cometadata/datacite-rtg-text-other-reclassification-records huggingface dataset:
Decomposition of output growth in the Tunisian olive-growing sector: A frontier production function approach
Creators: name: Dhehibi, Boubaker
name: Lachaal, Lassaad
name: Karray, B.
name: Chebil, Ali
name: Dhehibi, Boubaker
name: Lachaal, Lassaad
name: Karray, B.
name: Chebil, Ali
Publisher: name: Unknown
Year: 2006
Subjects: subject: Crop Production/Industries
subject: Demand and Price Analysis
subject: Olive oil sector
subject: Tunisia
subject: productivity

description: The aim of this paper is to investigate the relative contribution of technical efficiency, technological change and increased input use to the output growth of the Tunisian olive oil growing farms using a stochastic frontier production function approach applied to panel data for the period 1995- 1997. The proposed methodology is based on the use of a flexible translog functional form. Results indicate that technical efficiency of production in the sample of olive producing farms investigated ranges from a minimum of 24.8% to a maximum of 84.6% with an average technical efficiency estimate of 48.5%. This suggests that olive producers may increase their production by as much as 51.5% through more efficient use of production inputs. Further, the production is characterised by decreasing returns to scale, which on average was 0.8. Finally, investigation of the sources of production growth reveals that the contribution of conventional inputs (labour, in particular) and technical change are found to be the main source of that growth, since total factor productivity increased during the study period, but at a slowing rate.
Consumer purchasing decisions and welfare under country of origin. Labelling regulation
Creators: name: Awada, Lana
name: Yiannaka, Amalia
name: Awada, Lana
name: Yiannaka, Amalia
Publisher: name: Unknown
Year: 2006
Subjects: subject: Consumer/Household Economics
subject: country of origin labeling
subject: heterogeneous consumer preferences
subject: vertical and horizontal product differentiation.

description: This study develops a theoretical framework of heterogeneous consumer preferences to examine the effect of voluntary and mandatory country of origin labeling (COOL) on consumer purchasing decisions and welfare when consumers view COOL information as an attribute that differentiates products vertically and horizontally. Analytical results of both the vertically and horizontally differentiated product models show that the change from a no COOL to a mandatory COOL regime decreases (increases) the welfare of consumers with weak (strong) preference for COOL. A change from a no COOL to a voluntary COOL regime leads to an undisputed increase in consumer welfare which results from an increase in the welfare of consumers with strong preference for COOL, while the welfare of consumers with weak preference for COOL remains unchanged. A change from a voluntary to a mandatory COOL regime leads to a consumer welfare loss in the vertically differentiated product model and in the horizontally differentiated product model when product relocation is prohibitively costly. In both the above models, a switch from voluntary to mandatory COOL decreases the welfare of consumer with weak preference for COOL, while it keeps the welfare of consumers with strong preference for COOL unchanged. A change from a voluntary to a mandatory COOL regime in the horizontally differentiated product market when product relocation is possible leads to a decrease in the welfare of consumer with both weak and strong preference for COOL and to possible welfare gains for those consumers who place greater value in country of origin information under mandatory than under voluntary COOL.
A Surrogate-model-based Approach for Estimating the First and Second-order Moments of Offshore Wind Power
Creators: name: Golparvar, Behzad
name: Papadopoulos, Petros
name: Ezzat, Ahmed Aziz
name: Wang, Ruo-Qian
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2020
Subjects: subject: Applications (stat.AP)
subject: Fluid Dynamics (physics.flu-dyn)
subject: FOS: Computer and information sciences
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: Power curve is widely used in the wind industry to estimate power output for planning and operational purposes. Existing methods for power curve estimation have three main limitations: (i) they mostly rely on wind speed as the sole input, thus ignoring the secondary, yet possibly significant effects of other environmental factors, (ii) they largely overlook the complex marine environment in which offshore turbines operate, potentially compromising their value in offshore wind energy applications, and (ii) they solely focus on the first-order properties of wind power, with little (or null) information about the variation around the mean behavior, which is important for ensuring reliable grid integration, asset health monitoring, and energy storage, among others. This study investigates the impact of several wind- and wave-related factors on offshore wind power variability, with the ultimate goal of accurately predicting its first two moments. Our approach couples OpenFAST with Gaussian Process (GP) regression to reveal the underlying relationships governing offshore weather-to-power conversion. We first find that a multi-input power curve which captures the combined impact of wind speed, direction, and air density, can provide double-digit improvements relative to univariate methods which rely on wind speed as the sole explanatory variable (e.g. the standard method of bins). Wave-related variables are found not important for predicting the average power output, but interestingly, appear to be extremely relevant in describing the fluctuation of the offshore power around its mean. Tested on real-world data collected at the New York/New Jersey bight, our proposed multi-input models demonstrate a high explanatory power in predicting the first two moments of offshore wind generation, testifying their potential value to the offshore wind industry.
Standards, a catalyst for the winners - a barrier for the losers? An empirical analysis of the impact of higher SPS measures on the trade performance of developing countries
Creators: name: Chemnitz, Christine
name: Kuenkel, Nana
name: Chemnitz, Christine
name: Kuenkel, Nana
Publisher: name: Unknown
Year: 2006
Subjects: subject: International Relations/Trade
subject: Food Safety
subject: SPS
subject: Developing Countries
subject: Cluster Analysis
subject: Competitiveness.

