The purpose of this paper is to analyze the productivity change for agricultural cooperatives in Japan measured by nonparametric outputoriented Malmquist indices of total factor productivity. The productivity change is decomposed into technical change and technical efficiency change. Linear programming techniques are used to calculate the productivity change using a panel data set for 49 agricu...

We report an all-fiber mode division multiplexer formed with cascaded mode selective couplers with significantly broadened bandwidth potentially spanning S, C and L band. This was achieved by matching the effective refractive indices over a wide wavelength range for the few mode fiber and the single mode fiber used in the coupler. The multiplexer provides high coupling efficiency (>55% for the ...

The binding sites of wild-type avian influenza A H5N1 neuraminidase, as well as those of the Tamiflu (oseltamivir)-resistant H274Y variant, were explored computationally to design inhibitors that target simultaneously several adjacent binding sites of the open conformation of the virus protein. The compounds with the best computed free energies of binding, in agreement by two docking methods, c...

Conventional data envelopment analysis (DEA) assists decision makers in distinguishing between efficient and inefficient decisionmaking units (DMUs) in a homogeneous group. However, DEA does not provide more information about the efficient DMUs. This research proposes a methodology to determine one common set of weights for the performance indices of only DEA efficient DMUs. Then, these DMUs ar...

Selection of high yielding genotypes to be carried over to subsequent selection cycles in a breeding programme can sometimes be accomplished using a suitable index of secondary traits that may be relatively less sensitive to genotype-by-environment interactions than yield. We used the concept of correlated response to selection to measure the relative efficiency of nine selection indices. The r...

We introduce a new measure for capital market efficiency. The measure takes into consideration the correlation structure of the returns (long-term memory), local herding behavior (information dimension) and uncertainty in the process (entropy). The efficiency measure is then taken as a distance from an ideal efficient market situation. Methodology is applied to a portfolio of 41 stock indices. ...

abstract soil quality evaluation is an essential issue in soil management for agriculture and natural resource protection. soil quality indices are useful tools for determination and comparison of soils quality. using of principle component analysis in this study we selected 6 important properties as a soil quality minimum data set (mds) among 18 soil properties (tds). then, soil quality of agr...

drought is a climatic phenomenon that causes much detrimental influence on ecological environments. this research investigates the performance of meteorological drought indices in different time scales in thetajan basin in iran. indices undergone in this study include: percent normal precipitation index (pnpi), z-score index (zsi), standard precipitation index (spi), china z index (czi), modifi...

Eco-efficiency has emerged as a management response to waste issues associated with current production processes. Despite the popularity of the term in both business and government circles, limited attention has been paid to measuring and reporting eco-efficiency to government policy makers. Aggregate measures of eco-efficiency are needed, to complement existing measures and to help highlight i...