Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

A Review Of Baobab (Adansonia Digitata) Products: Effect Of Processing Techniques, Medicinal Properties And Uses, Donatien Kabore, Hagrétou Sawadogo-Lingani, Bréhima Diawara, Clarise Compaoré, Mamoudou H. Dicko Prof., Mogens Jacobsen

Pr. Mamoudou H. DICKO, PhD

A general literature review including the effect of processing techniques, medicinal value and uses of baobab tree is reported in this manuscript. Baobab tree has multi-purpose uses, as it produces food and non-food products such as medicines, fuel, timber, fodder. Every part of the baobab tree is reported to be useful. The seeds, leaves, roots, flowers, fruit pulp and bark of baobab are edible. Baobab leaves are used in the preparation of soup. Seeds are used as a thickening agent in soups, but they can be fermented and used as a flavouring agent or roasted and eaten as snacks. The …

Economic Impact Of Agriculture On South Dakota, Gary Taylor

Economics Commentator

No abstract provided.

The Resource Curse And Peru: A Potential Threat For The Future?, Sergio Cruz

Master's Theses

What explains the ability of some countries to successfully use their natural resources towards development and economic growth while for others stagnation and impoverishment? The resource curse theory has helped economists explain this observation. This work examines how Peru has been able to produce strong economic growth in the last 20 years despite the economy’s strong dependence on its natural resource extractive industry. Peru has been able to avoid many of the pitfalls and traps that resource curse literature considers to be detrimental to economic growth. This article examines the resource based economies of four other countries (Venezuela, Chile, Nigeria, …

Fairmount Greenway - A Community Initative, Leah H. Bamberger, Liliana Carvajal, Mary F. Dehais, Yuanfang Gong, John E. Hulsey, Eric C. Kells, Kimberley Klosterman, Pamela Jo Landi, Adam G. Monroy, Seth A. Morrow, Bryan O'Bara, Jie Su, Arianna Thompson, Owen M. White

jie su

This studio was based on the Fairmount Greenway that was developed through a series of public meetings with the neighborhood community and with consultants from the firm Crosby, Schlessinger and Smallridge (CSS). The Fairmount Greenway, while drawing its identity from the traditional greenway model is in fact a reinterpretation of an urban greenway. The greenway path follows along both primary and secondary city streets because of the lack of space along the rail right-of-way. The Fairmount Greenway begins at what will be a new station stop at New Market South Bay near Upham’s Corner in northern Dorchester. The greenway follows …

Economic Outlook Heading Into 2012, Emmanuel Opoku, Scott W. Fausti

Economics Commentator

No abstract provided.

Using Pen Source Data Inputs To Map Food Insecurity In Cumberland County, Maine, Daniel Wallace

Muskie School Capstones and Dissertations

In 2010, Mapping Food Insecurity’s Project Director (PD) participated in “The Campaign to Promote Food Security in Cumberland County, Maine.” The Campaign drew together a 60 member coalition to address rapidly increasing food insecurity challenges in the county. It produced a report with a series of recommendations grouped under six strategic community goals. One of the recommendations called for the use of ‘mapping and connectivity software to determine location of vulnerable populations and services in order to plan best future delivery and use of food access services in Cumberland County

60 Years Of Rural Reconstruction Movement In The Philippines (Prrm) = 回顧菲律賓鄉村建設運動60年, Isagani R. Serrano

South South Forum 南南論壇

PRRM did not go to the countryside to disperse buffalos though that’s not necessarily a bad thing. PRRM did disperse buffalos and other farm animals but it went to the countryside for nobler reason---the liberation of the peasant from poverty and oppression. It sought to do this through mass education and mass movement.

By 2012 PRRM will have spanned a period running in parallel to the postwar development history of the Philippines. It was founded in 1952 during the administration of President Magsaysay, called “Man of the Masses”. PRRM peaked in the 1960s, declined in the late 1970s through to …

Tension And Contradiction In Agrarian Reform And Rural Reconstruction In Post-Monarch Nepal, Arjun Karki

South South Forum 南南論壇

Agrarian reform and land reform are usually understood synonymously as they are embedded with the unequal agrarian structure in Nepal. A widespread objective of agrarian reform is to promote social justice by equitable distribution of land and resources. Agrarian reform includes the restructuring of land tenure, the means of production, and the provision of support services to the farmers and rural inhabitants.