description: Within the debate about developing countries export competitiveness the increasing importance of food safety and quality standards especially in OECD countries appeals to be one of the major sources of concern. The paper analyses the trade performance of 73 developing countries within the context of stricter SPS measures. The analysis concentrates on the meat and fruit / vegetable sectors as especially high value product sectors are determined by standards. The periods under consideration are 1993- 1995, as a period before the implementation of the SPS Agreement and 2002- 2004, as a period after the implementation. A cluster analysis groups the countries according to the variables "ratio" and "difference" of the export value to OECD countries including the possibility to explore trade performance regarding to the absolute level of change and relative dynamics. Subsequently, interconnections with EU and US border rejections as well as with STDF (Standards and Trade Development Facility) investment are explored. For the results three major findings should be underlined: e) The group of developing countries shows as well in total as in relative terms a very heterogeneous picture of their export development and there is no linear relation between total export value and direction of development. ee) Ten groups were identified in the cluster analysis, like e.g. small winners, large winners, small losers, large losers. eee) Most large exporters increased their market share, but very successful groups were also found among small exporters, especially in the fruit / vegetable market. eeee) Both, border rejections as well as STDF investments did not reflect a particular structure related to market share development of individual countries.
Completeness Theorems for Kleene algebra with tests and top
Creators: name: Pous, Damien
name: Wagemaker, Jana
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2023
Subjects: subject: Formal Languages and Automata Theory (cs.FL)
subject: FOS: Computer and information sciences

description: We prove two completeness results for Kleene algebra with tests and a top element, with respect to guarded string languages and binary relations. While the equational theories of those two classes of models coincide over the signature of Kleene algebra, this is no longer the case when we consider an additional constant ``top'' for the full element. Indeed, the full relation satisfies more laws than the full language, and we show that those additional laws can all be derived from a single additional axiom. We recover that the two equational theories coincide if we slightly generalise the notion of relational model, allowing sub-algebras of relations where top is a greatest element but not necessarily the full relation. We use models of closed languages and reductions in order to prove our completeness results, which are relative to any axiomatisation of the algebra of regular events. For one of our constructions, we extend the concept of finite monoid recognisability to guarded-string languages; this device makes it possible to obtain a PSpace algorithm for the equational theory of binary relations.
The market analysis of branded, new generation hungaricums
Creators: name: Szakaly, Zoltan
name: Szigeti, Orsolya
name: Berke, Sz.
name: Szente, Viktoria
name: Szakaly, Zoltan
name: Szigeti, Orsolya
name: Berke, Sz.
name: Szente, Viktoria
Publisher: name: Unknown
Year: 2006
Subjects: subject: Demand and Price Analysis
subject: Marketing
subject: FOS: Economics and business
subject: Export
subject: New product
subject: Nutritional benefits
subject: Position
subject: Marketing strategy
subject: Competition

description: Natural capabilities of Hungary are particularly favourable for agricultural and food production. There are good possibilities both in cultivation of plants and in animal husbandry on plough- and grasslands. Hungary's share and its competitive position, however, decreased on European and world market in the past years. Therefore our research was focused on developing new animal products meeting the changing consumers' demands by their nutritional benefits and by their natural way of production. The study highlights four product s, namely goose - liver produced by considerately fatten up, rabbit meat with low fat and cholesterol levels, beef rich in omega - 3 fatty acids and selenium enriched eggs. The final goal is to form the basis of test - marketing being necessary to sale new branded products. By performing it we can introduce marketable products on national and international markets.
The main problems of food allergic consumers concerning food labeling: an ethnographic study
Creators: name: Voordouw, Jantine
name: Cornelisse-Vermaat, Judith R.
name: Frewer, Lynn J.
name: Voordouw, Jantine
name: Cornelisse-Vermaat, Judith R.
name: Frewer, Lynn J.
Publisher: name: Unknown
Year: 2006
Subjects: subject: Consumer/Household Economics
subject: Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety
subject: Food allergy
subject: consumers
subject: food labelling
subject: information needs

description: It has been estimated that 5-8% of children and 1-2% of the adults in developed countries are affected by food allergy, with symptoms ranging from discomfort to fatality. At present, avoidance of problematic foods is the only effective treatment strategy. As of November 25 th , 2005 food manufacturers in the EU are obliged to list 12 potentially allergic ingredients in food. Although the label is still not always fully understood by the consumer, or they get confused by precautionary labelling practices. This paper aims to gain insights into the information preferences of food allergic consumers regarding existing food labelling and additional information delivery systems. The results of this study will facilitate the development of best practices in information provision regarding food safety in the area of food allergy. In particular the research will elicit preferences for new ICT approaches to information delivery which can be focused on the individual needs of consumers. We argue that improved information supply will contribute to the quality of life of food allergic people.
Homogeneous open quantum walks on the line: criteria for site recurrence and absorption
Creators: name: Jacq, T. S.
name: Lardizabal, C. F.
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2020
Subjects: subject: Quantum Physics (quant-ph)
subject: Mathematical Physics (math-ph)
subject: Probability (math.PR)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences
subject: FOS: Mathematics

