PEACH PRICES IN CALIFORNIA IN THE PRESENCE OF TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE IN THE AGRICULTURAL PESTICIDE INDUSTRY

The potentially adverse effects of pesticides in wide use are causing concern to grow in the agricultural community. Minimizing the risks to human health and the environment created by agricultural pesticides has become a very important issue. The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has set a high priority on registering safer pesticides. According to the EPA, more than 1 billion pounds of active pesticide ingredients are used in the United States each year. Americans are exposed to pesticides every day through food consumption, cleaning products, and home and work environments. The agricultural pesticide industry has experienced an influx of changes during the past decade. Two of the primary changes affecting the pesticide industry are the introduction of new technology and EPA regulatory changes. On the regulatory front, the EPA requires manufacturers to register and test pesticides before they appear on the market. By 2006, the EPA will review old pesticides to ensure that they meet new safety requirements. These regulatory initiatives have contributed to the industry drive to develop safer and more "environmentally friendly" products for use in agricultural pest control. Technological changes consist of the introduction of new pesticides that are considered to be safer for both humans and the environment. As new technologies and regulatory initiatives are undertaken to ensure an improvement in both the safety of human health and the environment, one must consider how these changes may affect consumers. Specifically, an analysis should be conducted to determine whether or not the technological and regulatory changes have an effect on consumer prices. The recent developments in the agricultural pesticide industry provide several reasons to believe structural change has been occurring in economic relationships that determine peach prices in California. Therefore, we use a vector autoregressive (VAR) model to forecast peach prices by allowing parameters to vary with time. VAR models differ from standard econometric analyses of structural relationships in that they do not apply the usual exclusion restrictions to specify a priori which variables appear in which equations. Instead, a set of distributed lag equations is used to model each variable as a function of other variables in the structural system (Bessler, 1984). The objective of this paper is to forecast peach prices and evaluate dynamic relationships in the peach industry in the presence of technological and regulatory change. A VAR model that explicitly recognizes structural change will be used to forecast peach prices in California. Changes in dynamic relationships between peach prices and relevant economic variables will be considered.Demand and Price Analysis,

Predicting circulation and dispersion near coastal power plants : applications using models TEA and ELA

This report describes how a pair of two-dimensional numerical models (TEA and ELA) have been coupled to simulate thermal plume dispersion in the vicinity of coastal power plants. The work follows previous study by Kaufman and Adams (1981), but differs from most previous studies in that near field mixing is represented explicitly by specifying entrainment and mixed discharge fluxes as model boundary conditions. The models have been applied to two power plants-Brayton Point Generating Station and Millstone Nuclear Power Plant. Comparison against field data shows generally good agreement in both cases, and computational costs are reasonable. Several areas for additional research have been identified.Northeast Utilities Service Company and New England Power Company under M.I.T. Energy Laboratory Electric Utility Progra

Mercury Concentrations in Spotted Seatrout (Cynoscion nebulosus) from Northwest Florida

We determined total mercury concentrations in dorsal muscle tissue of 112 spotted seatrout (Cynoscion nebulosus) collected between 1993 and 1996 from Pensacola Bay and Choctawhatchee Bay, FL. We describe the relationships of length, weight, age, and sex to total mercury concentrations in this species. Fish ranged in size from 235 to 613 mm total length (TL), with a mean of 463 mm TL. The majority (84%) of the fish collected were female. The mean total mercury concentration detected in all fish combined was 0.40 ± 0.15 ppm, and in individual fish, total mercury concentration ranged from 0.11 to 0.88 ppm. We detected no significant differences in mercury concentrations between sexes. Total mercury concentration was positively correlated with fish TL and weight. However, no relationship was evident between total mercury concentration and age. Mercury concentrations detected in the majority of spotted seatrout examined from northwest Florida were below the State of Florida\u27s limited-consumption advisory of 0.5 ppm

Leg joint power output during progressive resistance FES-LCE cycling in SCI subjects: developing an index of fatigue

