Economic feed utilization for dairy buffalo under intensive agricultural system

The national strategies for the irrigated intensive agricultural system in developing countries should focus upon Producing less expensive milk from dairy buffaloes that, efficiently, utilize the limited expensive produced feed resources. Therefore, planning for the least cost feeds combination is the most recommended approach to keep buffalo milk price at a competitive level and being low enough to make milk available for the major proportion of the low-income households, particularly “Vulnerable Groups”. Estimation of the least cost feed ration combination of the limited expensive feed resources were conducted from a recent farm survey of the dairy buffalo performances and the feed use pattern in Egypt. The estimated average production elasticity of fodder, concentrate feeds mix and straw, implies that their shares in generated buffalo milk income are 41.7%, 35%,and 23.3%, respectively.. The response of the human labor was of negative direction and statistically insignificant. This means that the labor used per dairy buffalo was beyond the economic level, that reflects the excess farm-family labor involved in such activity, because they have almost nil opportunity income of off farm work. The other capital inputs have small positive effect on milk production, The average marginal return from milk per onedollar expenditure reached $.1.08 for fodder,and$ 1.04 for concentrated feed mix, i.e. it isfeasible to expand the usage of fodder more than concentrates.The wheat straw has shown uneconomic efficiency. Therefore, it is recommended to limit its level in the ration. The least cost ration reduces feed cost of one ton of buffalo milk equivalent (4% fat) by 22%. The less costs of production will strength the competition of domestic supply either against in the international export market or against the dumping policies followed by exporters to the domestic market.Economic feed, Water buffalo, Intensive system.

The Regional and Multilateral Dilemna: Institutions Do Matter

The world trade has been p olitically framed towards liberalism and "openness". It is evident that this openness has its own grades and interests that command it. Developing countries have been directed, and pushed towards a playing ground they fear and ignore. But some would argue that even developed countries have to go through such stages. The whole difference here is the gap between where the latter stood when they decided to move toward openness and where developing countries do stand today. A simple and obvious proof of that is the increasing number of regional trade agreements (RTAs in following papers for convenience) that most countries have adopted. If we agree that regional networking should serve coordinating interests, RTAs came to answer a multilateral dilemma: multilateral negotiations are asking different and diversified countries, economies and cultures, to melt into a single frame defined by the "Triade", the world powers. In this paper we will examine the regional trade in the context of world trade (part 1) and contrast regionalism and multilateralism. My conclusion that regional agreements hinder the progress of a fair and dynamic multilateral governance and reduce its institutional progress.Institutional and Behavioral Economics, F13, O1,

Economic problems of poultry production in Egypt

Marketing inefficiency in the poultry market, Consumer price spread, Comparative advantage criteria, Economic obstacles facing poultry industry, Agribusiness, Agricultural and Food Policy, Community/Rural/Urban Development, Farm Management, Livestock Production/Industries,

Defection-Proofed? Militaries and Authoritarian Regime Survival

The question of loyalty in autocratic regimes has drawn a sustained scholarly interest, especially with the resilience of many of these regimes over most of world history and over the past few decades in particular. Autocratic leaders need to secure the support of their militaries to survive in office and to minimize the risk of a coup. Among the commonly employed mechanisms in this regard is the extension of extra-budgetary financial rewards, including ‘Military-Owned Businesses (MOBs).’ Nevertheless, under the increasingly significant threat of an uprising from below, military defection remains the key for the success of the revolution. The question then becomes: under what conditions would a military defect from an autocratic ruling alliance? Although many answers have been proposed to solve this puzzle, an increasing number of cases are proving them insufficient. Alternatively, this project presents one novel answer to this question, which is: militaries are “defection-proofed” in the face of mass uprisings when they develop financial dependency on the regime. By contrast, when the management of the extra-budgetary resource for the military, i.e. MOBs, becomes the exclusive domain of the military and independent from the regime, the military is expected to defect. This proposed hypothesis represents a contribution to the democratization literature, both its installation, i.e. underlining a ‘pro-democracy’ capacity of the military in removing the dictator, as well as its consolidation, i.e. handling the legacy of the autocratic regime after the transition. This hypothesis is tested comparatively against the cases of mass protests in China (1989), Indonesia (1998), Thailand (2006), Iran (2009), and Egypt (2011). This comparative analysis represents another contribution of this study, bringing together a diverse array of cases unexpected to have much in common. Analysis draws on a mix of both primary resources collected from the field along with secondary materials. The comparisons are made considering the type of civil-military relations in each case, the size and type of financial rewards controlled by the military, and their effect, if any, on its decision to repress or defect based on the interaction between the military and the dictator

Computational methods for the analysis of functional 4D-CT chest images.

