16,752 research outputs found
ALTERNATIVE ITALIAN AGRICULTURAL COOPERATIVE SYSTEMS IN THE CHANGING EU FOOD SYSTEM
The European food system is undergoing significant change driven both by global competitive forces and local conditions. Market globalization and technological innovation are interacting with the reform of EU's agricultural policies (CAP) and a renewed interest by the European society in the social and environmental functions of agriculture. These factors have created a new and challenging economic environment both for farmers and the food industry across Europe (Tarditi, 1997).Agribusiness,
MEMBERS' FINANCIAL EVALUATION AND COOPERATIVES' DECISION PROCESSES
The paper presents an analysis of cooperative investment decision based on the coalition theoretical framework (Staatz 1983, 1987, 1989). According to this framework, cooperatives can be considered as coalitions of groups with different interests. The behavior of any cooperative is determined by the interaction of its many groups (different types of farmers, managers, lenders, input suppliers, buyers, etc.) with different objectives. The group that can impose its will on the coalition will determine the cooperative's strategy. The other parties may accept this leadership, leave the cooperative or try to use their bargaining power to modify the final outcome. The paper discusses the impact of group bargaining on cooperatives' decision process. In particular, the paper addresses the issues related to the consequences of members' heterogeneity on cooperative efficiency. The proposed model utilizes tools from financial theory already successfully applied in the literature (Peterson 1992, Hendrikse 1998) providing a more detailed insight into the determinants of the cooperative decision process. The paper shows that cooperatives evaluate investments differently from IOFs due to the unique characteristics of their patrons compared to other types of investors.Agribusiness, Agricultural Finance,
Pharmacogenetics of analgesic drugs
• Individual variability in pain perception and differences in the efficacy of analgesic drugs are complex phenomena and are partly genetically predetermined. • Analgesics act in various ways on the peripheral and central pain pathways and are regarded as one of the most valuable but equally dangerous groups of medications. • While pharmacokinetic properties of drugs, metabolism in particular, have been scrutinised by genotype–phenotype correlation studies, the clinical significance of inherited variants in genes governing pharmacodynamics of analgesics remains largely unexplored (apart from the µ-opioid receptor). • Lack of replication of the findings from one study to another makes meaningful personalised analgesic regime still a distant future. • This narrative review will focus on findings related to pharmacogenetics of commonly used analgesic medications and highlight authors’ views on future clinical implications of pharmacogenetics in the context of pharmacological treatment of chronic pain
The probability that and commute in a compact group
We show that a compact group has finite conjugacy classes, i.e., is an
FC-group if and only if its center is open if and only if its commutator
subgroup is finite. Let denote the Haar measure of the set of all
pairs in for which ; this, formally, is the
probability that two randomly picked elements commute. We prove that is
always rational and that it is positive if and only if is an extension of
an FC-group by a finite group. This entails that is abelian by finite. The
proofs involve measure theory, transformation groups, Lie theory of arbitrary
compact groups, and representation theory of compact groups. Examples and
references to the history of the discussion are given at the end of the paper.Comment: 17 pages; we have cut some points ; to appear in Math. Proc.
Cambridge Phil. So
Delocalised oxygen as the origin of two-level defects in Josephson junctions
One of the key problems facing superconducting qubits and other Josephson
junction devices is the decohering effects of bi-stable material defects.
Although a variety of phenomenological models exist, the true microscopic
origin of these defects remains elusive. For the first time we show that these
defects may arise from delocalisation of the atomic position of the oxygen in
the oxide forming the Josephson junction barrier. Using a microscopic model, we
compute experimentally observable parameters for phase qubits. Such defects are
charge neutral but have non-zero response to both applied electric field and
strain. This may explain the observed long coherence time of two-level defects
in the presence of charge noise, while still coupling to the junction electric
field and substrate phonons.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures. This version streamlines presentation and focuses
on the 2D model. Also fixed embarrassing typo (pF -> fF
EFFECTS OF MANAGERS' POWER ON CAPITAL STRUCTURE: A STUDY ON ITALIAN AGRICULTURAL COOPERATIVES
Agribusiness,
The Effect of Mandatory Employer-Sponsored Insurance (ESI) on Health Insurance Coverage and Labor Force Utilization in Hawaii: Evidence from the Current Population Survey (CPS) 1994-2004
Using data from the Current Population Surveys, we examine the impact of Hawaii’s mandatory employer-sponsored insurance on health insurance coverage and employment structure in Hawaii. We find empirical evidence of three phenomena. First, private employer-sponsored insurance coverage for full-time workers (more than 20 hours per week) is more prevalent in Hawaii, other things held constant, than in other states and the U.S. as a whole. Second, there is avoidance of the employer-mandate in Hawaii by skirting the 20 hour rule, which changes the both the distribution of employment and the distribution of employment-based insurance coverage by hours worked. Third, Hawaii workers who match with part-time jobs without employer-sponsored health insurance obtain publicly provided health insurance or military coverage with higher probability than their counterparts elsewhere in the U.S. These results suggest that employer mandates induce both higher rates of coverage and labor market sorting.health insurance, employee sponsored insurance, Hawaii's labor market
Wormhole phase in the RST model
We show that the RST model describing the exactly soluble black hole model
can have a dynamical wormhole solution along with an appropriate boundary
condition. The necessary exotic matter which is usually negative energy density
is remarkably produced by the quantization of the infalling matter fields. Then
the asymptotic geometry in the past is two-dimensional anti-de Sitter(AdS),
which implies the exotic matter is negative. As time goes on, the wormhole
eventually evolves into the black hole and its Hawking radiation appears. The
throat of the static RST wormhole is lower-bounded but in the presence of
infalling matter it collapses to a black hole.Comment: v1. REVTeX3, 12 pages and 1 figure; v2. JHEP3, 10 pages and 1 figure,
version published in JHE
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