HYBRID RICE AND ITS IMPACT ON FOOD SECURITY AND THE PATTERN OF GLOBAL PRODUCTION AND TRADE

The hybrid rice technology is one of the many ways in which productivity of scarce resources devoted to rice production could be enhanced, with the consequent alleviation of food insecurity. The findings of this study show that the hybrid rice technology has so far made some sizable contributions to per-capita availability of rice in adopting countries with marginal spillover effects to other regions. However, at forecasted population growths, a massive intensification of adoption would be needed to maintain per-capita availability of rice at baseline levels. But even with adoption rates climbing significantly, much higher equilibrium prices are expected, which will represent a challenge for the hungry in many parts of the world. While hybrid rice has the potential to contribute significantly to improve production and food security, more efforts are needed to improve the productivity of the constraining production resources.hybrid rice, food security, technology change, Demand and Price Analysis, Food Security and Poverty, International Relations/Trade, Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies, Q16, Q55,

Slab Tipper

Stone countertops are very heavy and fragile. When installing a finished countertop, up to six workers are required to lift the stone onto the countertop, risking their safety and possibly breaking the stone. The safety of both the workers and the stone are very important, so there needs to be a better way. NSI Solutions came up with an idea for a mechanism to aid in the insulation process while limiting the number of workers required, and keeping the workers safer while adequately supporting the stone to prevent it from breaking. Designing methods and calculations were done to ensure the mechanism can support the stone while limiting the size and weight of the mechanism. During the construction process several changes were made to the design of the mechanism to make it easier to construct, limit cost, and increase the strength of the Slab Tipper. During the testing process, the mechanism will be evaluated and changes will be made to improve the Slab Tipper and ensure that it will work in the field. In the end the Mechanism will consist of two separate stands that can be stored in the installation truck when not in use. Then the stands can be set up next to the cabinets that the countertop will be installed on

Management Control- International Observatory 2011

International audienc

Résultats de l’enquête internationale 2012 « Quelles activités, quels processus, quelles méthodes, quels systèmes », Observatoire International du Contrôle de Gestion

International audienc

Fixed Point and Aperiodic Tilings

An aperiodic tile set was first constructed by R.Berger while proving the undecidability of the domino problem. It turned out that aperiodic tile sets appear in many topics ranging from logic (the Entscheidungsproblem) to physics (quasicrystals) We present a new construction of an aperiodic tile set that is based on Kleene's fixed-point construction instead of geometric arguments. This construction is similar to J. von Neumann self-reproducing automata; similar ideas were also used by P. Gacs in the context of error-correcting computations. The flexibility of this construction allows us to construct a "robust" aperiodic tile set that does not have periodic (or close to periodic) tilings even if we allow some (sparse enough) tiling errors. This property was not known for any of the existing aperiodic tile sets.Comment: v5: technical revision (positions of figures are shifted

Econometric Modeling and Analysis of Residential Water Demand Based on Unbalanced Panel Data

This paper develops an econometric methodology devised to analyze a sample of time unbalanced panel data on residential water consumption in the French island La Reunion with the purpose to bring out the main determinants of household water consumption and estimate the importance of water consumption by uses. For this purpose, we specify a daily panel econometric model and derive, by performing a time aggregation, a general linear regression model accounting for water consumption data recorded on periods of any calendar date and time length. To esti-mate efficiently the parameters of this model we develop a feasible two step generalized least square method. Using the principle of best linear unbiased prediction, we finally develop an approach allowing to consistently break down the volume of water consumption recorded on household water bills by uses, namely by enforcing this estimated decomposition to add up to the observed total. The application of this methodology to a sample of 437 unbalanced panel observations shows the scope of this approach for the empirical analysis of actual data.econometric modeling; water consumption; panel data