A New Sampling Design for Swiss Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN) Data

Agricultural Finance,

Sustainable Value: an application to the Swiss dairy farms of the mountainous area

The improvement of the sustainable performance of the agricultural sector is a priority of the Swiss agricultural policy. The sustainability of Swiss dairy farms located in the mountainous area might be critical as many of them show a weak performance in the use of their economic and/or social resources, and sometimes also of their environmental resources. An improvement of the sustainability of these farms prerequisites to better know on a large scale their sustainable performance and its determinants. For a representative sample of 480 dairy farms, we perform an assessment of their sustainable efficiency with the “sustainable value”, an approach to assess corporate sustainability based on the capital and opportunity cost theories. Using a linear regression, we analyze the determinants of the sustainable efficiency. The results show a tight positive relationship between sustainable performance and pure economic performance. The intensity of the use of intermediate consumptions is found to be the most important determinant of the sustainable efficiency. Farms with a high sustainable efficiency are those that use their intermediate consumptions in the most efficient way. The part of direct payments in the gross profit is shown to negatively affect the sustainable efficiency. The structural characteristics of the farms and the sociologic characteristics of the farmer managers are shown to hardly influence the sustainable efficiency.corporate sustainable performance, dairy farms, Switzerland, Farm Management, Livestock Production/Industries,

Real-time software metrics

This study describes the software metrics analysis of IO releases of an embedded real-time telephone switching system developed by a German telecommunications firm. The micro-controlled application was written in a C-like macro assembly language. We developed a metrics program that computes the standard complexity metrics plus a number of information flow metrics. The releases of the real-time software satisfies published laws of software evolution, e.g. continuing change, increasing entropy, and total change is not uniform over the changed modules. The data also supports Harrison and Cook's program maintenance decision model [7]. We propose the change standard deviation as a threshold for their model. A multi variate analysis of the metrics computed with our metric analyzer program identified four underlying complexity domains: size, information flow into functions, information flow out of functions and control flow. We also found that the information flow metrics characterize real-time complexity better than the standard software complexity metrics, e.g. Halstead's Software Science, LOC, McCabe's Cyclomatic Complexity. We also investigated the relations between programming hours for the various releases and the program changes and changes in metric values

How Many and What Types of SPARQL Queries can be Answered through Zero-Knowledge Link Traversal?

The current de-facto way to query the Web of Data is through the SPARQL protocol, where a client sends queries to a server through a SPARQL endpoint. Contrary to an HTTP server, providing and maintaining a robust and reliable endpoint requires a significant effort that not all publishers are willing or able to make. An alternative query evaluation method is through link traversal, where a query is answered by dereferencing online web resources (URIs) at real time. While several approaches for such a lookup-based query evaluation method have been proposed, there exists no analysis of the types (patterns) of queries that can be directly answered on the live Web, without accessing local or remote endpoints and without a-priori knowledge of available data sources. In this paper, we first provide a method for checking if a SPARQL query (to be evaluated on a SPARQL endpoint) can be answered through zero-knowledge link traversal (without accessing the endpoint), and analyse a large corpus of real SPARQL query logs for finding the frequency and distribution of answerable and non-answerable query patterns. Subsequently, we provide an algorithm for transforming answerable queries to SPARQL-LD queries that bypass the endpoints. We report experimental results about the efficiency of the transformed queries and discuss the benefits and the limitations of this query evaluation method.Comment: Preprint of paper accepted for publication in the 34th ACM/SIGAPP Symposium On Applied Computing (SAC 2019

Climate Variability-Observations, Reconstructions, and Model Simulations for the Atlantic-European and Alpine Region from 1500-2100 AD

A detailed analysis is undertaken of the Atlantic-European climate using data from 500-year-long proxy-based climate reconstructions, a long climate simulation with perpetual 1990 forcing, as well as two global and one regional climate change scenarios. The observed and simulated interannual variability and teleconnectivity are compared and interpreted in order to improve the understanding of natural climate variability on interannual to decadal time scales for the late Holocene. The focus is set on the Atlantic-European and Alpine regions during the winter and summer seasons, using temperature, precipitation, and 500 hPa geopotential height fields. The climate reconstruction shows pronounced interdecadal variations that appear to "lock” the atmospheric circulation in quasi-steady long-term patterns over multi-decadal periods controlling at least part of the temperature and precipitation variability. Different circulation patterns are persistent over several decades for the period 1500 to 1900. The 500-year-long simulation with perpetual 1990 forcing shows some substantial differences, with a more unsteady teleconnectivity behaviour. Two global scenario simulations indicate a transition towards more stable teleconnectivity for the next 100 years. Time series of reconstructed and simulated temperature and precipitation over the Alpine region show comparatively small changes in interannual variability within the time frame considered, with the exception of the summer season, where a substantial increase in interannual variability is simulated by regional climate model

