A Regional and Industry Analysis of the Complexity of the Regulatory Environment Affecting Agricultural Producers in California

This paper provides results from a producers survey that enquired about the complexity of the regulatory environment in California. The primary objective of this paper is to examine the relationship between the complexity of the regulatory environment, agricultural industries in California, and different regions in California. This objective is achieved by taking information gathered from a producers survey and applying an ordered logit econometric model using complexity of the regulatory environment as the dependent variable. A secondary objective of this study is to develop a motivation why the complexity of the regulatory environment is important issue to consider. To achieve this goal, the perception of the complexity of the regulatory environment will be examined with potential management options that producers can take including increasing and decreasing their size of operation, leaving agricultural production, and moving out of the state.Agricultural and Food Policy,

An Estimation of the Regulatory Cost on California Agricultural Producers

This paper develops an estimation of the cost of regulations on California agricultural producers which can be used as a baseline for comparing regulatory environments. The estimated regulatory cost in relationship to operating costs for producers is between $2.19 billion to$2.21 billion. The range on percentage of income allocated to regulatory cost is between 5.24% and 9.19%.Environmental Economics and Policy,

Advanced content-based semantic scene analysis and information retrieval: the SCHEMA project

The aim of the SCHEMA Network of Excellence is to bring together a critical mass of universities, research centers, industrial partners and end users, in order to design a reference system for content-based semantic scene analysis, interpretation and understanding. Relevant research areas include: content-based multimedia analysis and automatic annotation of semantic multimedia content, combined textual and multimedia information retrieval, semantic -web, MPEG-7 and MPEG-21 standards, user interfaces and human factors. In this paper, recent advances in content-based analysis, indexing and retrieval of digital media within the SCHEMA Network are presented. These advances will be integrated in the SCHEMA module-based, expandable reference system

Analyses of Generic Dairy Advertising, 1984-97

Generic advertising raised fluid milk sales about 6.0 percent, or 18.1 billion pounds, between September 1984 and September 1997. Sales of cheese rose by about 6.8 billion pounds (milk equivalent) in the same period because of increased generic advertising. An assessment of 15 cents per hundredweight of milk sold commercially, mandated by the Dairy and Tobacco Adjustment Act of 1983, funded the advertising. Activities of the National Fluid Milk Processor Promotion Board also contributed to increased milk sales over the past year. Gross returns to dairy farmers between September 1984 and September 1997 were estimated to increase by $3.44 for each dollar spent on generic advertising.cheese, fluid milk, advertising, demand, entry, exit, distributed lag, econometrics, simulation, elasticities, Milk Processor Education Program, Livestock Production/Industries, Marketing,

A REGIONAL MODELING STRUCTURE FOR ASSESSING MANURE MANAGEMENT POLICIES: APPLICATION TO THE CHESAPEAKE BAY WATERSHED

A modeling framework addresses manure management policies within the Chesapeake Bay watershed. Policy focus is on manure-land application at agronomic rates, as proposed under the EPA/USDA Unified Strategy. Manure-nutrient flows are assessed subject to assimilative capacity of farmland. National data bases and GIS coverages facilitate model transferability to other watersheds.manure management, confined livestock operations, regional optimization, Chesapeake Bay, Environmental Economics and Policy, Livestock Production/Industries,

MODELING MULTI-FARM SPATIAL INTERDEPENDENCE USING NATIONAL DATA COVERAGES: A REGIONAL APPLICATION TO MANURE MANAGEMENT

A regional modeling framework using national data series is developed to estimate the net cost of land applying manure under new federal guidelines for manure management. The model, applied to the Chesapeake Bay watershed, integrates GIS spatial data within an optimization model to generate manure hauling distances and costs.Livestock Production/Industries,

Dispersion of Klauder's temporally stable coherent states for the hydrogen atom

We study the dispersion of the "temporally stable" coherent states for the hydrogen atom introduced by Klauder. These are states which under temporal evolution by the hydrogen atom Hamiltonian retain their coherence properties. We show that in the hydrogen atom such wave packets do not move quasi-classically; i.e., they do not follow with no or little dispersion the Keplerian orbits of the classical electron. The poor quantum-classical correspondence does not improve in the semiclassical limit.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figure

Judges, Prosecutors, Jurors, and Organized Labor: Four Perspectives of Corporate Citizenship

Some people argue that the civil jury is in decline. They argue that it\u27s not really so important to be focusing on jurors and jurors\u27 views about corporate responsibility as it might have been in prior times. I want to raise some arguments in favor of the continuing importance of the civil jury. First of all, the cases that juries try may be very important cases in terms of the company and in terms of the role of the company vis-a-vis government regulation. Jurors are symbolic representatives of the public in the courtroom. Finding out what juries do when they look at the facts of the case, a missing memo, or a corporate executive explaining a memo, can give the parties an idea about what laypeople generally think about corporate action. Most important, the fact that we have a jury in some cases makes a difference in all the rest of the cases in the civil docket that settle rather than go to trial. Civil jury trial verdicts send signals to lawyers, judges, and companies about how the public perceives corporate behavior. So, in my view, it\u27s important to take a look at how juries think about issues of corporate responsibility in part to get a sense of public understanding of it and in part to understand how a jury might decide a specific case. From one perspective, the civil jury is seen as a modern-day Robin Hood. The civil jury is thought to be extraordinarily pro-plaintiff and quite anti-business. It is said to operate with a deep pockets approach. I put some of these beliefs about the jury to the test. In a nutshell, I found that the widespread beliefs about the civil jury in business cases are nearly as mythic as Robin Hood. In contrast to prevailing beliefs, the jurors I interviewed surprised me by being rather tough on plaintiffs who bring cases against businesses and corporations. Second, and this was also something of a surprise, I didn\u27t find a lot of anti-business prejudice. I asked participants in all of my studies a question about the appropriate standard for corporate responsibility: Should corporations be held to a higher standard of responsibility compared to individuals? I found that a number of people believed in similar treatment for individuals and corporations, with a substantial number also believing that corporations should be held to a higher standard. Jurors do treat corporations differently, but not for the reasons commonly believed. Jurors don\u27t treat corporations differently because they are overly sympathetic to plaintiffs, or because they have some sort of pre-existing animus against the corporate form or business in society. Rather, it appears that a corporation\u27s size, potential impact, organizational resources, or role responsibility encourage jurors to impose a higher level of responsibility

A Review of the "Digital Turn" in the New Literacy Studies

Digital communication has transformed literacy practices and assumed great importance in the functioning of workplace, recreational, and community contexts. This article reviews a decade of empirical work of the New Literacy Studies, identifying the shift toward research of digital literacy applications. The article engages with the central theoretical, methodological, and pragmatic challenges in the tradition of New Literacy Studies, while highlighting the distinctive trends in the digital strand. It identifies common patterns across new literacy practices through cross-comparisons of ethnographic research in digital media environments. It examines ways in which this research is taking into account power and pedagogy in normative contexts of literacy learning using the new media. Recommendations are given to strengthen the links between New Literacy Studies research and literacy curriculum, assessment, and accountability in the 21st century