ECONOMIC EVALUATION OF ALTERNATIVE SUPPLY CHAINS FOR SOYBEAN PEROXIDASE

Soybean peroxidase is an enzyme derived from soybean hulls. Peroxidase has much commercial potential as an ingredient in the manufacturer of polymers and specialty chemicals, as a dough conditioner, and as a component in medical test kits. Commodity soybean cultivars contain various amounts of active peroxidase enzyme. This study evaluates alternative supply chain arrangements for moving soybean hulls containing peroxidase from producer to processor. Results suggest at current peroxidase levels in soybeans, supply chain arrangements involving soybean segregation offer cost advantages over the standard commodity supply chain. In addition, a supply chain involving high peroxidase cultivars may offer enough cost savings over the commodity supply chain to justify full identity preservation of the high peroxidase soybeans from producer to processor.Agribusiness,

An Empirical Model of Growth Through Product Innovation

Productivity dispersion across firms is large and persistent, and worker reallocation among firms is an important source of productivity growth. The purpose of the paper is to estimate the structure of an equilibrium model of growth through innovation that explains these facts. The model is a modified version of the Schumpeterian theory of firm evolution and growth developed by Klette and Kortum (2004). The data set is a panel of Danish firms than includes information on value added, employment, and wages. The model's fit is good and the structural parameter estimates have interesting implications for the aggregate growth rate and the contribution of worker reallocation to it.labor productivity growth; worker reallocation; firm dynamics; firm panel data estimation

Productivity Growth and Worker Reallocation: Theory and Evidence

Dispersion in labor and factor productivity across firms is large and persistent, large flows of workers move across firms, and worker reallocation is an important source of productivity growth. The purpose of the paper is to provide a formal explanation for these observations that clarifies the role of worker reallocation as a source of productivity growth. Specifically, we study a modified version of the Schumpeterian model of growth induced by product innovation developed by Klette and Kortum (2002). More productive firms are those that supply higher quality products in the model. We show that more productive firms grow faster and the reallocation of workers across continuing firms contributes to aggregate productivity growth if and only if current productivity predicts future productivity. We provide evidence in support of the hypothesis that more productive firms become larger in Danish data. In addition, we provide estimates of the distribution of productivity at entry and the parameters of the cost of investment in innovation function and other structural parameters that all firms are assumed to face by fitting the model to observations on value added, employment, and wages drawn from a panel of Danish firms for the years 1992-1997.

On the Job Search and the Wage Distribution

Estimates of the structural parameters of a job separation model derived from the theory of on-the-job search are reported in this paper. Given that each employer pays the same wage to observably equivalent workers but wages are dispersed across employers, the theory implies that an employer's separation flow is the sum of an exogenous outflow unrelated to the wage paid and a job-to-job flow that decreases with the employer's wage. The specification estimated allows worker search effort to depend on the wage currently earned. The empirical results imply that search effort declines with the wage paid, as the theory predicts, using Danish IDA data for the years 1994-1995. Furthermore, the estimates for the full sample and four occupational sub-samples explain the employment effect, defined as the horizontal difference between the distribution of wages earned and the distribution of wages offered.

The Effects of Time Dependent Stress-Path on The Plastic and Elastic Deformation of Sand and Clay Soils Subjected to Dynamic Loading

Cylindrical cyclic loading tests were used to study the effects of time dependent stress path on the plastic and elastic deformations of sand and clay soil samples. The test materials were obtained from the subgrade of existing highway pavements located throughout the state of Michigan. Approximately, 25 cylindrical soil samples (13.5 cm long, 5.5 cm in diameter) were tested under repeated loading conditions using different hydrostatic confining pressures and several time dependent stress-paths. In all tests, the first invariant of the stress tensor was cycled between two constant values and the first invariant of the stress deviator tensor was increased incremently and cycled such that its minimum value was kept greater than 6.895 kPa. at all times. Analysis of the test results indicated several findings, these include: 1) Increasing the first invariant of the stress deviator tensor with time,for sand samples, decreased the average rate and magnitude of the plastic deformation of the samples. 2) For clay samples, the rate and magnitude of the plastic and elastic deformations were found to be dependent on the first invariants of the stress tensor and stress deviator tensor, on the stresspath and on the sample parameters. For example, the elastic strains of two duplicate soil samples tested under the same stress conditions (same invariants of stress tensor and stress deviator tensor) were different by a factor of 2 to 100. The value of this factor was found to be a function of the time dependent stress path

Analyses of Dental Pulp in Restored Teeth

Restored teeth were extracted from test animals at four time intervals (1 hour, 1 day, 1 week, and 3 months) following amalgam insertion. Extracted teeth were frozen in liquid nitrogen, cryo-fractured so as to expose the pulps and then freeze-dried. Pulps were analyzed for mercury content by energy dispersive spectrometry (EDS) and atomic absorption spectrophotometry (AAS). Mercury levels appeared below the detection limits of EDS but could be detected by AAS which showed the highest readings seven days after amalgam insertion

Improved risk-based strategies for disease management in the pig production chain

To minimize financial losses in times of crisis, it is necessary to prove methods of maintaining trade in a case of disease. This work shows that the identification of modules and clusters could be of high relevance if these clusters impede disease spread or if so-called Ad hoc-connector-points serving as routes of transmission between clusters could be identified. Furthermore the advantages of a risk-based selection of critical control points for surveillance or monitoring can be shown. This work provides new approaches to review and possibly optimize existing disease prevention and control strategies