Technical and Environmental efficiencies and Best Management Practices in Agriculture

An input distance function (IDF) is estimated to empirically evaluate and analyze the technical and environmental efficiencies of 210 farms located in the Chaudière watershed (Quebec), where water quality problems are particularly acute because of the production of undesirable outputs that are jointly produced with agricultural products. The true IDF is approximated by a flexible translog functional form estimated using a full information maximum likelihood method. Technical and environmental efficiencies are disaggregated across farms and account for spatial variations. Our results show that there is a significant correlation between technical and environmental efficiencies. The IDF is used to compute the cumulative Malmquist productivity index and the Fisher index. The two indices are used to measure changes in technology, profitability, efficiency, and productivity in response to the adoption of 2 selected best management practices (BMPs) whose objective is to reduce water pollution. We found significant differences across BMPs regarding the direction and the magnitude of their effect on profitability, efficiency and productivity.Environmental efficiency, distance function, phosphorus runoff, productivity, profitability, technical efficiency.

Top 10 Most Effective Marketing Strategies in Business to Consumer Marketing (B2C)

Business-to-customer marketing refers to the tactics and best practices used to promote products and services among consumers. B2C marketing differs from B2B marketing in a number of key ways, one being that it often depends on campaigns abilities to invoke emotional responses rather than solely demonstrating value. The most popular or effective channels for a business will differ according to its unique demographic, but the web is becoming universal in consumer shopping. In terms of content marketing, B2C marketers have found success with blogs written specifically to appeal to consumers who may be interested in unique products. Developing key marketing strategies in B2C markets is paramount in a firms overall profit and increased sales objectives

Emergentism Reconsidered

This paper argues that emergentism is not committed to downward causation but of direct causation. Events that are believed to be caused by a mental state, whether physical or mental, are actually caused by a physical state with a mental property. These mental properties are caused by the complexity of a collection of several physical components. Emergentism, as a view, is often faced by the fallacy of composition given its nomological nature which leads one to resort to dualism. Mental properties cannot exist in and of itself, but it only supports the physical through entailment. Lastly, it gives a brief discussion regarding some of the conditions of the possibility of emergent properties in conjunction with the characteristics of biological organisms

Emergentism Reconsidered

This paper argues that emergentism is not committed to downward causation but of direct causation. Events that are believed to be caused by a mental state, whether physical or mental, are actually caused by a physical state with a mental property. These mental properties are caused by the complexity of a collection of several physical components. Emergentism, as a view, is often faced by the fallacy of composition given its nomological nature which leads one to resort to dualism. Mental properties cannot exist in and of itself, but it only supports the physical through entailment. Lastly, it gives a brief discussion regarding some of the conditions of the possibility of emergent properties in conjunction with the characteristics of biological organisms

Low Computational Sensing with Goertzel Filtering for Mobile Industrial IoT Devices

Internet-of Things (IoT) is getting connected to an increasing number of mobile devices such as autonomous vehicles, drones and robots. Termed as Mobile Industrial Internet-of Things (MI²oT) devices in this paper, a key requirement of these devices is to accurately estimate range and Doppler in various applications, in addition to data communication. Research efforts therefore include incorporating MI²-oT devices with high-data rate communications together with Frequency Modulated Continuous Wave Radar (FMCW) sensing capabilities. Range and Doppler sensing, in FMCW radars is undertaken by a twostage Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) which is computationally demanding. It is challenging to design baseband processing with FFTs that can be implemented as low computational hardware or application specific integrated circuits (ASIC) in MI²-oT devices. This paper, presents a novel range and Doppler sensing technique based on Goertzel filtering, leading to considerable reduction in computations compared to the FFT. FMCW radar with Goertzel filtering and FFT are examined in three cases viz., sensing the range and velocity of a car, vibration and respiration monitoring. Simulation results show a computation reduction of the order of 6.3×, 7.7× and 8.1× \u1d422\u1d427Giga-operations per second (GOPS) for the three cases respectively. The reduced computations increase the feasibility of implementing range and Doppler sensing in MI²oT devices which have restricted computational resources

The Top 9 Ways to Increase Customer Loyalty

Every company executive will raise their hand and say they believe having loyal customers is the key to business success. But what are executives really doing about it? Most point to customer care training or CRM systems and say “this is how we take care of loyalty at our firm”. Some point to monthly newsletters or discount programs to demonstrate their efforts. All of these are good attempts, however, they are not good enough. Companies are losing customers at a staggering rate and never hearing from most of them. Each year the average company loses 10-15% of its customer base. 84% of customers who leave do so because of poor service. A typical business only hears from 4% of its dissatisfied customers the other 96% leave, 91% leave for good. By understanding certain principles and putting those principals into practice a company can foster a culture of greater loyalty and engagement that will reward them with greater profits and increased sales. These topics can be separated into three primary groups: 1. Basic Concepts, 2. Technologies, 3. Business Outcome

Forest and Land-Use Practices in Philippine Uplands: National Level Analysis Based on Eight Villages

The study identifies the rural poor and measures their needs and capabilities. It focuses on the tree product from forests and upland cultivation systems and analyzes the forest and land use practices of the upland poor through the development of a common database. It also examines the influence of household-specific characteristics, development intervention mechanisms, institutional and local use conditions on specific tree and forest-use practices.land use planning, natural resources and environment, forestry sector, land management, uplands

Learning through Reading: A Handbook of Literature-based Lessons for ESL

Learning through Reading: A Handbook of Literature-based Lessons for ESL A Field Project written by Lota Rygiel in the spring of 2016. This project is a handbook of lessons for adult ESL students at intermediate or advanced proficiency levels of English as a Second Language. The handbook offers the use of authentic materials in the form of short stories and poems in English. The authentic materials serve as a challenge to students (Krashen\u27s i + 1 level): with careful guidance of the instructor they will be interesting and meaningful to students. The use of various literary genres corresponds to the different learning styles of students (based on Gardner\u27s Multiple Intelligences Theory). The author hopes that incorporating lessons based on authentic literary material supplemented by audio-visual presentations will lower the affective filter of students and promote successful learning of ESL