Inequity aversion and team incentives

We study how the optimal contract in team production is affected when employees are averse to inequity in the sense described by Fehr and Schmidt (1999). By designing a reward scheme that creates inequity of the desired equilibrium, the employer can induce employees to perform effort at a lower total wage cost than when they are not inequity averse. We also show that the optimal output choice might change when employees are inequity averse. Finally, we show that an employer can gain, and never lose, by designing a contract that accounts for inequity aversion, even if employees have standard preferences

The four food systems in developing countries and the challenges of modern supply chain inclusion for organic small-holders

To promote developmental objectives, such as growth, food security and improvement of the livelihoods of the rural poor, a greater understanding of the four food systems prevalent in the South is of great importance. Inclusion of small-holder farmers into the various food systems depends to a large extent on the capacity of the intermediaries and their ability to cope with both internal as well as external constraints while linking farmers to the agro-supply chains. The greater discrepancy between the intermediary’s own social and human capital resource base as well as the supporting resource environment, and the level of requirements demanded from agro-food systems; the greater constraints the stakeholders along the supply chain will encounter and the more difficult the inclusion of small-holder farmers will be

The partition function zeroes of quantum critical points

The Lee–Yang theorem for the zeroes of the partition function is not strictly applicable to quantum systems because the zeroes are defined in units of the fugacity ehΔτ, and the Euclidean-time lattice spacing Δτ can be divergent in the infrared (IR). We recently presented analytic arguments describing how a new space-Euclidean time zeroes expansion can be defined, which reproduces Lee and Yang's scaling but avoids the unresolved branch points associated with the breaking of nonlocal symmetries such as Parity. We now present a first numerical analysis for this new zeroes approach for a quantum spin chain system. We use our scheme to quantify the renormalization group flow of the physical lattice couplings to the IR fixed point of this system. We argue that the generic Finite-Size Scaling (FSS) function of our scheme is identically the entanglement entropy of the lattice partition function and, therefore, that we are able to directly extract the central charge, c, of the quantum spin chain system using conformal predictions for the scaling of the entanglement entropy

A computational approach for a fluid queue driven by a truncated birth-death process

In this paper, we consider a fluid queue driven by a truncated birth-death process with general birth and death rates. We find the equilibrium distribution of the content of the fluid buffer by computing the eigenvalues and eigenvectors of an associated real tridiagonal matrix. We provide efficient procedures which avoid numerical instability, to a greater extent, arising in a straightforward calculation of these quantities by standard procedures. In particular, we reduce the order of the matrix by one and show that this reduced matrix can be made symmetric and hence we could make use of the stable and efficient method of bisection to compute the eigenvalues. The effectiveness of these procedures is illustrated through tables and graphs. \u

Investigation of attractive forces between PECVD silicon nitride microstructures and an oxidized silicon substrate

A troublesome phenomenon encountered during the realization of free-standing microstructures, for example, beams, diaphragms and micromotors, is that initially released structures afterwards stick to the substrate. This effect may occur during wafer drying after the etching process has been completed, as well as during normal operation as soon as released structures come into contact with the substrate. In this paper the most important types of attractive forces are discussed with respect to their possible influence on the performance of micromachined structures. It is concluded that the main reason for sticking of PECVD silicon nitride micromachined structures is adsorption of water molecules. The water molecules, adsorbed on both surfaces, attract each other as soon as the surfaces come into contact. It is shown that a chemical surface modification, in order to achieve hydrophobic surfaces, is an effective method for avoiding adsorption of water, and therefore reduces sticking. Sticking of micromachined structures during drying is reduced by rinsing with a non-polar liquid before wafer drying

Big hART at John Northcott Estate: Community, Health and the Arts

This paper considers the work of Big hART, a social impact of the Arts company, in their residency entitled Northcott Narratives over three and half years at John Northcott Estate, a public housing estate in Sydney. During this time Big hART used arts practice to engage tenants, strengthen their creative dispositions, and build relationships between tenants and a range of different communities. Northcott Narratives used a variety of multi-modal forms with tenants to inquire into, and then express ideas in relation to issues that confront them. These ideas are presented as social policy recommendations. The power and benefits of this form of arts practice along with the tensions and challenges are revealed. The paper adds to the developing discourse in relation to community cultural development

Dolphin-inspired target detection for sonar and radar

Gas bubbles in the ocean are produced by breaking waves, rainfall, methane seeps, exsolution, and a range of biological processes including decomposition, photosynthesis, respiration and digestion. However one biological process that produces particularly dense clouds of large bubbles, is bubble netting. This is practiced by several species of cetacean. Given their propensity to use acoustics, and the powerful acoustical attenuation and scattering that bubbles can cause, the relationship between sound and bubble nets is intriguing. It has been postulated that humpback whales produce ‘walls of sound’ at audio frequencies in their bubble nets, trapping prey. Dolphins, on the other hand, use high frequency acoustics for echolocation. This begs the question of whether, in producing bubble nets, they are generating echolocation clutter that potentially helps prey avoid detection (as their bubble nets would do with man-made sonar), or whether they have developed sonar techniques to detect prey within such bubble nets and distinguish it from clutter. Possible sonar schemes that could detect targets in bubble clouds are proposed, and shown to work both in the laboratory and at sea. Following this, similar radar schemes are proposed for the detection of buried explosives and catastrophe victims, and successful laboratory tests are undertaken

The green and blue water footprint of paper products: methodological considerations and quantification

For a hardcopy of this report, printed in the Netherlands, an estimated 200 litres of water have been used. Water is required during different stages in the production process, from growing wood to processing pulp into the final consumer product. Most of the water is consumed in the forestry stage, where water consumption refers to the forest evapotranspiration. The water footprint during the manufacturing processes in the industrial stage consists of evaporation and contamination of ground- and surface water. In this report we assess water requirements for producing paper products using different types of wood and in different parts of the world. We quantify the combined green and blue water footprint of paper by considering the full supply chain; we do not include the grey water footprint in this study. The water footprint of printing and writing paper is estimated to be between 300 and 2600 m3/ton (2-13 litres for an A4 sheet). These figures account for the paper recovery rates as they currently are. The exact amount depends on the sort and origin of the paper used for printing. Without recovery, the global average water footprint of paper would be much larger; by using recovered paper an estimated 40% is saved globally. Further saving can be achieved by increasing the recovery percentages worldwide. For countries with a low recovered paper utilization rate a lot of room for reduction still remains. Some countries such as the Netherlands, Spain and Germany already use a lot of recovered paper. In addition, the global water footprint of paper can be reduced by choosing production sites and wood types that are more water-efficient. The findings presented in this report can be helpful in identifying the opportunities to reduce water footprints of paper consumption. This report also shows that the use of recovered paper may be very helpful in reducing water footprints