12,077 research outputs found
Productivity Growth in U.S. Agriculture
Innovation and changes in technology have been a driving force for gains in productivity growth in U.S. agriculture. USDA's Economic Research Service has developed annual indexes of agricultural inputs, outputs, and total factor productivity (TFP) for 1948 through 2004. American agriculture relies almost entirely on productivity growth to raise output. By lowering the cost of agricultural commodities, productivity growth benefits not only farmers but also food manufacturers and consumers.Agriculture, productivity, productivity growth, total factor productivity, TFP, labor, farm economy, prices, agricultural research, agricultural output, technology, ERS, USDA, Production Economics, Productivity Analysis,
coupling constant in light cone QCD sum rules
We employ the light cone QCD sum rules to calculate coupling
constant by studying the two point correlation function between the vacuum and
the pion state. Our result is consistent with the traditional QCD sum rules
calculations and it is in agreement with the experimental value.Comment: 8 pages, latex, 2 figure
Constraints on the IR behaviour of gluon and ghost propagator from Ward-Slavnov-Taylor identities
We consider the constraints of the Slavnov-Taylor identity of the IR
behaviour of gluon and ghost propagators and their compatibility with solutions
of the ghost Dyson-Schwinger equation and with the lattice picture.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figure
Brief review on semileptonic B decays
We concisely review semileptonic B decays, focussing on recent progress on
both theoretical and experimental sides.Comment: 18 pages, 2 figures; version to be published in Mod. Phys. Lett.
Edge-Based Compartmental Modeling for Infectious Disease Spread Part III: Disease and Population Structure
We consider the edge-based compartmental models for infectious disease spread
introduced in Part I. These models allow us to consider standard SIR diseases
spreading in random populations. In this paper we show how to handle deviations
of the disease or population from the simplistic assumptions of Part I. We
allow the population to have structure due to effects such as demographic
detail or multiple types of risk behavior the disease to have more complicated
natural history. We introduce these modifications in the static network
context, though it is straightforward to incorporate them into dynamic
networks. We also consider serosorting, which requires using the dynamic
network models. The basic methods we use to derive these generalizations are
widely applicable, and so it is straightforward to introduce many other
generalizations not considered here
Heavy-to-Light Form Factors in the Final Hadron Large Energy Limit of QCD
We argue that the Large Energy Effective Theory (LEET), originally proposed
by Dugan and Grinstein, is applicable to exclusive semileptonic, radiative and
rare heavy-to-light transitions in the region where the energy release E is
large compared to the strong interaction scale and to the mass of the final
hadron, i.e. for q^2 not close to the zero-recoil point. We derive the
Effective Lagrangian from the QCD one, and show that in the limit of heavy mass
M for the initial hadron and large energy E for the final one, the heavy and
light quark fields behave as two-component spinors. Neglecting QCD
short-distance corrections, this implies that there are only three form factors
describing all the pseudoscalar to pseudoscalar or vector weak current matrix
elements. We argue that the dependence of these form factors with respect to M
and E should be factorizable, the M-dependence (sqrt(M)) being derived from the
usual heavy quark expansion while the E-dependence is controlled by the
behaviour of the light-cone distribution amplitude near the end-point u=1. The
usual expectation of the (1-u) behaviour leads to a 1/E^2 scaling law, that is
a dipole form in q^2. We also show explicitly that in the appropriate limit,
the Light-Cone Sum Rule method satisfies our general relations as well as the
scaling laws in M and E of the form factors, and obtain very compact and simple
expressions for the latter. Finally we note that this formalism gives
theoretical support to the quark model-inspired methods existing in the
literature.Comment: Latex2e, 25 pages, no figure. Slight changes in the title and the
phrasing. Misprint in Eq. (25) corrected. To appear in Phys. Rev.
Parameter estimators of random intersection graphs with thinned communities
This paper studies a statistical network model generated by a large number of
randomly sized overlapping communities, where any pair of nodes sharing a
community is linked with probability via the community. In the special case
with the model reduces to a random intersection graph which is known to
generate high levels of transitivity also in the sparse context. The parameter
adds a degree of freedom and leads to a parsimonious and analytically
tractable network model with tunable density, transitivity, and degree
fluctuations. We prove that the parameters of this model can be consistently
estimated in the large and sparse limiting regime using moment estimators based
on partially observed densities of links, 2-stars, and triangles.Comment: 15 page
Pauvreté et accès à l'eau dans la vallée du Sénégal
Water poverty in the Senegal Valley Considering the flood-recession agriculture, the hydraulic history of the valley of the Senegal River is ancient, but knows a deep mutation since the introduction of the irrigation. Can one speak of water poverty, whereas two dams now control the water flow of the Senegal River and ensure a permanent abundance in water ? The answer to this questioning is proposed through the link between poverty, access to funding, access to land, and involvement in resource management.L'histoire hydraulique de la vallée du fleuve Sénégal est ancienne et remonte à la culture de décrue. Mais elle connaît une profonde mutation depuis l'introduction de l'irrigation. Peut-on parler de « pauvreté hydraulique », alors que deux barrages régulent à présent le régime du fleuve Sénégal et assurent une permanence de l'abondance en eau ? La réponse à cette question est proposée sous l'angle de l'articulation entre la pauvreté, l'accès au financement, l'accès au foncier, la participation à la gestion de la ressource
Evaluation of vaccination strategies for SIR epidemics on random networks incorporating household structure
This paper is concerned with the analysis of vaccination strategies in a stochastic SIR (susceptible → infected → removed) model for the spread of an epidemic amongst a population of individuals with a random network of social contacts that is also partitioned into households. Under various vaccine action models, we consider both household-based vaccination schemes, in which the way in which individuals are chosen for vaccination depends on the size of the households in which they reside, and acquaintance vaccination, which targets individuals of high degree in the social network. For both types of vaccination scheme, assuming a large population with few initial infectives, we derive a threshold parameter which determines whether or not a large outbreak can occur and also the probability and fraction of the population infected by such an outbreak. The performance of these schemes is studied numerically, focusing on the influence of the household size distribution and the degree distribution of the social network. We find that acquaintance vaccination can significantly outperform the best household-based scheme if the degree distribution of the social network is heavy-tailed. For household-based schemes, when the vaccine coverage is insufficient to prevent a major outbreak and the vaccine is imperfect, we find situations in which both the probability and size of a major outbreak under the scheme which minimises the threshold parameter are \emph{larger} than in the scheme which maximises the threshold parameter
Predictions on , and from QCD Light-Cone Sum Rules
The form factors of the , and transitions
are calculated from QCD light-cone sum rules (LCSR) and used to predict the
widths and differential distributions of the exclusive semileptonic decays
, and ,
where . The current theoretical uncertainties are estimated. The LCSR
results are found to agree with the results of lattice QCD calculations and
with experimental data on exclusive semileptonic D decays. Comparison of the
LCSR prediction on with the CLEO measurement yields a
value of |V_{ub}| in agreement with other determinations.Comment: 24 pages, 12 figures, Latex, epsfig, some additional remarks on the
two-pole parameterization, prediction on the form factor added,
version to appear in Phys. Rev.
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