EMERGING AGRICULTURAL WATER CONSERVATION PRICE INCENTIVES

Recent Bureau of Reclamation policies encourage or require irrigation districts to adopt price conservation incentives. Using unpublished survey results and new district-level information, we examine the rate structures and incentives of district water pricing. Our findings reveal that the majority of districts use fixed charges independent of the quantity of water delivered and that most conservation rate structures recently implemented are designed so that the first tier quantity allocation satisfies most crop water needs. Although other district management objectives may be satisfied, price incentives are diminished or nonexistent. The question of whether conservation is being achieved is tautological and depends on how each district defines conservation.Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

IRRIGATION DISTRICT ADOPTION OF WATER CONSERVING RATE STRUCTURES

A binary choice model was used to identify the attributes that influence irrigation district adoption of conservation rate structures. Using principles of rate design and irrigation district administration as a framework, measures of irrigation district rate structure objectives and physical and economic conditions were developed. The factors investigated characterize the constraints under which districts operate, value and cost of water, quantity of water delivered and revenue risk for districts. Rate structure adoption was predicted with over 75% accuracy. Both significant and non-significant factors are key to understanding rate choice. Districts were more likely to adopt conservation rate pricing when the cost of water to farmers was greater, higher value crops were grown and in areas with warmer and longer growing seasons. These conditions may be interpreted as reflecting the presence of greater opportunity costs in allocating water between low and higher valued uses. Conservation rate pricing was less likely to be adopted by districts where the proportion of alfalfa to total acreage was higher and with higher per acre deliveries of water. Somewhat surprisingly, annual variation in water deliveries (which should increase the risk of revenue shortfalls) and size of the district (larger districts being more sophisticated) have little bearing on the type of rate structure adopted.Environmental Economics and Policy, Land Economics/Use, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

EVALUATING THE EFFECTIVENESS OF CONSERVATION WATER-PRICING PROGRAMS: REPLY

Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

EVALUATING THE EFFECTIVENESS OF CONSERVATION WATER-PRICING PROGRAMS

Charging farmers increasing block prices for irrigation deliveries is advocated as a means of encouraging agricultural water conservation in the West. We formulated a model of a hypothetical irrigated river basin to investigate the hyrdro-economic circumstances in which such pricing leads to water conservation. Our results indicate that increasing delivery prices may encourage irrigators to make adjustments with countervailing impacts on consumptive water use and conservation. Whether these countervailing impacts combine to conserve water or increase its consumptive use must be resolved empirically. An alternative resolution of this ambiguity is to assess water prices in terms of consumptive use.Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Densities and phase equilibria of hydrogen, propane and vegetable oil mixtures. Experimental data and thermodynamic modeling

Heterogeneous catalytic gas-liquid reactions are intensified when carried out in the homogenous fluid phase by means of a supercritical co-solvent. For instance, supercritical propane is used to enhance yield in the hydrogenation of vegetable oils. Besides phase equilibrium knowledge, volumetric information is also needed to elucidate kinetic mechanisms and design continuous supercritical reactors. In this work, we report new experimental PvT data of the reactive mixture H2+sunflower oil+propane using the isochoric method. In addition, the phase equilibria and PvT data are modeled with the GCA and RK-PR equations of state, respectively. The isochoric method not only provides PvT information under the reaction conditions, but also the reactive system compressibility, key variable to attain enhanced transport properties in the supercritical reactors.Fil: Hegel, Pablo Ezequiel. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Bahía Blanca. Planta Piloto de Ingeniería Química. Universidad Nacional del Sur. Planta Piloto de Ingeniería Química; ArgentinaFil: Cotabarren, Natalia Soledad. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Bahía Blanca. Planta Piloto de Ingeniería Química. Universidad Nacional del Sur. Planta Piloto de Ingeniería Química; ArgentinaFil: Brignole, Esteban Alberto. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Bahía Blanca. Planta Piloto de Ingeniería Química. Universidad Nacional del Sur. Planta Piloto de Ingeniería Química; ArgentinaFil: Pereda, Selva. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Bahía Blanca. Planta Piloto de Ingeniería Química. Universidad Nacional del Sur. Planta Piloto de Ingeniería Química; Argentina. University of KwaZulu-Natal; Sudáfric

