Off-farm Work, Technical Efficiency, and Production Risk: Empirical Evidence from a National Farmer Survey in Taiwan

The objective of this paper is to investigate the differences in yield production, production efficiency, and yield risk for farmers with and without off-farm work. Using a nationwide survey of Taiwanese rice farmers, we estimate a stochastic production frontier model accommodating the technical inefficiency and the production risk simultaneously. Applying the stochastic dominance criterion to rank the estimated technical efficiency and yield risk between professional farmers and farmers with off-farm jobs, our empirical analysis shows that off-farm work is significantly associated with lower technical efficiency. Additionally, farmers with off-farm work face higher production risks. Comparing the marginal effects of input uses on technical inefficiency and yield risk between these groups of farmers, we found a substantial heterogeneity of input uses between these two groups of farmers.Off-farm work, technical efficiency, production risk, Taiwan, Crop Production/Industries, Farm Management,

Tailoring excitonic states of van der Waals bilayers through stacking configuration, band alignment and valley-spin

Excitons in monolayer semiconductors have large optical transition dipole for strong coupling with light field. Interlayer excitons in heterobilayers, with layer separation of electron and hole components, feature large electric dipole that enables strong coupling with electric field and exciton-exciton interaction, at the cost that the optical dipole is substantially quenched (by several orders of magnitude). In this letter, we demonstrate the ability to create a new class of excitons in transition metal dichalcogenide (TMD) hetero- and homo-bilayers that combines the advantages of monolayer- and interlayer-excitons, i.e. featuring both large optical dipole and large electric dipole. These excitons consist of an electron that is well confined in an individual layer, and a hole that is well extended in both layers, realized here through the carrier-species specific layer-hybridization controlled through the interplay of rotational, translational, band offset, and valley-spin degrees of freedom. We observe different species of such layer-hybridized valley excitons in different heterobilayer and homobilayer systems, which can be utilized for realizing strongly interacting excitonic/polaritonic gases, as well as optical quantum coherent controls of bidirectional interlayer carrier transfer either with upper conversion or down conversion in energy

THE ELECTROMYOGRAPHY CHARACTERISTICS BETWEEN DIFFERENT LEVELS OF SOCCER PLAYER ON INSTEP KICKING

This study improves kicking performance by comparing muscle activity between different levels of players. Twelve soccer players in the college cup in division I and division II volunteered to participate in this study. A VlCON motion capture system (200 Hz) was used to capture the kicking motion including back-swing and forward-swing. The Noraxon electromyography system was used to collect and analyze the percentage of maximum voluntary contraction on rectus femoris, bicepsfemoris, tibialis anterior, and gastrocnemius. The Mann-Whilney U (a = -05) test was applied to assess significant differences in this study. The results indicated that division II players had a greater percentage maximum voluntary contraction in tibialis anterior in the back-swing. To avoid stiff movements in soccer kicks, division II players should decrease muscle contraction in the tiblalis anterior In the back-swing

Gravitational Corrections to Φ4\Phi^{4} Theory with Spontaneously Broken Symmetry

We consider a complex scalar $\Phi^4$ theory with spontaneously broken global U(1) symmetry, minimally coupling to perturbatively quantized Einstein gravity which is treated as an effective theory at the energy well below the Planck scale. Both the lowest order pure real scalar correction and the gravitational correction to the renormalization of the Higgs sector in this model have been investigated. Our results show that the gravitational correction renders the renormalization of the Higgs sector in this model inconsistent while the pure real scalar correction to it leads to a compatible renormalization.Comment: 11 pages, 24 figure