Performance of international medical students in psychosocial medicine

Background: Particularly at the beginning of their studies, international medical students face a number of language-related, social and intercultural challenges. Thus, they perform poorer than their local counterparts in written and oral examinations as well as in Objective Structured Clinical Examinations (OSCEs) in the fields of internal medicine and surgery. It is still unknown how international students perform in an OSCE in the field of psychosocial medicine compared to their local fellow students. Methods: All students (N = 1033) taking the OSCE in the field of psychosocial medicine and an accompanying written examination in their eighth or ninth semester between 2012 and 2015 were included in the analysis. The OSCE consisted of four different stations, in which students had to perform and manage a patient encounter with simulated patients suffering from 1) post-traumatic stress disorder, 2) schizophrenia, 3) borderline personality disorder and 4) either suicidal tendency or dementia. Students were evaluated by trained lecturers using global checklists assessing specific professional domains, namely building a relationship with the patient, conversational skills, anamnesis, as well as psychopathological findings and decision-making. Results: International medical students scored significantly poorer than their local peers (p < .001; η2 = .042). Within the specific professional domains assessed, they showed poorer scores, with differences in conversational skills showing the highest effect (p < .001; η2 = .053). No differences emerged within the multiple-choice examination (p = .127). Conclusion: International students showed poorer results in clinical-practical exams in the field of psychosocial medicine, with conversational skills yielding the poorest scores. However, regarding factual and practical knowledge examined via a multiple-choice test, no differences emerged between international and local students. These findings have decisive implications for relationship building in the doctor-patient relationship

Messung der Nachhaltigkeit auf Betriebsebene: welches Instrument für welchen Zweck?

Für die Bewertung der Nachhaltigkeit auf der Ebene des Landwirtschaftsbetriebes liegen drei in der Schweiz entwickelte Methoden vor: RISE, SMART und SALCAsustain. Im vorliegenden Artikel werden die drei Methoden anhand eines Kriterienkatalogs und einiger konkreter Beispiele miteinander verglichen, mit dem Ziel, dem Leser, der Leserin die Entscheidung zu erleichtern, welches Tool für die eigene spezifische Anwendung und Zielgruppe am besten geeignet ist. Alle drei Methoden decken die Nachhaltigkeit umfassend ab, und aus den Ergebnissen lassen sich für die entsprechenden Interessengruppen konkrete Verbesserungsmassnahmen und Entscheidungen ableiten. Die Ausführungen zeigen, dass sich SALCAsustain für die Beantwortung von Forschungsfragen sowie die Analyse unterschiedlicher betrieblicher Managementstrategien eignet. Die Stärke von RISE ist seine flexible Anwendbarkeit, die es ermöglicht, RISE in der Beratung, im Unterricht und zum Vergleich von Betrieben und Betriebsgruppen einzusetzen. SMART erlaubt ein rasches Screening der betrieblichen Nachhaltigkeit und liefert dabei Ergebnisse, die sich auch zwischen Betrieben vergleichen und einfach an Dritte kommunizieren lassen. Die Wahl der geeigneten Methode hängt daher von der Fragestellung und der Zielgruppe ab

Mesure de la durabilité à l’échelle de l’exploitation: quel instrument dans quel but?

Trois méthodes développées en Suisse sont disponibles pour évaluer la durabilité au niveau de l’exploitation: RISE, SMART et SALCAsustain. Le présent article compare les trois méthodes à l’aide d’un catalogue de critères et de quelques exemples concrets afin d’aider le lecteur à choisir l’outil le mieux adapté à son application spécifique et à son groupe cible. Les trois méthodes couvrent toutes les dimensions de la durabilité et les résultats obtenus permettent de déduire des mesures d’amélioration et des décisions concrètes pour les groupes d’intérêt concernés. Les arguments exposés montrent que SALCAsustain convient pour répondre à des questions de recherche et analyser différentes stratégies de gestion d’exploitation. La force de RISE réside dans sa souplesse, qui permet de l’utiliser pour le conseil, l’enseignement et la comparaison d’exploitations et de groupes d’exploitations. SMART permet un examen rapide de la durabilité à l’échelle de l’exploitation et fournit des résultats qui peuvent également être comparés entre les exploitations et facilement communiqués à des tiers. Le choix de la méthode appropriée dépend donc de la problématique en jeu et du groupe cible

Climate Variability - Observations, Reconstructions, and Model Simulations for the Atlantic-European and Alpine region from 1500-2100 AD

A detailed analysis is undertaken of the Atlantic-European climate using data from 500-year-long proxy-based climate reconstructions, a long climate simulation with perpetual 1990 forcing, as well as two global and one regional climate change scenarios. The observed and simulated interannual variability and teleconnectivity are compared and interpreted in order to improve the understanding of natural climate variability on interannual to decadal time scales for the late Holocene. The focus is set on the Atlantic-European and Alpine regions during the winter and summer seasons, using temperature, precipitation, and 500 hPa geopotential height fields. The climate reconstruction shows pronounced interdecadal variations that appear to “lock” the atmospheric circulation in quasi-steady long-term patterns over multi-decadal periods controlling at least part of the temperature and precipitation variability. Different circulation patterns are persistent over several decades for the period 1500 to 1900. The 500-year-long simulation with perpetual 1990 forcing shows some substantial differences, with a more unsteady teleconnectivity behaviour. Two global scenario simulations indicate a transition towards more stable teleconnectivity for the next 100 years. Time series of reconstructed and simulated temperature and precipitation over the Alpine region show comparatively small changes in interannual variability within the time frame considered, with the exception of the summer season, where a substantial increase in interannual variability is simulated by regional climate models