Movement Restrictions, Agricultural Trade and Price Transmission between Israel and the West Bank

Imposing military security measures as a consequence of violent conflict may lead to depressing economic effects for all parties involved. One implication is the limited ability to conduct trade, which in turn brings about welfare losses to the economic agents involved and may threat livelihoods and food security. This paper focuses on the consequences of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as a prominent example, on bilateral agricultural trade and price dynamics. For this purpose, we consider high-frequency wholesale price data and data on movement restrictions (complete closures) which were imposed by the Israeli Defense Forces in the West Bank between May 2007 and December 2008. In particular, we study the price dynamics of cucumbers and apples, two crops which play an important role for bilateral trade. The spatial and temporal price relationships are assessed using a cointegration framework. Specifically, we use a novel multivariate exogenous regime-switching vector error correction model and employ a recently developed extension of Johansen’s cointegration estimation method. We find the wholesale markets of cucumbers and apples in Hebron and Tel Aviv to be integrated. For both products, the price differentials between both markets quickly adjust to short run deviations from the long-run price equilibria. The regime-dependent model suggests that the movement restrictions effectively cut off both markets from each other temporarily.Agricultural trade, cointegration, Israel, regime-dependent error correction, price transmission, Palestinian territories., International Relations/Trade, Marketing, Political Economy,

Reentrance of disorder in the anisotropic shuriken Ising model

For a material to order upon cooling is common sense. What is more seldom is for disorder to reappear at lower temperature, which is known as reentrant behavior. Such resurgence of disorder has been observed in a variety of systems, ranging from Rochelle salts to nematic phases in liquid crystals. Frustration is often a key ingredient for reentrance mechanisms. Here we shall study a frustrated model, namely the anisotropic shuriken lattice, which offers a natural setting to explore an extension of the notion of reentrance between magnetic disordered phases. By tuning the anisotropy of the lattice, we open a window in the phase diagram where magnetic disorder prevails down to zero temperature. In this region, the competition between multiple disordered ground states gives rise to a double crossover where both the low- and high-temperature regimes are less correlated than the intervening classical spin liquid. This reentrance of disorder is characterized by an entropy plateau, a multi-step Curie law crossover and a rather complex diffuse scattering in the static structure factor. Those results are confirmed by complementary numerical and analytical methods: Monte Carlo simulations, Husimi-tree calculations and an exact decoration-iteration transformation.Comment: 16 pages, 13 figure

Tribological behaviour of polyalphaolefins: wear and rolling contact fatigue tests

Polyalphaolefin fluids are gaining rapid acceptance as high-performance lubricants and functional fluids because they have certain inherent, and highly desirable, characteristics relative to mineral oils. One of these characteristics is their low toxicity. It combined with excellent viscometrics and lubricity, have made low-viscosity PAO fluids an important component in lubricant formulations. Typical data found in product specifications for lubricants are the kinematic viscosity and the viscosity index. These values do not give enough information to choose the optimum lubricant for a lubricated contact. In mechanical systems take place rolling, sliding and rolling/sliding contacts, therefore lubricants have to work the best possible in these operation conditions. In this study are experimentally determined the L50, L10 and Weibull´s slope () of polyalphaolefins with two different viscosities. This test was made on a four-ball machine (Stanhope Seta). Wear test also was made on a four-ball tester (Roxana) in order to measure the wear scar diameter (WSD), and the flash temperature parameter (FTP). Lubricants were identified through infrared spectroscopy, and ball´s pittings were observed with SEM

Analisis dan Perancangan Sistem Pendukung Keputusan Penentuan Lokasi Penambahan Bts (Base Transceiver Station) Smartfren Area Kota Jambi Menggunakan Metode Saw (Simple Additive Weighting) (Studi Kasus :Kantor Smartfren Jambi)

Perkembangan teknologi saat ini semakin meningkat, salah satunya adalah teknologi telekomunikasi. Hampir semua orang memiliki suatu perangkat jaringan telekomunikasi. Hal ini mendorong teknologi telekomunikasi untuk semakin berkembang pesat dalam memberikan kemudahan pada manusia untuk berkomunikasi dimanapun berada. Smartfren adalah operator selular provider 4G LTE Advanced untuk internet, handphone dan smartphone Android-IOS yang lebih cepat terjangkau dan dapat diandalkan. Smartfren berusaha untuk mempertahankan pasar agar tidak kalah bersaing dengan media telekomunikasi lainnya, salah satunya yaitu dengan memperbanyak BTS didaerah yang belum mendapatkan sinyal Smartfren. Area yang menjadi targetnya mulai dari kota besar hingga daerah yang mulai berkembang. Jambi termasuk daerah yang menjadi target penambahan BTS Smartfren. Kurangnya jumlah BTS mengakibatkan lemahnya jaringan Smartfren yang ada di Jambi. Dari latar belakang tersebut, sistem pendukung keputusan dengan menggunakan metode Simple Additive  Weighting (SAW) cocok untuk dikembangkan dalam sistem  ini.  Sistem  ini  akan  mempermudah  dalam menentukan lokasi penambahan  BTS  yang  tepat  dan  akan  mempercepat perhitungan nilai untuk menentukan lokasi mana  yang  lebih  berpotensi  agar  semua  wilayah dapat terjangkau sinyalnya

