FINANCIAL INTERMEDIATION IN AGRICULTURE: A SUGGESTED ANALYTICAL MODEL

Agricultural Finance,

CASH FLOWS AND FINANCING IN TEXAS AGRICULTURE

Agricultural Finance,

The fire performance of engineered timber products and systems

Timber is an inherently sustainable material which is important for future construction in the UK. In recent years many developments have been made in relation to timber technology and construction products. As the industry continues to look to construct more efficient, cost effective and sustainable buildings a number of new engineered timber products have emerged which are principally manufactured off-site. In terms of light timber frame, products such as structural insulated panels (SIPs) and engineered floor joists have emerged. For heavy timber construction, systems such as glulam and cross laminated timber (CLT) are now increasingly common. Despite many of the obvious benefits of using wood as a construction material a number of concerns still exist relating to behaviour in fire. Current fire design procedures are still reliant upon fire resistance testing and ‘deemed to satisfy’ rules of thumb. Understanding of ‘true’ fire performance and thus rational design for fire resistance requires experience of real fires. Such experience, either gathered from real fire events or large fire tests, is increasingly used to provide the knowledge required to undertake ‘performance based designs’ which consider both fire behaviour and holistic structural response. At present performance based structural fire design is largely limited to steel structures and less frequently concrete buildings. Many of the designs undertaken are in accordance with relevant Eurocodes which give guidance on the structural fire design for different materials. For the same approaches to be adopted for timber buildings a number of barriers need to be overcome. Engineered timber products, such as SIPs and engineered joists, are innovative technologies. However, their uptake in the UK construction market is increasing year on year. Little is known about how such systems behave in real fires. As a result the development of design rules for fire is a difficult task as failure modes are not well understood. To overcome this..

Sedentary Behavior of White Collar Office Workers-Review

Aim The aim of this systematic review is to evaluate the physical activity time (PAT) of white collar office workers in order to assess the levels of sedentary activity in an office environment. Analysing the office workers PAT will not only allow an insight into how an office based job could impact a person’s overall health and wellness status, but will also allow for the development of future office based inter ventions aimed at increasing the overall physical activity among white collar office workers. Methodology Using the PRISMA 2009 guidelines a literature review was conducted to assess the PAT of office workers and the typical sedentary nature of their work could affect their health. The review consisted of 8 peer reviewed studies, collected through the entry of 9 initial search terms relating to the physical activity, sedentariness and overall health of white collar workers into Discovery, PubMed and Google Scholar search engines. Results Results suggesting low physical activity time spent among white collar office workers with the average minutes spent sedentary on a working day mean(±SD), (529±75.3), minutes in light activity, (164.9±51.1) and vigorous activity time, (28.2±15.9). Low levels of physical activity were also found during non working days with the average sedentary time being mean (±SD), (460.1±63.2), minutes in light physical activity, (251.2±102.1), and moderate to vigorous physical activity time (MVPA) time, (17.9±29.3). Conclusion White collar office workers are spending greater amounts of work time in sedentary behavior. Value This paper provides a current literature review and analysis of the physical activity levels among office workers and sedentary behavior at work which could effects office workers health and well being. Keywords: sedentariness; Physical activity levels; Office workers and white collar worker

A possibilist analysis of the geography national curriculum in England

This article presents an analysis of the national curriculum for geography as it has evolved in England since its inception in 1991 following the Education Reform Act of 1988. Whilst the main contents of our original analysis are provided by way of a table, enabling the reader ready access to the broad trends we identify in how geography has been expressed in the national curriculum over a period of some 25 years, the main purpose of the article is to focus on the current reforms in England. This takes the form of a brief, and yet precise, ?knowledge-led? national curriculum programme of study introduced to a radically marketised school system in which choice and local autonomy are emphasised and encouraged. Our discussion leads us to speculate on the possibility of teachers reclaiming professional responsibility for the curriculum rather than the state, based on a progressive discipline oriented vision of geography in education

A robust automated technique for operational calibration of ceilometers using the integrated backscatter from totally attenuating liquid clouds

A simple and robust method for calibrating ceilometers has been tested in an operational environment demonstrating that the calibrations are stable to better than ± 5 % over a period of a year. The method relies on using the integrated backscatter (B) from liquid clouds that totally extinguish the ceilometer signal; B is inversely proportional to the lidar ratio (S) of the backscatter to the extinction for cloud droplets. The calibration technique involves scaling the observed backscatter so that B matches the predicted value for S of 18.8 ± 0.8 sr for cloud droplets, at ceilometer wavelengths. For accurate calibration, care must be taken to exclude any profiles having targets with different values of S, such as drizzle drops and aerosol particles, profiles that do not totally extinguish the ceilometer signal, profiles with low cloud bases that saturate the receiver, and any profiles where the window transmission or the lidar pulse energy is low. A range dependent multiple scattering correction that depends on the ceilometer optics should be applied to the profile. A simple correction for water vapour attenuation for ceilometers operating at around 910 nm wavelength is applied to the signal using the vapour profiles from a forecast analysis. For a generic ceilometer in the UK the 90-day running mean of the calibration coefficient over a period of 20 months is constant to within 3 % with no detectable annual cycle, thus confirming the validity of the humidity and multiple scattering correction. For Gibraltar, where cloud cover is less prevalent than in the UK, the 90-day running mean calibration coefficient was constant to within 4 %. The more sensitive ceilometer model operating at 1064 nm is unaffected by water vapour attenuation but is more prone to saturation in liquid clouds. We show that reliable calibration is still possible, provided the clouds used are above a certain altitude. The threshold is instrument dependent but is typically around 2 km. We also identify a characteristic signature of saturation, and remove any profiles with this signature. Despite the more restricted sample of cloud profiles, a robust calibration is readily achieved, and, in the UK, the running mean 90-day calibration coefficients varied by about 4 % over a period of one year. The consistency of profiles observed by nine pairs of co-located ceilometers in the UK Met Office network operating at around 910 nm and 1064 nm provided independent validation of the calibration technique. EUMETNET is currently networking 700 European ceilometers so they can provide ceilometer profiles in near real time to European weather forecast centres and has adopted the cloud calibration technique described in this paper for ceilometers with a wavelength of around 910 nm

Human Factors Certification of Advanced Aviation Technologies

Proceedings of the Human Factors Certification of Advanced Aviation Technologies Conference held at the Chateau de Bonas, near Toulouse, France, 19-23 July 1993

Party finance reform as constitutional engineering? The effectiveness and unintended consequences of party finance reform in France and Britain

In both Britain and France, party funding was traditionally characterized by a laissez faire approach and a conspicuous lack of regulation. In France, this was tantamount to a 'legislative vacuum'. In the last two decades, however, both countries have sought to fundamentally reform their political finance regulation regimes. This prompted, in Britain, the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000, and in France a bout of 'legislative incontinence' — profoundly transforming the political finance regime between 1988 and 1995. This article seeks to explore and compare the impacts of the reforms in each country in a bid to explain the unintended consequences of the alternative paths taken and the effectiveness of the new party finance regime in each country. It finds that constitutional engineering through party finance reform is a singularly inexact science, largely due to the imperfect nature of information, the limited predictability of cause and effect, and the constraining influence of non-party actors, such as the Constitutional Council in France, and the Electoral Commission in Britain