This paper proposes an automatic expert system for accuracy crop row detection in maize fields based on images acquired from a vision system. Different applications in maize, particularly those based on site specific treatments, require the identification of the crop rows. The vision system is designed with a defined geometry and installed onboard a mobile agricultural vehicle, i.e. submitted t...

This paper studies concentration (i.e. inequality) aspects of the functions of Zipf and of Lotka. Since both functions are power laws (i.e. they are – mathematically the same) it suffices to develop one concentration theory for power laws and apply it twice for the different interpretations of the laws of Zipf and Lotka. After a brief repetition of the functional relationships between Zipf’s la...

This paper utilizes a rank-size function to investigate market concentration in lieu of well-known measures. For comparison, two measures were chosen: Theil’s entropy and the Herfindahl. The empirical results are based on premiums written for twelve lines of property and liability insurance. While the two concentration measures rank the lines for the level of concentration in almost complete un...

Article history: Received 16 June 2014 Received in revised form 19 September 2014 Accepted 21 September 2014 Available online 8 October 2014

This article examines the influence of income distribution in the determination of effective demand in the US. A simple model is developed to simulate the effects of changing income inequality on the aggregate propensity to consume. The simulation results illustrate that income inequality has a substantial negative impact on consumption when household spending is assumed to be income-constraine...

This paper presents the details of a terrain mapping system that has been used to measure median profiles. Details are presented of the system construction, design, and algorithms to process the data. The capability of the system is gauged by performing tests to compensate for vehicle orientation, tests for repeatability, and tests comparing the system with manual measurement. Results demonstra...

Motivated by applications to goodness of fit U-statistics testing, the empirical likelihood approach is generalized to allow for the number of constraints to grow with the sample size and for the constraints to use estimated criteria functions. The latter is needed to handle naturally occurring nuisance parameters. The proposed empirical likelihood based goodness of fit tests are asymptotically...

In the context of Social Welfare and Choquet integration, we briefly review, on the one hand, the generalized Gini welfare functions and inequality indices for populations of n ≥ 2 individuals, and on the other hand, the Möbius representation framework for Choquet integration, particularly in the case of k-additive symmetric capacities. We recall the binomial decomposition of OWA functions due ...

BACKGROUND Health insurance contributes to reducing the economic burden of disease and improving access to healthcare. In 2016, the Chinese government announced the integration of the New Cooperative Medical Scheme (NCMS) and Urban Resident Basic Medical Insurance (URBMI) to reduce system segmentation. Nevertheless, it was unclear whether there would be any geographic variation in health insura...

The least squares method is the most commonly used technique for fitting an ellipse through a set of points. However, it has a low breakdown point, which means that it performs poorly in the presence of outliers. We describe various alternative methods for ellipse fitting which are more robust: the Theil-Sen, least median of squares, Hilbert curve, and minimum volume estimator approaches. Testi...