Perancangan Sistem Informasi Penilaian Kinerja Dosen Berbasis Web (Studi Kasus : Universitas Adiwangsa Jambi)

Di kota Jambi saat ini telah banyak berdirinya beberapa perguruan Tinggi Swasta baik dari Sekolah Tinggi, Institue, maupun Universitas. Salah satunya adalah Universitas Adiwangsa Jambi merupakan salah satu perguruan Tinggi Swasta di Kota Jambi, yang telah mengalami Perubahan bentuk dari Sekolah Tinggi Ilmu Kesehatan Prima Jambi. Universitas Adiwangsa Jambi memiliki beberapa Fakultas diantaranya Fakultas Kesehatan dan Farmasi, Fakultas Teknik Dan Ilmu Komputer, Fakultas Ekonomi, Fakultas Hukum, dan Fakultas FKIP. Pada masing-masing Fakultas terdiri dari beberapa Program Studi. Total Program Studi ada 12 dan 60 orang dosen tetap. Untuk meningkatkan kualitas dosen yang dimilikinya, secara rutin Universitas Adiwangsa Jambi telah melakukan evaluasi kinerja dosen yang dilaksanakan oleh Penjamin Mutu Internal. Evaluasi yang masih bersifat manual dengan menggunakan kuesioner yang diisi oleh mahasiswa/i, kemudian hasilnya dievaluasi dengan menggunakan aplikasi spreadsheet. Penggunaan aplikasi ini hasilnya belum maksimal hal ini disebabkan karena membutuhkan biaya yang cukup besar, hasil evaluasi rentan terhadap kesalahan human error (salah entry) data, proses pengolahan dan hasil evaluasi relative lama. Akibatnya informasi yang dibutuhkan untuk meningkatkan kualitas dosen selalu terlambat, sehingga berpengaruh terhadap pengambilan keputusan dari Pihak managemen. Untuk mengatasi masalah tersebut dibutuhkan suatu sistem informasi yang diharapkan dapat membantu mengolah semua data-data evaluasi laporan kinerja dosen yaitu dengan cara merancang sistem informasi yang berbasis kebutuhan Universitas Adiwangsa Jambi dan membuat sistem informasi evaluasi kinerja dosen yang berbasis WEB

Loops and Strings in a Superconducting Lattice Gauge Simulator

We propose an architecture for an analog quantum simulator of electromagnetism in 2+1 dimensions, based on an array of superconducting fluxonium devices. The encoding is in the integer (spin-1 representation of the quantum link model formulation of compact U(1) lattice gauge theory. We show how to engineer Gauss' law via an ancilla mediated gadget construction, and how to tune between the strongly coupled and intermediately coupled regimes. The witnesses to the existence of the predicted confining phase of the model are provided by nonlocal order parameters from Wilson loops and disorder parameters from 't Hooft strings. We show how to construct such operators in this model and how to measure them nondestructively via dispersive coupling of the fluxonium islands to a microwave cavity mode. Numerical evidence is found for the existence of the confined phase in the ground state of the simulation Hamiltonian on a ladder geometry.Comment: 17 pages, 5 figures. Published versio

Search for tau neutrinos at PeV energies and beyond with the MAGIC telescopes

The MAGIC telescopes, located at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory (2200 a.s.l.) in the Canary Island of La Palma, are placed on the top of a mountain, from where a window of visibility of about 5 deg in zenith and 80 deg in azimuth is open in the direction of the surrounding ocean. This permits to search for a signature of particle showers induced by earth-skimming cosmic tau neutrinos in the PeV to EeV energy range arising from the ocean. We have studied the response of MAGIC to such events, employing Monte Carlo simulations of upward-going tau neutrino showers. The analysis of the shower images shows that air showers induced by tau neutrinos can be discriminated from the hadronic background coming from a similar direction. We have calculated the point source acceptance and the expected event rates, for a sample of generic neutrino fluxes from photo-hadronic interactions in AGNs. The analysis of about 30 hours of data taken toward the sea leads to a point source sensitivity for tau neutrinos at the level of the down-going point source analysis of the Pierre Auger Observatory, if the AUGER observation time is dedicated to a similar amount by MAGIC.Comment: Proceedings of EPS-HEP 2017, European Physical Society conference on High Energy Physics, 5-12 July 2017, Venice, Italy. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1708.0614