Medical imaging is an important emerging technology that has been intensively used in the last few decades for disease diagnosis and monitoring as well as for the assessment of treatment effectiveness. Medical images provide a very large amount of valuable information that is too huge to be exploited by radiologists and physicians. Therefore, the design of computer-aided diagnostic (CAD) system, which can be used as an assistive tool for the medical community, is of a great importance. This dissertation deals with the development of a complete CAD system for lung cancer patients, which remains the leading cause of cancer-related death in the USA. In 2014, there were approximately 224,210 new cases of lung cancer and 159,260 related deaths. The process begins with the detection of lung cancer which is detected through the diagnosis of lung nodules (a manifestation of lung cancer). These nodules are approximately spherical regions of primarily high density tissue that are visible in computed tomography (CT) images of the lung. The treatment of these lung cancer nodules is complex, nearly 70% of lung cancer patients require radiation therapy as part of their treatment. Radiation-induced lung injury is a limiting toxicity that may decrease cure rates and increase morbidity and mortality treatment. By finding ways to accurately detect, at early stage, and hence prevent lung injury, it will have significant positive consequences for lung cancer patients. The ultimate goal of this dissertation is to develop a clinically usable CAD system that can improve the sensitivity and specificity of early detection of radiation-induced lung injury based on the hypotheses that radiated lung tissues may get affected and suffer decrease of their functionality as a side effect of radiation therapy treatment. These hypotheses have been validated by demonstrating that automatic segmentation of the lung regions and registration of consecutive respiratory phases to estimate their elasticity, ventilation, and texture features to provide discriminatory descriptors that can be used for early detection of radiation-induced lung injury. The proposed methodologies will lead to novel indexes for distinguishing normal/healthy and injured lung tissues in clinical decision-making. To achieve this goal, a CAD system for accurate detection of radiation-induced lung injury that requires three basic components has been developed. These components are the lung fields segmentation, lung registration, and features extraction and tissue classification. This dissertation starts with an exploration of the available medical imaging modalities to present the importance of medical imaging in today’s clinical applications. Secondly, the methodologies, challenges, and limitations of recent CAD systems for lung cancer detection are covered. This is followed by introducing an accurate segmentation methodology of the lung parenchyma with the focus of pathological lungs to extract the volume of interest (VOI) to be analyzed for potential existence of lung injuries stemmed from the radiation therapy. After the segmentation of the VOI, a lung registration framework is introduced to perform a crucial and important step that ensures the co-alignment of the intra-patient scans. This step eliminates the effects of orientation differences, motion, breathing, heart beats, and differences in scanning parameters to be able to accurately extract the functionality features for the lung fields. The developed registration framework also helps in the evaluation and gated control of the radiotherapy through the motion estimation analysis before and after the therapy dose. Finally, the radiation-induced lung injury is introduced, which combines the previous two medical image processing and analysis steps with the features estimation and classification step. This framework estimates and combines both texture and functional features. The texture features are modeled using the novel 7th-order Markov Gibbs random field (MGRF) model that has the ability to accurately models the texture of healthy and injured lung tissues through simultaneously accounting for both vertical and horizontal relative dependencies between voxel-wise signals. While the functionality features calculations are based on the calculated deformation fields, obtained from the 4D-CT lung registration, that maps lung voxels between successive CT scans in the respiratory cycle. These functionality features describe the ventilation, the air flow rate, of the lung tissues using the Jacobian of the deformation field and the tissues’ elasticity using the strain components calculated from the gradient of the deformation field. Finally, these features are combined in the classification model to detect the injured parts of the lung at an early stage and enables an earlier intervention

