Building trust in agribusiness supply chains: A conceptual model of buyer-seller relationships in the seed potato industry in Asia

In the absence of a certified seed system, potato farmers in Asia must purchase replacement seed tubers from an informal seed system. With no third party assurance that the seed tubers purchased are of good quality, the farmer's decision to purchase seeds may be influenced by the long-standing relationships that have been established between buyers and sellers. Trust is the critical determinant of a good buyer-seller relationship. Through maintaining communication and the making of various relationship specific investments, a conceptual model is proposed which suggests that seed suppliers may engage in trust building behavior which should result in the preferred seed supplier enjoying a greater share of the farmer's patronage

Human–agent collaboration for disaster response

In the aftermath of major disasters, first responders are typically overwhelmed with large numbers of, spatially distributed, search and rescue tasks, each with their own requirements. Moreover, responders have to operate in highly uncertain and dynamic environments where new tasks may appear and hazards may be spreading across the disaster space. Hence, rescue missions may need to be re-planned as new information comes in, tasks are completed, or new hazards are discovered. Finding an optimal allocation of resources to complete all the tasks is a major computational challenge. In this paper, we use decision theoretic techniques to solve the task allocation problem posed by emergency response planning and then deploy our solution as part of an agent-based planning tool in real-world field trials. By so doing, we are able to study the interactional issues that arise when humans are guided by an agent. Specifically, we develop an algorithm, based on a multi-agent Markov decision process representation of the task allocation problem and show that it outperforms standard baseline solutions. We then integrate the algorithm into a planning agent that responds to requests for tasks from participants in a mixed-reality location-based game, called AtomicOrchid, that simulates disaster response settings in the real-world. We then run a number of trials of our planning agent and compare it against a purely human driven system. Our analysis of these trials show that human commanders adapt to the planning agent by taking on a more supervisory role and that, by providing humans with the flexibility of requesting plans from the agent, allows them to perform more tasks more efficiently than using purely human interactions to allocate tasks. We also discuss how such flexibility could lead to poor performance if left unchecked

Nurses' perceptions of aids and obstacles to the provision of optimal end of life care in ICU

Contains fulltext : 172380.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access

Wireless electric billing system and amplitude characterization

People have no means of knowing what their current electricity consumption is until the bill arrives, but the information provided by the electric bill contains too much information when the user only wants to know how much is their power generation charge for that particular billing period. The conventional method of collection of bills has several inherent disadvantages like human error, and the whole process can be very time consuming. There is also the problem of stray loading in apartments and electricity theft. Applying the technology of SMS and microcontrollers, electricity companies will now have ways on collecting the bill wirelessly and simultaneously without having to employ a reader going house to house. This can also give the reader an option to check what their current generation charge is. To some extent, the problem of electricity theft can also be detected. All of these can be done with a simple command via text messaging

A Strategy for Selecting Points of Interest on Mobile Devices for Emergency Situations

The need to use mobile technology in urban emergency response processes has recently been identified, given the importance of having relevant information to make decisions in these scenarios. The data visualization on small mobile devices, such as PDAs or smartphones, is a critical aspect to make appropriate and on-time decisions. This criticality particularly occurs due to the small size of their screens to show geographical data. This article presents a strategy to select and display the most relevant “Points of Interest” on a digital map, according to the emergency influence area. This strategy was implemented on the MobileMap tool, and then it was evaluated through simulated emergency situations. Commanders of various Chilean Fire Companies participated in this evaluation

Reformas del sector Agrícola y el campesinado en Mexico. Estrategias para mitigar la pobreza en América Latina y el Caribe

454p. FIDA/ IICA 4.El análisis detalla un contexto del desarrollo rural, reformas macroeconómicas, sectoriales y comerciales, así como una caracterización de la heterogeneidad de los hogares y comunidades rurales, factores conexos a la pobreza de estas zonas