Accelerating Agricultural Growth—Is Irrigation Institutional Reform Necessary?

The right to the flow of income from water is vigorously pursued, protected, and fought over in any arid part of the world. Pakistan is of course no exception. Reform of irrigation institutions necessarily changes the rights to water, whether it be those of farmers, government, or government functionaries. Those perceived rights may be explicit and broadly accepted, or simply takings that are not even considered legitimate. Nevertheless they will be fought over. Pakistan has a long history of proposals for irrigation reform, little or none being implemented, except as isolated pilot projects. Thus, to propose major changes in irrigation institutions must be clearly shown to have major benefits to justify the hard battles that must be fought and the goodwill of those who might win those battles for reform. Proponents of irrigation institution reform have always argued the necessity of the reforms and the large gains to be achieved. Perhaps, however, those arguments have not been convincing. This paper will briefly outline the failed attempts at irrigation reform to provide an element of reality to the discussion. It will then proceed to make the case of the urgency of reform in a somewhat different manner to the past. Finally, current major reform proposals will be presented. This paper approaches justification of irrigation reform by focusing on the agricultural growth rate. It does so because that is the critical variable influencing poverty rates and is a significant determinant of over-all economic growth rates. The paper decomposes growth rates and suggests a residual effect of deterioration of the irrigation system that is large and calls for policy and institutional reform. The data are notional, suggesting the usefulness of the approach and paves the way for more detailed empirical analysis and enquiry for the future.

Agricultural Development and Food Security(The Allama Iqbal Memorial Lecture)

It is always a pleasure for me to participate in these annual meetings. The knowledge and the talent displayed are immense. The quality of discussion is high. I had never thought however that I would have the honor of delivering the Aalama Iqbal lecture. To prepare for this lecture I read extensively from Iqbal’s poetry. Of course I read in translation, but even so I was overwhelmed by the beauty of the ideas and the expression. My search for an apt couplet or set of lines for this paper was in vain. Iqbal was speaking to his people and although he was expansive in his view of society, it is still not meant for me to carry the word of Iqbal to you. Nevertheless I do display at the beginning of this paper three lines from Iqbal. He is clear on the importance of doing for oneself and for ones country. At least in the modern world ones efforts are so much more productive if government provides a favourable environment for individual effort. And he would embrace the brotherhood of mankind, leaving some potential for us to help each other. He was very clear that learning from the West was desirable, and he was very selective about that—science and technology in particular. My paper is about what government must do, and specifically the government of Pakistan must do, to create an environment in which not just a few gather dew but in which all people gather dew. As soon as ones concern encompasses the bulk of the population food security comes to the fore. My paper can be seen as addressing how all rural people can gather the dew. It has a prominent place for science and technology.

Institutional finance for agricultural development

The authors review the literature to see at how rural financial institutions (RFIs) are organized, how they can improve their financial viability, and how real interest rates affect the demand for rural loans, the supply of rural deposits, and rural savings. Their purpose is to make the findings of the extensive literature on agricultural credit policy accessible to developing-country policymakers. The review addresses six major questions: Why promote formal RFIs? How should RFIs be organized? What are the transaction costs of RFIs and how should they be measured? What effects do real interest rates and other factors have on rural loans, deposits, and savings? What determines whether an RFI system is a net contributor to or a drain on public resources? And, what policy conclusions can be drawn from this analysis? To answer these questions, Desai and Mellor look at the literature on RFIs in high-, middle-, and low-income countries, both developed and developing. They include countries in four developing regions Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, the Near East and Mediterranean Basin, and Latin America and the Caribbean as well as Western Europe and North America.Rural credit Developing countries. ,Financial institutions. ,

A novel linear direct drive system for textile winding applications

The paper describes the specification, modelling, magnetic design, thermal characteristics and control of a novel, high acceleration (up to 82g) brushless PM linear actuator with Halbach array, for textile package winding applications. Experimental results demonstrate the realisation of the actuator and induced performance advantages afforded to the phase lead, closed-loop position control scheme

Random close packing (RCP) of equal spheres: structure and implications for use as a model porous medium

