Status Quo Analysis of the Flathead River Conflict

Status quo analysis algorithms developed within the paradigm of the graph model for conflict resolution are applied to an international river basin conflict involving the United States and Canada to assess the likeliness of various compromise resolutions. The conflict arose because the state of Montana feared that further expansion of the Sage Creek Coal Company facilities in Canada would pollute the Flathead River, which flows from British Columbia into Montana. Significant insights not generally available from a static stability analysis are obtained about potential resolutions of the conflict under study and about how decision makers’ interactions may direct the conflict to distinct resolutions. Analyses also show how political considerations may affect a particular decision maker’s choice, thereby influencing the evolution of the conflict

Water Supply Planning under Interdependence of Actions: Theory and Application

An ongoing water supply planning problem in the Regional Municipality of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, is studied to select the best water supply combination, within a multiple-objective framework, when actions are interdependent. The interdependencies in the problem are described and shown to be essential features. The problem is formulated as a multiple-criteria integer program with interdependent actions. Because of the large number of potential actions and the nonconvexity of the decision space, it is quite difficult to find nondominated subsets of actions. Instead, a modified goal programming technique is suggested to identify promising subsets. The appropriateness of this technique is explained, and the lessons learned in applying it to the Waterloo water supply planning problem are described

Progress Report to the TNRC for Analysis of the Economics of Atrazine Remediation for Representative Grain Farms in the Aquilla Watershed, Hill County, Texas: Subtasks 4.0-4.4

Four alternative BMPs for atrazine remediation were reported by Harmon and Wang for the study area. The BMPs involved alternative incorporation practices, tillage operations, and sediment ponds. Harmon and Wang reported no statistical difference in corn yields under the alternative BMPs. An economic analysis of four alternative best management practices (BMPs) for atrazine remediation in Hill County, Texas, was performed by the Agricultural and Food Policy Center (AFPC) at Texas A&M University. Using the farm-level economic simulation model FLIPSIM, AFPC scientists analyzed the financial effects of the alternative BMPs on the Texas Blackland Prairie representative farm. This farm consists of 2,000 dryland acres, divided among corn (600 acres), sorghum (750 acres), wheat (250 acres), and native pasture (150 acres). This farm also maintains a small beef cowherd. Regularly updated, the AFPC maintains more than 80 farms across the nation that form the basis for probabilistic-based agricultural policy evaluation.Agricultural and Food Policy, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Strategies for adding adaptive learning mechanisms to rule-based diagnostic expert systems

Rule-based diagnostic expert systems can be used to perform many of the diagnostic chores necessary in today's complex space systems. These expert systems typically take a set of symptoms as input and produce diagnostic advice as output. The primary objective of such expert systems is to provide accurate and comprehensive advice which can be used to help return the space system in question to nominal operation. The development and maintenance of diagnostic expert systems is time and labor intensive since the services of both knowledge engineer(s) and domain expert(s) are required. The use of adaptive learning mechanisms to increment evaluate and refine rules promises to reduce both time and labor costs associated with such systems. This paper describes the basic adaptive learning mechanisms of strengthening, weakening, generalization, discrimination, and discovery. Next basic strategies are discussed for adding these learning mechanisms to rule-based diagnostic expert systems. These strategies support the incremental evaluation and refinement of rules in the knowledge base by comparing the set of advice given by the expert system (A) with the correct diagnosis (C). Techniques are described for selecting those rules in the in the knowledge base which should participate in adaptive learning. The strategies presented may be used with a wide variety of learning algorithms. Further, these strategies are applicable to a large number of rule-based diagnostic expert systems. They may be used to provide either immediate or deferred updating of the knowledge base

Stochastic Optimization: An Application to Sub-Arctic Dairy Farming

The paper demonstrates how a deterministic farm linear programming (LP) model can be made stochastic and simulated using Solver and Simetar© in Excel©. The demonstration is conducted with an LP-model for a dairy farm for a sub arctic region of Norway. The income risks arising from variation in milk and crop yields due to winter damage in leys and pastures have been quantified for farms demonstrating low, medium and high forage yield risk. The estimated distribution of farm profit will be skewed to the left, indicating a downside risk. In the presence of risks, farmers maximize income by producing the milk quota with using surplus forage for meat production. The analysis demonstrated here may assist farmers and farm managers in improving sensitivity analysis for risky variables in farm LP models.dairy production, Northern Norway, stochastic optimization, stochastic simulation, yield risks, Livestock Production/Industries,

Comparison of Risk Between Cropping Systems in Eastern Norway

The aim of this study was to compare production and policy risk of organic, integrated and conventional cropping systems in Norway. Experimental cropping system data (1991-1999) from eastern Norway were combined with budgeted data. Empirical distributions of total farm income for different cropping systems were estimated with a simulation model that uses a multivariate kernel density function to smooth the limited experimental data. Stochastic efficiency with respect to a function (SERF) was used to rank the cropping systems for farmers with various risk aversion levels. The results show that the organic system had the greatest net farm income variability, but the existing payment system and organic price premiums makes it the most economically viable alternative.organic, integrated and conventional crop farming, stochastic simulation, multivariate kernel estimator, risk aversion, stochastic efficiency with respect to a function, Crop Production/Industries, Risk and Uncertainty, Q12, C44,

DISTRIBUTION CHOICE UNDER NULL PRIORS AND SMALL SAMPLE SIZE

Defining appropriate probability distributions for the variables in an economic model is an important and often arduous task. This paper evaluates the performance of several common probability distributions under different distributional assumptions when sample sizes are small and there is limited information about the data.Research Methods/ Statistical Methods,

Measurements of the Total Cross Section for the Scattering of Polarized Neutrons from Polarized 3^3He

Measurements of polarized neutron--polarized $^3$He scattering are reported. The target consisted of cryogenically-polarized solid $^3$He, thickness 0.04 atom/b and polarization 40%. The longitudinal and transverse total cross-section differences $\Delta\sigma_L$ and $\Delta\sigma_T$ were measured for incident neutron energies 2-8 MeV. The results are compared to phase-shift predictions based on four different analyses of n-$^3$He scattering. The best agreement is obtained with a recent R-matrix analysis of A=4 scattering and reaction data, lending strong suport to the $^4$He level scheme obtained in that analysis.Comment: 19 pages RevTeX style, 5 postscript figures, excepted for publication in the Aug96 issue of Phys. Rev. C. Revised version includes correct version of 1 postscript figur

Measurements at low energies of the polarization-transfer coefficient Kyy' for the reaction 3H(p,n)3He at 0 degrees

Measurements of the transverse polarization coefficient Kyy' for the reaction 3H(p,n)3He are reported for outgoing neutron energies of 1.94, 5.21, and 5.81 MeV. This reaction is important both as a source of polarized neutrons for nuclear physics experiments, and as a test of theoretical descriptions of the nuclear four-body system. Comparison is made to previous measurements, confirming the 3H(p,n)3He reaction can be used as a polarized neutron source with the polarization known to an accuracy of approximately 5%. Comparison to R-matrix theory suggests that the sign of the 3F3 phase-shift parameter is incorrect. Changing the sign of this parameter dramatically improves the agreement between theory and experiment.Comment: 12 pages, RevTeX, 5 eps figures, submitted to Phys. Rev.

STOCHASTIC EFFICIENCY ANALYSIS USING MULTIPLE UTILITY FUNCTIONS

Evaluating the risk of a particular decision depends on the risk aversion of the decision maker related to the underlying utility function. The objective of this paper is to use stochastic efficiency with respect to a function (SERF) to compare the ranking of risky alternatives using alternative utility functional forms.Research Methods/ Statistical Methods,