13,615 research outputs found

    HOW BRAZIL TRANSFERRED BILLIONS TO FOREIGN COFFEE IMPORTERS: THE INTERNATIONAL COFFEE AGREEMENT, RENT SEEKING AND EXPORT TAX REBATES

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    Rent seeking is well known, but empirical evidence of its effects is relatively rare. This paper analyzes the how domestic and international rent seeking caused Brazil to provide coffee export tax rebates that transferred foreign exchange to coffee importers. Although Brazil was the worlds largest exporter, it began to pay export tax rebates to selected coffee importers in 1965 and, by 1988, had paid rebates totaling 8billion.BrazilexplainedtheserebatesasamechanismtopricediscriminateamongimportersandexpandexportswithinthecontextoftheexportquotaimposedbytheInternationalCoffeeAgreement.Weshowthisexplanationwasinvalidduringmostoftheperiod.Thenetpricefellforthosewhoreceivedrebates,causingBraziltoeffectivelytransferapproximately8 billion. Brazil explained these rebates as a mechanism to price discriminate among importers and expand exports within the context of the export quota imposed by the International Coffee Agreement. We show this explanation was invalid during most of the period. The net price fell for those who received rebates, causing Brazil to effectively transfer approximately 3 billion to foreign importers. The effects of the rebate policy were never recognized in Brazil, hidden largely by the complex nature of government intervention in the coffee sector.International Relations/Trade,

    It\u27s Fun, But Is It Science? Goals and Strategies in a Problem-Based Learning Course

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    All students at Hampshire College must complete a science requirement in which they demonstrate their understanding of how science is done, examine the work of science in larger contexts, and communicate their ideas effectively. Human Biology: Selected Topics in Medicine is one of 18-20 freshman seminars designed to move students toward completing this requirement. Students work in cooperative groups of 4-6 people to solve actual medical cases about which they receive information progressively. Students assign themselves homework tasks to bring information back for group deliberation. The goal is for case teams to work cooperatively to develop a differential diagnosis and recommend treatment. Students write detailed individual final case reports. Changes observed in student work over six years of developing this course include: increased motivation to pursue work in depth, more effective participation on case teams, increase in critical examination of evidence, and more fully developed arguments in final written reports. As part of a larger study of eighteen introductory science courses in two institutions, several types of pre- and post-course assessments were used to evaluate how teaching approaches might have influenced students’ attitudes about science, their ability to learn science, and their understanding of how scientific knowledge is developed [1]. Preliminary results from interviews and Likert-scale measures suggest improvements in the development of some students’ views of epistemology and in the importance of cooperative group work in facilitating that development

    Noise Power Spectrum Scene-Dependency in Simulated Image Capture Systems

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    The Noise Power Spectrum (NPS) is a standard measure for image capture system noise. It is derived traditionally from captured uniform luminance patches that are unrepresentative of pictorial scene signals. Many contemporary capture systems apply non- linear content-aware signal processing, which renders their noise scene-dependent. For scene-dependent systems, measuring the NPS with respect to uniform patch signals fails to characterize with accuracy: i) system noise concerning a given input scene, ii) the average system noise power in real-world applications. The scene- and-process-dependent NPS (SPD-NPS) framework addresses these limitations by measuring temporally varying system noise with respect to any given input signal. In this paper, we examine the scene-dependency of simulated camera pipelines in-depth by deriving SPD-NPSs from fifty test scenes. The pipelines apply either linear or non-linear denoising and sharpening, tuned to optimize output image quality at various opacity levels and exposures. Further, we present the integrated area under the mean of SPD-NPS curves over a representative scene set as an objective system noise metric, and their relative standard deviation area (RSDA) as a metric for system noise scene-dependency. We close by discussing how these metrics can also be computed using scene-and-process- dependent Modulation Transfer Functions (SPD-MTF)

    THE IMPACT OF CHILEAN FRUIT SECTOR DEVELOPMENT ON FEMALE EMPLOYMENT AND HOUSEHOLD INCOME

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    Modern fruit sector development in Chile led to agricultural employment for women, though usually only as temporary workers and often at a piece rate. Nonetheless, fruit sector employment offered women access to income and personal fulfillment previously lacking. This paper links the fruit sector to improving female and family economic welfare in rural Chile and changing gender relations. Using a unique longitudinal data set, we examine women's decisions regarding labor force participation and employment, their earnings and contributions to household income, and their attitudes toward employment to understand how new opportunities are changing women, their households, and the rural sector.Consumer/Household Economics, Labor and Human Capital,

