The Impact of Labor Constraints on the Farm Performance

Stricter immigration policies that affect an estimated 12 million unauthorized immigrants, 40% of whom are hired as farm workers, can potentially leave the highly labor-dependent organic farms more economically vulnerable. The displacement of unauthorized immigrants will expectedly create labor shortages. This study analyzes the impact of hiring constraints and changes in farm labor market conditions (due to stricter immigration policies) on the technical efficiency and financial performance of organic and conventional farms. A production function approach is used to analyze survey data that has a mix of organic and conventional farms in the Southeast region. Adjustment strategies to deal with labor shortage and providing workers with nonwage incentives have been determined to be an important determinant of farm income. Among the strategies, adjustment of wage and nonwage benefits were found to be the most effective but a combination of strategies is the most preferred approach to deal with labor shortage. Furthermore, we found productivity difference between farmers with labor shortage adjustment strategies and those who do not.Agricultural Finance, Production Economics, Productivity Analysis,

THE ROLE OF CANNABIDIOL IN THE INFLAMMATORY PROCESS AND ITS PROPERTIES AS AN ALTERNATIVE THERAPY – A REVIEW (META-ANALYSIS)

Abstract Cannabis has been used as a medicinal plant for thousands of years in Asia. Numerous physical, psychological, and emotional benefits have been attributed to cannabis since its first reported use in 2,600 BC in a Chinese pharmacopoeia. Recent years have seen a resurgence in interest in the therapeutic potential of compounds derived from these plants, mainly the non-psychoactive compound cannabidiol (CBD). In this way, we seek to evaluate, through this present study, what has been published about CBD in the Pubmed / Medline database in the last two years (2019/2020) in relation to anxiety, depression, panic attack and dementia, as well as therapeutic dosages, results with significant values, side effects and others reported in the studies found.  The results were distributed in 4 tables. In the first, the types of publication were reported; in the second, the proposal for evaluation; in the third, the results with significance evaluated; and in the fourth the doses used. Although the majority of studies found are in the form of a review (55.3%), several studies in humans have shown promising results with the use of CBD in therapies. The treatments for anxiety and stress with CBD were the most evident accounting for 37.8% of the total studies found in table 2. The relationship of CBD in metabolic processes as inflammatory markers, activator of specific nuclear receptors and protein modulations was the second most evident item na tabela 2 with 11,1%. Cognitive processes and depression appear comes in sequence with 8.9% both. The results of significance values found in this study demonstrated a good acceptance in the treatment with CBD regarding anxiety and stress. With 70.6% of positive results in table 3, CBD appears as a promising option in the treatment of anxiety, stress and similar behaviors. Regarding depression, the results were slightly lower. With 66.6% positive results, depression can also be treated with CBD as an alternative therapy option. In dose used CBD administration are extremely diverse. The doses ranged from 25mg to 800mg depending on the time of administration and also the purpose of the therapy. Although the results presented in this study are promising, we need more information to be able to position ourselves on the efficiency of CBD in proposed treatments

Boundary conditions effects by Discontinuous Galerkin solvers for Boltzmann-Poisson models of electron transport

In this paper we perform, by means of Discontinuous Galerkin (DG) Finite Element Method (FEM) based numerical solvers for Boltzmann-Poisson (BP) semiclassical models of hot electronic transport in semiconductors, a numerical study of reflective boundary conditions in the BP system, such as specular reflection, diffusive reflection, and a mixed convex combination of these reflections, and their effect on the behavior of the solution. A boundary layer effect is observed in our numerical simulations for the kinetic moments related to diffusive and mixed reflection.Comment: appears in Computational Electronics (IWCE), 2014 International Workshop on, Paris, France. (2014). IEEE Xplore Digital Library 6865873.pd

Entropy-stable positivity-preserving DG schemes for Boltzmann-Poisson models of collisional electronic transport along energy bands

This work develops entropy-stable positivity-preserving DG methods as a computational scheme for Boltzmann-Poisson systems modeling the pdf of electronic transport along energy bands in semiconductor crystal lattices. We pose, using spherical or energy-angular variables as momentum coordinates, the corresponding Vlasov Boltzmann eq. with a linear collision operator with a singular measure modeling the scattering as functions of the energy band. We show stability results of semi-discrete DG schemes under an entropy norm for 1D-position 2D-momentum, and 2D-position 3D-momentum, using the dissipative properties of the collisional operator given its entropy inequality, which depends on the whole Hamiltonian rather than only the kinetic energy. For the 1D problem, knowledge of the analytic solution to Poisson and of the convergence to a constant current is crucial to obtain full stability. For the 2D problem, specular reflection BC are considered in addition to periodicity in the estimate for stability under an entropy norm. Regarding positivity preservation (1D position), we treat the collision operator as a source term and find convex combinations of the transport and collision terms which guarantee the positivity of the cell average of our numerical pdf at the next time step. The positivity of the numerical pdf in the whole domain is guaranteed by applying the natural limiters that preserve the cell average but modify the slope of the piecewise linear solutions in order to make the function non-negative. The use of a spherical coordinate system $\vec{p}(|\vec{p}|,\mu=cos\theta,\varphi)$ is slightly different to the choice in previous DG solvers for BP, since the proposed DG formulation gives simpler integrals involving just piecewise polynomial functions for both transport and collision terms, which is more adequate for Gaussian quadrature than previous approaches.Comment: Preprint. The first author acknowledges discussions with Eirik Endeve and Cory Hauck during the time he spent visiting them at ORNL (restricted to positivity preservation, appearing on arXiv:1711.03949) on a trip paid by the kinet grant NSF-RNMS DMS-1107465. V2 is a replacement for V1. V2 has added some references and corrected typos (not affecting any of the calculations

