Plants have evolutionarily developed mechanisms that enable them to adapt and respond to environmental stimuli, increasing plant survivability. A key component involved in these mechanisms are stomatal pores that regulate gas exchange. Stomatal pores are in charge of regulating the intake of CO2, which is used during photosynthesis to create energy, while releasing oxygen that humans and animals breathe and minimizing the amount of water loss via evapotranspiration. Plant water loss reduces leaf temperature and can be used as a tool to measure plant transpiration. In monocot grasses, stomatal pores are made up of two dumbbell-shaped guard cells and flanked by two subsidiary cells. These specialized subsidiary cells have been shown to play an important role in promoting faster stomatal opening and closing to stimuli like CO2. So far, very little is known about the different molecular elements involved in the CO2 sensing and response mechanisms in grasses. Therefore, to identify potential novel components involved in CO2-dependent stomatal movement, infrared thermal imaging was utilized in a forward genetic screen using EMS mutagenized plant lines from the grass model Brachypodium distachyon

Stomatal pores are found on the abaxial(lower) and adaxial(upper) side of leaves. Changes to the patterning or development of stomatal pores on leaves affects the overall gas exchange. The elements involved in stomatal development and patterning are well understood in the dicot, Arabidopsis thaliana. It has been shown that pro-peptide signals known as EPIDERMAL PATTERNING FACTORs (EPFs) regulate stomatal development. Moreover, it has been shown that some subtilase proteases from the (SBT) family can cleave EPF peptides. Cleaved EPFs in turn become activated EPF peptide signals, inducing stomatal regulation. The function of SBT proteases in the monocot, Brachypodium distachyon has not been investigated. Therefore, a reverse genetic screen was conducted as a pilot study using artificial microRNA technology to investigate if downregulating selected family members of the SBT family would affect stomatal development in the grass model

We analyze large nationally representative surveys of the labor force from three developing Asian economies (India, the Philippines and Thailand) at two points in time separated by a decade or more. Secondary and tertiary education attainment rose in the interim while the Mincerian education-wage profile became more convex. We document these shifts, allowing for inter-cohort dynamics. Returns to secondary education fell. Returns to college rose for older workers everywhere and for young workers in India, but fell for young Thais and Filipinos. We develop a new decomposition that permits us to attribute the shifting returns to education to the evolving structure of employment and inter- and intra-industry wage patterns. Secondary returns fell sharply in every sector as secondary-educated workers rapidly became available, while employment structures shifted slowly to absorb them. Conversely, rising returns within modern services were instrumental in lifting the returns to tertiary education. More manufacturing jobs will enable the Philippines to leverage higher growth from its human capital stock. Returns to secondary education in India have come to depend less on the manufacturing sector as manufacturing employment growth has been concentrated in low-skill sub-sectors. The intercohort divergence in returns to college arises in the Philippines and Thailand because excess young college-educated workers are pushed into low-wage or low-return jobs, while older college graduates are more likely to work in modern services. As modern service employment grows slowly, the largest and growing share of services employment has been in low-wage traditional services. From an employment perspective, “services-led development” therefore appears to be a red herring.

We study why the relationship between education and log-wages has become more convex in India, the Philippines and Thailand. To do so, we develop decompositions connecting returns to education, and shifts in those returns, to the evolving structure of employment. Returns to college depend mostly upon high-skill service jobs. While relative demand for college graduates in that sector generally rose, its employment share grew slowly, pushing workers with secondary education into less skill intensive services. Services employment, which grew fast, therefore became more menial on average. These polarizing trends in services account for the growing convexity of the Mincerian wage profile. The effects of industrialization on the returns to secondary education depend upon the composition of manufacturing employment. Slow structural transformation when educational attainment increases rapidly causes education inflation, and drives down the returns to secondary education. This constrains governments' seeking to use educational expansion to alter the wage distribution.

In the absence of data measuring the number of years of schooling required to perform particular jobs, we propose a new approach to testing for overeducation. Overeducation is confirmed by rising education levels in menial jobs that offer very low returns to education. Overeducation is deemed a systemic problem if these jobs absorb a growing share of the educated labor force. Normatively, overeducation should sometimes be seen as a shortage of skilled jobs, not as a surplus of educated workers. We use a decomposition of the returns to education to clarify the distinction between equity and efficiency rationales for expanding access to education when returns to education are low. We find substantial evidence of overeducation in the Philippines, mild evidence of it in India, and none in Thailand.