The space exploration initiative. Operational efficiency panel space-basing technology requirements

The topics covered include the following: (1) space basing technology requirements sources; (2) orbit transfer vehicle (OTV) processing heritage; (3) ground processing progression to space processing; (4) technology requirements for space based OTV servicing and maintenance; (5) design and development schedule for OTV's and OTV accommodations/ support hardware; (6) cryogenic technology test program development; (7) cryogenic propellant transfer, storage, and reliquefaction management summary; (8) propellant transfer technology analysis and ground testing; (8) OTV propellant storage depot development critical scaling relationships; (9) flight experiment options; (10) OTV maintenance; (11) automated fault detection/ isolation and system checkout summary; (12) engine replacement; (13) alternative docking operation; (14) OTV/payload integration; and (15) technology criticality and capability assessment. This document is presented in viewgraph form

Potential of duckweed for swine wastewater nutrient removal and biomass valorisation through anaerobic co-digestion

Over the last decades, phytodepuration has been considered an efficient technology to treat wastewaters. The present study reports a bench scale depuration assay of swine wastewater using Lemna minor. The highest observed growth rate obtained in swine wastewater was 3.1 ± 0.3 gDW m−2 day−1 and the highest nitrogen and phosphorus uptake were 140 mg N m−2 day−1 and 3.47 mg P m−2 day−1, respectively. The chemical oxygen demand removal efficiency in the swine wastewater assay was 58.9 ± 2.0%. Furthermore, the biomass valorisation by anaerobic co-digestion with swine wastewater was assessed. Results showed a clear improvement in specific methane production rate (around 40%) when compared to mono-substrate anaerobic digestion. The highest methane specific production, 131.0 ± 0.8 mL CH4 g−1 chemical oxygen demand, was obtained with a mixture containing 100 g of duckweed per liter of pre-treated swine wastewater. The water-nutrients-energy nexus approach showed to be promising for swine waste management.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Empirical econometric evaluation of alternative methods of dealing with missing values in investment climate surveys

Investment climate Surveys are valuable instruments that improve our understanding of the economic, social, political, and institutional factors determining economic growth, particularly in emerging and transition economies. However, at the same time, they have to overcome some difficult issues related to the quality of the information provided; measurement errors, outlier observations, and missing data that are frequently found in these datasets. This paper discusses the applicability of recent procedures to deal with missing observations in investment climate surveys. In particular, it presents a simple replacement mechanism -- for application in models with a large number of explanatory variables -- which in turn is a proxy of two methods: multiple imputations and an export-import algorithm. The performance of this method in the context of total factor productivity estimation in extended production functions is evaluated using investment climate surveys from four countries: India, South Africa, Tanzania, and Turkey. It is shown that the method is very robust and performs reasonably well even under different assumptions on the nature of the mechanism generating missing data.E-Business,Statistical&Mathematical Sciences,Economic Theory&Research,Information Security&Privacy,Information and Records Management

Assessing the impact of infrastructure quality on firm productivity in Africa : cross-country comparisons based on investment climate surveys from 1999 to 2005

This paper provides a systematic, empirical assessment of the impact of infrastructure quality on the total factor productivity (TFP) of African manufacturing firms. This measure is understood to include quality in the provision of customs clearance, energy, water, sanitation, transportation, telecommunications, and information and communications technology (ICT). Microeconometric techniques to investment climate surveys (ICSs) of 26 African countries are carried out in different years during the period 2002–6, making country-specific evaluations of the impact of investment climate (IC) quality on aggregate TFP, average TFP, and allocative efficiency. For each country the impact is evaluated based on 10 different productivity measures. Results are robust once controlled for observable fixed effects (red tape, corruption and crime, finance, innovation and labor skills, etc.) obtained from the ICSs. African countries are ranked according to several indices: per capita income, ease of doing business, firm perceptions of growth bottlenecks, and the concept of demeaned productivity (Olley and Pakes 1996). The countries are divided into two blocks: high-income-growth and low-income-growth. Infrastructure quality has a low impact on TFP in countries of the first block and a high (negative) impact in countries of the second. There is significant heterogeneity in the individual infrastructure elements affecting countries from both blocks. Poor-quality electricity provision affects mainly poor countries, whereas problems dealing with customs while importing or exporting affects mainly faster-growing countries. Losses from transport interruptions affect mainly slower-growing countries. Water outages affect mainly slower-growing countries. There is also some heterogeneity among countries in the infrastructure determinants of the allocative efficiency of African firms.Transport Economics Policy&Planning,Economic Theory&Research,E-Business,Labor Policies,Infrastructure Economics

Assessing the impact of infrastructure quality on firm productivity in Africa: Cross-country comparisons based on investment climate surveys from 1999 to 2005

This paper provides a systematic, empirical assessment of the impact of infrastructure quality on the total factor productivity (TFP) of African manufacturing firms. This measure is understood to include quality in the provision of customs clearance, energy, water, sanitation, transportation, telecommunications, and information and communications technology (ICT). We apply microeconometric techniques to investment climate surveys (ICSs) of 26 African countries carried out in different years during the period 2002–6, making country-specific evaluations of the impact of investment climate (IC) quality on aggregate TFP, average TFP, and allocative efficiency. For each country we evaluated this impact based on 10 different productivity measures. Results are robust once we control for observable fixed effects (red tape, corruption and crime, finance, innovation and labor skills, etc.) obtained from the ICSs. We ranked African countries according to several indices: per capita income, ease of doing business, firm perceptions of growth bottlenecks, and the concept of demeaned productivity (Olley and Pakes 1996). We divided countries into two blocks: high-incomegrowth and low-income-growth. Infrastructure quality has a low impact on TFP in countries of the first block and a high (negative) impact in countries of the second. We found heterogeneity in the individual infrastructure elements affecting countries from both blocks. Poor-quality electricity provision affects mainly poor countries, whereas problems dealing with customs while importing or exporting affects mainly faster-growing countries. Losses from transport interruptions affect mainly slower-growing countries. Water outages affect mainly slower-growing countries. There is also some heterogeneity among countries in the infrastructure determinants of the allocative efficiency of African firms.Africa, Infrastructure, Total factor productivity, Investment climate, Competitiveness,

Investment climate assessment based on demean Olley and Pakes decompositions: methodology and application to Turkey's investment climate survey

Most empirical studies show strong detrimental evidence that regulatory, and administrative, barriers to entry have on productivity and on firm growth. In this paper we evaluate and measure the total factor productivity (TFP) impacts of having; low quality physical infrastructures (electricity, telecommunications, transport, customs, etc.) and bad social infrastructures (rules of law, informality, corruption, etc.). We suggest evaluating the impact on average productivity (TFP) and on the allocative efficiency of production among firms based on several versions of the Olley and Pakes (O&P) decompositions. We evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of each the O&P decomposition in terms of their IC explanatory power. Once we have measured those IC impacts, we compare them with other sources of empirical information obtained from firm’s perceptions on main bottlenecks for firm growth and from doing business reports of the World Bank (2007). For the econometric analysis, we use firm level data bases from Turkey’s manufacturing sector based on Investment Climate surveys (ICs) done by the World Bank. These ICs are done in many other developing countries and therefore we propose to make crosscountry comparisons based on a new demean concept of TFP that also reduces the heterogeneity if using several robust productivity measures within each country