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licens

Orientational and phase-coexistence behaviour of hard rod-sphere mixtures

Results are presented from Monte Carlo simulations of bulk mixtures of Hard Gaussian Overlap particles with an aspect ratio of 3:1 and hard spheres with diameters equal to the breadths of the rods. For sphere number-concentrations of 50% and lower, compression of the isotropic fluid results in formation of a homogeneous (i.e. compositionally mixed) nematic phase. The volume fraction of this isotropic-nematic transition is found to increase approximately linearly with sphere concentration. On compression to higher volume fractions, however, this homogeneous nematic phase separates out into coexisting nematic and isotropic phases.</p

A Theoretical Model for the Mbh−σM_{\rm bh}-\sigma Relation for Supermassive Black Holes in Galaxies

We construct a model for the formation of black holes within galactic bulges. The initial state is a slowly rotating isothermal sphere, characterized by effective transport speed \aeff and rotation rate $\Omega$. The black hole mass is determined when the centrifugal radius of the collapse flow exceeds the capture radius of the central black hole. This model reproduces the observed correlation between black hole masses and galactic velocity dispersions, \mbh \approx 10^8 M_\odot (\sigma/200 \kms)^4, where \sigma = \sqrt{2} \aeff. This model also predicts the ratio \mrat of black hole mass to host mass: \mrat $\approx$ 0.004 (\sigma/200 \kms).Comment: 9 pages, 2 figures, submitted to Astrophysical Journal Letter

Superconducting Films for Absorber-Coupled MKID Detectors for Sub-Millimeter and Far-Infrared Astronomy

We describe measurements of the properties, at dc, gigahertz, and terahertz frequencies, of thin (10 nm) aluminum films with 10 ohm/{rm square}$ normal state sheet resistance. Such films can be applied to construct microwave kinetic inductance detector arrays for submillimeter and far-infrared astronomical applications in which incident power excites quasiparticles directly in a superconducting resonator that is configured to present a matched-impedance to the high frequency radiation being detected. For films 10 nm thick, we report normal state sheet resistance, resistance-temperature curves for the superconducting transition, quality factor and kinetic inductance fraction for microwave resonators made from patterned films, and terahertz measurements of sheet impedance measured with a Fourier Transform Spectrometer. We compare properties with similar resonators made from niobium 600 nm thick

Isolated deep earthquakes beneath the North Island of New Zealand

Seismicity shallows towards the south along the Tonga-Kermadec-Hikurangi margin, deep and intermediate seismicity being absent altogether in the South Island of New Zealand. Beneath the Taranaki region of the North Island the maximum depth of the main seismicity is 250 km, but very rare events occur directly below at 600 km. These could be associated with a detached slab or a vertical, aseismic continuation of the subducted Pacific Plate. Six small events that occurred in the 1990s were recorded extensively by digital instruments of the New Zealand National Network (NZNN) and temporary deployments. We relocate these events by a joint hypocentre determination (JHD) method and find their focal mechanisms using first motions and relative amplitudes of P and S arrivals. The earthquakes relocate to a remarkably uniform depth of 603 +/- 3 kmrelative error (+/- 10 km absolute error) in a line 30- km long orientated 40 NE, roughly parallel to the strike of the intermediate- depth seismicity. The only consistent component of the focal mechanisms is the tension axis: all lie close to horizontal and tend to align with the line of hypocentres. We interpret this deep seismic zone as a detached sliver of plate lying horizontally with the same orientation as the main subducted plate above. Volume change caused by a phase change controlled by the pressure at 600 km and temperature in the sliver produces a pattern of strain that places the sliver under tension along its lengt

Supersymetry on the Noncommutative Lattice

Built upon the proposal of Kaplan et.al. [hep-lat/0206109], we construct noncommutative lattice gauge theory with manifest supersymmetry. We show that such theory is naturally implementable via orbifold conditions generalizing those used by Kaplan {\sl et.al.} We present the prescription in detail and illustrate it for noncommutative gauge theories latticized partially in two dimensions. We point out a deformation freedom in the defining theory by a complex-parameter, reminiscent of discrete torsion in string theory. We show that, in the continuum limit, the supersymmetry is enhanced only at a particular value of the deformation parameter, determined solely by the size of the noncommutativity.Comment: JHEP style, 1+22 pages, no figure, v2: two references added, v3: three more references adde