Human Resource Issues in the Gaming Industry

The gaming industry is currently experiencing unprecedented growth and with this growth, a myriad of business concerns have emerged. Perhaps the single greatest priority is to understand the needs of our most important industry asset: our employees. As with any service business, success is predicated on the quality of the product delivered by workers and employee performance often has it roots and can be traced to the degree of job satisfaction and training realized by the workforce

Lifetime Improvement in Wireless Sensor Networks via Collaborative Beamforming and Cooperative Transmission

Collaborative beamforming (CB) and cooperative transmission (CT) have recently emerged as communication techniques that can make effective use of collaborative/cooperative nodes to create a virtual multiple-input/multiple-output (MIMO) system. Extending the lifetime of networks composed of battery-operated nodes is a key issue in the design and operation of wireless sensor networks. This paper considers the effects on network lifetime of allowing closely located nodes to use CB/CT to reduce the load or even to avoid packet-forwarding requests to nodes that have critical battery life. First, the effectiveness of CB/CT in improving the signal strength at a faraway destination using energy in nearby nodes is studied. Then, the performance improvement obtained by this technique is analyzed for a special 2D disk case. Further, for general networks in which information-generation rates are fixed, a new routing problem is formulated as a linear programming problem, while for other general networks, the cost for routing is dynamically adjusted according to the amount of energy remaining and the effectiveness of CB/CT. From the analysis and the simulation results, it is seen that the proposed method can reduce the payloads of energy-depleting nodes by about 90% in the special case network considered and improve the lifetimes of general networks by about 10%, compared with existing techniques.Comment: Invited paper to appear in the IEE Proceedings: Microwaves, Antennas and Propagation, Special Issue on Antenna Systems and Propagation for Future Wireless Communication

Federal Crop and Crop Revenue Insurance Programs: Crop Revenue Coverage

Risk and Uncertainty,

Capacity Region of Vector Gaussian Interference Channels with Generally Strong Interference

An interference channel is said to have strong interference if for all input distributions, the receivers can fully decode the interference. This definition of strong interference applies to discrete memoryless, scalar and vector Gaussian interference channels. However, there exist vector Gaussian interference channels that may not satisfy the strong interference condition but for which the capacity can still be achieved by jointly decoding the signal and the interference. This kind of interference is called generally strong interference. Sufficient conditions for a vector Gaussian interference channel to have generally strong interference are derived. The sum-rate capacity and the boundary points of the capacity region are also determined.Comment: 50 pages, 11 figures, submitted to IEEE trans. on Information Theor