Nonconventional Technology for Agricultural Development in Developing Countries

This paper concerns the economic assessment of a nonconventional technology to provide a cheap food and/or feed for many developing countries, using wasted resources, i.e. coastal arid areas irrigated directly with seawater to grow a halophyte crop(Salicornia-sos-7). It was cultivated for two successive years in Kuwait. The analysis showed that the harvested yield was 20 tons per hectare, which provided 12.42 MT of straw for sale and 1.7 MT of oil seeds for processing. Processed seeds of 1-hectare provide 425 kg of food oil and 1.1 MT of feed meal.Under Kuwait conditions, on per hectare basis, the total costs of production( fixed &variable costs)were $3088. However,simulation of this technology under a conventional developing country like Egypt with much less probability of sever sandy winds and less cost to adjust the irrigation network and much cheaper labor, much lower costs per hectare was achieved. Accordingly, the costs schedule would be$2903(investment costs), i. e. less than the current desert land reclamation costs in Egypt ($3000/ha)$1401 (variable costs)and 1588 (total costs of production).Under Kuwait conditions, the reached yield made a negative net farm income of 6.5% of the total costs of production. Under Egyptian condition, the same level of yield generated a positive gross margin of about 52% of the variable costs and a net farm income of 45% above the total costs of production. The ERR under Egyptian condition was 45% from investment in "Salicornia" production. Among several social benefits, such technology would introduce a much cheaper water resource. Under Kuwait condition costs was 1.2 cents/m3 of seawater, i.e. equivalent to 7% of the costs of brackish water production. Sheep-Hay Response Analysis showed that: At the current feed and livestock prices, to use salicornia hay is feasible up to 37% of the ration and the rest could be fulfilled from alfalfa hay. Cultivation of Salicornia at the wasted coastal area would save 1/3 of the berseem area in Egypt. This area could be devoted to produce 2000,000 tons of wheat. One hectare with livestock could provide sufficient livelihood for a family of five persons.Halophyte Crops, Seawater irrigation system, Salicornia as oil seeds crop, Scaling Up the experiments, Profit Margin, Production function, least cost Ration, Sheep fattning, Agribusiness, Community/Rural/Urban Development, Crop Production/Industries, Land Economics/Use, Livestock Production/Industries, Production Economics, Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies, Research Methods/ Statistical Methods, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Institutional theory and the policy problem of vocational education and training and its development: the Egyptian case

This thesis extends analysis of the policy problem of Egyptian Vocational Education and Training (VET) beyond the current supply/demand mismatch perspective and into a broader institutional analytic framework. It critically deploys concepts from Whitley‘s institutional framework (1999) and Wood and Frynas‘ (2006) Segmented Business Systems (SBS) archetype to the problem, complementing them with historical and political dimensions. These illustrate the continuities and discontinuities in key institutional features and relationships influencing VET since the military coup in the 1950s and through subsequent paradigm shifts. The institutional analysis illustrates that VET is embedded in a set of incoherent institutional arrangements that have constrained systemic development. Further, they have not supported development towards Western models suggested by international organisations. These have had limited effect. A key institutional relationship for VET; state-employer-union cooperation, is currently being developed by the ILO through its Social Dialogue Project (ILO SDP). This could, if effectively realised, enhance institutional actors‘ participation in VET and hence its effectiveness. This proposition is examined through empirical investigation of institutional actors‘ (i) mutual perceptions of state-employer-union cooperation and contributions to VET; and (ii) their perceptions of the ILO SDP and the ways in which it has influenced VET. These responses are verified on an enterprise level through two cases in the tourism sector. The investigation took place in three phases from July 2008 to April 2010 in Egypt, Switzerland and the UK, through triangulated data collection: documentation, 60 interviews, 2 focus groups and observation. The findings have theoretical and practical implications. On a theoretical level, the proposition that Egypt largely corresponds to the SBS archetype is confirmed. Suggestions for modifying Whitley‘s institutional framework include (i) a better integration of historical and political dimensions; and (ii) the inclusion of international organisations as a key institutional influence on state relations with social actors in developing countries. Practical conclusions confirm the ineffective levels of state-employer-union cooperation and contributions to VET. ILO attempts to develop these relationships through social dialogue were perceived to be largely ineffective by institutional actors. The ILO SDP has been constrained by institutional incoherencies which are difficult to change in the short- to medium term. Some positive experiences of effective state-employer-union cooperation and employer-employee interdependence were reported on regional and enterprise levels. These could possibly be expanded on by the ILO SDP as a bottom-up approach to enhancing social dialogue. Finally, the 2011 events could offer new institutional opportunities for enhanced representation of social actors in socio-economic matters which could possibly lead to their effective cooperation in VET and its development; an area which could be pursued in future research