In Nepal land is the principle determinant for classifying people into distinct classes. Due to the various state-led land grants, unequal socio-economic relations and growing population density, little ‘free’ land is available these days (Karki, 2001). More than …

Reasons To Shop At Farmer's Market: A Survey Study In South Dakota, Kuo-Liang Chang, Jerry Warmann

Economics Commentator

No abstract provided.

Offshore Wind Energy In Michigan: Economic Costs And Benefits, Erik Edward Nordman, Lynn Vaccaro

Erik Edward Nordman

No abstract provided.

Offshore Wind Energy In Michigan: Implications For The Great Lakes Environment, Erik Edward Nordman, Daniel M. O'Keefe

Erik Edward Nordman

No abstract provided.

A Counterfactual Decomposition Analysis Of Immigrants-Natives Earnings In Malaysia. Economics Discussion Papers, No 2011-51, Muhammad Anees

Muhammad Anees

Economics of discrimination has been the topic of interest of many in the last decade or two. Human capital theory describes wage determination as a function of labour human capital and should be determined based on marginal productivity theorem of labour economics. Islamic theology also dictates paying labour well in time and equal to their productivity not based on his colour, race, gender, nationality health status and other non-economic factors. The current study analyses the immigrants-natives wage gap to find the extent of potential discrimination against the immigrants. Using employees’ level data from the Enterprise Surveys by the World Bank …

Rethinking A Carbon Tax In An Era Of Budget Deficits, Chad Covert

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Biofuel And Water Resources, Xia Zhou

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation focuses on the economic and environmental benefits of planting switchgrass as a bioenergy feedstock. The first chapter presents a dynamic optimization model of fertilizer and land allocation between switchgrass and corn to estimate economic benefits. Subsequent chapters utilize Geographic Information System (GIS)-based Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) to be calibrated to evaluate the environmental (nutrient and sediment loading) effects of land use conversion to switchgrass production on water quality and analyze the Water Quality Trading (WQT) program with cost-effectiveness ratios ordered for abatements of nutrient loadings in an East Tennessee watershed.

Optimal Draw Area And Feedstock Delivery Schedule Of Biorefineries In The Southeast U.S. Based On Least Cost And Producers’ Willingness To Plant A Dedicated Energy Crop, Wen Tu

Doctoral Dissertations

To overcome the limitations of starch-based and sugar-based ethanol, scientists propose to expand the use of cellulosic ethanol. Cellulosic ethanol is a biofuel produced from wood, grasses, or the non-edible parts of plants. As the U.S. has a large cellulosic biomass production base (Perlack et al., 2006), production of ethanol from cellulosic feedstock and use of ethanol as a substitute for gasoline could help promote rural development, reduce green house gases emissions, and increase energy independence. This study focuses on the cost of producing cellulosic ethanol along with the amount of carbon sequestered and emitted using switchgrass as a feedstock. …

Designing Carbon Taxation Schemes For Automobiles: A Simulation Exercise For Germany, Adamos Adamou, Sofronis Clerides, Theodoros Zachariadis

Theodoros Zachariadis

Vehicle taxation based on CO2 emissions is increasingly being adopted worldwide in order to shift consumer purchases to low-carbon cars, yet little is known about the effectiveness and overall economic impact of these schemes. We focus on feebate schemes, which impose a fee on high-carbon vehicles and give a rebate to purchasers of low-carbon automobiles. We estimate a discrete choice model of demand for automobiles in Germany and simulate the impact of alternative feebate schemes on emissions, consumer welfare, public revenues and firm profits. The analysis shows that a well-designed scheme can lead to emission reductions without reducing overall welfare.

Toolkit And Guidance For Preventing And Managing Land And Natural Resources Conflict: Conflict Prevention In Resource-Rich Economies, Cosmas Milton Obote Ochieng Ochieng

Cosmas Milton Obote Ochieng Ochieng

Natural resource exports such as oil, diamonds and copper provide opportunities to drive growth and human development. However, extraction of these commodities can also result in slow growth, poverty and conflict. This paper focuses on four questions. First, how does natural resource dependence impede economic and social progress? Second, how does lack of economic and social progress translate into violent conflict? Third, which economic policies lessen the risk of conflict? Fourth, what are the programmatic implications for UNDP?

