12,267 research outputs found
ECONOMIC ANALYSIS OF PHOSPHORUS - REDUCING TECHNOLOGIES IN PORK PRODUCTION
Soil phosphorus levels have increased as pork production has become concentrated. Phosphorus-based manure management regulations for land application have been proposed by policy makers. The objective of this study is to determine benefits/costs of adopting two alternatives for reducing phosphorus: synthetic amino acids or phytase. An optimization model is constructed to determine optimal excreted nitrogen and phosphorus from alternative feed ingredients. Results are derived using different manure storage and application systems. While the two alternatives are not least-cost ingredients, they become profitable when producers are constrained by land. An important result is that the net cost of manure is negative.Livestock Production/Industries,
National Catastrophic Drug Insurance Revisited: Who Would Benefit from Senator Kirby's Recommendations?
The recent "Romanow" and "Kirby" inquiries into the Canadian health care system recommended a publicly funded catastrophic prescription drug insurance program to protect Canadians from potentially ruinous drug costs. While the Romanow commission was not specific about the nature of such a program, the Kirby commission recommended that household prescription drug expenses be capped at 3% of total household income, or 461 million annually, although reductions in out of pocket drug spending will reduce medical tax credits and thereby increase tax revenues by at least $80 million. Program costs appeared to be very sensitive to increased household drug spending that might result from the program introduction.drug insurance; prescription drug expenses
OPTIMAL HOG SLAUGHTER WEIGHTS UNDER ALTERNATIVE PRICING SYSTEMS
Three hog genotypes are simulated to determine how producer profits, economically optimal slaughter weights, and carcass component weights change under three pricing models. Live weight pricing pays more for the fatter barrows whereas a three component (separate payments for fat, lean, and byproducts) and six component (separate payments for major primal cuts, other lean, fat, and byproducts) pricing system pay more for the leaner gilts. Implications for selection of genetic stock and pricing system are presented.Swine production management, Hog pricing systems, Hog marketing, Livestock Production/Industries,
National Catastrophic Drug Insurance Revisited: Who Would Benefit from Senator Kirby's Recommendations?
The recent "Romanow" and "Kirby" inquiries into the Canadian health care system recommended a publicly funded catastrophic prescription drug insurance program to protect Canadians from potentially ruinous drug costs. While the Romanow commission was not specific about the nature of such a program, the Kirby commission recommended that household prescription drug expenses be capped at 3% of total household income, or 461 million annually, although reductions in out of pocket drug spending will reduce medical tax credits and thereby increase tax revenues by at least $80 million. Program costs appeared to be very sensitive to increased household drug spending that might result from the program introduction.drug insurance; prescription drug expenses
THE VALUE OF PUBLIC INFORMATION FOR MICROECONOMIC PRODUCTION DECISIONS
Procedures are needed to evaluate the benefits of the provision of information. This paper shows how to apply a money metric definition of the value of information for this purpose. The application is to microeconomic input choices for agricultural production, and the information to be valued concerns the effect of fertilization on sorghum yield. In this paper application both output price and output level are stochastic, and the probability distribution of output is affected by the chosen level of fertilizer.Crop Production/Industries,
NUTRITION AND THE ECONOMICS OF SWINE MANAGEMENT
Current methods of formulating animal rations lead to excess nutrient excretion which can potentially lead to excess manure nutrients and an increase in economic costs. These methods do not recognize the impact of diminishing returns. The objective is to simultaneously optimize feed ration composition and replacement. The results, when compared against results from a survey of feed companies, indicate that using a profit maximization rather than live weight growth maximization criterion targets nutrients to an animal's actual needs and, hence, fewer nutrients are excreted and higher returns for producers are obtained.nonlinear growth modeling, pigs, replacement, swine, Livestock Production/Industries,
Symmetry Plays a Key Role in the Erasing of Patterned Surface Features
We report on how the relaxation of patterns prepared on a thin film can be
controlled by manipu- lating the symmetry of the initial shape. The validity of
a lubrication theory for the capillary-driven relaxation of surface profiles is
verified by atomic force microscopy measurements, performed on films that were
patterned using focused laser spike annealing. In particular, we observe that
the shape of the surface profile at late times is entirely determined by the
initial symmetry of the perturba- tion, in agreement with the theory. Moreover,
in this regime the perturbation amplitude relaxes as a power-law in time, with
an exponent that is also related to the initial symmetry. The results have
relevance in the dynamical control of topographic perturbations for
nanolithography and high density memory storage
VERTICALLY ALIGNED VS. OPEN MARKET COORDINATION: DOMINANCE OR CO-EXISTENCE?
Will a more tightly aligned system become the exclusive coordination or governance system in the pork industry? The analysis shows that the packer prefers to source hogs from both an aligned market and an independent market. This result is because the packer, facing variability in the demand for premium pork, must balance the cost of higher quality aligned hogs and independent hogs against the states of nature for demand for the premium product.Industrial Organization, Livestock Production/Industries,
Giant pop-ins and amorphization in germanium during indentation
Sudden excursions of unusually large magnitude (>1 μm), “giant pop-ins,” have been observed in the force-displacement curve for high load indentation of crystalline germanium(Ge). A range of techniques including Raman microspectroscopy, focused ion-beam cross sectioning, and transmission electron microscopy, are applied to study this phenomenon. Amorphous material is observed in residual indents following the giant pop-in. The giant pop-in is shown to be a material removal event, triggered by the development of shallow lateral cracks adjacent to the indent. Enhanced depth recovery, or “elbowing,” observed in the force-displacement curve following the giant pop-in is explained in terms of a compliant response of plates of material around the indent detached by lateral cracking. The possible causes of amorphization are discussed, and the implications in light of earlier indentation studies of Ge are considered
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