description: In this work, we study open quantum random walks, as described by S. Attal et al. These objects are given in terms of completely positive maps acting on trace-class operators, leading to one of the simplest open quantum versions of the recurrence problem for classical, discrete-time random walks. This work focuses on obtaining criteria for site recurrence of nearest-neighbor, homogeneous walks on the integer line, with the description presented here making use of recent results of the theory of open walks, most particularly regarding reducibility properties of the operators involved. This allows us to obtain a complete criterion for site recurrence in the case for which the internal degree of freedom of each site (coin space) is of dimension 2. We also present the analogous result for irreducible walks with an internal degree of arbitrary finite dimension and the absorption problem for walks on the semi-infinite line.
description: Revised version
Microscopic Description of Deeply Virtual Compton Scattering off Spin-0 Nuclei
Creators: name: Liuti, S.
name: Taneja, S. K.
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2005
Subjects: subject: High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: We evaluate within a microscopic calculation the contributions of both coherent and incoherent deeply virtual Compton scattering from a spin-0 nucleus. The coherent contribution is obtained when the target nucleus recoils as a whole, whereas for incoherent scattering break-up configurations for the final nucleus into a an outgoing nucleon and an $A-1$ system are considered. The two processes encode different characteristics of generalized parton distributions.
description: 7 pages, 3 figures
On the integrality of locally algebraic representations of $\mathrm{GL}_{2}(D)$
Creators: name: Nadimpalli, Santosh
name: Sheth, Mihir
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2023
Subjects: subject: Representation Theory (math.RT)
subject: Number Theory (math.NT)
subject: FOS: Mathematics
subject: 11F70, 22E50

description: Emerton's theory of Jacquet modules for locally analytic representations provides necessary conditions for the existence of integral structures in locally analytic representations. These conditions are also expected to be sufficient for the integrality of generic irreducible locally algebraic representations. In this article, we prove the sufficiency of Emerton's conditions for some tamely ramified locally algebraic representations of $\mathrm{GL}_{2}(D)$ where $D$ is a $p$-adic division algebra.
description: Lemma 2.4 is added. This is the published version
Transformer-based stereo-aware 3D object detection from binocular images
Creators: name: Sun, Hanqing
name: Pang, Yanwei
name: Cao, Jiale
name: Xie, Jin
name: Li, Xuelong
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2023
Subjects: subject: Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (cs.CV)
subject: FOS: Computer and information sciences

description: Transformers have shown promising progress in various visual object detection tasks, including monocular 2D/3D detection and surround-view 3D detection. More importantly, the attention mechanism in the Transformer model and the 3D information extraction in binocular stereo are both similarity-based. However, directly applying existing Transformer-based detectors to binocular stereo 3D object detection leads to slow convergence and significant precision drops. We argue that a key cause of that defect is that existing Transformers ignore the binocular-stereo-specific image correspondence information. In this paper, we explore the model design of Transformers in binocular 3D object detection, focusing particularly on extracting and encoding task-specific image correspondence information. To achieve this goal, we present TS3D, a Transformer-based Stereo-aware 3D object detector. In the TS3D, a Disparity-Aware Positional Encoding (DAPE) module is proposed to embed the image correspondence information into stereo features. The correspondence is encoded as normalized sub-pixel-level disparity and is used in conjunction with sinusoidal 2D positional encoding to provide the 3D location information of the scene. To enrich multi-scale stereo features, we propose a Stereo Preserving Feature Pyramid Network (SPFPN). The SPFPN is designed to preserve the correspondence information while fusing intra-scale and aggregating cross-scale stereo features. Our proposed TS3D achieves a 41.29% Moderate Car detection average precision on the KITTI test set and takes 88 ms to detect objects from each binocular image pair. It is competitive with advanced counterparts in terms of both precision and inference speed.
description: Accepted by IEEE T-ITS
Ising model as a $U(1)$ Lattice Gauge Theory with a $θ$-term
Creators: name: Sulejmanpasic, Tin
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2020
Subjects: subject: High Energy Physics - Lattice (hep-lat)
subject: Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech)
subject: High Energy Physics - Theory (hep-th)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: We discuss a gauged XY model a $θ$-term on an arbitrary lattice in 1+1 dimensions, and show that the theory reduces exactly to the 2d Ising model on the dual lattice in the limit of the strong gauge coupling, provided that the topological term is defined via the Villain action. We discuss the phase diagram by comparing the strong and weak gauge coupling limits, and perform Monte Carlo simulations at intermediate couplings. We generalize the duality to higher-dimensional Ising models using higher-form U(1) gauge field analogues.
description: 6 pages, 2 figures. This version corrected a typo in the text and split Fig.2 into a) and b) part
LIVESTOCK DEVELOPMENT AND NATURAL RESOURCES USE: A CASE STUDY OF BOTSWANA
Creators: name: O'Connor, Leslie Carole
name: O'Connor, Leslie Carole
Publisher: name: Unknown
Year: 1991
Subjects: Livestock Production/Industries
Resource /Energy Economics and Policy

