AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS OF HONEYBEE POLLINATION MARKETS

Pollination by honeybees plays an important role in modern agriculture. Some crops are greatly dependent on honeybees (almonds, apples, avocados, blueberries, and cherries are examples) while the yields and quality of other crops are significantly enhanced by honeybee pollination. The importance of understanding pollination markets has increased recently due to changes brought on by the twin scourges of Varroa and tracheal mites. Both are infestations of feral and domestic bees that imply greater future reliance on domesticated bees at higher cost. In the United States a complex market has evolved that connects itinerant beekeepers and their bee colonies with farmers who demand their services. While the fields of entomology and crop science have developed a large literature on general principles of beekeeping and its application to particular crops, there has been little economic analysis of pollination markets. In this paper, we begin to remedy this lack of attention by analyzing an extensive panel data set of individual pollination transactions for Oregon beekeepers. The Oregon panel constitutes a considerably larger and richer data set on pollination markets than the data set examined by Cheung (1973), which is our only empirical precedent. Using cross-sectional time series regression models, we find results that are consistent with Cheungs earlier findings on the consistency of pollination market outcomes with economic theory. Fees charged for placing colonies on crops that yield marketable honey are found to be less than for crops that yield no honey income to the beekeeper: the pollination fee for crops that produce honey is about $17 per colony less than for crops that produce no honey. Pollination fees also vary over time in response to changes in both crop prices and honey prices. Because bees are paid according to their value of marginal product in the production of crops, pollination fees should vary positively with crop prices. We find that a ten percent increase in crop prices causes pollination fees to increase by about$.40 per colony. With respect to honey prices, we find that a ten percent increase is estimated to decrease pollination fees by about $2.50 per colony. This estimated effect is a previously unexplored link between the now-defunct honey program and its longstanding public policy rationale, the encouragement of honeybee pollination. Insofar as the honey program successfully maintained the price of honey above levels that would otherwise have been observed, our analysis suggests that elimination of the program has resulted in a reduction in pollination services and an increase in pollination fees.Marketing,

Measuring device Patent

Expulsion and measuring device for determining quantity of liquid in tank under conditions of weightlessnes

Impact of the JOBS Act and crowdfunding on the commercial real estate market

Thesis (S.M. in Real Estate Development)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Program in Real Estate Development in Conjunction with the Center for Real Estate, 2013.This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections.Cataloged from student-submitted PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (pages 145-152).This thesis systematically evaluates how rapid developments in the nascent crowdfunding industry, combined with recent regulatory changes, will impact the commercial real estate markets. The phenomenon of crowdfunding, defined as raising numerous small amounts of capital from a large number of people, or the crowd, has been accelerated by the recent passage of the Jumpstart Our Businesses Start-up Act (JOBS Act). The JOBS Act legalizes and facilitates the sale of securities used to crowdfund equity and debt investments, giving rise to a proliferation of new crowdfund entrants in various business sectors, including the commercial real estate arena. This thesis first gives a detailed analysis of the JOBS Act legislation and how it alters the current regulatory and business landscape. The focus then turns to the commercial real estate markets, tracing the evolution of commercial real estate as an institutional asset class and the influence large, institutional investors such as pension funds and real estate investment trusts exert on this market. The authors also examine the impact on the average investor and conclude that these large institutional investors have bifurcated the market, leaving the average investor unable to gain exposure to "hard" commercial real estate assets. The authors then link the research to crowdfunding, first with a chapter on the emerging and dynamic crowdfund industry in general, and then on specific commercial real estate crowdfunding sites, also discussing sites related to this sector. The authors strengthen this primary research with field investigations, conducting interviews with real estate developers, investors, and securities lawyers specializing in regulatory law. They concurrently surveyed 138 well-vetted real estate professionals (the MIT Center for Real Estate alumni). The thesis then projects the size of the potential dollar value of the commercial real estate crowdfund market based on existing value and turnover in the commercial real estate markets. The final chapter imagines what this market will look like in 2015; concluding that crowdfunding will have a profound effect on the commercial real estate market.by John R. McDonald and Bonnie L. Burgett.S.M.in Real Estate Developmen

Newly Discovered RR Lyrae Stars in the SDSSXPanXSTARRS1XCatalina Footprint

We present the detection of 6,371 RR Lyrae (RRL) stars distributed across ~14,000 deg^2 of the sky from the combined data of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System 1 (PS1), and the second photometric catalogue from the Catalina Survey (CSDR2), out of these, ~2,021 RRL stars (~572 RRab and 1,449 RRc) are new discoveries. The RRL stars have heliocentric distances in the 4--28 kpc distance range. RRL-like color cuts from the SDSS and variability cuts from the PS1 are used to cull our candidate list. We then use the CSDR2 multi-epoch data to refine our sample. Periods were measured using the Analysis of Variance technique while the classification process is performed with the Template Fitting Method in addition to the visual inspection of the light curves. A cross-match of our RRL star discoveries with previous published catalogs of RRL stars yield completeness levels of ~50% for both RRab and RRc stars, and an efficiency of ~99% and ~87% for RRab and RRc stars, respectively. We show that our method for selecting RRL stars allows us to recover halo structures. The full lists of all the RRL stars are made publicly available.Comment: 14 pages, 11 figures. Accepted 2014 March 30. Received 2014 March 12; in original form 2013 November 2

A cost-effective adverse-weather precision guidance system

This SAND report documents the results of an LDRD project undertaken to study the accuracy of terrain-aided navigation coupled with highly accurate topographic maps. A revolutionary new mapping technology, interferometric synthetic aperture radar (IFSAR), has the ability to make terrain maps of extremely high accuracy and spatial resolution, more than an order of magnitude better than currently available DMA map products. Using a laser altimeter and the Sandia Labs Twin Otter Radar Testbed, fix accuracies of less than 3 meters CEP were obtained over urban and natural terrain regions

Short Term Results of Three Modalities of Periodontal Treatment

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/141914/1/jper0131.pd

Can an Optical Plankton Counter Produce Reasonable Estimates of Zooplankton Abundance and Biovolume in Water With High Detritus?

The Optical Plankton Counter (OPC) has been used in oceanic and fresh waters to estimate zooplankton abundance and biovolume. However, it is not clear whether the OPC can produce accurate estimates of zooplankton abundance and biovolume in waters with high detritus. In order to test the capability of the OPC to estimate zooplankton abundance and biovolume in Chesapeake Bay, two sets of laboratory experiments were conducted using water with high detritus concentrations collected from the upper Choptank estuary of Chesapeake Bay and laboratory cultured Artemia. Our results suggest that the OPC is able to produce accurate estimates of zooplankton biovolume after correcting for the influence of background detritus in all the detritus concentrations used, but accurate estimates of zooplankton abundance only in water with background detritus \u3c100 particles l-1. The relationship between light attenuation and OPC background particle concentrations provides a useful way to estimate OPC background particle concentrations when direct OPC background particle measurements are not available. Light attenuation corrected OPC particle abundance and particle volume gave accurate estimates of zooplankton abundance and biovolume. However, the accuracy of the corrected OPC measurements by the estimated background particle concentrations was not as high as the corrected OPC measurements by the direct background particle measurements

Results of Periodontal Therapy Related to Tooth Type

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/142120/1/jper0270.pd