Design of Observer-Based Robust Power System Stabilizers

Power systems are subject to undesirable small oscillations that might grow to cause system shutdown and consequently great loss of national economy. The present manuscript  proposes two  designs for observer-based robust power system stabilizer (PSS) using Linear Matrix Inequality (LMI) approach to damp such oscillations. A model to describe power system dynamics for different loads is derived in the norm-bounded form. The first controller design is based on the derived model to achieve  robust stability against load variation. The design is based on a new Bilinear matrix inequality (BMI) condition. The BMI optimization  is solved interatively in terms of Linear Matrix Inequality (LMI) framework. The condition contains a symmetric positive definite full matrix to be obtained, rather than the commonly used block diagonal form. The difficulty in finding a feasible solution is thus alleviated. The resulting LMI is of small size, easy to solve. The second PSS design shifts the closed loop poles in a desired region so as to achieve a favorite  settling time and damping ratio via a non-iterative solution to a set of LMIs.  The approach provides a systematic way to design a robust output feedback PSS which  guarantees good dynamic performance for different loads. Simulation results based on single-machine and multi-machine power system models verify the ability of the proposed PSS to satisfy control objectives for a wide range of load conditions

Stock prices and monetary policy: An impulse response analysis

This paper analyses the relationship between monetary policy and the stock market with the aim of gaining new insights into the transmission mechanism of monetary policy. The empirical findings shed light on the importance of stock prices for money demand and therefore provide useful nformation to monetary authorities deciding on policy actions. A technique developed by Wickens and Motto (2001) for identifying shocks by estimating a VECM for the endogenous variables is employed. The reported evidence suggests that stock markets play a significant role in the money demand function

Reinforcement larning in gaming

Mestrado em IPB-ESTGA inteligência artificial em videojogos é uma área de investigação de longa data. É um conceito importante em muitos jogos e estuda como utilizar tecnologias de IA para alcançar o desempenho a nível humano durante o jogo. No entanto, quando se trata de IA e videojogos, a Reinforcement Learning tem de ser mencionada. RL define os agentes que enfrentam os problemas que aprendem a tomar boas decisões apenas através da acção e observação. Este projecto centra-se na integração de um algoritmo de Machine Learning chamado Reinforcement Learning no desenvolvimento de um videojogo do género Tower Defense. O projeto foi desenvolvido pelo motor Unity3D que incorpora um agente que utiliza a técnica RL para simular o comportamento de um jogador humano e continuar a melhorá-lo, com base em experiências de jogo anteriores, até ser totalmente optimizado com uma pontuação imbatível pelo jogador médio. O agente irá imitar o comportamento de um humano, comprando, actualizando e colocando torres enquanto obtém a pontuação mais alta, utilizando o menor número de moedas. Além disso, o relatório irá também rever vários conceitos de Aprendizagem Automática, incluindo o Processo de Decisão de Markov e o Q-Learning.Artificial intelligence in video games is a longstanding research area. It is a major concept in a lot of games and it studies how to use AI technologies to achieve human-level performance when playing games. However, when it comes to AI and video games, Reinforcement Learning has to be mentioned. RL defines the problem-facing agents that learn to make good decisions through action and observation alone. This project focuses on integrating a Machine Learning algorithm called Reinforcement Learning in the development of a video game of the Tower Defense genre developed by the Unity3D engine that incorporates an agent that uses the RL technique to simulate the behavior of a human player and keep on improving it, based on previous game experiences, until it’s fully optimized with a score unbeatable by the average player. The agent will imitate the behavior of a human, buying, upgrading, and placing towers while getting the highest score by using the lowest number of currencies. Moreover, the report will also review several Machine Learning concepts, including Markov-Decision Process and Q-Learning