description: Pastoralism and communal livestock production are important economic activities in Sub-Saharan Africa. According to FAO production figures the number of cattle in two countries, Botswana and Namibia, outnumber the human population (FAO, 1989). In Southern Africa, Botswana's agricultural sector is largely dependent on livestock, because most of the country lacks adequate rainfall for arable agriculture. A complicating factor is the unreliability of the rainfall and the potential for recurrent drought. Indeed, drought is considered a normal occurrence and farmers experience crop failure three or four years in every decade. Tyson, points out that the oscillations observed in past rainfall will likely continue into the future and that the rainfall averages would be expected to decline until 1982 or 1983 followed by a dry period lasting until about 1992 (Tyson, 1979, p. 51). This proved to be true as the 1982 drought began and it remains to be seen if the rainfall will increase in the next few years. While diamonds and minerals have superseded beef as the largest export, livestock remains the dominant factor in the agricultural sector and a large portion of the population rely on income from livestock to survive. For these reasons, livestock will most likely remain an important part of Botswana's economy and culture. Since independence in 1960, livestock projects have been implemented in almost every country in Sub-Saharan Africa. Unfortunately, few of the projects have been successful and donors are understandably reluctant to continue financing such projects. Because about 80% of the people in Botswana live in rural areas, it is unlikely that national development can be successful, unless there is a growing agricultural sector which generates jobs and employment and an efficient livestock sub-sector. Careful thought needs to be given to the reasons why donor-financed livestock projects have failed in Africa and to the donor experience in Botswana. An equally important issue that relates closely to the problems of communal livestock is the use and preservation of the natural resources and the environment. It is apparent that future development projects must consider the long term effects of these projects on the sustainability of economic systems such as agriculture. The challenge is to develop productive and environmentally sustainable cropping and livestock systems. The Botswana government recognized this need in the National Development Plan for 1976-1981: "The greatest challenge facing the livestock industry is to develop a system of land use and land tenure that can achieve sustained long term production from Botswana's range land" (Ministry of Finance and Development Planning, 1977, p.14B).
Branching exponents of synthetic vascular trees under different optimality principles
Creators: name: Jessen, Etienne
name: Steinbach, Marc C.
name: Debbaut, Charlotte
name: Schillinger, Dominik
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2023
Subjects: subject: Biological Physics (physics.bio-ph)
subject: Optimization and Control (math.OC)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences
subject: FOS: Mathematics

description: The branching behavior of vascular trees is often characterized using Murray's law. We investigate its validity using synthetic vascular trees generated under global optimization criteria. Our synthetic tree model does not incorporate Murray's law explicitly. Instead, we assume it holds implicitly and investigate the effects of different physical constraints and optimization goals on the branching exponent that is now allowed to vary locally. In particular, we include variable blood viscosity due to the Fåhræus--Lindqvist effect and enforce an equal pressure drop between inflow and the micro-circulation. Using our global optimization framework, we generate vascular trees with over one million terminal vessels and compare them against a detailed corrosion cast of the portal venous tree of a human liver. Murray's law is implicitly fulfilled when no additional constraints are enforced, indicating its validity in this setting. Variable blood viscosity or equal pressure drop leads to deviations from this optimum, but with the branching exponent inside the experimentally predicted range between 2.0 and 3.0. The validation against the corrosion cast shows good agreement from the portal vein down to the venules. Not enforcing Murray's law explicitly reduces the computational cost and increases the predictive capabilities of synthetic vascular trees. The ability to study optimal branching exponents across different scales can improve the functional assessment of organs.
FACTORS AFFECTING THE IMPORT OF WHEAT IN SAUDI ARABIA
Creators: name: Al-Goosi, Adbullah I.
name: Al-Goosi, Adbullah I.
Publisher: name: Unknown
Year: 1980
Subjects: Crop Production/Industries
International Relations/Trade

