If only I could borrow more ! Production and consumption credit constraints in the Philippines

This paper provides a new approach to analyzing credit constraints by differentiating which of the household's production and consumption decisions are affected by credit constraints. It also provides a first attempt to estimate of the extent and determinants of credit constraints in the Philippines. Based on direct questions on households' experiences in credit markets, we estimate the percentage of credit-constrained households at 65%. The lack of credit constrained the level of agricultural production of 37% of the farming households ; it also constrained the level of family business production of 31% of the households operating such businesses. Credit constraints also limited consumption choices of 21% of the sample households. We found that the presence of credit programs operating in the village and proximity to commercial banks and rural banks reduced the probability of credit constraints in production decisions. Further, some types of households are more likely to experience credit constraints. These are the households with little education, households that own little or no titled land and sugar-producing households.Credit constraints, Philippines, Asia.

Throughput Analysis of Buffer-Constrained Wireless Systems in the Finite Blocklength Regime

In this paper, wireless systems operating under queueing constraints in the form of limitations on the buffer violation probabilities are considered. The throughput under such constraints is captured by the effective capacity formulation. It is assumed that finite blocklength codes are employed for transmission. Under this assumption, a recent result on the channel coding rate in the finite blocklength regime is incorporated into the analysis and the throughput achieved with such codes in the presence of queueing constraints and decoding errors is identified. Performance of different transmission strategies (e.g., variable-rate, variable-power, and fixed-rate transmissions) is studied. Interactions between the throughput, queueing constraints, coding blocklength, decoding error probabilities, and signal-to-noise ratio are investigated and several conclusions with important practical implications are drawn

A 1 GHz RF Trigger Unit implemented in FPGA logic

Applications of Trigger Units (TU) can be found in almost all accelerators at CERN. The requirements in terms of operating frequencies, configuration or modes of operation change from one application to another, how-ever, in terms of design requirements for the Trigger Unit, the operating frequency is probably the most demanding one. In this work, we present an implementation of a Trigger Unit almost fully embedded in the FPGA logic operating at a maximum frequency of 1 GHz using the internal serializer/deserializer circuitry to simplify the timing constraints of the design. This implementation allows easy reconfiguration of the module and the development of new modes of operation, which are described in this paper.Comment: Poster presented at LLRF Workshop 2017 (LLRF2017, arXiv:1803.07677

Let there be Light! Firms Operating under Electricity Constraints in Developing Countries

Many developing countries are unable to provide their industrial sector with reliable electric power and many enterprises have to contend with insufficient and unreliable electricity supply. Because of these constraints, enterprises often opt for self-generation even though it is widely considered a second best solution. This paper develops a theoretical model of investment behavior in remedial infrastructure when physical constraints are present. It then tests econometrically implications from this model using a large sample of enterprises from 87 countries from the World Bank enterprise survey database. After showing that these constraints have non-linear effects according to the natural degree of reliance on electricity of an industrial sector and on firm size, the paper draws differentiated policy recommendations. Credit constraints appear to be the priority in sectors very reliant on electricity to spur entry and convergence to the technological frontier while, in other sectors, firms would benefit more widely from marginal improvements in electrical supply.Infrastructure, Electricity, Industrial structure

Experimental Verification of a Depth Controller using Model Predictive Control with Constraints onboard a Thruster Actuated AUV

In this work a depth and pitch controller for an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) is developed. This controller uses the model predictive control method to manoeuvre the vehicle whilst operating within the defined constraints of the AUV actuators. Experimental results are given for the AUV performing a step change in depth whilst maintaining zero pitch

Articulated Clinician Detection Using 3D Pictorial Structures on RGB-D Data

Reliable human pose estimation (HPE) is essential to many clinical applications, such as surgical workflow analysis, radiation safety monitoring and human-robot cooperation. Proposed methods for the operating room (OR) rely either on foreground estimation using a multi-camera system, which is a challenge in real ORs due to color similarities and frequent illumination changes, or on wearable sensors or markers, which are invasive and therefore difficult to introduce in the room. Instead, we propose a novel approach based on Pictorial Structures (PS) and on RGB-D data, which can be easily deployed in real ORs. We extend the PS framework in two ways. First, we build robust and discriminative part detectors using both color and depth images. We also present a novel descriptor for depth images, called histogram of depth differences (HDD). Second, we extend PS to 3D by proposing 3D pairwise constraints and a new method that makes exact inference tractable. Our approach is evaluated for pose estimation and clinician detection on a challenging RGB-D dataset recorded in a busy operating room during live surgeries. We conduct series of experiments to study the different part detectors in conjunction with the various 2D or 3D pairwise constraints. Our comparisons demonstrate that 3D PS with RGB-D part detectors significantly improves the results in a visually challenging operating environment.Comment: The supplementary video is available at https://youtu.be/iabbGSqRSg