The Economics of Biotechnology under Ecosystem Disruption

Economic analysis of chemical pesticide use has shown that the interactions between plants, pests, damage control technology and state of the ecosystem are important variables to be considered. Hence, a bio-economic model was developed for the assessment of Bt variety and pesticide-based control strategies of the cotton bollworm in China. The model simulates plant growth, the dynamics of pest populations and of natural enemies. The model predictions are used as major inputs for a stochastic partial budgeting procedure of alternative control strategies. Results show that: (1) productivity effects of Bt varieties and pesticide use depend on the action of natural control agents, and (2) the profitability of damage control measures increases with the severity of ecosystem disturbance. The findings highlight the importance of the choice of a counterfactual scenario in the assessment of the impact of agricultural biotechnology. Also, some doubts are raised whether the high benefits of Bt cotton varieties based on cross section comparisons are realistic.Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies, Q57, Q55, O13, O3,

Institutional Constraints for the Success of Agricultural Biotechnology in Developing Countries: The Case of Bt-Cotton in Shandong Province, China

The use of genetically engineered crop varieties has recently become one option to prevent pest damage in agriculture. The promoters of biotechnology stress the great potential for yield increase and pesticide reduction while the critics point out the potential risks for biodiversity and human health as well as institutional problems for implementation especially in developing countries. The objective of this paper is an in-depth economic analysis of Btcotton production in North East China under small-scale conditions and several years after technology introduction. Data were collected in 2002 (March - October) in Linqing County, a major cotton growing area of Shandong Province, China. Data collection comprised a seasonlong monitoring of Bt-cotton production with 150 farmers from five villages, and three complementary household interviews. In addition, plot-level biological testing was carried out to determine the actual Bt toxin concentration in the varieties that were used by the farmers. All farmers in the case study were growing insect resistant Bt-cotton varieties in 2002. Nevertheless, they sprayed high amounts of chemical pesticides that were almost entirely insecticides. A proportion of 40% of the pesticides applied belonged to the categories extremely or highly hazardous (WHO classes Ia and Ib). The paper reviews methodological issues inherent to impact assessment of crop biotechnology and identifies market and institutional failure as possible reasons for continued high pesticide use. The production function methodology with damage control function was applied and it was found that for both damage control inputs, i.e. Bt and insecticides the coefficients were not significantly different from zero. In contrast to studies that treat Bt varieties as dummy variable in economic models, in this research it was possible to specify Bt toxin concentration in cotton leaf samples as a continuous variable. The results of this study support the notion that introducing Biotechnology in developing countries without enabling institutions that assure proper use of the technology can considerably limit its benefits. Hence it is important to include institutional criteria in the evaluation of agricultural biotechnology especially in developing countries. --

Technical guidelines for economic valuation of inland small-scale fisheries in developing countries

These ôTechnical Guidelines for Economic Valuation of Inland Small-scale Fisheries in Developing Countriesö are one of the outputs of the project on ôFood security and poverty alleviation through improved valuation and governance of river fisheries in Africaö. The guidelines draw upon research results and experience gained during the course of the project. The project was coordinated and implemented by the WorldFish Center and was carried out in cooperation with the National Agricultural Research Institutes (NARs) from the participating countries: the Nigeria Institute for Freshwater Fisheries Research, the Departments of Fishery of Niger, Malawi and Zambia, and the Cameroonian MinistΦre de lÆElevage, des PΩches et de lÆIndustrie Animale; and three advanced research institutes (ARIs): the Leibniz University of Hannover in Germany, the Institute for Sustainable Development and Aquatic Resources in UK, and the University of Cape Town in South Africa.Rural development, Sustainable development, Livelihoods, Economic analysis, Research, Artisanal fishing

Bilingual Word Spectral Clustering for Statistical Machine Translation

In this paper, a variant of a spectral clustering algorithm is proposed for bilingual word clustering. The proposed algorithm generates the two sets of clusters for both languages efficiently with high semantic correlation within monolingual clusters, and high translation quality across the clusters between two languages. Each cluster level translation is considered as a bilingual concept, which generalizes words in bilingual clusters. This scheme improves the robustness for statistical machine translation models. Two HMM-based translation models are tested to use these bilingual clusters. Improved perplexity, word alignment accuracy, and translation quality are observed in our experiments

A brief description of geological and geophysical exploration of the Marysville geothermal area

Extensive geological and geophysical surveys were carried out at the Marysville geothermal area during 1973 and 1974. The area has high heat flow (up to microcalories per square centimeter-second, a negative gravity anomaly, high electrical resistivity, low seismic ground noise, and nearby microseismic activity. Significant magnetic and infrared anomalies are not associated with the geothermal area. The geothermal anomaly occupies the axial portion of a dome in Precambrian sedimentary rocks intruded by Cretaceous and Cenozoic granitic rocks. The results from a 2.4-km-deep test well indicate that the cause of the geothermal anomaly is hydrothermal convection in a Cenozoic intrusive. A maximum temperature of 95 C was measured at a depth of 500 m in the test well

INFRARED MEASUREMENTS AND ESTIMATION OF TEMPERATURE IN THE RESTRICTIVE SCOPE OF AN INDUSTRIAL CEMENT PLANT

In this paper, we describe and evaluate the process of estimating reflectance corrected temperatures based on infrared measurements in the scope of an industrial cement production plant. We overview the underlying cement production phases, as well as the resulting challenges for infrared-based monitoring in such an industrial environment. Our studies are focused particularly on the use of infrared sensors in the clinker cooling process. Using a highly specialized infrared camera (10.6 μm), a dataset is obtained capturing the radiation emissions of cement clinker during the clinker cooling process at a cement plant. We briefly turn on the necessity of image preprocessing and then focus on calculating reflectance corrected thermal images for temperature estimation without the use of reference markers or additional instrumentation. This study represents the first usage of infrared camera-based measurements in the clinker cooling process. The main contributions, a recorded dataset and two proposed estimation models including a linear model and a machine learning model with their respective temperature estimations, will provide the basis for the extraction of further process characteristics. Therefore, our contributions will enable scientists as well as process operators to gain new insights about the cement clinker cooling process and to optimize the cement cooling and production process automatically

Robot life: simulation and participation in the study of evolution and social behavior.

This paper explores the case of using robots to simulate evolution, in particular the case of Hamilton's Law. The uses of robots raises several questions that this paper seeks to address. The first concerns the role of the robots in biological research: do they simulate something (life, evolution, sociality) or do they participate in something? The second question concerns the physicality of the robots: what difference does embodiment make to the role of the robot in these experiments. Thirdly, how do life, embodiment and social behavior relate in contemporary biology and why is it possible for robots to illuminate this relation? These questions are provoked by a strange similarity that has not been noted before: between the problem of simulation in philosophy of science, and Deleuze's reading of Plato on the relationship of ideas, copies and simulacra