description: The modern economy of Saudi Arabia depends primarily on oil exports. Oil being the source of most of the country's exports, foreign exchange, and government revenues, it follows that the oil sector affects the economy rather than the economy affecting the oil sector. Saudi Arabia lacks natural resources for most of its essential goods and because of sudden high income, it has become necessary to introduce new strategies for producing necessary goods and services. Since Saudi Arabia depends more on foreign trade then most other countries in the world, it has to export almost all of the oil it produces - oil bing the country's only export commodity. Thus, Saudi Arabia is almost entirely dependent on the international market, which is, in turn, affected by oil prices. Like the oil sector, agriculture has also received the Saudi Arabian government's keen attention. The agricultural sector is estimated to have contributed 1,035.9 million ryals in 1970, about 6.5 percent of the Gross Domestic Production. The agricultural sector's annual growth rate was 4.1 percent in 1968, 3 percent in 1969, then estimated in 1970 at about 4 percent. Whereas this rate is less than those for other sectors in the Kingdom, it is not low when compared with growth rates in the developing countries. The Kingdom's imports of all goods have been increased at an average annual rate of about 70 percent, but in 1976 rose by 83 percent. The value of foodstuff imported financed by commercial banks in 1976 rose by 10 percent, while the value of other imports increased by 61 percent. Imports of food grains rose by about 12 percent per annum in the period between 1956 and 1970. Imports of wheat, flour, and rice rose increasingly because of the factors mentioned earlier. Wheat is considered to be the principal agricultural crop in Saudi Arabia. In the last few years domestic wheat crops faced many production and marketing problems, such as increasing demand and fluctuating supplies of wheat and flour. Thus this paper provides a study of the factors that affect imports of wheat and flour, such as an increase in oil export and population. The objectives of this paper are to: 1) To estimate the demand equation for imported wheat and flour during the period between 1960 and 1976; 2) To identify the most important factors affecting the imported quantities of this commodity; 3) To identify the most important socio-economic factors affecting the Saudi economy; 4) To give a general picture of the balance of payments and its effect on foreign trade; and 5) To introduce the Kingdom's background position of production and imports for wheat and flour.
Active-Particle Polarization Without Alignment Forces
Creators: name: Söker, Nicola Andreas
name: Auschra, Sven
name: Holubec, Viktor
name: Kroy, Klaus
name: Cichos, Frank
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2020
Subjects: subject: Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft)
subject: Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: Active-particle suspensions exhibit distinct polarization-density patterns in activity landscapes, even without anisotropic particle interactions. Such polarization without alignment forces is at work in motility-induced phase separation and betrays intrinsic microscopic activity to mesoscale observers. Using stable long-term confinement of a single hot microswimmer in a dedicated force-free particle trap, we examine the polarized interfacial layer at a motility step and confirm that it does not exert pressure onto the bulk. Our observations are quantitatively explained by an analytical theory that can also guide the analysis of more complex geometries and many-body effects.
description: 5 pages, 3 figures
AN ECONOMIC STUDY OF A REGULATED SUBSECTOR: SUGAR IN SPAIN
Creators: name: Cadenas, Alfredo M.
name: Cadenas, Alfredo M.
Publisher: name: Unknown
Year: 1975
Subjects: Agricultural and Food Policy

description: The objectives of this paper are five-fold: 1) it represents an attempt to describe the problems, issues, and policies related to the Spanish sugar subsector, and, to put together and organize some facts about its functioning; 2) finding sugar demand and supply relationships at the provincial and regional levels respectively; 3) some extrapolations of past trends in sugar consumption and sugar-beet production will be made in order to project long run levels to 1980 and 1985; 4) to find the area, or areas, which may be considered as the "main consuming areas" or places with "the largest sugar deficit" from which to compute the "threshold", "variable levies", and at-the-port-differentiated prices in an economically efficient way; and 5) to find whether there is any regional comparative advantage in terms of transportation costs.
Laser spectroscopy with nanometric gas cells : distance dependence of atom-surface interaction and collisions under confinement
Creators: name: Hamdi, Ismahène
name: Todorov, Petko
name: Yarovitski, Alexander
name: Dutier, Gabriel
name: Maurin, Isabelle
name: Saltiel, Solomon
name: Li, Yuanyuan
name: Lezama, Arturo
name: Varzhapetyan, Tigran
name: Sarkisyan, David
name: Gorza, Marie-Pascale
name: Fichet, Michèle
name: Bloch, Daniel
name: Ducloy, Martial
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2005
Subjects: subject: Atomic Physics (physics.atom-ph)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: The high sensitivity of Laser Spectroscopy has made possible the exploration of atomic resonances in newly designed "nanometric" gas cells, whose local thickness varies from 20nm to more than 1000 nm. Following the initial observation of the optical analogous of the coherent Dicke microwave narrowing, the newest prospects include the exploration of long-range atom surface van der Waals interaction with spatial resolution in an unprecedented range of distances, modification of atom dielectric resonant coupling under the influence of the coupling between the two neighbouring dielectric media, and even the possible modification of interatomic collisions processes under the effect of confinement.
AN EMPIRICAL TEST OF COMPETITIVENESS AMONG MAJOR RICE EXPORTING COUNTRIES
Creators: name: Chen, Jin
name: Chen, Jin
Publisher: name: Unknown
Year: 1995
Subjects: International Relations/Trade

