649 research outputs found
Spatial Externalities in Agriculture: Empirical Analysis, Statistical Identification, and Policy Implications
Spatial externalities can affect economic welfare and landscape pattern by linking farm returns on adjoining parcels of land. While policy can be informed by research that documents spatial externalities, statistically quantifying the presence of externalities from landscape pattern is insufficient for policy guidance unless the underlying cause of the externality can be identified as positive or negative. This article provides a springboard for empirical research by examining the underlying structure, social-environmental interactions, and statistical identification strategies for the analysis and quantification of agricultural spatial externalities that are derived from observations of landscape change. The potential for original policy treatments of agricultural spatial externalities in development and environment outcomes are highlighted.
Cloudbus Toolkit for Market-Oriented Cloud Computing
This keynote paper: (1) presents the 21st century vision of computing and
identifies various IT paradigms promising to deliver computing as a utility;
(2) defines the architecture for creating market-oriented Clouds and computing
atmosphere by leveraging technologies such as virtual machines; (3) provides
thoughts on market-based resource management strategies that encompass both
customer-driven service management and computational risk management to sustain
SLA-oriented resource allocation; (4) presents the work carried out as part of
our new Cloud Computing initiative, called Cloudbus: (i) Aneka, a Platform as a
Service software system containing SDK (Software Development Kit) for
construction of Cloud applications and deployment on private or public Clouds,
in addition to supporting market-oriented resource management; (ii)
internetworking of Clouds for dynamic creation of federated computing
environments for scaling of elastic applications; (iii) creation of 3rd party
Cloud brokering services for building content delivery networks and e-Science
applications and their deployment on capabilities of IaaS providers such as
Amazon along with Grid mashups; (iv) CloudSim supporting modelling and
simulation of Clouds for performance studies; (v) Energy Efficient Resource
Allocation Mechanisms and Techniques for creation and management of Green
Clouds; and (vi) pathways for future research.Comment: 21 pages, 6 figures, 2 tables, Conference pape
Lithic technological responses to Late Pleistocene glacial cycling at Pinnacle Point Site 5-6, South Africa
There are multiple hypotheses for human responses to glacial cycling in the Late Pleistocene, including changes in population size, interconnectedness, and mobility. Lithic technological analysis informs us of human responses to environmental change because lithic assemblage characteristics are a reflection of raw material transport, reduction, and discard behaviors that depend on hunter-gatherer social and economic decisions. Pinnacle Point Site 5-6 (PP5-6), Western Cape, South Africa is an ideal locality for examining the influence of glacial cycling on early modern human behaviors because it preserves a long sequence spanning marine isotope stages (MIS) 5, 4, and 3 and is associated with robust records of paleoenvironmental change. The analysis presented here addresses the question, what, if any, lithic assemblage traits at PP5-6 represent changing behavioral responses to the MIS 5-4-3 interglacial-glacial cycle? It statistically evaluates changes in 93 traits with no a priori assumptions about which traits may significantly associate with MIS. In contrast to other studies that claim that there is little relationship between broad-scale patterns of climate change and lithic technology, we identified the following characteristics that are associated with MIS 4: increased use of quartz, increased evidence for outcrop sources of quartzite and silcrete, increased evidence for earlier stages of reduction in silcrete, evidence for increased flaking efficiency in all raw material types, and changes in tool types and function for silcrete. Based on these results, we suggest that foragers responded to MIS 4 glacial environmental conditions at PP5-6 with increased population or group sizes, 'place provisioning', longer and/or more intense site occupations, and decreased residential mobility. Several other traits, including silcrete frequency, do not exhibit an association with MIS. Backed pieces, once they appear in the PP5-6 record during MIS 4, persist through MIS 3. Changing paleoenvironments explain some, but not all temporal technological variability at PP5-6.Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada; NORAM; American-Scandinavian Foundation; Fundacao para a Ciencia e Tecnologia [SFRH/BPD/73598/2010]; IGERT [DGE 0801634]; Hyde Family Foundations; Institute of Human Origins; National Science Foundation [BCS-9912465, BCS-0130713, BCS-0524087, BCS-1138073]; John Templeton Foundation to the Institute of Human Origins at Arizona State Universit
