Impact of Fuel Price Increases on Texas Crops

Replaced with revised version of paper 02/02/06.crop model, simulation, input-output model, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy, C53, Q10,

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Is a Divorce Granted Where One Only of the Parties is domiciled Entitled to Full Faith and Credit?; Laibiltiy of Water Companies for Fire Losses; Diversion of Subterranean Percolating Waters; Women as Notaries Public

Projecting net incomes for Texas crop producers: an application of probabilistic forecasting

Agricultural policy changes directly affect the economic viability of Texas crop producers because government payments make up a significant portion of their net farm income (NFI). NFI projections benefit producers, agribusinesses and policy makers, but an economic model making these projections for Texas did not previously exist. The objective of this study was to develop a model to project annual NFI for producers of major crops in Texas. The Texas crop model was developed to achieve this objective, estimating state prices, yields and production costs as a function of their national counterparts. Five hundred iterations of national price and yield projections from the Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute (FAPRI), along with FAPRIâÂÂs average production cost projections, were used as input to the Texas crop model. The stochastic FAPRI Baseline and residuals for Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) equations relating Texas variables to national variables were used to incorporate the risk left unexplained by OLS equations between Texas and U.S. variables. Deterministic and probabilistic NFI projections for Texas crops were compared under the January 2005 and January 2006 FAPRI Baseline projections. With production costs increasing considerably and prices rising moderately in the January 2006 Baseline, deterministic projections of 2006-2014 Texas NFI decreased by an average of 26 percent for corn, 3 percent for cotton, 15 percent for peanuts, and 12 percent for rice, and were negative for sorghum and wheat. Probability distributions of projected NFI fell for all program crops, especially sorghum and wheat. Higher hay price projections caused deterministic projections of NFI for hay to rise roughly 13 percent, and increased the probability distributions of projected hay NFI. Deterministic and probabilistic projections of total NFI decreased for each year, especially for 2006-2008 when fuel price projections were the highest. The Texas crop model can be used to simulate NFI for Texas crop producers under alternative FAPRI baselines. The model shows the impact of baseline changes on probability distributions of NFI for each crop and for Texas as a whole. It can also be useful as a policy analysis tool to compare impacts of alternative farm and macroeconomic policies on NFI

Measuring the psychosocial, biological, and cognitive signatures of profound stress in humanitarian settings: Impacts, challenges, and strategies in the field

From Springer Nature via Jisc Publications RouterAlastair Ager - ORCID 0000-0002-9474-3563 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9474-3563Background: Evidence of ‘what works’ in humanitarian programming is important for addressing the disruptive consequences of conflict and forced displacement. However, collecting robust scientific evidence, and ensuring contextual relevance, is challenging. We measured the biological, psychosocial, and cognitive impacts of a structured psychosocial intervention, implemented by Mercy Corps with Syrian refugees and Jordanian host-community youth. In this paper, we present a case analysis of this evaluation study and reflect on the scientific contributions of the work, the challenges experienced in its delivery, and the strategies deployed to address them.Discussion: We identified challenges with respect to study design, methods, and dissemination: these included the logistics and acceptability of implementing a randomized controlled trial in a humanitarian context, the selection and refinement of culturally-relevant research tools and community-based practices, and the dissemination of results to multiple stakeholders. We demonstrated beneficial and sustained impacts on self-reports of insecurity, stress, and mental health; developed a reliable and culturally-relevant measure of resilience; experimentally tested cognitive skills; and showed that levels of cortisol, a biomarker of chronic stress, reduced by one third in response to intervention. Using stress biomarkers offered proof-of-concept evidence, beyond self-reported data: interventions targeting mental health and psychosocial wellbeing can regulate physiological stress in the body as well as improve self-reported mental health and wellbeing. We built constructive dialogue between local communities, scholars, humanitarian practitioners, and policy-makers.Conclusions: Our work shows the value of rigorous research in humanitarian settings, emphasizing relevance for local communities and meaningful ways to build research ownership. Findings encourage the adoption of cognitive measures and stress biomarkers alongside self-report surveys in evaluating programme impacts. High-quality scientific research with youth can be feasible, useful, and ethical in humanitarian settings.pubpu

Improving Access to Mental Health Care and Psychosocial Support within a Fragile Context: A Case Study from Afghanistan

As one article in a series on Global Mental Health Practice, Peter Ventevogel and colleagues provide a case study of their efforts to integrate brief, practice-oriented mental health training into the Afghanistan health care system at a time when the system was being rebuilt from scratch

The ACA training programme to improve communication between general practitioners and their palliative care patients: development and applicability

<p>Abstract</p> <p>We describe the development of a new training programme on GP-patient communication in palliative care, and the applicability to GPs and GP Trainees. This ‘ACA training programme’ focuses on <b> <it>A</it> </b><it>vailability</it> of the GP for the patient, <b> <it>C</it> </b><it>urrent issues</it> that should be raised by the GP, and <b> <it>A</it> </b><it>nticipating</it> various scenarios. Evaluation results indicate the ACA training programme to be applicable to GPs and GP Trainees. The ACA checklist was appreciated by GPs as useful both in practice and as a learning tool, whereas GP Trainees mainly appreciated the list for use in practice.</p

A Galaxy-scale Fountain of Cold Molecular Gas Pumped by a Black Hole

We present Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array and Multi-Unit Spectroscopic Explorer observations of the brightest cluster galaxy in Abell 2597, a nearby (z = 0.0821) cool core cluster of galaxies. The data map the kinematics of a three billion solar mass filamentary nebula that spans the innermost 30 kpc of the galaxy's core. Its warm ionized and cold molecular components are both cospatial and comoving, consistent with the hypothesis that the optical nebula traces the warm envelopes of many cold molecular clouds that drift in the velocity field of the hot X-ray atmosphere. The clouds are not in dynamical equilibrium, and instead show evidence for inflow toward the central supermassive black hole, outflow along the jets it launches, and uplift by the buoyant hot bubbles those jets inflate. The entire scenario is therefore consistent with a galaxy-spanning "fountain," wherein cold gas clouds drain into the black hole accretion reservoir, powering jets and bubbles that uplift a cooling plume of low-entropy multiphase gas, which may stimulate additional cooling and accretion as part of a self-regulating feedback loop. All velocities are below the escape speed from the galaxy, and so these clouds should rain back toward the galaxy center from which they came, keeping the fountain long lived. The data are consistent with major predictions of chaotic cold accretion, precipitation, and stimulated feedback models, and may trace processes fundamental to galaxy evolution at effectively all mass scales

Resilience in Context: A Brief and Culturally Grounded Measure for Syrian Refugee and Jordanian Host-Community Adolescents

Validated measures are needed for assessing resilience in conflict settings. An Arabic version of the Child and Youth Resilience Measure (CYRM) was developed and tested in Jordan. Following qualitative work, surveys were implemented with male/female, refugee/nonrefugee samples (N = 603, 11–18 years). Confirmatory factor analyses tested three-factor structures for 28- and 12-item CYRMs and measurement equivalence across groups. CYRM-12 showed measurement reliability and face, content, construct (comparative fit index = .92–.98), and convergent validity. Gender-differentiated item loadings reflected resource access and social responsibilities. Resilience scores were inversely associated with mental health symptoms, and for Syrian refugees were unrelated to lifetime trauma exposure. In assessing individual, family, and community-level dimensions of resilience, the CYRM is a useful measure for research and practice with refugee and host-community youth.Elrha’s Research for Health in Humanitarian Crises (R2HC) Programme; Wellcome Trust; UK Governmen