A Bioeconomic Rationale for the Expansion of Tree Planting by Upland Philippine Farmers

Upland farmers have long been cast as key actors of deforestation, but in the wake of timber scarcity brought on by deforestation and logging restrictions, many have adopted a new role--tree planters. Responding to market signals, upland farmers in Mindanao have spontaneously been planting fast-growing timber species on parcels going out of annual crop production. Research was conducted in Bukidnon province to compare the potential returns from trees and annual crops, and determine whether the typical farm forestry practice of intercropping trees and crops conferred efficiencies that could make it competitive with larger scale plantation projects. A bioeconomic model was developed from the research. The paper suggests that farm forestry is economically efficient, environmentally advantageous, and socially empowering, and that policy should be pursued to facilitate its expansion by providing information such as best management practices and by removing disincentives to tree planting such as harvesting restrictions and tenure insecurity. It also suggests that forestry investment should be directed at protecting and enhancing the nonmarket benefits of complex forests.bioeconomy, upland farming, tree planting, farm forestry

A Bioeconomic Rationale for the Expansion of Tree Planting by Upland Philippine Farmers

Upland farmers have long been cast as key actors of deforestation, but in the wake of timber scarcity brought on by deforestation and logging restrictions, many have adopted a new role--tree planters. Responding to market signals, upland farmers in Mindanao have spontaneously been planting fast-growing timber species on parcels going out of annual crop production. Research was conducted in Bukidnon province to compare the potential returns from trees and annual crops, and determine whether the typical farm forestry practice of intercropping trees and crops conferred efficiencies that could make it competitive with larger scale plantation projects. A bioeconomic model was developed from the research. The paper suggests that farm forestry is economically efficient, environmentally advantageous, and socially empowering, and that policy should be pursued to facilitate its expansion by providing information such as best management practices and by removing disincentives to tree planting such as harvesting restrictions and tenure insecurity. It also suggests that forestry investment should be directed at protecting and enhancing the nonmarket benefits of complex forests.bioeconomy, upland farming, tree planting, farm forestry

SICStus MT - A Multithreaded Execution Environment for SICStus Prolog

The development of intelligent software agents and other complex applications which continuously interact with their environments has been one of the reasons why explicit concurrency has become a necessity in a modern Prolog system today. Such applications need to perform several tasks which may be very different with respect to how they are implemented in Prolog. Performing these tasks simultaneously is very tedious without language support. This paper describes the design, implementation and evaluation of a prototype multithreaded execution environment for SICStus Prolog. The threads are dynamically managed using a small and compact set of Prolog primitives implemented in a portable way, requiring almost no support from the underlying operating system

Scrum for product innovation : a longitudinal embedded case study

This article describes the innovation processes used in a partnership between Add Latent Ltd., an asset integrity and maintenance management consulting services provider in the energy sector and University of Salford. The challenge faced by the company is to make their in-house expertise more readily available to a worldwide audience. A longitudinal embedded case study has been used to investigate how installable desktop software applications have been redesigned to create a new set of cloud hosted software services. The innovation team adapted an agile scrum process to include exploratory prototyping and manage the geographical distribution of the team members. A minimum viable product was developed that integrated functional elements of previous software tools into an end-to-end data collection, analysis and visualisation product called AimHi which uses a cloud-hosted web services approach. Field trials were conducted using the software at the Uniper, Isle of Grain power station in Kent, UK. Enhancements were made to the AimHi product which was adopted for use at the Uniper site. The product emerged from a Knwledge Transfer Partnership whci was evaluated on cmplettion by InnovateUK and awarded the highest possible “outstanding” grade. The article illustrates how the scrum software development method was tailored for a product innovation context. Extended periods of evaluation and reflection, prototyping and requirement refinement were combined with periods of incremental feature development using sprints. The AimHi product emerged from a technology transfer and innovation project that has successfully reconciled conflicting demands from customers, universities, partner companies and project staff members

Keystone XL Pipeline Project: Key Issues

[Excerpt] This report describes the Keystone XL Project as it is proposed in the 2012 Presidential Permit application and the process that the State Department is obligated to complete to issue or deny that application. To the extent that they may affect the State Department’s decision to issue or deny the current permit application, this report discusses selected issues related to the project proposed in 2008 and issues that have arisen since the State Department denied the initial permit application in 2012. This report also summarizes key arguments that have been raised, both for and against the pipeline, by the pipeline’s developers, state and federal agencies, environmental groups, private property owners, and other stakeholders. Finally, the report discusses the constitutional basis for the State Department’s authority to issue a Presidential Permit, and opponents’ possible challenges to this authority

Artefacts and agile method tailoring in large-scale offshore software development programmes

Context: Large-scale offshore software development programmes are complex, with challenging deadlines and a high risk of failure. Agile methods are being adopted, despite the challenges of coordinating multiple development teams. Agile processes are tailored to support team coordination. Artefacts are tangible products of the software development process, intended to ensure consistency in the approach of teams on the same development programme. Objective: This study aims to increase understanding of how development processes are tailored to meet the needs of large-scale offshore software development programmes, by focusing on artefact inventories used in the development process. Method: A grounded theory approach using 46 practitioner interviews, supplemented with documentary sources and observations, in nine international companies was adopted. The grounded theory concepts of open coding, memoing, constant comparison and saturation were used in data analysis. Results: The study has identified 25 artefacts, organised into five categories: feature, sprint, release, product and corporate governance. It was discovered that conventional agile artefacts are enriched with artefacts associated with plan-based methods in order to provide governance. The empirical evidence collected in the study has been used to identify a primary owner of each artefact and map each artefact to specific activities within each of the agile roles. Conclusion: The development programmes in this study create agile and plan-based artefacts to improve compliance with enterprise quality standards and technology strategies, whilst also mitigating risk of failure. Management of these additional artefacts is currently improvised because agile development processes lack corresponding ceremonies