    Organosolv pretreatment of Sitka spruce wood: conversion of hemicelluloses to ethyl glycosides

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    A range of organosolv pretreatments, using ethanol:water mixtures with dilute sulphuric acid, were applied to Sitka spruce sawdust with the aim of generating useful co-products as well as improving saccharification yield. The most efficient of the pretreatment conditions, resulting in subsequent saccharification yields of up to 86%, converted a large part of the hemicellulose sugars to their ethyl glycosides as identified by GC/MS. These conditions also reduced conversion of pentoses to furfural, the ethyl glycosides being more stable to dehydration than the parent pentoses. Through comparison with the behaviour of model compounds under the same reaction conditions it was shown that the anomeric composition of the products was consistent with a predominant transglycosylation reaction mechanism, rather than hydrolysis followed by glycosylation. The ethyl glycosides have potential as intermediates in the sustainable production of high-value chemicals

    Projective Representations of the Inhomogeneous Hamilton Group: Noninertial Symmetry in Quantum Mechanics

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    Symmetries in quantum mechanics are realized by the projective representations of the Lie group as physical states are defined only up to a phase. A cornerstone theorem shows that these representations are equivalent to the unitary representations of the central extension of the group. The formulation of the inertial states of special relativistic quantum mechanics as the projective representations of the inhomogeneous Lorentz group, and its nonrelativistic limit in terms of the Galilei group, are fundamental examples. Interestingly, neither of these symmetries includes the Weyl-Heisenberg group; the hermitian representations of its algebra are the Heisenberg commutation relations that are a foundation of quantum mechanics. The Weyl-Heisenberg group is a one dimensional central extension of the abelian group and its unitary representations are therefore a particular projective representation of the abelian group of translations on phase space. A theorem involving the automorphism group shows that the maximal symmetry that leaves invariant the Heisenberg commutation relations are essentially projective representations of the inhomogeneous symplectic group. In the nonrelativistic domain, we must also have invariance of Newtonian time. This reduces the symmetry group to the inhomogeneous Hamilton group that is a local noninertial symmetry of Hamilton's equations. The projective representations of these groups are calculated using the Mackey theorems for the general case of a nonabelian normal subgroup

    Kinetic study of adsorption and photo-decolorization of Reactive Red 198 on TiO2 surface

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    Recycling and reuse of wastewater after purification will reduce the environmental pollution as well as fulfill the increasing demand of water. Adsorption-based water treatment process is very popular for dye-house wastewater treatment. The present study deals with treatment of wastewater contaminated by reactive dye. TiO2 is used as adsorbent and the spent adsorbent has been regenerated by Advanced Oxidation Process (AOP), without using any other chemicals. TiO2 adsorbs dye molecules and then those dye molecules have been oxidized via a photocatalytic reaction in presence of UV irradiation. Kinetics of dye adsorption and photocatalytic oxidation reaction has been developed in this study. Photocatalyst adsorbent (TiO2) has been reused several times after regeneration. The activity of catalyst decreases after each cycle; due to poisoning cause by intermediate by-products. Kinetic of this catalyst deactivation has been incorporated with L–H model to develop the photocatalytic reaction kinetic model

    Isolation of high quality lignin as a by-product from ammonia percolation pretreatment of poplar wood

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    A two-step process combining percolation-mode ammonia pretreatment of poplar sawdust with mild organosolv purification of the extracted lignin produced high quality, high purity lignin in up to 31% yield and 50% recovery. The uncondensed fraction of the isolated lignin was up to 34%, close to that the native lignin (40%). Less lignin was recovered after pretreatment in batch mode, apparently due to condensation during the longer residence time of the solubilised lignin at elevated temperature. The lignin recovery was directly correlated with its molecular weight and its nitrogen content. Low nitrogen incorporation, observed at high ammonia concentration, may be explained by limited homolytic cleavage of -O-4 bonds. Ammonia concentrations from 15% to 25% (w/w) gave similar results in terms of lignin structure, yield and recovery
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