Issues Related to Treating R&D as Investment in BEA's Regional Accounts

This paper presents an analysis of regional issues related to treating R&D as an investment . It provides experimental estimates of the impact on gross domestic product by state of the new treatment of R&D. It also discusses several important conceptual and methodological issues pertaining to these estimates.

ESTIMATING THE EFFECTS OF PESTICIDE USE ON BURLEY AND FLUE-CURED TOBACCO

Crop Production/Industries,

Industry Clusters and Rural Labor Markets

Along with the recent resurgence of interest in the agglomeration and clustering of economic activity, there has been increasing interest in industry clusters as a potential economic development strategy. Ultimately, the question of whether or not clusters are an appropriate focus of economic development strategies for rural areas depends on the relationship between clusters and local economic growth. The primary purpose of this paper is to discuss some of the issues involved in measuring the relationship between clusters and rural economic growth. Preliminary evidence of a positive association between industry clusters and rural earnings growth are presented, supporting the notion that a cluster-focused development strategy may be effective in some rural areas

REGIONAL DIFFERENCES IN THE CONTRIBUTION OF OFF-FARM WORK TO INCOME INEQUALITY

This paper uses the concept of the Gini Coefficient and data from the 1991 Farm Costs and Returns Survey (FCRS) to measure the role of off-farm income and that of other income sources in the size distribution of farm operator households' total personal income. Disaggregated FCRS data by region and by level of participation in off-farm employment show that nonparticipating farm operator households have, as a group, higher income inequality than participating households. The results also indicate that, irrespective of the off-farm work status of the farm operator household, the distribution of income among households in the North Central region is least unequal and that in the West is most unequal.Labor and Human Capital,

Grafting melons onto potential cucumis spp. rootstocks

Cucumís melo is an economically importar]t crop. Its culture is hampered by differen t types of soil stresses. Grafting melons onto different resistant cucurbits belonging to the genera, Cucurbíta, Lagenaría, Luffa, etc. have been successfully used to avoid these problems. However, me Ion quality has been nega.tively modified as a consequence of grafting. In general, variation in fruit shape, seed cavity and sugar content have been observed. The use of rootstocks more genetically c\oser to the melon scions could be useful to obtain fru i ts with better quality from melon grafted plantsPostprint (published version

A new system to measure leather shrinkage temperature

Content: A characteristic of leather is that if it is gradually heated in aqueous solution it reaches a temperature where sudden and irreversible shrinkage occurs. This phenomenon is related to the denaturalization of the collagen protein that conforms the hide and is known as leather shrinkage. Specifically, the internal bonds break thus causing a shortening of the skin that can be up to a 35% from its original length. Accordingly, one of the most used methods to check the quality of the leather tanning process is the determination of the contraction temperature according to the ISO 3380:2015 standard. This method measures the leather shrinkage when constantly increasing the sample temperature. The shrinkage temperature corresponds to the temperature when the sample suddenly contracts. The value of this temperature indicates the degree of collagen stability and therefore, when higher, the leather will have better quality and resistance. The process of leather shrinkage can be divided in different stages. Several authors discriminate temperature A1 (when the first fibre starts to shrinkage), temperature C (when there is a massive shrinkage) and finally temperature A2 (when the last fibres are contracted individually). The method that describes the ISO 3380:2015 standard uses a device where the determination of the shrinkage temperature is performed visually by the laboratory technician. Consequently, the method tends to be imprecise and subjective. It should also be noticed that the device proposed by the standard does not allow differentiation between the different stages of the contraction process. There are other methods to determine leather shrinkage temperature including differential scanning calorimetry, microscopic hot table, thermogravimetric analysis, differential thermal analysis and thermomechanical analysis. All these methods involve complex devices and are only suitable for specialized personnel. In this work, a new device is developed to precisely measure the leather shrinkage temperature and to distinguish the different contraction stages. In addition, the proposed device is simple, easy to use and inexpensive, which facilitates its use in any industry. The developed system consists basically of a load cell to measure the strength produced by the shrinkage of the leather. With the logged data during the test a strength versus temperature graph is built. By means of its interpretation, the different stages of shrinkage can be determined. Different mathematical analysis of the logged data is proposed to determine the shrinkage stages temperatures, thus achieving a high degree of certainty and repeatability. Take-Away: A new device, simple and inexpensive, is developed to precisely measure the leather shrinkage temperature and to distinguish the different contraction stages

Emergence of Zipf's Law in the Evolution of Communication

Zipf's law seems to be ubiquitous in human languages and appears to be a universal property of complex communicating systems. Following the early proposal made by Zipf concerning the presence of a tension between the efforts of speaker and hearer in a communication system, we introduce evolution by means of a variational approach to the problem based on Kullback's Minimum Discrimination of Information Principle. Therefore, using a formalism fully embedded in the framework of information theory, we demonstrate that Zipf's law is the only expected outcome of an evolving, communicative system under a rigorous definition of the communicative tension described by Zipf.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figure