Flagstaff Watershed Protection Project: Creating Solutions through Community Partnerships

In the past two decades, communities in fire-prone forests across the West have faced increased danger of cata- strophic wildfires. These wildfires have been steadily growing in size and intensity, partly due to the amount of fuel built up from a century of fire suppression and also driven by rising temperatures and drought. These intense wild- fires have burned homes and infrastructure as well as critical natural resources such as watersheds and wildlife habitat. However, hazardous fuel reduction projects — especially on steep slopes adjacent to communities — can be difficult and costly. Cities and towns throughout the West have been grappling with innovative ways to fund forest restoration and protect their water supplies and reduce flooding impacts. An example of one such effort is the Flagstaff Watershed Protection Project, known as FWPP, in Flagstaff, Arizona. The FWPP emerged from proactive civic leadership that recognized the need to overcome funding limitations and implement hazardous fuel reduction treatments in critical, at-risk watersheds. Several factors contributed to its success, among them the fear of another extreme fire event in the mountains north of town. The purpose of this white paper is to convey to other communities, municipalities, and/or government agencies the administrative functions and mechanisms used by the two primary partners, the City of Flagstaff (City) and the U.S. Forest Service (also referred to as USFS, the forest, the Coconino National Forest, and the National Forest), to develop and implement FWPP. The paper is designed as a case study for other entities considering a similar initiative. This case study spans the first two years of the project (see Figure 1, page 4), from the bond election in November 2012 to December 2014. Personal interviews were conducted with key personnel from the City and the USFS. This report summarizes findings from the interviews and information derived from review of City and USFS internal project documents. The value of this case study is two-fold. First, it is an historical account of what led to the successful passage and start-up of the FWPP. Second, it serves as a guide to the steps (Appendix A) and the mechanisms used to develop and implement a successful private/public/agency partnership. These findings can be used as a foundation to develop a similar initiative designed to achieve community protection through forest management

Blockchain based Identity Management and Ticketing for MaaS

Trabalho de projeto de mestrado, Engenharia Informatica (Engenharia de Software) Universidade de Lisboa, Faculdade de Ciências, 2020As time moves further into the 21st century, the world is progressively becoming more sophisticated, and our capacity to forecast the future is decreasing at the same rate. The emerging global problems require new kinds of tools paving the way to move forward. Across Europe, privatised public transport systems are frequently conceived in separation by an operator resulting in legacy systems with proprietary ticketing solutions causing fragmentation and lack of uniformity of information. The Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) concept promises to solve existing problems in the transport industry since it allows the integration of different mobility services, such as car and bicycle sharing, among others, with traditional public transport. To plan a trip, passengers have several mobility options, interconnected to each other, with a range of alternatives according to their preferences. However, it is a huge challenge to expand the MaaS network that includes several operators. Recent innovations in Blockchain and distributed ledger technologies, especially the current developments of smart contracts, it is expected that a novel distributed approach to MaaS is finally feasible. MaaS systems benefit from the power of Blockchain disruptive technology, improving transparency and trust among service providers thereby eliminat ing the middle tier. In order to implement the new MaaS concept and take advantage of the high volumes of data relating to passengers and their tickets, it is essential that trans port operators have a unified system, thus allowing each participant to create, view and modify the information. This project enables the development of a new ticketing solution based on Blockchain, with an Identity Management module capable of managing the identities of passengers across the entire system, as well as the creation of a MaaS application mock-up for the passenger. Finally, the proposed system is evaluated in terms of operation and perfor mance, according predefined use cases and requirements. Results are achieved in terms of the collaboration between multiple service providers operating on a single platform

Local reputation, local selection, and the leading eight norms

Humans are capable of solving cooperation problems following social norms. Social norms dictate appropriate behaviour and judgement on others in response to their previous actions and reputation. Recently, the so-called leading eight norms have been identified from many potential social norms that can sustain cooperation through a reputation-based indirect reciprocity mechanism. Despite indirect reciprocity being claimed to extend direct reciprocity in larger populations where direct experiences cannot be accumulated, the success of social norms have been analysed in models with global information and evolution. This study is the first to analyse the leading eight norms with local information and evolution. We find that the leading eight are robust against selfish players within most scenarios and can maintain a high level of cooperation also with local information and evolution. In fact, local evolution sustains cooperation under a wider set of conditions than global evolution, while local reputation does not hinder cooperation compared to global reputation. Four of the leading eight norms that do not reward justified defection offer better chances for cooperation with quick evolution, reputation with noise, larger networks, and when unconditional defectors enter the population

Performance Evaluation of AODV and FSR Routing Protocols in MANETs

A mobilead hoc Network (MANET) is an infrastructure less, decentralized multi-hop network where the mobile nodes are free to move randomly, these making the network topology dynamic. MANET routing protocols show different performance in different mobile network scenarios. In this paper an attempt has been made to understand the characteristics/behavior of ad hoc on demand distance vector (AODV) and Fisheye State Routing (FSR)protocols. The analysis of these protocols has been done using NS-2