description: This paper reviews recent empirical research on measures of industrial performance in world trade. Two recently developed indices, comparative advantage and competitive advantage, are used to analyze trade patterns of major rice exporting countries in the world rice market. The empirical test results conclude that there is no significant difference between revealed comparative advantage and revealed competitive advantage for the five major rice exporters. The ranking for the five exporters based on test results suggest that Burma has the greatest comparative advantage and competitive advantage in exporting rice, Thailand and Pakistan rank second, and the United States and China rank third among the five major exporters.
WORLD BANK PROJECT APPRAISAL AND AN EMERGENT DEVELOPMENT PERSPECTIVE: THE ITERATIVE/PARTICIPATORY APPROACH
Creators: name: Zewde, Almaz
name: Zewde, Almaz
Publisher: name: Unknown
Year: 1993
Subjects: International Development
Research Methods/ Statistical Methods

description: This study aimed to investigate the strategic assumptions and practices in World Bank project appraisal programs. Semistructured interviews of senior World Bank field officers in Addis Ababa and Nirobi and extensive review of World Bank appraisal directives and related documents provided the data for the study. The purpose was to see the correspondence between Bank project appraisal methods, assumptions, and criteria and the iterative/participatory development model. The findings suggest that despite the Bank's awareness of the inherent value of the iterative/participatory development model and expressed interest in changing the direction of the Bank's development practices towards it, the project approach with appraisal emphasis on monetary and quantitative measures of development continue to dominate. The findings also imply the importance of broadening the Bank's professional mix if significant movement towards an iterative/participatory strategy is to be realized.
Polarization-Density Patterns of Active Particles in Motility Gradients
Creators: name: Auschra, Sven
name: Holubec, Viktor
name: Söker, Nicola Andreas
name: Cichos, Frank
name: Kroy, Klaus
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2020
Subjects: subject: Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft)
subject: Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: The co-localization of density modulations and particle polarization is a characteristic emergent feature of motile active matter in activity gradients. It can therefore play the role of a smoking gun for the mesoscale detection of intrinsic microscopic activity. We employ the active-Brownian-particle (ABP) model to derive precise analytical expressions for the density and polarization profiles of a single Janus-type swimmer in the vicinity of an abrupt activity step, including situations with an orientation-dependent propulsion speed. Our results agree well with measurement data for a hot microswimmer presented in the companion paper [1] and can serve as a template for more complex applications, e.g., to motility-induced phase separation or studies of physical boundaries. The essential physics behind our formal results is robustly captured and elucidated by a schematic two-species ``run-and-tumble'' model.
description: 21 pages, 11 figures
The adiabatic theorem in the presence of noise
Creators: name: O'Hara, Michael J.
name: O'Leary, Dianne P.
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2008
Subjects: subject: Quantum Physics (quant-ph)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: We provide rigorous bounds for the error of the adiabatic approximation of quantum mechanics under four sources of experimental error: perturbations in the initial condition, systematic time-dependent perturbations in the Hamiltonian, coupling to low-energy quantum systems, and decoherent time-dependent perturbations in the Hamiltonian. For decoherent perturbations, we find both upper and lower bounds on the evolution time to guarantee the adiabatic approximation performs within a prescribed tolerance. Our new results include explicit definitions of constants, and we apply them to the spin-1/2 particle in a rotating magnetic field, and to the superconducting flux qubit. We compare the theoretical bounds on the superconducting flux qubit to simulation results.
description: 40 pages, 4 figures
A Moment-SOS Hierarchy for Robust Polynomial Matrix Inequality Optimization with SOS-Convexity
Creators: name: Guo, Feng
name: Wang, Jie
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2023
Subjects: subject: Optimization and Control (math.OC)
subject: FOS: Mathematics
subject: 90C23, 90C17, 90C22, 90C26

description: We study a class of polynomial optimization problems with a robust polynomial matrix inequality (PMI) constraint where the uncertainty set itself is defined also by a PMI. These can be viewed as matrix generalizations of semi-infinite polynomial programs, since they involve actually infinitely many PMI constraints in general. Under certain SOS-convexity assumptions, we construct a hierarchy of increasingly tight moment-SOS relaxations for solving such problems. Most of the nice features of the moment-SOS hierarchy for the usual polynomial optimization are extended to this more complicated setting. In particular, asymptotic convergence of the hierarchy is guaranteed and finite convergence can be certified if some flat extension condition holds true. To extract global minimizers, we provide a linear algebra procedure for recovering a finitely atomic matrix-valued measure from truncated matrix-valued moments. As an application, we are able to solve the problem of minimizing the smallest eigenvalue of a polynomial matrix subject to a PMI constraint. If SOS-convexity is replaced by convexity, we can still approximate the optimal value as closely as desired by solving a sequence of semidefinite programs, and certify global optimality in case that certain flat extension conditions hold true. Finally, an extension to the non-convexity setting is provided under a rank one condition. To obtain the above-mentioned results, techniques from real algebraic geometry, matrix-valued measure theory, and convex optimization are employed.
description: 38 pages, 1 figure
APPLICATION OF SAMPLING SURVEY IN ESTIMATING AGRICULTURAL STATISTICS OF THAILAND
Creators: name: Buasri, Prajiad
name: Buasri, Prajiad
Publisher: name: Unknown
Year: 1971
Subjects: Research Methods/ Statistical Methods

