: elongation factor-1 alpha recovers morphology-based tree for heliothine moths

Molecular systematists need increased access to nuclear genes. Highly conserved, low copy number protein-encoding nuclear genes have attractive features for phylogenetic inference but have heretofore been applied mostly to very ancient divergences. By virtue of their synonymous substitutions, such genes should contain a wealth of information about lower-level taxonomic relationships as well, with the advantage that amino acid conservatism makes both alignment and primer definition straightforward. We tested this postulate for the elongation factor-1 alpha (EF-1 alpha) gene in the noctuid moth subfamily Heliothinae, which has probably diversified since the middle Tertiary. We sequenced 1,240 bp in 18 taxa representing heliothine groupings strongly supported by previous morphological and allozyme studies. The single most parsimonious gene tree and the neighbor-joining tree for all nucleotides show almost complete concordance with the morphological tree. Homoplasy and pairwise divergence levels are low, transition/transversion ratios are high, and phylogenetic information is spread evenly across gene regions. The EF-1 alpha gene and presumably other highly conserved genes hold much promise for phylogenetics of Tertiary age eukaryote groups.      

Mesodern-inducing factors and mesodermal patterning

Identification of the signalling molecules involved in mesoderm formation in amphibian embryos still presents problems. None of the original candidates, such as activin, have been definitively ruled out, and the new factors, such as the nodal-related genes, have come on to the scene. Of the original candidates, activin has been definitively shown to act as a morphogen, whereas bone morphogenetic protein (BMP)-4 has emerged as a ventral inducer and an inhibitor of neural differentiation. The effects of BMP-4 are antagonized by chordin, a molecule related to the product of the Drosophila gene short gastrulation.     

Mitotic chiasmata in human diplochromosomes

Summary Three placental tissue cultures of spontaneous human abortions showed an unusually high frequency of metaphases with diplochromosomes. In 62 such cells, nine configurations were interpreted as mitotic chiasmata between the two sister chromosomes of a diplochromosome. One U-type exchange between two sister chromosomes was also found. This differs significantly from the 1:1 ratio of adjacent and alternate exchanges in translocations, thus supporting the idea that mitotic chiasmata are in principle different from chromatid translocations. The hypothesis is put forward that the frequency of homologous exchanges is determined by the intimacy of pairing which ranges from meiotic pairing through sister chromatid association, through sister chromosome association in diplochromosomes to accidental pairing of homologous regions in diploid cells.     

Replication of bacteriophage lambda DNA. Examination of variants containing double origins and observation of a bias in directionality

Bacteriophage λ variants have been constructed that possess two λ ori sites. Replicative intermediates resulting from infection with these phages have been investigated. We find that initiation of replication from the ori site on an EcoRI fragment (containing all the DNA sequences from within the red gene to the middle of gene O) cloned in the inverted orientation is predominantly bidirectional but occurs at a decreased frequency. Double initiations were observed at low frequency. However, a second cloned ori fragment (carrying two large deletions and a small insertion) cloned in the normal orientation demonstrated insignificant levels of replication from the cloned site unless the normal ori had already initiated.A bias in directionality of λ replication has been observed. Molecules that replicate unidirectionally propagate to the right more often than to the left. If the cloned ori-containing EcoRI fragment is inserted with reversed polarity, then the bias is towards the left. Bidirectional λ replicative intermediates also appear to show a similar bias but this is superimposed on a large, apparently random, effect that results in asymmetric growing-point propagation.     

Genetic polymorphism of PIF (parotid isoelectric focusing variant) proteins with linkage to the PPP (parotid proline-rich protein) gene complex

Genetic polymorphism is found among the PIF (parotid isoelectric focusing variant) salivary proteins after separation by prolonged isoelectric focusing in pH 3.5–5.2 urea polyacrylamide slab gels subsequently stained for protein. Two PIF proteins are either present (PIF +) or absent (PIF –) from all salivas. The phenotypes are determined by autosomal inheritance of two alleles, PIF ⁺ and PIF ^–. Gene frequencies in randomly collected samples show marked racial differences: among 148 whites, PIF ⁺ is 0.66 and PIF ^– is 0.34; among 90 blacks, PIF ⁺ is 0.35 and PIF ^– is 0.65; among 78 Chinese, PIF ⁺ is 0.56 and PIF ^– is 0.44. Studies in 41 families including 129 children support the interpretation of control of PIF by a single autosomal locus. In 8 PIF+ × PIF– matings, there were 8 PIF– (6.34 expected) children. In 33 PIF+ × PIF+ matings, there were 7 PIF– (6.70 expected) children. Linkage studies indicate that PIF is closely linked to the proline-rich protein (PPP) gene complex (e.g., for six families, lod score at =0.00 of PIF/G1 is 3.58). In 107 randomly collected samples from whites, PIF is strongly associated with Db (x ₁ ² =20.02; P<0.0001) and Gl (x ₁ ² =12.58; P=0.0005) but not with Pr, Ps, Pm, and Pa proteins. These data (probably reflecting genetic disequilibrium) suggest that PIF may be closer to Db and G1 than to other identified loci of the PPP gene complex. The PPP gene complex includes at least seven genes (and probably more) that produce many acidic and basic proline-rich proteins, constituting about two-thirds of parotid salivary proteins that are thought to have important functions at the tooth surfaces.This study was supported by a grant from the National Institutes of Dental Research (DEO 3658-15). Paper No. 2435 of the Laboratory of Genetics, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin 53706.     

Hot spots and functional organization of human chromosomes

Summary Our working hypothesis is that the Q-darker human chromosome segments have higher gene densities than the bright regions. Especially prominent in this respect are six hot spots, the short Q-dark regions in 3p, 6p, 11q, 12q, 17q, and 19 (p or q), which have been chosen because their density of mitotic chiasmata is above 5. Chromosomes with gene-rich segments would act as trisomy lethals in very early embryos, whose spontaneous abortions would not be recognized. Containing active genes, the regions would be looped out in interphase and thus be more easily available for mitotic pairing and crossing-over.To test this hypothesis, correlations and partial correlations of the following parameters have been determined: the density of mitotic chiasmata, the number and density of localized genes, the incidence of trisomic abortions, the length of chromosomes, and their Q-brightness. Overall, the correlations and partial correlations agree with, but do not prove, the working hypothesis. Far stronger evidence for our hypothesis comes from the highly significant negative effect of hot spots on trisomic abortions which would act as a kind of trisomy lethal. The gene numbers on the hot-spot chromosomes as compared with the controls, on the other hand, are in the right direction, but the difference is not significant.This is paper No. 2161 from the Genetics Laboratory, University of Wisconsin. It was supported by National Institutes of Health (Washington) grants GM 22881, GM 15422-09, and, to Dr. Hans Ris, GM 04738; by grant IN-35P from the American Cancer Society, and by the U. W. Graduate Research Committee (Grant 101-4403). The photography was done by Mr. Walter Kugler, Jr.