A DYNAMIC RESPONSE ANALYSIS FOR THE U.S. ROUGH RICE MARKET

This study provides a comparative evaluation of VARs versus structural VARs for policy analysis and simulation via impulse response analysis (IRA). The IRA is valuable information for rice market participants as these results provide an economically intuitive explanation of adjustments that occur as a result of shocks to the market.Marketing,

A Sequential Rationality and Efficiency Test of U.S. Department of Agriculture Program Crop Price Estimates: Rice, Wheat, and Soybeans

This paper examines the USDA price estimates of rice, wheat, and soybeans and whether spot commodity prices reflect price information embodied in USDA estimates. Results indicate that the monthly USDA estimates are failed to meet a rationality condition. Rice and wheat actual prices marginally incorporate the information embodied in USDA past price estimates.Agricultural and Food Policy, Research Methods/ Statistical Methods, Crop Production/Industries,

A Dynamic Econometric Model for the United States Rice Market.

Over the past two decades, developments in time series analysis have brought new approaches for combining structural characteristics of market models with stochastic processes that better represent available data. One line of research is the works of Zellner and Palm, which is known as structural econometric and time series analysis (SEMTSA). The other approach is the structural vector autoregressive model (SVAR), which is an economic-theory enhancement to the standard VAR approach. Empirical evaluations of how well these approaches may work in explaining the dynamics of commodity markets are lacking. The current study provides an empirical evaluation of these two approaches for the U.S. rough rice market. Transfer functions (TF), derived from a dynamic structural econometric model of the U.S. rice market, were estimated. The RMSE and MAPE evaluation revealed that the TF model greatly reduces forecasting errors relative to the existing structural and ARIMA models for the seven rice market variables (acreage planted, yields, production, domestic consumption, exports, ending stocks, and rough rice prices) in an out-of-sample period (1990--1999). A turning point evaluation indicated that forecasts generated by the TF model closely follow the actual movements of all variables except ending stocks. The research also addressed the empirical usefulness of combining structural-statistical properties of economic data in commodity modeling. A comparative analysis of the impulse response functions revealed that the estimated effects in the VAR model of specific behavioral shocks often do not appear economically intuitive. Having imposed structural relationships in a time series context, the study found that most impulse response functions in the SVAR model are in conformation with economic logic, with empirical results far superior to those generated from a VAR in levels. These empirical findings in favor of the TF and SVAR models stem from a common methodological approach, which combines economic theory with statistical properties of time series. The research findings suggest that a significant contribution to commodity modeling can be derived from this type of approach. This conclusion is supported by the empirical findings from economic model of the U.S. rough rice market

Impact of Sugarcane Delivery Schedule on Product Value at Raw Sugar Factories

Conversion to combine harvesters has resulted in Louisiana sugarcane growers delivering a more perishable product to raw sugar factories. Dextran formation increases as the time between harvest and milling is extended. Milling of freshly cut sugarcane reduces the formation of dextran and associated economic losses. One approach available to factories to reduce dextran formation is to extend the harvested sugarcane delivery schedule to the mill. A simulation model was developed to evaluate alternative delivery schedules at raw sugar factories. Economic losses in product value associated with dextran formation were estimated and compared for various extended delivery schedules.dextran, milling, product value, raw sugar factories, scheduling, sugarcane industry, Crop Production/Industries, Marketing, Production Economics,

Exploiting Fine-Grained Spatial Optimization for Hybrid File System Space

Over decades, I/O optimizations implemented in legacy file systems have been concentrated on reducing HDD disk overhead, such as seek time. As SSD (Solid-State Device) is becoming the main storage medium in I/O storage subsystems, file systems integrated with SSD should take a different approach in designing I/O optimizations. This is because SSD deploys the peculiar device characteristics that do not take place in HDD, such as erasure overhead on flash blocks and absence of seek time to positioning data. In this paper, we present HP-hybrid (High Performance-hybrid) file system that provides a single hybrid file system space, by combining HDD and SSD partitions. HP-hybrid targets for optimizing I/O while considering the strength and weakness of two different partitions, to store large-scale amounts of data in a cost-effective way. Especially, HP-hybrid proposes spatial optimizations that are executed in a hierarchical, fine-grained I/O unit, to address the limited SSD storage resources. We conducted several performance experiments to verify the effectiveness of HP-hybrid while comparing to ext2, ext4 and xfs mounted on both SSD and HDD

Delayed rupture of a pseudoaneurysm in the brachial artery of a burn reconstruction patient

A brachial artery pseudoaneurysm is a rare but serious condition that can be limb threatening. A number of reports have found that it may be the result of damage to the blood vessels around the brachial artery, either directly or indirectly, due to trauma or systemic diseases. We present our experience of delayed pseudoaneurysm rupture of the brachial artery in a rehabilitation patient with burns of the upper extremity who underwent fasciotomy and musculocutaneous flap coverage. We also provide a review of the brachial artery pseudoaneurysm

Student and Faculty Preferences Regarding Instructional Modalities at an HBCU Business School as a Result of Covid-19 – A Change Management Approach and Mindset

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a major impact on the higher education community, especially the Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). At a micro-level, the HBCU business schools have felt the effects as well, particularly in critical areas such as instructional modalities and the overall classroom experience. Since COVID-19 has changed the educational game, what do key stakeholder groups now prefer regarding instructional modalities in the HBCU business school? This study will answer this question and more while incorporating a change management approach and mindset for leadership and decision-making