Sugar policy and reform

Reviewing cross-country experience with sugar policies, and policy reform, the authors conclude that long-standing government interventions - rooted in historical trade arrangements, fear of shortages, and conflicting interests between growers, and sugar mills - often displace both the markets, and the institutions required to produce efficient outcomes. Arrangements rooted in colonial eras, still shape policies, and trade in the United States, the European Union (EU), and many developing countries. Once policies, and institutions are put in place, households, and the value of investments grow dependent on them, even as their usefulness fades. Firms and households make decisions that are costly to reverse. And the result is a legacy of path-dependent policies, in which approaches, and instruments are greatly influenced by past agreements, and previous interventions. The cumulative effects of these interventions are embodied in livelihoods, political institutions, capital stocks, and factor markets - which not only dictate the starting point for reform, but also determine which reform paths are feasible. Experiments with public ownership, common in many countries, have not succeeded. So most countries have initiated some measure of market reform. And events relating to NAFTA, Lome, and expansion of the EU, may bring about significant changes in the EU, and US sugar regimes, with cascading effects on other countries. Common problems in the sector include determining cane quality, finding methods for fairly sharing revenues from joint production, finding ways to take advantage of preferential trade arrangements with minimal negative consequences, finding ways to finance, and encourage research, and other activities with common benefits, identifying practices that facilitate equitable, sustainable privatization, and determining the relationship between sugar market reform, and markets in land, water, credit, and other inputs.Food&Beverage Industry,Environmental Economics&Policies,Agribusiness,Agribusiness&Markets,Economic Theory&Research,Environmental Economics&Policies,Agribusiness&Markets,Economic Theory&Research,Agribusiness,Agricultural Trade

Optical Spectroscopy of Disordered Materials

Contains reports on two research projects.Joint Services Electronics Program (Contract DAAG29-83-K-0003

Abolishing green rates : the effects on cereals, sugar, and oilseeds in West Germany

In 1987 the European Community began the ambitious task of forging a single market for goods and services across the national borders of its member states by 1992. Substantive reform of the Community's Common Agricultural Policy - necessary for the full integration of existing markets - has not yet been accomplished and has proven difficult to achieve. Creating a truly"common"agricultural policy in the European Community requires, at a minimum, eliminating price differences resulting from country- and commodity-specific exchange rates, known as"green rates."The authors discuss the various policy instruments that complicate the effects of these policy-determined price differences on crop production and the demand for inputs. They present a model that estimates the cross-commodity biases created by multiple policy instruments and that quantifies the effects of removing green-rate differentials in what was West Germany. The effects of price changes on domestic production are statistically significant in the model, although quantitatively small. This result suggests that eliminating green rates would lead primarily to a decline in farm income and a devaluation of fixed agricultural assets - which complicates the difficult task of attaining reform.Environmental Economics&Policies,Economic Theory&Research,Access to Markets,Markets and Market Access,Crops&Crop Management Systems

Display screen and method of manufacture therefor

A screen assembly that combines an angle re-distributing prescreen with a conventional diffusion screen is disclosed. The prescreen minimizes or eliminates the sensitivity of the screen assembly to projector location. The diffusion screen provides other desirable screen characteristics. The prescreen is preferably formed by a collection of light transmitting and refracting elements, preferably spheres 80, partially embedded in a light blocking layer. Toward the back of the spheres 80 are effective apertures 82 where the light blocking layer 81 is absent or at least thinner than in other regions toward the side of the spheres. The projected image enters spheres 80 through the effective apertures 82, and exits the spheres 80 centered orientationally about the normal to the lens axis. The re-oriented light rays then enter the diffusion screen for viewing

Seamless tiled display system

A modular and scalable seamless tiled display apparatus includes multiple display devices, a screen, and multiple lens assemblies. Each display device is subdivided into multiple sections, and each section is configured to display a sectional image. One of the lens assemblies is optically coupled to each of the sections of each of the display devices to project the sectional image displayed on that section onto the screen. The multiple lens assemblies are configured to merge the projected sectional images to form a single tiled image. The projected sectional images may be merged on the screen by magnifying and shifting the images in an appropriate manner. The magnification and shifting of these images eliminates any visual effect on the tiled display that may result from dead-band regions defined between each pair of adjacent sections on each display device, and due to gaps between multiple display devices

Graphoepitaxy of Colloidal Crystals

Contains reports on two research projects.Joint Services Electronics Program (Contract DAAL03-86-K-0002

Optical Spectroscopy of Disordered Materials and X-Ray Scattering from Surfaces

Contains reports on two research projects.Joint Services Electronics Program (Contract DAAG29-83-K-0003

Time-Resolved Spectroscopy of Condensed Matter

Contains a report on one research project.Joint Services Electronics Program (Contract DAAG29-80-C-0104)National Science Foundation (Grant DMR78-23555

Social network dynamics precede a mass eviction in group-living rhesus macaques

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Elsevier Masson via the DOI in this record.Network dynamics can reveal information about the adaptive function of social behaviour and the extent to which social relationships can flexibly respond to extrinsic pressures. Changes in social networks occur following changes to the social and physical environment. By contrast, we have limited understanding of whether changes in social networks precede major group events. Permanent evictions can be important determinants of gene flow and population structure and are a clear example of an event that might be preceded by social network dynamics. Here we examined the social networks of a group of rhesus macaques, Macaca mulatta, in the 2 years leading up to the eviction of 22% of adult females, which are the philopatric sex. We found that females engaged in the same amount of aggression and grooming in the 2 years leading up to the eviction but that there were clear changes in their choice of social partners. Females that would eventually be evicted received more aggression from lower-ranking females as the eviction approached. Evicted females also became more discriminating in their grooming relationships in the year nearer the split, showing a greater preference for one another and becoming more cliquish. Put simply, the females that would later be evicted continued to travel with the rest of the group as the eviction approached but were less likely to interact with other group members in an affiliative manner. These results have potential implications for understanding group cohesion and the balance between cooperation and competition that mediates social groups.We were supported by National Institute of Mental Health grants R01-MH089484 and R01-MH096875, and an Incubator Award from the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences. L.J.N.B. was supported by a Duke Center for Interdisciplinary Decision Sciences Fellowship and by an Early Career Fellowship from the Leverhulme Trust. The CPRC is funded by grant number 2 P40 OD012217 from the Office of Research Infrastructure Programs (ORIP) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH)

Time-Resolved Spectroscopy of Condensed Matter

Contains reports on three research projects.Joint Services Electronics Program (Contract DAAG29-78-C-0020)National Science Foundation (Grant DMR78-23555)National Science Foundation (Grant DMR76-80895