By synthesizing country cases, this paper shows that resource-based countries face a higher risk of experiencing violent conflict because of increases in …

Growing The Experience Economy, Cheryl Burkhart-Kriesel

Cornhusker Economics

Some of us, and I confess I am in this group, can remember when our mother would make us a birthday cake. She used basic ingredients or commodities like flour, sugar, eggs and cocoa to create it from scratch. It was always a wonderful creation and quite affordable – probably under 50 cents for the entire cake. Then a few years later it seemed fashionable to use cake mixes and canned frostings. Betty Crocker, Duncan Hines and others figured out that they could take the commodities and package them in such a way as to make a consumer good. …

2012 Nebraska Crop Budgets, Roger Wilson

Cornhusker Economics

Overall, average projected cash costs per unit of production for 2012 are almost 15 percent higher than the 2011 projections made in April.

Some of this increase is due to a higher labor wage. Twenty dollars per hour was used as the wage rate in 2012, compared to $12 per hour in 2011. Wage rates vary substantially from one producer to the next, and there is no suitable index for determining a representative wage. It is not likely that actual wages paid increased that much from one year to the next, so this change represents an adjustment upwards as well …

Ecological Revival And Sustainable Living In The Tropical Dry Evergreen Forest Of Tamil Nadu: A Measurement Of Residential Perception In Sadhana Forest, Elizabeth Collette Mcguire

Department of Environmental Studies: Undergraduate Student Theses

Since 1970, the role and function of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been to promote environmental quality and to form strategies for carrying out environmental policy¹. The EPA has committed to sustainability as the next level of environmental protection. The agency states that sustainability calls for policies and strategies that meet society’s present needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs². Presently, society’s requirements have resulted in natural resource exploitation and population distention- projected to reach 10 billion people within two human generations³. These paired occurrences are …

Residual Supply Analysis Of The United States Corn Export Market, Melissa Antoinette Yeast

Masters Theses

Six models of imperfect competition test the interaction between the United States and Argentina in the Japanese corn import market. The models evaluated were the Bertrand (1883), Cournot (1897), and Stackelberg (1952) with price and quantity leadership by the United States and Argentina. Models were compared using a non-nested likelihood ratio test. Results of the analysis did not show a statistically significant preference of one model over another. The dominance of the United States in the Japanese corn import market is the likely cause for the results. The methodology used in this analysis could be applied to alternate commodities such …

Analyzing Effects On Biofuels While Integrating The Agricultural Sector To The Energy Market: Linking Polysys And Markal, Shreekar Pradhan

Masters Theses

Two different sectoral models: POLYSYS (agricultural) and MARKAL (energy) are soft-linked in a modeling framework. The linkage benefits the strengths of price dynamics of biofuel crops in POLYSYS and the least cost biofuel supply in MARKAL. As the result the framework can now evaluate implication of biofuel policy in the agricultural and energy sectors simultaneously. This study utilizes the linkage to evaluate the implication of biofuel subsidy policy on the agricultural and energy sectors. Three scenarios are developed. First, the base case assumes current subsidy for corn ethanol and cellulosic ethanol will be continued until 2030. Second scenario (Sub1) assesses …

Sensitivity Analysis On Mapping Evapotranspiration At High Resolution Using Internal Calibration (Metric), Venkata Naga Ravi Kumar Choragudi

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Mapping EvapoTranspiration at high Resolution using Internal Calibration (METRIC) is most widely used to quantify evapotranspiration (ET) spatially and temporally. It is essential to inspect the model’s response to errors in various parameters used in the model. Landsat 5 images from May 30 2009, July 1 2009 and a Landsat 7 image from September 27 2009 are used in this study. Fourteen different fields composed of Corn, Soybeans, Alfalfa are randomly chosen for each crop type.

Two kinds of errors are addressed in this study. One, with the errors that are transferred and potentially compensated by calibration (Global error) and …

World Food Crisis: Imperfect Markets Starving Development, A Decomposition Of Recent Food Price Increases, Christine Costello

College of Business: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The recent decade has experienced two rather substantial food price spikes. This thesis sets out to provide an in-depth look at the recent food price increases by achieving two goals: assessing the forces driving food prices, and determining the magnitude of those forces. These goals are reached by reviewing selected rhetoric on the recent food price increases, analyzing case studies, and lastly determining our modeling capabilities in decomposing food price changes. Additionally, this thesis will serve as a tool for stakeholder's to better address critical policy issues surrounding food, agriculture, and energy policies.

