DEVELOPMENT OF MINIMUM COST, INCENTIVE BASED PLAN FOR THE IMPLEMENTATION OF A TECHNOLOGY STANDARD FOR COFFEE PROCESSING IN HONDURAS

In Honduras, traditional coffee processing is the cause of two problems: poor coffee quality and contaminated water. In this study we propose to replace traditional coffee processing plants with a network of improved ecological plants that would be optimally located in a sub-watershed. The method is an adaptation of a spatial integer linear programming that determines the optimal location and size of new coffee processing plants. We applied the method to a typical sub-watershed in the hillsides of western Honduras and show that coffee quality can be improved and contamination can be reduced substantially at a relatively low cost. We also calculated the incentive for small farmers to give up home processing. We find that the incentive is much lower than the premium that could be obtained from an improved coffee quality.Agribusiness,

TRADE-OFFS BETWEEN ECONOMIC EFFICIENCY AND CONTAMINATION BY COFFEE PROCESSING A BIOECONOMIC MODEL AT THE WATERSHED LEVEL IN HONDURAS

In Honduras, traditional coffee processing is the cause of two major problems: poor coffee quality and contaminated water. In this paper we present a method that determines the trade-off between economic efficiency and contamination in a Honduran sub-watershed. The method is a bioeconomic model based on mathematical programming that stimulates the functioning of the interlinked economic and ecological processes in the sub-watershed. We compare various scenarii where the model is given the possibility of replacing traditional coffee processing plants with a network of improved ecological plants. For different levels of contamination the model determines the optimal location and size of new coffee processing plants along river streams by minimizing transport, variable and fixed costs. The restrictions of the system are the volume of wet coffee to be processed, the available stream water, and in the alternative scenarii, investment capital and contaminant concentration in the river. We apply the method to a typical sub-watershed in the hillsides of western Honduras and show that coffee quality can be improved and contamination can be reduced substantially at a relatively low cost.coffee, environment, water quality, mathematical programming, transport cost, spatial analysis, watershed, Honduras., Environmental Economics and Policy,

Motor Deficits Are Produced By Removing Some Cortical Transplants Grafted Into Injured Sensorimotor Cortex of Neonatal Rats

Fetal frontal cortex was transplanted into cavities formed in the right, motor cortex of neonatal rats. As adults, the animals were trained to press two levers in rapid succession with their left forelimb to receive food rewards. Once they had reached an optimal level of performance, the effect of removing their transplants was assessed. Surgical removal of transplants significantly impaired the performance of 2 of 4 subjects. Placing a crossstrain skin graft to induce the immunological rejection of the transplants produced a behavioral deficit in 1 of 2 subjects with complete transplant removal. Skin grafts produced no behavioral effects in four subjects that had surviving transplants. Since the motor deficit produced by transplant removal resembled those observed following the removal of normal motor cortex, we propose that these three transplants functioned within the host brain

Players Indifferent to Cooperate and Characterizations of the Shapley Value

n this paper we provide new axiomatizations of the Shapley value for TU-games using axioms that are based on relational aspects in the interactions among players. Some of these relational aspects, in particular the economic or social interest of each player in cooperating with each other, can be found embedded in the characteristic function. We define a particular relation among the players that it is based on mutual indifference. The first new axiom expresses that the payoffs of two players who are not indifferent to each other are affected in the same way if they become enemies and do not cooperate with each other anymore. The second new axiom expresses that the payoff of a player is not affected if players to whom it is indifferent leave the game. We show that the Shapley value is characterized by these two axioms together with the well-known efficiency axiom. Further, we show that another axiomatization of the Shapley value is obtained if we replace t he second axiom and efficiency by the axiom which applies the efficiency condition to every class of indifferent players. Finally, we extend the previous results to the case of weighted Shapley values