Increasing funding for Global Mental Health by drawing lessons from the case of HIV/AIDS

Objective: Global Mental Health (GMH) is the field of global health dealing with the spectrum of mental, neurological and substance use disorders (MNS disorders), often with a focus on low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). While MNS disorders constitute a consider-able burden of disease, investments in the field lag behind, creating a severe funding gap. In contrast, the Human Immunodeficiency Virus/Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (HIV/AIDS) epidemic has seen unprecedented commitment, especially in terms of funding. Consequently, this paper examines the research question: “How can the increase in global funding for HIV/AIDS over the past three decades serve as an example to draw lessons for increasing GMH funding in LMICs?”.Methods: Based on the ‘Theory of Lesson-drawing’ by Rose (1991) two programs, the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (the Global Fund), were analyzed, and a conceptual model cre-ated for each program. The conceptual model, in addition to a comprehensive literature review were the base to draw learnings from the fight against the HIV/AIDS epidemic and its funding. Learnings from HIV/AIDS were applied to GMH by giving a prospective evalua-tion of the transferability and desirability of the analyzed programs and their outcomes.Results: A concrete next step that should be taken in order to increase funding and imple-mentation of high-quality mental health care in LMICs includes the establishment of a GMH partnership which represents diverse constituencies and expertise. Among other things, emphasis should be put on promoting strong civil-society and community involvement. Ad-ditionally, a multi-facetted advocacy and awareness campaign to increase traditional donor contributions, innovative financing mechanisms and domestic resources for GMH should be launched.Conclusion: Lessons from the increase in global funding for HIV/AIDS and how it was achieved can be drawn in the areas of funding generation, raising political and social com-mitment and multi-stakeholder collaboration. Yet, the analysis has also shown the potential pitfalls when overall health system strengthening efforts and primary health-care integration are not sufficiently addressed.Acknowledgments: This paper was produced as a final thesis to acquire the academic de-gree BSc International Health Sciences at Fulda University of Applied Sciences. I would like to extend my gratitude to Prof. Dr. Dr. Jens Holst for his support throughout my studies and this thesis supervision, together with Prof. Dr. Kai Michelsen. Moreover, I would like to thank Eric Daniel Sander for his invaluable thoughts and input during the writing process, as well as those who supported me with corrections and proof-reading

High-dimensional quantum dynamics of adsorption and desorption of H2_2 at Cu(111)

We performed high-dimensional quantum dynamical calculations of the dissociative adsorption and associative desorption of hydrogen on Cu(111). The potential energy surface (PES) is obtained from density functional theory calculations. Two regimes of dynamics are found, at low energies sticking is determined by the minimum energy barrier, at high energies by the distribution of barrier heights. Experimental results are well-reproduced qualitatively, but some quantitative discrepancies are identified as well.Comment: 4 two column pages, revtex, 4 figures, to appear in Phys. Rev. Let

Opaque Service Virtualisation: A Practical Tool for Emulating Endpoint Systems

Large enterprise software systems make many complex interactions with other services in their environment. Developing and testing for production-like conditions is therefore a very challenging task. Current approaches include emulation of dependent services using either explicit modelling or record-and-replay approaches. Models require deep knowledge of the target services while record-and-replay is limited in accuracy. Both face developmental and scaling issues. We present a new technique that improves the accuracy of record-and-replay approaches, without requiring prior knowledge of the service protocols. The approach uses Multiple Sequence Alignment to derive message prototypes from recorded system interactions and a scheme to match incoming request messages against prototypes to generate response messages. We use a modified Needleman-Wunsch algorithm for distance calculation during message matching. Our approach has shown greater than 99% accuracy for four evaluated enterprise system messaging protocols. The approach has been successfully integrated into the CA Service Virtualization commercial product to complement its existing techniques.Comment: In Proceedings of the 38th International Conference on Software Engineering Companion (pp. 202-211). arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1510.0142