The structure of the Finney Random Close Packing (RCP) of equal spheres has been analysed, together with the influence which such structure exerts over the capillary pressure characteristics of geometrically similar sphere packings. The analysis is centred on the simplicial, or Delaunay cell, which is an irregular tetrahedron with apices defined by four immediate neighbour sphere-centres. In terms of using RCP as a model porous medium, an individual simplicial cell is equivalent to an individual pore. A number of measured pore-size distribution parameters are presented for the Finney packing, from which it is shown from first principles that drainage-imbibition hysteresis is not an intrinsic property of the individual pore. The nature and degree of randomness which characterises the Finney packing is evaluated on two levels. First, by classifying edgelengths as either short or long, seven mutually exclusive cell classes are defined. Using the binomial theorem it is shown that cells (pores) are not random on the level of the individual cell. There are less of the extreme cells (with 6 long edges, or with 6 short edges) and more of the bland cells (with 3 short and 3 long edges) in the Finney packing than predicted on the basis of simple random expectations. Second, the distribution of cell classes within the packing is shown to be essentially homogeneously random. Evidence for extremely slight cell class clustering is found. The drainage and imbibition processes within the packing are simulated using pore-level algorithms. The algorithms utilise both the Haines' insphere approximation and the MS-P approximation for critical drainage meniscus curvature, and the cell cavity insphere radius approximation for critical imbibition meniscus curvature. Good agreement with experimental data is obtained, and the results confirm that drainage-imbibition hysteresis is a direct consequence of the connectivity between cells (pores), and is not an intrinsic property of the individual pore. Finally, the drainage and imbibition algorithms are adapted to emulate percolation theory models. The results prove that the classical bond problem of percolation theory does not adequately describe the drainage process for RCP, and that the classical site problem does not adequately describe the imbibition process for RCP

A component-based approach to human–machine interface systems that support agile manufacturing

The development of next generation manufacturing systems is currently an active area of research worldwide. Globalisation is placing new demands on the manufacturing industry with products having shorter lifecycles and being required in more variants. Manufacturing systems must therefore be agile to support frequent manufacturing system reconfiguration involving globally distributed engineering partners. The research described in this thesis addresses one aspect within this research area, the Human Machine Interface (HMI) system that support the personnel involved in the monitoring, diagnostics and reconfiguration of automated manufacturing production machinery. Current HMI systems are monolithic in their design, generally offer poor connectivity to other manufacturing systems and require highly skilled personnel to develop and maintain them. The new approach established in the research and presented in this thesis provides a specification capture technique (using a novel storyboarding modelling notation) that enables the end users HMI functionality to be specified and rapidly developed into fully functional End User HMI's via automated generation tools. A novel feature in this HMI system architecture that all machine information is stored in a common unified machine data model which ensures consistent accurate machine data is available to all machine lifecycle engineering tools including the HMI. The system's run-time architecture enables remote monitoring and diagnostics capabilities to be available to geographically distributed engineering partners using standard internet technologies. The implementation of this novel HMI approach has been prototyped and evaluated using the industrial collaborators full scale demonstrator machines within cylinder head machining and engine assembly applications

Increased surface flashover voltage in microfabricated devices

With the demand for improved performance in microfabricated devices, the necessity to apply greater electric fields and voltages becomes evident. When operating in vacuum, the voltage is typically limited by surface flashover forming along the surface of a dielectric. By modifying the fabrication process we have discovered it is possible to more than double the flashover voltage. Our finding has significant impact on the realization of next-generation micro- and nano-fabricated devices and for the fabrication of on-chip ion trap arrays for the realization of scalable ion quantum technology

Pair Creation of Black Holes by Domain Walls

In this paper we study the production of pairs of neutral and charged black holes by domain walls, finding classical solutions and calculating their classical actions. We find that neutral black holes whose creation is mediated by Euclidean instantons must be produced mutually at rest with respect to one another, but for charged black holes a new type of instanton is possible in which after formation the two black holes accelerate away from one another. These new types of instantons are not possible in Einstein-Maxwell theory with a cosmological constant. We also find that the creation of non-orientable black hole solutions can be mediated by Euclidean instantons and that in addition if one is prepared to consider entirely Lorentzian no-boundary type contributions to the path integral then mutually accelerating pairs may be created even in the neutral case. Finally we consider the production of Kaluza-Klein monopoles both by a standard cosmological term and in the presence of a domain wall. We find that compactification is accompanied by the production of pairs of Kaluza-Klein monopoles.Comment: 22 pages (REVTeX with AMS Symbols) with 5 postscript figures attached in a single uuencoded, g-zipped, tar file at end of tex fil