AN ANALYSIS OF ALTERNATIVE NET PRESENT VALUE CAPITAL INVESTMENT DECISION MODELS

We have found that the disagreement between Returns-to-Assets (RTA) and Returns-to-Equity (RTE) proponents is not confined to agricultural economics. Depending on the course they are taking and the accompanying text, students are likely to learn that there is a "right" way to calculate Net Present Values (NPVs), either by the RTA method or the RTE method. In most cases, only one of the two methods is discussed and illustrated with numerical examples. Less common are texts that compare the two methods, discuss their underlying assumptions, or show how the NPVs from the two methods can be reconciled. The paper is organized as follows. The first section of the main body of the paper provides a comparative overview of the RTA and RTE methods; the second section discusses our textbook survey; the final section offers our conclusions. Appendix A contains a brief history of the theoretical development of discounted cash flow (DCF) concepts. Appendix B contains additional details on defining components of NPV models. Finally, Appendix C is a listing of some additional references.Research Methods/ Statistical Methods,

HANDLING DURABLE AND NONDURABLE FARM INPUT DECISIONS USING A SINGLE THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

Students in economics are taught that the optimal usage of a nundurable input occurs when the value of its marginal product (VMP) equals its marginal cost (MC). However, this fundamental condition has rarely been extended to durable inputs. Even advanced textbooks have done little to compare and contrast the optimality conditions for durables versus nondurables. This paper outlines and compares a common VMP-MC decision for (1) nondurables in a single-period time horizon, (2) durables in a finite planning horizon, and (3) durables in an infinite planning horizon.Agricultural Finance,

Chemical Kinship: Interdisciplinary Experiments with Pollution

This is the final version. Available from catalystjournal.org via the DOI in this record. Feminist technoscientific research with chemicals is proliferating. This critical commentary considers how this scholarship extends environmental justice research on pollution. We are concerned with two key questions: How can we do/design ethical research with chemicals? And, what methods allow for researching chemicals without resorting to an imagined space of purity? We consider unfolding projects which reorient relations with chemicals from villainous objects with violent effects, to chemical kin. We imagine chemical kinship as a concept, an analytical tool, and a mode of relating. Emerging through feminist and anticolonial work with chemicals, it involves a tentativeness towards making normative claims about chemicals because, like kin, these materials are never entirely good nor bad, at once they can both be enabling and harmful. This commentary considers what the unfolding research with chemicals generates, and consolidates conceptualisations of chemical kinship; we ultimately articulate an agenda for ethical research with chemicals as an experimental process of invention.Economic and Social Research Counci

Computability of simple games: A characterization and application to the core

The class of algorithmically computable simple games (i) includes the class of games that have finite carriers and (ii) is included in the class of games that have finite winning coalitions. This paper characterizes computable games, strengthens the earlier result that computable games violate anonymity, and gives examples showing that the above inclusions are strict. It also extends Nakamura's theorem about the nonemptyness of the core and shows that computable games have a finite Nakamura number, implying that the number of alternatives that the players can deal with rationally is restricted.Comment: 35 pages; To appear in Journal of Mathematical Economics; Appendix added, Propositions, Remarks, etc. are renumbere

Semiconductor-metal nanoparticle molecules: hybrid excitons and non-linear Fano effect

Modern nanotechnology opens the possibility of combining nanocrystals of various materials with very different characteristics in one superstructure. The resultant superstructure may provide new physical properties not encountered in homogeneous systems. Here we study theoretically the optical properties of hybrid molecules composed of semiconductor and metal nanoparticles. Excitons and plasmons in such a hybrid molecule become strongly coupled and demonstrate novel properties. At low incident light intensity, the exciton peak in the absorption spectrum is broadened and shifted due to incoherent and coherent interactions between metal and semiconductor nanoparticles. At high light intensity, the absorption spectrum demonstrates a surprising, strongly asymmetric shape. This shape originates from the coherent inter-nanoparticle Coulomb interaction and can be viewed as a non-linear Fano effect which is quite different from the usual linear Fano resonance.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev. Let

Tunneling mechanism of light transmission through metallic films

A mechanism of light transmission through metallic films is proposed, assisted by tunnelling between resonating buried dielectric inclusions. This is illustrated by arrays of Si spheres embedded in Ag. Strong transmission peaks are observed near the Mie resonances of the spheres. The interaction among various planes of spheres and interference effects between these resonances and the surface plasmons of Ag lead to mixing and splitting of the resonances. Transmission is proved to be limited only by absorption. For small spheres, the effective dielectric constant can be tuned to values close to unity and a method is proposed to turn the resulting materials invisible.Comment: 4 papges, 5 figure

Advancing Expert Human-Computer Interaction Through Music

One of the most important challenges for computing over the next decade is discovering ways to augment and extend human control over ever more powerful, complex, and numerous devices and software systems. New high-dimensional input devices and control systems provide these affordances, but require extensive practice and learning on the part of the user. This paper describes a system created to leverage existing human expertise with a complex, highly dimensional interface, in the form of a trained violinist and violin. A machine listening model is employed to provide the musician and user with direct control over a complex simulation running on a high-performance computing system

Interactive High Performance Computing for Music

The origins of computer music are closely tied to the development of the first high-performance computers associated with major academic and research institutions. These institutions have continued to build extremely powerful computers, now containing thousands of CPUs with incredible processing power. Their precursors were typically designed to operate in non-real time, “batch” mode, and that tradition has remained a dominant paradigm for high performance computing. We describe experimental research in developing the interactive use of a modern high- performance machine, the Abe supercomputer at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications on the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign campus, for real-time musical and artistic purposes. We describe the requirements, development, problems, and observations from this project.National Science Foundation, TG-DDM09000