Adviser: Hendrik Van Den Berg

Agricultural Productivity Growth In Central America And The Caribbean, Ayako Ebata

Department of Agricultural Economics: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This thesis estimates total factor productivity (TFP) growth in the agricultural sector of fourteen regions in Central America and the Caribbean. First, TFP is measured parametrically and non-parametrically, using the Ordinary Least Square (OLS) method and the Maximum Likelihood (ML) method to estimate a translog production function and the Malmquist index approach. Secondly, the thesis incorporates an environmental bad, CO₂ emissions from expansion of agricultural land by sacrificing forest area and estimates environmentally adjusted productivity (EAP) growth rates using an output distance function in order to assess how the growth of TFP rates changes when such a bad is …

Optimizing University Managed Resources For South Dakota Public Universities: A Simulation Approach, Michael Holbeck, David Chicoine

Economics Staff Paper Series

A simulation analysis demonstrates the use of tuition as a policy tool to achieve financial independence among the six South Dakota public universities under University Managed Resources (UMR). The simulation analysis maintains an overall environment of funding stability and is guided by horizontal equity, a concept from the economics of public finance that all entities of the same or similar situation are treated similarly. Financial independence, within the simulation analysis, is defined as an annual budgeting process with no reallocation of financial resources among or between the six universities. For each of the three indicators of horizontal equity simulated, achieving …

Velocity Contour Weighting Method. Ii: Evaluation In Trapezoidal Channels And Roughness Sensitivity, Daniel Howes, Brett F. Sanders

BioResource and Agricultural Engineering

The Velocity Contour Weighting Method (VCWM) was developed in Part I to accurately estimate the cross-sectional average velocity of a prismatic channel flow using acoustic Doppler velocity meter (ADVM) measurements of centerline velocity. Here, the VCWM is validated by its successful application to 25 different concrete-lined trapezoidal channels used for irrigation water delivery. At each site, the cross-sectional distribution of velocity is measured by an acoustic Doppler velocimeter (ADV), which is moved horizontally and vertically through a sampling grid. Multiple tests at some sites led to a total of 51 sets of cross-sectional measurements. ADVM measurements are simulated by interpolating …

Velocity Contour Weighting Method. I: Algorithm Development And Laboratory Testing, Daniel J. Howes, Brett F. Sanders

BioResource and Agricultural Engineering

An algorithm is developed for real-time estimation of the cross-sectional average velocity of a channel flow by using an upward-looking pulsed wave acoustic Doppler velocity meters (ADVM). The Velocity Contour Weighting Method (VCWM) is applicable to gradually varied flows in prismatic channels and requires little to no calibration. VCWM estimates the average velocity as a weighted average of ADVM bin velocities. Weights are based on the velocity distribution sampled by the ADVM. Collectively, the VCWM is able to adapt to a wide range of channel geometry and roughness features. Expressions for the velocity weights are developed by first applying a …

Public Opinion And Food Animal Welfare, Randolph L. Cantrell

Cornhusker Economics

In the October 12, 2011 edition of Cornhusker Economics, Professor Dave Aiken brought us up to date on the issue of food animal welfare as it might affect Nebraska agriculture. His update was rendered out of date a mere six days later when the Nebraska Farmers’ Union (NEFU) and the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) announced an agreement and the formation of a new advisory body, the Nebraska Agricultural Council of the Humane Society of the United States. The stated goal of the new organization is “To advance more humane practices on farms and ranches and to …

The Increasing World Population: A Call For Entrepreneurial Leadership And Innovation, Connie Reimers-Hild

Cornhusker Economics

According to the United Nations, the world’s population hit seven billion on October 31, 2011. The United Nations is projecting the world population to reach 9.3 billion by 2050. The new population landmark set off alarms in governments and organizations around the world. Most of the growth will occur in the poorest and least developed regions of the world, which already must work to resolve issues related to shortages of quality food, soil, air and water. Many people living in these countries also lack access to education, healthcare and global political capital.

More developed countries face many of the same …