description: Thailand is an essentially agricultural country. Agriculture provides direct employment to 81 percent of the nation's population. Approximately one third of the Gross Domestic Product originates in the agricultural sector, including agricultural crops, livestock, fisheries, and forestry. Substantially more income is earned in the marketing and processing of agricultural commodities. The major exports of Thailand continue to be primary agricultural products such as rice, rubber, teak, corn, kenaf, cassava, oil seeds, and other upland crops. These account for 90 percent of total foreign exchange earnings. Since Thailand has a prosperous agrarian economy, and agriculture continues to be the main economic activity despite the growing importance of other sectors of the economy, agricultural statistics are a very important input for decision-making purposes. This applies to all levels of the economy from the farmer to the national political leadership. In order to solve the problem of unreliable agricultural statistics in Thailand, this study attempted to design an appropriate method that would furnish better agricultural data subject to the limited resources available.
Bibliometric Data Fusion for Biomedical Information Retrieval
Creators: name: Breuer, Timo
name: Kreutz, Christin Katharina
name: Schaer, Philipp
name: Tunger, Dirk
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2023
Subjects: subject: Digital Libraries (cs.DL)
subject: FOS: Computer and information sciences

description: Digital libraries in the scientific domain provide users access to a wide range of information to satisfy their diverse information needs. Here, ranking results play a crucial role in users' satisfaction. Exploiting bibliometric metadata, e.g., publications' citation counts or bibliometric indicators in general, for automatically identifying the most relevant results can boost retrieval performance. This work proposes bibliometric data fusion, which enriches existing systems' results by incorporating bibliometric metadata such as citations or altmetrics. Our results on three biomedical retrieval benchmarks from TREC Precision Medicine (TREC-PM) show that bibliometric data fusion is a promising approach to improve retrieval performance in terms of normalized Discounted Cumulated Gain (nDCG) and Average Precision (AP), at the cost of the Precision at 10 (P@10) rate. Patient users especially profit from this lightweight, data-sparse technique that applies to any digital library.
description: 10 pages + references, conference paper accepted at JCDL'23
Dalecarlioceras undetermined
Creators: name: Kröger, Björn
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2025
Subjects: Biodiversity
Taxonomy
Animalia
Mollusca
Cephalopoda
Oncoceratida
Oncoceratidae
Dalecarlioceras
Dalecarlioceras undetermined

description: Dalecarlioceras sp.
Fig. 34C
Material examined
ESTONIA • Vohilaid Island, Vohilaid shore (E); Adila Formation, Pirgu Regional Stage; GIT 878-250.
Description
GIT 878-250 is a fragment of a phragmocone with part of the body chamber, in which details of the siphuncle are well-preserved. The conch increases in height from 35 mm to 49 mm over 31 mm (angle of expansion 25°). At a height of 38 mm, its width is 30 mm (CHI = 1.27), and the conch cross section is ovate with a slightly narrower margin on the prosiphuncular side. The preserved part of the body chamber is 40 mm long. In lateral view, the conch is nearly straight with a convex margin on the prosiphuncular side and a straight margin at the antisiphuncular side, which is slightly convex near the adoral end of the body chamber. The sutures are straight and directly transverse, 6 mm apart where the conch height is 49 mm (RCL = 0.12). The siphuncle is close to the conch margin, ca 3 mm in diameter where the conch height is 35 mm (RSH = 0.09). The siphuncular segments are expanded within the chambers, with their greatest width near the adoral end of the segments.
Remarks
The near mature size of this specimen is indicated by the convex shape of its antisiphuncular body chamber margin. The fragmentary preservation of the specimen does not permit species level determination.
description: Published as part of Kröger, Björn, 2025, The Lyckholm acme of cephalopods - Review of the late Katian (Vormsi-Pirgu regional stages) Ordovician cephalopods of Estonia, pp. 1-169 in European Journal of Taxonomy 978 on pages 88-89, DOI: 10.5852/ejt.2025.978.2801, http://zenodo.org/record/14988376
Non-commutative resolutions of linearly reductive quotient singularities
Creators: name: Liedtke, Christian
name: Yasuda, Takehiko
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2023
Subjects: subject: Algebraic Geometry (math.AG)
subject: Commutative Algebra (math.AC)
subject: Rings and Algebras (math.RA)
subject: FOS: Mathematics
subject: 14A22, 14B05, 13A35

description: We prove existence of non-commutative crepant resolutions (in the sense of van den Bergh) of quotient singularities by finite and linearly reductive group schemes in positive characteristic. In dimension two, we relate these to resolutions of singularities provided by G-Hilbert schemes and F-blowups. As an application, we establish and recover results concerning resolutions for toric singularities, as well as canonical, log terminal, and F-regular singularities in dimension 2.
description: 20 pages, minor changes, comments welcome!
PHILIPPINE COCONUT INDUSTRY AND THE INTERNATIONAL TRADE
Creators: name: Oniki, Shunji
name: Oniki, Shunji
Publisher: name: Unknown
Year: 1992
Subjects: Crop Production/Industries
International Relations/Trade

