Nuclear systems in space? Does/will the public accept them?

Public attitudes toward the use of nuclear energy on earth and in space are discussed. Survey data are presented which show that the public believes nuclear energy should play an important role in our energy supply. However, based on broad attitude research, there should be no expectation that the public will accept or support the use of nuclear energy unless it meets special needs and offers special and significant benefits. It is proposed that a public information program be adopted that results in getting recognition and support for the space program broadly and for the missions that benefit substantially from or require nuclear energy for their accomplishment

Evidence of slowing yield growth – the example of Swiss cereal yields

We analyze trends in yield growth and yield variability of barley, maize, oats, rye triticale and wheat in Switzerland from 1961 to 2006. In contrast to linear trends in cereal yield growth that are usually assumed for Europe, cereal yields have leveled off due to widespread extensive cereal production in Switzerland since the early 1990’s. This might also indicate prospects for future crop yield developments in other countries if similar farming practices are widely-used. Even though we find increasing yield variability for barley and rye, no increasing trend in relative yield variability (relative to yield levels) is found for all analyzed crops. Furthermore, this study emphasizes the importance of robust regression methods to ensure reliable results in trend estimation.climate change, crop yield development, detrending, robust regression, Switzerland, crop yield variability, agri-environmental policy

Modeling agricultural production risk and the adaptation to climate change

A model that integrates biophysical simulations in an economic model is used to analyze the impact of climate change on crop production. The biophysical model simulates future plant-management-climate relationships and the economic model simulates farmers' adaptation actions to climate change using a nonlinear programming approach. Beyond the development of average yields, special attention is devoted to the impact of climate change on crop yield variability. This study analyzes corn and winter wheat production on the Swiss Plateau with respect to climate change scenarios that cover the period of 2030-2050. In our model, adaptation options such as changes in seeding dates, changes in production intensity and the adoption of irrigation farming are considered. Different scenarios of climate change, output prices and farmers' risk aversion are applied in order to show the sensitivity of adaptation strategies and crop yields, respectively, on these factors. Our results show that adaptation actions, yields and yield variation highly depend on both climate change and output prices. The sensitivity of adaptation options and yields, respectively, to prices and risk aversion for winter wheat is much lower than for corn because of different growing periods. In general, our results show that both corn and winter wheat yields increase in the next decades. In contrast to other studies, we find the coefficient of variation of corn and winter wheat yields to decrease. We therefore conclude that simple adaptation measures are sufficient to take advantage of climate change in Swiss crop farming.climate change, robust estimation, yield variation, corn, winter wheat, market liberalization, Environmental Economics and Policy, Production Economics, Risk and Uncertainty,

Economists, institutions, and trade restrictions : a review article

A review article on the work of"practitioners of contemporary economic analysis of trade restrictions", this report focuses on three questions : a) are there holes in the case of free trade? B) Why are trade restrictions imposed, and c) how do US policy actions and those of other nations interact ? On the first question, though difficult to identify when there is profit to be captured by trade intervention and to design an appropriate trade intervention policy, capturing a strategic sector and economic rents is important to equity holders without necessarily being of much significance to the economy as a whole. Further, on trade restrictions, these are often aimed at non economic objectives, since economic sanctions tend to be used only when other instruments fail. As for the interaction of US policy actions versus other nations, they are a manifestation of protectionist legislation in the US Congress and perhaps indictments against GATT as wrong headed.TF054105-DONOR FUNDED OPERATION ADMINISTRATION FEE INCOME AND EXPENSE ACCOUNT,Environmental Economics&Policies,Economic Theory&Research,Rules of Origin,Trade Policy

A direct cerebello-telencephalic projection in an electrosensory mormyrid fish

After injections of the posterior part of the lateral zone of the area dorsalis telencephali (Dlp) with either horseradish peroxidase or the newly available carbocyanine dye DiI, efferent cells were labeled in the valvula cerebelli of the mormyrid fish,Gnathonemus petersii. This may be a unique connection for this group of electrosensory teleosts, since no other vertebrate has ever been reported before to have a direct cerebello-telencephalic projection

Poor people's knowledge : helping poor people to earn from their knowledge

How can we help poor people to earn more from their knowledge rather than from their sweat and muscle? This paper draws lessons from projects intended to promote and protect the innovation, knowledge, and creative skills of poor people in poor countries, particularly to improve the earnings of poor people from such knowledge and skills. The international community has paid considerable attention to problems associated with intellectual property that poor countries buy-such as the increased cost of pharmaceuticals brought on by the WTO's agreement on the Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPS). This paper is about the other half of the development-intellectual property link. It is about the knowledge poor people own, create, and sell rather than about what they buy. The paper calls attention to a broad range of poor people's knowledge that has commercial potential. It highlights the incentives for and concerns of poor people-which may be different from those of corporate research, northern nongovernmental organizations, or even entertainment stars from developing countries who already enjoy an international audience. The studies find that increased earnings is sometimes a matter of poor people acquiring commercial skills. Legal reform, though often necessary, is frequently not sufficient. Moreover, the paper concludes that the need for novel legal approaches to protect traditional knowledge has been overemphasized. Standard instruments such as patents and copyrights are often effective. Rather than legal innovation, there is a need for economic and political empowerment of poor people so that they have the skills to use such instruments and the influence to insist that institutional structures respond to their interests. Finally, the paper concludes that there is minimal conflict between culture and commerce. There are many income-earning expressions of culture, and it is incorrect to presume that expressions of culture must always be income-using.Cultural Heritage&Preservation,Environmental Economics&Policies,Arts&Music,Public Health Promotion,Cultural Policy,Environmental Economics&Policies,Cultural Heritage&Preservation,Arts&Music,Cultural Policy,Health Monitoring&Evaluation

New Codes for OFDM with Low PMEPR

In this paper new codes for orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) with tightly controlled peak-to-mean envelope power ratio (PMEPR) are proposed. We identify a new family of sequences occuring in complementary sets and show that such sequences form subsets of a new generalization of the Reed--Muller codes. Contrarily to previous constructions we present a compact description of such codes, which makes them suitable even for larger block lengths. We also show that some previous constructions just occur as special cases in our construction.Comment: To appear in the Proceedings of IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory, Sept. 4-9, 2005, Adelaide, Australi

The Application of Robust Regression to a Production Function Comparison – the Example of Swiss Corn

The adequate representation of crop response functions is crucial for agri-environmental modeling and analysis. So far, the evaluation of such functions focused on the comparison of different functional forms. The perspective is expanded in this article by considering an alternative regression method. This is motivated by the fact that exceptional crop yield observations (outliers) can cause misleading results if least squares regression is applied. We show that such outliers are adequately treated if robust regression is used instead. The example of simulated Swiss corn yields shows that the use of robust regression narrows the range of optimal input levels across different functional forms and reduces potential costs of misspecification.production function estimation, production function comparison, robust regression, crop response