Hamiltonian dynamics for Einstein's action in G→\rightarrow0 limit

The Hamiltonian analysis for the Einstein's action in $G\to 0$ limit is performed. Considering the original configuration space without involve the usual $ADM$ variables we show that the version $Gto 0$ for Einstein's action is devoid of physical degrees of freedom. In addition, we will identify the relevant symmetries of the theory such as the extended action, the extended Hamiltonian, the gauge transformations and the algebra of the constraints. As complement part of this work, we develop the covariant canonical formalism where will be constructed a closed and gauge invariant symplectic form. In particular, using the geometric form we will obtain by means of other way the same symmetries that we found using the Hamiltonian analysis

Inflation with a constant ratio of scalar and tensor perturbation amplitudes

The single scalar field inflationary models that lead to scalar and tensor perturbation spectra with amplitudes varying in direct proportion to one another are reconstructed by solving the Stewart-Lyth inverse problem to next-to-leading order in the slow-roll approximation. The potentials asymptote at high energies to an exponential form, corresponding to power law inflation, but diverge from this model at low energies, indicating that power law inflation is a repellor in this case. This feature implies that a fine-tuning of initial conditions is required if such models are to reproduce the observations. The required initial conditions might be set through the eternal inflation mechanism. If this is the case, it will imply that the spectral indices must be nearly constant, making the underlying model observationally indistinguishable from power law inflation.Comment: 20 pages, 7 figures. Major changes to the Introduction following referee's comments. One figure added. Some other minor changes. No conclusion was modifie

Empleo de materiales secundarios como materia prima de nuevos tipos de cementos

The present paper is a comparative study of some characteristics of new belite cements obtained from two kind of wastes, which were used as secondary raw materials: fly ash (FA), of low CaO content, from coal combustion, and ash from incineration of municipal solid waste (MSWIA). Cements were synthesised in a range of temperature between 700°C and 900°C from MSWIA and FA, which were previously activated by hydrothermal treatment at 200°C The evolution of cemented phases with the heating temperature was followed by X-ray diffraction (XRD). The results were compared with those obtained from heating the starting FA and MSWIA without the previous hydrothermal treatment. The degree of hydration was quantitatively evaluated by the combined water content, determined from thermogravimetric analyses, during a period of 28 days or 200 days from mixing depending of hydration kinetics of each cement.Este trabajo es un estudio comparativo de algunas de las características de nuevos cementos belíticos, obtenidos a partir de dos tipos de residuos, como materia prima secundaria: cenizas volantes (CV) de bajo contenido en cal, procedentes de la combustión del carbón y cenizas procedentes de la incineración de residuos sólidos urbanos (CIRSU). Los cementos fueron sintetizados en un rango de temperaturas comprendido entre 700°C y 900°C después de un tratamiento hidrotermal de la CV y CIRSU a 200°C La evolución de las fases cementicias, con la temperatura de calentamiento, fue estudiada por difracción de rayos X (DRX). Los resultados fueron comparados con aquellos obtenidos, directamente, por calentamiento de los residuos, sin un tratamiento hidrotermal previo de los mismos. El grado de hidratación fue cuantitativamente evaluado, por medio del análisis termogravimétrico, a partir del agua combinada de los cementos hidratados durante un período de 28 días o 200 días, dependiendo de la cinética de hidratación de cada cemento

Primordial fluctuations and cosmological inflation after WMAP 1.0

The observational constraints on the primordial power spectrum have tightened considerably with the release of the first year analysis of the WMAP observations, especially when combined with the results from other CMB experiments and galaxy redshift surveys. These observations allow us to constrain the physics of cosmological inflation: (i) The data show that the Hubble distance is almost constant during inflation. While observable modes cross the Hubble scale, it changes by less than 3% during one e-folding: d(d_H)/dt < 0.032 at 2 sigma. The distance scale of inflation itself remains poorly constrained: 1.2 x 10^{-28} cm < d_H < 1 cm. (ii) We present a new classification of single-field inflationary scenarios (including scenarios beyond slow-roll inflation), based on physical criteria, namely the behaviour of the kinetic and total energy densities of the inflaton field. The current data show no preference for any of the scenarios. (iii) For the first time the slow-roll assumption could be dropped from the data analysis and replaced by the more general assumption that the Hubble scale is (almost) constant during the observable part of inflation. We present simple analytic expressions for the scalar and tensor power spectra for this very general class of inflation models and test their accuracy.Comment: 19 pages, 5 figures; section on the classification of models in the plane of tilt and tensor-to-scalar ratio added, references adde