NAFTA, GATT, AND AGRICULTURE IN THE NORTHERN ROCKIES AND GREAT PLAINS

Over the past seven years, the U.S. government has been involved in trade negotiations that have led to one bilateral and two multilateral agreements whose provisions have substantive implications for U.S. agricultural trade. The first of these sets of trade negotiations led to the bilateral Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement (CFTA). The second resulted in the current multilateral General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) which was implemented on January 1, 1995. The third set of negotiations, initiated under the Bush Administration, led to the multilateral North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which was approved by Congress in November 1993 and implemented on January 1, 1994. The three agreements signed by the U.S. since the late 1980's have been substantively different from most previous agreements because each explicitly addressed trade in agricultural commodities. The result has been that, to a greater or lesser degree, CFTA, NAFTA, and GATT have altered or will alter the structure and behavior of world and domestic markets for agricultural commodities. These commodities include wheat and barley, sugar, and cattle and beef products; such changes are of importance to many Montana producers. The purpose of this report is to provide a detailed description of the agricultural provisions of NAFTA and the recent GATT agreement for wheat, barley, sugar, and cattle and boxed beef, and to discuss possible implications for producers of these commodities. The report does not investigate the consequences of the CFTA. The report begins by describing the general nature of these types of agreements. Brief histories and descriptions of the provisions of NAFTA and GATT are presented as well as overviews of the general agricultural provisions of the two agreements. The final section contains more detailed discussions of the provisions and implications of the agreements that directly relate to wheat, barley, sugar, and livestock products. The author concludes that for U.S. wheat producers, the consequences of both NAFTA and GATT appear to be favorable. Due to NAFTA, Mexican imports of U.S. wheat are likely to rise moderately. How NAFTA will impact U.S. and Canadian competition for the Mexican wheat market is unclear. The implications of GATT for wheat are also modest but generally favorable. Some countries will reduce tariff rates for wheat over the implementation period and improve import access to domestic markets. These adjustments are likely to encourage slight increases in world demand for wheat exports that will provide modest benefits for U.S. wheat producers. Historically, Mexico has levied high tariffs and implemented quantity restrictions via import licensing arrangements for barley imports from Canada and the U.S. Under NAFTA, Mexico allocated an initial quota of 120,000 metric tons per year to U.S. barley producers. This duty-free quota will be increased to about 195,000 metric tons in 2004. Tariffs on over-quota imports will also be removed by 2004. U.S. and Canadian barley producers are likely to benefit from increased Mexican import demand. The implications of GATT for barley are modest but generally favorable. As with wheat, some countries will reduce tariff rates for barley over the implementation period and/or improve import access to domestic markets. These adjustments are also likely to encourage slight increases in world demand for barley exports, thereby benefitting U.S. barley producers. With respect to cattle and beef, under the NAFTA agreement, the U.S. and Mexico have simply exempted each other from their respective import quotas. Prior to NAFTA, Mexico did not impose tariffs on live cattle or beef imports but did levy a small tariff on imports of edible offal. This tariff will be phased out by 2003. The U.S. also abolished modest tariffs on imports of Mexican fresh, chilled, and frozen beef, and imported feed and feeder cattle. Under the GATT agreement, several major beef-producing countries made commitments to reduce trade restrictions and internal supports. The U.S. has agreed to increase access at a low rate of duty and to reduce tariffs on over-quota imports by 15 percent by the year 2000. Some beef-importing countries such as Japan and South Korea have agreed to reduce tariffs and subsidies for domestic producers. The Trade Research Center is sponsoring research to analyze the impact of changes on U.S. beef prices due to GATT and NAFTA. Upcoming publications will discuss that issue. Under NAFTA, trade in sugar and sugar-containing products is subject to extensive provisions. Gradually, over the transition period 1994-2009, Mexico's access to the U.S. market will be expanded to a quota of 250,000 metric tons, if Mexico becomes a net surplus producer. These trade policy adjustments are likely to have minimal effects on the U.S. sugar industry over the first six years of the fifteen-year transition period, but their long-run effects are likely to be much more substantial. The GATT agreement contained only small changes for U.S. sugar policy and is not expected to have much impact on the U.S. sugar market. This special report contains a detailed description of the agricultural provisions of GATT and NAFTA that are of particular interest to producers in the Northern Plains and Rockies. The Center is sponsoring research projects to analyze the economic impacts of these trade agreements on the economy of the region.NAFTA, GATT, agriculture, Agricultural and Food Policy, Q1, F1,

U.S. and Canadian Currency Values and Exchange Rates

International Relations/Trade,

THE EFFECTS OF CHANGES IN THE TAX STRUCTURE ON AGRICULTURAL ASSET REPLACEMENT

This paper uses a deterministic asset replacement model to examine the implications of the 1986 Tax Reform Act (TRA) for replacement investment in U.S. agriculture. The optimal replacement age for an asset is shown to be inversely related to the size of investment tax credits and the present value of depreciation allowances but generally directly related to marginal tax rate. Simulation results indicate that the net effects of the TRA vary across assets. Replacement ages for assets with relatively long depreciation lives (e.g., farm structures) tend to fall. Those for assets with relatively short depreciation lives rise (e.g., tractors).Agricultural and Food Policy,