Revenue maximising combination of rice monocrop and cassava-based farm enterprises in the Central Niger Delta: A linear programming solution

The study focuses on empirical analysis of the optimum combination of rice monocrop and cassavabased cropping systems consistent with revenue maximisation, and the identification of limiting resources in the target cropping systems in the Central Niger Delta of Nigeria. It was based on a cost-route study of 100 small-holder crop farmers throughout an entire farming season spanning 15 months. A linear programming model, with five crop production activities and 10 resources constraints, was employed in analysing the data obtained from the field survey. Results indicate that, of the five crop production activities, only the mixed cropping enterprise, cassava/maize, entered the feasible plan at an hectarage of 2 with a programme value of N124,000.00. Crop production activities not included in the feasible plan are cassava, yam, swamp rice, and cocoyam. The shadow price of land indicates that it is the only limiting resource to surveyed crop farmers in the area. It has been argued that rice cassava-based farmers in the area should cultivate about 2 ha of cassava/maize in order to maximise farm revenue. To ensure that cassava-based farmers are encouraged to adopt the optimal farm plan, it has been suggested that government evolves appropriate farm credit policy to enable them have easier access to finance with which to acquire more farm land for cultivation. Land consolidation and reform policies and programmes on the part of government have also been advocated, as well as the evolution of an effective marketing arrangement to forestall anticipated price risks associated with increased production and supply of cassava and maize. Also advocated is the boosting by government of its rural development activities so as to encourage non-farm activities to which the quarterly excess family labour of cassava-based farmers in the area could be profitably re-deployed

The 'Iron Cage' strengthened? Discretion and digital discipline

Research on changes in public administration associated with the adoption and use of information and communication technologies ('informatization'), almost univocally supports the conclusion that shop floor discretion disappears under their influence. We, however, are ill at ease with this direction in thought about discretion. Our unease is based on the scholarly work about practices, organizational learning and responsiveness. In this article, we test the thesis on the relation between informatization and operational discretion in an empirical research of operational discretion and informatization in two Dutch public agencies, both large and both automated. Our findings show that informatization does not destroy operational discretion, but rather obscures discretion. Based on the work of Argyris, we show that the phenomenon at work is 'participatory boundary practices', the direct personal ties that keep an organization together. ICTs destroy such links and thereby affect organizational learning. © Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2007

Just a guy in pajamas? Framing the blogs in mainstream US newspaper coverage (1999—2005)

When new technologies are introduced to the public, their widespread adoption is dependent, in part, on news coverage (Rogers, 1995).Yet, as weblogs began to play major role in the public spheres of politics and journalism, journalists faced a paradox: how to cover a social phenomenon that was too large to ignore and posed a significant threat to their profession. This article examines how blogs were framed by US newspapers as the public became more aware of the blogging world. A content analysis of blog-related stories in major US newspapers from 1999 to 2005 was conducted. Findings suggest that newspaper coverage framed blogs as more beneficial to individuals and small cohorts than to larger social entities such as politics, business and journalism. Moreover, only in the realm of journalism were blogs framed as more of a threat than a benefit, and rarely were blogs considered an actual form of journalism.Yeshttps://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/manuscript-submission-guideline

Search for leptophobic Z ' bosons decaying into four-lepton final states in proton-proton collisions at root s=8 TeV

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Search for a W ' boson decaying to a muon and a neutrino in pp collisions at √s =7 TeV

This is the Pre-Print version of the Article. The official published version can be accessed from the link below - Copyright @ 2011 ElsevierA new heavy gauge boson, W', decaying to a muon and a neutrino, is searched for in pp collisions at a centre-of-mass of 7 TeV. The data, collected with the CMS detector at the LHC, correspond to an integrated luminosity of 36 inverse picobarns. No significant excess of events above the standard model expectation is found in the transverse mass distribution of the muon-neutrino system. Masses below 1.40 TeV are excluded at the 95% confidence level for a sequential standard-model-like W'. The W' mass lower limit increases to 1.58 TeV when the present analysis is combined with the CMS result for the electron channel.This work is supported by the FMSR (Austria); FNRS and FWO (Belgium); CNPq, CAPES, FAPERJ, and FAPESP (Brazil); MES (Bulgaria); CERN; CAS, MoST, and NSFC (China); COLCIENCIAS (Colombia); MSES (Croatia); RPF (Cyprus); Academy of Sciences and NICPB (Estonia); Academy of Finland, ME, and HIP (Finland); CEA and CNRS/IN2P3 (France); BMBF, DFG, and HGF (Germany); GSRT (Greece); OTKA and NKTH (Hungary); DAE and DST (India); IPM (Iran); SFI (Ireland); INFN (Italy); NRF and WCU (Korea); LAS (Lithuania); CINVESTAV, CONACYT, SEP, and UASLP-FAI (Mexico); PAEC (Pakistan); SCSR (Poland); FCT (Portugal); JINR (Armenia, Belarus, Georgia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan); MST and MAE (Russia); MSTD (Serbia); MICINN and CPAN (Spain); Swiss Funding Agencies (Switzerland); NSC (Taipei); TUBITAK and TAEK (Turkey); STFC (United Kingdom); DOE and NSF (USA)

Search for new phenomena in monophoton final states in proton-proton collisions at root s=8 TeV

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Search for single production of a heavy vector-like T quark decaying to a Higgs boson and a top quark with a lepton and jets in the final state

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