description: This study explores effects of Philippines' coconut policies on the performance in the international market. Analysis of the coconut sector found that the Philippine government successfully changed the structure of the coconut industry during the 1970's using a fund collected as coconut levies. Since the Philippines dominated the international trade market of coconut products, it could exercise dominant market power in the world trade, by integrating the domestic sector. However, the industrial policies were not effective. Results of an econometric analysis show that the Philippines did not gain the market power despite the heavy investment in the coconut sector. Due to technological development in the oil processing sector, other oil products became close substitutes for the coconut products. Shift in coconut oil utilization from edible use to inedible use also accelerated the substitutability. Under the competitive market, the Philippines could not gain monopolistic profits from the exports.
Single Transition Layer in Mass-Conserving Reaction-Diffusion Systems with Bistable Nonlinearity
Creators: name: Kuwamura, Masataka
name: Teramoto, Takashi
name: Ikeda, Hideo
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2023
Subjects: subject: Analysis of PDEs (math.AP)
subject: FOS: Mathematics
subject: 35B25, 35K57

description: Mass-conserving reaction-diffusion systems with bistable nonlinearity are useful models for studying cell polarity formation, which is a key process in cell division and differentiation. We rigorously show the existence and stability of stationary solutions with a single internal transition layer in such reaction-diffusion systems under general assumptions by the singular perturbation theory. Moreover, we present a meaningful model for understanding the existence of an unstable transition layer solution; our numerical simulations show that the unstable solution is a separatrix of the dynamics of the model.
description: 41 pages, 5 figures
APPROACHES TO RURAL DEVELOPMENT IN TAIWAN (A CASE STUDY)
Creators: name: Nair, K. Damodaran
name: Nair, K. Damodaran
Publisher: name: Unknown
Year: 1969
Subjects: Community/Rural/Urban Development

description: The purpose of this paper is not to inquire into the role of agricultural sector in the economic growth of Taiwan. That has been done by many in the past. Rather, the main purpose of this paper is to review and discuss a few institutional approaches to agricultural and rural development on Taiwan which are considered to have played more significant roles, viz. The Joint Commission on Rural Reconstruction, the Farmers' Associations, Land Reform Program, Research and Education and the Four Year Economic Plans. An attempt also will be made to identify the effects of these institutions on the socio-economic life of the people in the rural Taiwan. Agricultural and rural development has been a subject for study and discussion among those who have focused their attention and resources for the economic development of the emerging nations in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. There have been several attempts and approaches to the problem. There is a growing consensus among economists regarding the vital importance of agricultural and rural development in developing countries for the fact that many of these countries are predominantly rural and agricultural. Abundant is the literature dealing with developmental strategies for under-developed countries and the role of agriculture in total economic development. Still there is no satisfactory explanation of why some countries at one time or another have emerged into and sustained the cumulative growth process while others have failed. Japan has been, quite for some time, often quoted as an example of sustained economic growth for which its agricultural development strategy is considered to be a major factor. Another country which is fast approaching the level of Japan is its one-time colony, Taiwan.
Thermal characteristics in a heat exchanger tube fitted with zigzag-winglet perforated-tapes
Creators: name: S. Suwannapan, S. Skullong
Publisher: name: Thai Society of Mechanical Engineers
Year: 2015
Subjects: Thermal performance, zigzag-winglet, perforated-tape, Nusselt number, Reynolds number

description: 1, 3, Journal of Research and Applications in Mechanical Engineering
Guided Image Synthesis via Initial Image Editing in Diffusion Model
Creators: name: Mao, Jiafeng
name: Wang, Xueting
name: Aizawa, Kiyoharu
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2023
Subjects: subject: Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (cs.CV)
subject: FOS: Computer and information sciences

description: Diffusion models have the ability to generate high quality images by denoising pure Gaussian noise images. While previous research has primarily focused on improving the control of image generation through adjusting the denoising process, we propose a novel direction of manipulating the initial noise to control the generated image. Through experiments on stable diffusion, we show that blocks of pixels in the initial latent images have a preference for generating specific content, and that modifying these blocks can significantly influence the generated image. In particular, we show that modifying a part of the initial image affects the corresponding region of the generated image while leaving other regions unaffected, which is useful for repainting tasks. Furthermore, we find that the generation preferences of pixel blocks are primarily determined by their values, rather than their position. By moving pixel blocks with a tendency to generate user-desired content to user-specified regions, our approach achieves state-of-the-art performance in layout-to-image generation. Our results highlight the flexibility and power of initial image manipulation in controlling the generated image. Project Page: https://ut-mao.github.io/swap.github.io/
description: ACM MM 23