Impediments to the Diversification of Rural Economies in Central and Eastern Europe: evidence from small-scale farms in Poland

Most rural economies in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) suffer from a poorly developed Rural Non-Farm Economy (RNFE) and a lack of alternative economic activities outside of farming. While the diversification of rural economies in CEE away from an over reliance on agriculture has become an important policy goal, little research has been conducted on the impediments to diversification. This paper focuses on the barriers faced by Polish farm households to taking up off-farm employment and establishing new, non-agricultural enterprises. Factor and cluster analysis are applied to a data-set of individual farms in order to identify groups of households facing similar constraints and profile policy measures that are most likely to assist diversification. Diversification is unlikely to expand significantly in the short-term due to a combination of the age of households, a desire to concentrate on farming and remoteness. Those farm households that are most willing to diversify are characterised by the lowest agricultural incomes and suffer from a poor endowment of human and physical capital

Double Precision Floating-Point Arithmetic on FPGAs

We present low cost FPGA floating-point arithmetic circuits for all the common operations, i.e. addition/subtraction, multiplication, division and square root. Such circuits can be extremely useful in the FPGA implementation of complex systems that benefit from the reprogrammability and parallelism of the FPGA device but also require a general purpose arithmetic unit. While previous work has considered circuits for low precision floating-point formats, we consider the implementation of 64-bit double precision circuits that also provide rounding and exception handling

The central jet chamber of the H1 experiment

The mechanical design and the readout electronics of a cylindrical drift chamber for the H1 experiment at the HERA electron-proton collider is described. The chamber meets the special requirements of the ep-physics (thin endwalls, momentum resolution of σp⊥p⊥2∼ 3×10−3GeV−1 and double track resolution of ≈ 2.5 mm) and has a high bunch repetition rate (96 ns)

Potential Output, EU Fiscal Surveillance and the COVID-19 Shock

Abstract This paper discusses how the technical foundations of the EU’s fiscal rules constrain the fiscal space in EU countries in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. We review the evidence on how estimates of potential output, which are at the heart of essential control indicators in EU fiscal surveillance, were revised in the ten years running up to the COVID-19 pandemic, and how these revisions affected the fiscal stance of EU countries. We provide first evidence for downward revisions in the European Commission’s potential output estimates against the background of the COVID-19 shock across the EU27 countries, and we assess the potential consequences in terms of fiscal space. According to our results, one additional percentage point in predicted losses of actual output is associated with a loss in potential output of about 0.6 percentage points. Given the importance of model-based estimates in the EU’s fiscal rules, avoiding pro-cyclical fiscal tightening will require that policymakers’ hands are not tied by overly pessimistic views on the development of potential output

Qualification and integration aspects of the DSSC mega-pixel X-ray imager

The focal-plane module is the key component of the DEPFET sensor with signal compression (DSSC) mega-pixel X-ray imager and handles the data of 128 $\times512$ pixels. We report on assembly-related aspects, discuss the experimental investigation of bonding behavior of different adhesives, and present the metrology and electrical test results of the production. The module consists of two silicon (Si) sensors with flip-chip connected CMOS integrated circuits, a Si-heat spreader, a low-temperature co-fired ceramics circuit board, and a molybdenum frame. A low-modulus urethane-film adhesive fills the gaps between on-board components and frame. It is also used between board and heat spreader, reduces the misfit strain, and minimizes the module warpage very efficiently. The heat spreader reduces the on-board temperature gradient by about one order of magnitude. The placement precision of the bare modules to each other and the frame is characterized by a standard deviation below 10 and 65 $\mu \text{m}$ , respectively. The displacement due to the in-plane rotation and vertical tilting errors remains below 80 and 50 $\mu \text{m}$ , respectively. The deflection of the sensor plane shows a mean value below 30 $\mu \text{m}$ with a standard deviation below 15 $\mu \text{m}$ . Less than 4% of the application-specified integrated circuits (ASICs) exhibit a malfunction. More than two-thirds of the sensors have a maximum leakage current below 1 $\mu \text{A}$