LIQUOR AND BEVERAGE CONSUMPTION IN CHINA:A CENSORED DEMAND SYSTEM APPROACH

This paper estimated the Liquor and Beverage Consumption based on a Chinese survey data. The results showed that beer consumption has been relatively stable during the past 10 years. However, there exists large potential wine market in china.Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety,

Damage prediction of low-rise buildings under hurricane winds

Low-rise buildings are defined as the buildings with a mean roof height less than the least horizontal dimension and less than 18.3 m in ASCE 7-10. They represent the majority of commercial, residential, and industrial buildings. Approximate 90% of the existing low-rise residential buildings are constructed as wood light-frame buildings that are not fully engineered and thus more vulnerable to extreme wind pressures, wind borne debris and rain water intrusion. The resulting hurricane-induced economic loss is primarily attributed to the insufficient performance of building envelope instead of the catastrophic failure of their main structural system for Category 1 to 4 hurricanes. The limitations of the current public hurricane loss prediction models for low-rise buildings motivate the current study. Firstly, the wind loading is estimated by modifying the ASCE 7 or other design provisions that envelope the peak wind pressure in limited building surface zones for design purpose. It is difficult to modify those non-contemporaneous wind pressure coefficients close to realistic simultaneous wind loads accurately and to exclude the structural resonant portion on gust effect factor G that is built in with pressure coefficient Cp in most scenarios defined as ASCE 7-10. Secondly, the empirically prescribed tributary area, load path and load sharing may be reasonable for design on the conservative side, but not suitable for damage prediction that demands accurate instead of conservative load distribution among the entire system. Thirdly, most current standards are developed by obtaining equivalent pressure coefficients that envelope the peak responses calculated from wind tunnel data for a range of assumed structural wind resisting system without appropriate attention on building envelope. Currently, the prediction of the mean recurrence interval for peak structural responses under wind loading is achieved by integrating local meteorology data, wind tunnel aerodynamic database, and refined Finite Element analysis techniques as Database Assisted Design does. Those efforts are mainly focused on main wind force resistance system in the past and are extended to evaluate the building envelope performance in this study. The major objectives of this study include to (1) initiate a Database-assisted damage prediction framework for both main wind force resistance system and components and claddings, (2) collect aerodynamic datasets on scaled models by wind tunnel testing, (3) develop a comprehensive and in-depth 3D Finite Element model for both building frame system and its envelope, and qualitatively validate the analytical model under realistic wind pressures with limited available post disaster reports, (4) numerically predict the detailed structural responses for ongoing quantitative validation against the full scale static tests conducted by Florida International University, and (5) develop the vulnerability curves for a selected roof corner sheathing panel by using a database assisted stochastic finite element modeling approach

Food Calorie Intake under Grain Price Uncertainty: Evidence from Rural Nepal

This study evaluates the effects of grain output price uncertainty on the farm income of rural households and, consequently, how this uncertainty influences caloric intake through changes in farm income. Using a rural household data set, augmented with output price uncertainty measures calculated from historical time-series data, we find that grain output price uncertainty tends to decrease crop production income of rural households. In addition, we find that higher crop income from production increases calorie intake of rural households. Taken together, these results suggests that output price uncertainty during the production process may tend to reduce caloric intake of rural Nepalese households since the price uncertainty negatively affects the crop income households need to buy calorie-rich staple foods.Food Calorie Intake, Price Uncertainty, Nepal, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, Food Security and Poverty, D12, O13, Q11, Q12,

Asymptotic Correction Schemes for Semilocal Exchange-Correlation Functionals

Aiming to remedy the incorrect asymptotic behavior of conventional semilocal exchange-correlation (XC) density functionals for finite systems, we propose an asymptotic correction scheme, wherein an exchange density functional whose functional derivative has the correct (-1/r) asymptote can be directly added to any semilocal density functional. In contrast to semilocal approximations, our resulting exchange kernel in reciprocal space exhibits the desirable singularity of the type O(-1/q^2) as q -> 0, which is a necessary feature for describing the excitonic effects in non-metallic solids. By applying this scheme to a popular semilocal density functional, PBE [J. P. Perdew, K. Burke, and M. Ernzerhof, Phys. Rev. Lett. 77, 3865 (1996)], the predictions of the properties that are sensitive to the asymptote are significantly improved, while the predictions of the properties that are insensitive to the asymptote remain essentially the same as PBE. Relative to the popular model XC potential scheme, our scheme is significantly superior for ground-state energies and related properties. In addition, without loss of accuracy, two closely related schemes are developed for the efficient treatment of large systems.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figures, 2 tables, supplementary material not include