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-Currently, customer relationship management (CRM) tools are very important in our society because they provide a comunication channel to the healthcare system for patients. Salud Responde is a CRM that provides many health services for the entire population of Andalusia, in southern Spain. The number and frequenzy of phone calls received change along the year. They depend on many factors, such as weekdays, seasons, vaccination campaigns, environmental factors, pandemic periods, etc. All these are the main reasons number of health calls changes along the year. This variability makes that the current management of resources for offering emergency services based on historical data is inefficient. The factors, which influence the phone calls along the year, are different from one period to another. Therefore, it is clear to demand an improved in the current management system. In this context, the main goal for this research is to develop an expert system able to identify and analyze, using different data mining algorithms, the most relevant factors to predict the variability of health service demand. Thus, here, it is proposed a methodology in which using reasons calls received in the CRM as input data, it is possible to predict in advance the healthcare resources demand.

“Where’s the I-O?” Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in Talent Management Systems

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) have seen widespread adoption by organizations seeking to identify and hire high-quality job applicants. Yet the volume, variety, and velocity of professional involvement among I-O psychologists remains relatively limited when it comes to developing and evaluating AI/ML applications for talent assessment and selection. Furthermore, there is a paucity of empirical research that investigates the reliability, validity, and fairness of AI/ML tools in organizational contexts. To stimulate future involvement and research, we share our review and perspective on the current state of AI/ML in talent assessment as well as its benefits and potential pitfalls; and in addressing the issue of fairness, we present experimental evidence regarding the potential for AI/ML to evoke adverse reactions from job applicants during selection procedures. We close by emphasizing increased collaboration among I-O psychologists, computer scientists, legal scholars, and members of other professional disciplines in developing, implementing, and evaluating AI/ML applications in organizational contexts

Reply to G. Betts's letter referring to "Serum potassium dynamics during acute heart failure hospitalization".

This work was funded by the Instituto de Salud Carlos III (Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness) and cofunded by the European Regional Development Fund, through the CIBER in cardiovascular diseases (CB16/11/00502).S

Influence of plasma-generated negative oxygen ion impingement on magnetron sputtered amorphous SiO2 thin films during growth at low temperatures

Growth of amorphous SiO2 thin films deposited by reactive magnetron sputtering at low temperatures has been studied under different oxygen partial pressure conditions. Film microstructures varied from coalescent vertical column-like to homogeneous compact microstructures, possessing all similar refractive indexes. A discussion on the process responsible for the different microstructures is carried out focusing on the influence of (i) the surface shadowing mechanism, (ii) the positive ion impingement on the film, and (iii) the negative ion impingement. We conclude that only the trend followed by the latter and, in particular, the impingement of O- ions with kinetic energies between 20 and 200 eV, agrees with the resulting microstructural changes. Overall, it is also demonstrated that there are two main microstructuring regimes in the growth of amorphous SiO2 thin films by magnetron sputtering at low temperatures, controlled by the amount of O2 in the deposition reactor, which stem from the competition between surface shadowing and ion-induced adatom surface mobilityMinisterio de Innovación español-MAT 2007-65764Ministerio de Innovación español (CONSOLIDER INGENIO 2010)-CSD2008-00023Junta de Andalucía-TEP2275, TEP5283, P07-FQM-03298 y P10-FQM-690

Order Monotonic Solutions for Generalized Characteristic Functions

Generalized characteristic functions extend characteristic functions of 'classical' TU-games by assigning a real number to every ordered coalition being a permutation of any subset of the player set. Such generalized characteristic functions can be applied when the earnings or costs of cooperation among a set of players depends on the order in which the players enter a coalition. In the literature, the two main solutions for generalized characteristic functions are the one of Nowak and Radzik (1994), shortly called NR-value, and the one introduced by Sanchez and Bergantinos (1997), shortly called SB-value. In this paper, we introduce the axiom of order monotonicity with respect to the order of the players in a unanimity coalition, requiring that players who enter earlier should get not more in the corresponding (ordered) unanimity game than players who enter later. We propose several classes of order monotonic solutions for generalized characteristic functions that contain the NR-value and SB-value as special (extreme) cases. We also provide axiomatizations of these classes