Cost-Effectiveness Evaluation of Swiss Agri-Environmental Measures on Sector Level

Abstract This paper focuses on non-linear programming models and their suitability for ex-ante evaluations of agri-environmental policies on sector level. An approach is presented to compare organic farming payments as a multi-objective policy, with other, more targeted agri-environmental policies in Switzerland. The Swiss version of the comparative static sector-consistent farm group model FARMIS is able to group the sector’s farms into organic and non-organic farms and optimise them separately. CH-FARMIS is expanded with three modules particularly for this study: a) allowing for the simulation of uptake; b) integrating life cycle assessment data for energy use, eutrophication and biodiversity; and c) estimating the policy and farm-group-specific public expenditure, including transaction costs. This paper illustrates the functions of the model, shows preliminary energy use calculations for the German Agricultural Sector and discusses the advantages and limitations of the approach

Infinitely many local higher symmetries without recursion operator or master symmetry: integrability of the Foursov--Burgers system revisited

We consider the Burgers-type system studied by Foursov, w_t &=& w_{xx} + 8 w w_x + (2-4\alpha)z z_x, z_t &=& (1-2\alpha)z_{xx} - 4\alpha z w_x + (4-8\alpha)w z_x - (4+8\alpha)w^2 z + (-2+4\alpha)z^3, (*) for which no recursion operator or master symmetry was known so far, and prove that the system (*) admits infinitely many local generalized symmetries that are constructed using a nonlocal {\em two-term} recursion relation rather than from a recursion operator.Comment: 10 pages, LaTeX; minor changes in terminology; some references and definitions adde

Multicomponent theory of buoyancy instabilities in magnetized plasmas: The case of magnetic field parallel to gravity

We investigate electromagnetic buoyancy instabilities of the electron-ion plasma with the heat flux based on not the magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) equations, but using the multicomponent plasma approach when the momentum equations are solved for each species. We consider a geometry in which the background magnetic field, gravity, and stratification are directed along one axis. The nonzero background electron thermal flux is taken into account. Collisions between electrons and ions are included in the momentum equations. No simplifications usual for the one-fluid MHD-approach in studying these instabilities are used. We derive a simple dispersion relation, which shows that the thermal flux perturbation generally stabilizes an instability for the geometry under consideration. This result contradicts to conclusion obtained in the MHD-approach. We show that the reason of this contradiction is the simplified assumptions used in the MHD analysis of buoyancy instabilities and the role of the longitudinal electric field perturbation which is not captured by the ideal MHD equations. Our dispersion relation also shows that the medium with the electron thermal flux can be unstable, if the temperature gradients of ions and electrons have the opposite signs. The results obtained can be applied to the weakly collisional magnetized plasma objects in laboratory and astrophysics.Comment: Accepted for publication in Astrophysics & Space Scienc

Generation of maximum spin entanglement induced by cavity field in quantum-dot systems

Equivalent-neighbor interactions of the conduction-band electron spins of quantum dots in the model of Imamoglu et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 83, 4204 (1999)] are analyzed. Analytical solution and its Schmidt decomposition are found and applied to evaluate how much the initially excited dots can be entangled to the remaining dots if all of them are initially disentangled. It is demonstrated that the perfect maximally entangled states (MES) can only be generated in the systems of up to 6 dots with a single dot initially excited. It is also shown that highly entangled states, approximating the MES with a good accuracy, can still be generated in systems of odd number of dots with almost half of them being excited. A sudden decrease of entanglement is observed by increasing the total number of dots in a system with a fixed number of excitations.Comment: 6 pages, 7 figures, to appear in Phys. Rev.

Native ‘um’s elicit prediction of low-frequency referents, but non-native ‘um’s do not.

Speech comprehension involves extensive use of prediction. Linguistic prediction may be guided by the semantics or syntax, but also by the performance characteristics of the speech signal, such as disfluency. Previous studies have shown that listeners, when presented with the filler uh, exhibit a disfluency bias for discourse-new or unknown referents, drawing inferences about the source of the disfluency. The goal of the present study is to study the contrast between native and non-native disfluencies in speech comprehension. Experiment 1 presented listeners with pictures of high-frequency (e.g., a hand) and low-frequency objects (e.g., a sewing machine) and with fluent and disfluent instructions. Listeners were found to anticipate reference to low-frequency objects when encountering disfluency, thus attributing disfluency to speaker trouble in lexical retrieval. Experiment 2 showed that, when participants listened to disfluent non-native speech, no anticipation of low-frequency referents was observed. We conclude that listeners can adapt their predictive strategies to the (non-native) speaker at hand, extending our understanding of the role of speaker identity in speech comprehension

Character emotion experience in virtual environments

The present paper presents an emotion module from an authoring tool of interactive storytelling being developed within the European Project—INSCAPE. The Atmosphere Editor (AE) is an INSCAPE software plug-in. Its aim is to help authors to easily create virtual interactive scenes that are recognized as emotional in order to contribute to higher coherence of their content and simultaneously to emphasize their communication purposes. It works through the attribution of emotional meaning to virtual environments and characters classes that act on the virtual story-world. Therefore, it is designed to produce a semantic intervention in the story but does not intend to transcend the storyteller work. AE presents then a taxonomy capable of sustaining the communicational optimization of the interactive narratives at an emotional level. The AE intervention develops in addition a possible pedagogical virtue permitting the learning by the story authors about potential emotional uses of specific virtual parameters. It permits also the INSCAPE user to understand the emotional semantics canons of the interactive virtual stories.Projecto Europeu: INSCAPE IP - EU RTD IST 2004-00415

Native ‘um’s elicit prediction of low-frequency referents, but non-native ‘um’s do not.

Speech comprehension involves extensive use of prediction. Linguistic prediction may be guided by the semantics or syntax, but also by the performance characteristics of the speech signal, such as disfluency. Previous studies have shown that listeners, when presented with the filler uh, exhibit a disfluency bias for discourse-new or unknown referents, drawing inferences about the source of the disfluency. The goal of the present study is to study the contrast between native and non-native disfluencies in speech comprehension. Experiment 1 presented listeners with pictures of high-frequency (e.g., a hand) and low-frequency objects (e.g., a sewing machine) and with fluent and disfluent instructions. Listeners were found to anticipate reference to low-frequency objects when encountering disfluency, thus attributing disfluency to speaker trouble in lexical retrieval. Experiment 2 showed that, when participants listened to disfluent non-native speech, no anticipation of low-frequency referents was observed. We conclude that listeners can adapt their predictive strategies to the (non-native) speaker at hand, extending our understanding of the role of speaker identity in speech comprehension

Characterization of mesophilic bacilli in faeces of feedlot cattle

Aims: To determine the identity and composition of mesophilic Bacillus spp. in faeces sampled from feedlot cattle