Analyzing Factors Affecting U.S. Food Price Inflation.

Since the summer of 2007, U.S. food price has increased dramatically. Given public anxiety over fast-rising food prices in recent years, this paper attempts to analyze the effects of market factors ─ prices of energy and agricultural commodities and exchange rate ─ on U.S. food prices using a co-integration analysis. Results show that the agricultural commodity price and exchange rate play key roles in determining the short- and long-run movement of U.S. food prices. It is also found that in recent years, the energy price has been a significant factor affecting U.S. food prices in the long-run, but has little effect in the short-run. This implies the strong long-run linkage between energy and agricultural markets has emerged through production of commodity-based ethanol in the recent years.Agricultural commodity price, Energy price, Exchange rate, Food price inflation, Time-series analysis, Agribusiness,

Responsive and Personalized Web Layouts with Integer Programming

Over the past decade, responsive web design (RWD) has become the de facto standard for adapting web pages to a wide range of devices used for browsing. While RWD has improved the usability of web pages, it is not without drawbacks and limitations: designers and developers must manually design the web layouts for multiple screen sizes and implement associated adaptation rules, and its "one responsive design fits all"approach lacks support for personalization. This paper presents a novel approach for automated generation of responsive and personalized web layouts. Given an existing web page design and preferences related to design objectives, our integer programming -based optimizer generates a consistent set of web designs. Where relevant data is available, these can be further automatically personalized for the user and browsing device. The paper includes presentation of techniques for runtime adaptation of the designs generated into a fully responsive grid layout for web browsing. Results from our ratings-based online studies with end users (N = 86) and designers (N = 64) show that the proposed approach can automatically create high-quality responsive web layouts for a variety of real-world websites.Peer reviewe

Simulink-Based Simulation Architecture for Evaluating Controls for Aerospace Vehicles (SAREC-ASV)

The Simulation Architecture for Evaluating Controls for Aerospace Vehicles (SAREC-ASV) is a Simulink-based approach to providing an engineering quality desktop simulation capability for finding trim solutions, extracting linear models for vehicle analysis and control law development, and generating open-loop and closed-loop time history responses for control system evaluation. It represents a useful level of maturity rather than a finished product. The layout is hierarchical and supports concurrent component development and validation, with support from the Concurrent Versions System (CVS) software management tool. Real Time Workshop (RTW) is used to generate pre-compiled code for substantial component modules, and templates permit switching seamlessly between original Simulink and code compiled for various platforms. Two previous limitations are addressed. Turn around time for incorporating tabular model components was improved through auto-generation of required Simulink diagrams based on data received in XML format. The layout was modified to exploit a Simulink "compile once, evaluate multiple times" capability for zero elapsed time for use in trimming and linearizing. Trim is achieved through a Graphical User Interface (GUI) with a narrow, script definable interface to the vehicle model which facilitates incorporating new models

AP-ASD1 : an Indonesian Desktop-based Educational Tool for Basic Data Structure Course

Although there are so many avalaible data structure educational tools, it is quite difficult to find a suitable tool to aid students for learning certain course [1]. Several major impediments in determining the tool are teaching preferences, language barrier, confusing terminologies, internet dependency, various degree of material difficulty, and other environment aspects. In this research, a data structure educational tool called AP-ASD1 is developed based on basic algorithm and data structure course (ASD 1). Since AP-ASD1 is developed following course materials and not vice versa, this educational tool is guaranteed to fit in our needs. The feasibility of AP-ASD1 is evaluated based on two factors which are functionality correctness and survey. All features are correctly functioned and yield expected output whereas survey yields fairly good result (84,305% achievement rate). Based on our survey, AP-ASD1 meets eligibility standard and its features are also successfully integrated. Survey also concludes that this application is also quite effective as a supportive tool for learning basic data structure