Can Conditional Cash Transfers Impact Institutional Deliveries? Evidence from Janani Suraksha Yojana in India
Polymer Crystallization in 25 nm Spheres
Crystallization within the discrete spheres of a block copolymer mesophase
was studied by time-resolved x-ray scattering. The cubic packing of
microdomains, established by self-assembly in the melt, is preserved throughout
crystallization by strong interblock segregation even though the amorphous
matrix block is well above its glass transition temperature. Homogeneous
nucleation within each sphere yields isothermal crystallizations which follow
first-order kinetics, contrasting with the sigmoidal kinetics normally
exhibited in the quiescent crystallization of bulk polymers.Comment: accepted for publication in Physical Review Letters, 2/28/2000;
scheduled for 5/1/2000 issu
Development of a Reliable Surgical Quality Assurance System for 2-stage Esophagectomy in Randomized Controlled Trials
Objective: The aim was to develop a reliable surgical quality assurance system for 2-stage esophagectomy. This development was conducted during the pilot phase of the multicenter ROMIO trial, collaborating with international experts. Summary of Background Data: There is evidence that the quality of surgical performance in randomized controlled trials influences clinical outcomes, quality of lymphadenectomy and loco-regional recurrence. Methods: Standardization of 2-stage esophagectomy was based on structured observations, semi-structured interviews, hierarchical task analysis, and a Delphi consensus process. This standardization provided the structure for the operation manual and video and photographic assessment tools. Reliability was examined using generalizability theory. Results: Hierarchical task analysis for 2-stage esophagectomy comprised fifty-four steps. Consensus (75%) agreement was reached on thirty-nine steps, whereas fifteen steps had a majority decision. An operation manual and record were created. A thirty five-item video assessment tool was developed that assessed the process (safety and efficiency) and quality of the end product (anatomy exposed and lymphadenectomy performed) of the operation. The quality of the end product section was used as a twenty seven-item photographic assessment tool. Thirty-one videos and fifty-three photographic series were submitted from the ROMIO pilot phase for assessment. The overall Gcoefficient for the video assessment tool was 0.744, and for the photographic assessment tool was 0.700. Conclusions: A reliable surgical quality assurance system for 2-stage esophagectomy has been developed for surgical oncology randomized controlled trials
DEF - a programming language agnostic framework and execution environment for the parallel execution of library routines
Centrifugal melt spinning of polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP)/triacontene copolymer fibres
Polyvinylpyrrolidone/1-triacontene (PVP/TA) copolymer fibre webs produced by centrifugal melt spinning were studied to determine the influence of jet rotation speed on morphology and internal structure as well as their potential utility as adsorbent capture media for disperse dye effluents. Fibres were produced at 72 C with jet head rotation speeds from 7000 to 15,000 r min-1. The fibres were characterised by means of SEM, XRD and DSC. Adsorption behaviour was investigated by means of an isothermal bottle point adsorption study using a commercial disperse dye, Dianix AC-E. Through centrifugal spinning nanofibers and microfibers could be produced with individual fibres as fine as 200â300 nm and mean fibre diameters of ca. 1â2 lm. The PVP/TA fibres were mechanically brittle with characteristic brittle tensile fracture regions observed at the fibre ends. DSC and XRD analyses suggested that this brittleness was linked to the graft chain crystallisation where the PVP/TA was in the form of a radial brush copolymer. In this structure, the triacontene branches interlock and form small lateral crystals around an amorphous backbone. As an adsorbent, the PVP/TA fibres were found to adsorb 35.4 mg g-1 compared to a benchmark figure of 30.0 mg g-1 for a granular-activated carbon adsorbent under the same application conditions. PVP/TA is highly hydrophobic and adsorbs disperse dyes through the strong ââhydrophobic bondingââ interaction. Such fibrous assemblies may have applications in the targeted adsorption and separation of non-polar species from aqueous or polar environments
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