World Fibers Demand

2001 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth W. Clements ◽  
Yihui Lan

AbstractThis paper analyses the world demand for fibers using the system-wide approach with three dimensions—product × space × time. We investigate to what extent differences in international consumption patterns of fibers can be explained by differences in incomes and prices faced by different consumers. A novel approach to cross-country consumption comparisons is employed to avoid the troublesome problem of what exchange rates to use when converting data into a common currency unit. We use data from the ten largest consuming countries to estimate demand systems and then examine how they perform in predicting consumption patterns in a large number of out-of-sample countries.

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (78) ◽  
Author(s):  
Francesca Caselli ◽  
Francesco Grigoli ◽  
Romain Lafarguette ◽  
Changchun Wang

In this paper we propose a novel approach to obtain the predictive density of global GDP growth. It hinges upon a bottom-up probabilistic model that estimates and combines single countries’ predictive GDP growth densities, taking into account cross-country interdependencies. Speci?cally, we model non-parametrically the contemporaneous interdependencies across the United States, the euro area, and China via a conditional kernel density estimation of a joint distribution. Then, we characterize the potential ampli?cation e?ects stemming from other large economies in each region—also with kernel density estimations—and the reaction of all other economies with para-metric assumptions. Importantly, each economy’s predictive density also depends on a set of observable country-speci?c factors. Finally, the use of sampling techniques allows us to aggregate individual countries’ densities into a world aggregate while preserving the non-i.i.d. nature of the global GDP growth distribution. Out-of-sample metrics con?rm the accuracy of our approach.


GIS Business ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (6) ◽  
pp. 243-252
Author(s):  
Dr. M.A. Bilal Ahmed ◽  
Dr. S. Thameemul Ansari

SHG is a movement which came to being in the early 1969. Prof. Muhammed Younus, a great economist of Bangladesh took initiative in setting up Self Help Groups and these SHGs were gradually spread all over the world. This social movement unites the people hailing from poor background. Those who are joining this group feel socially and economically responsible to one another. In India, there are some likeminded bodies and stakeholders of some government organizations play pivotal role towards the formation of SHG In this research article, role of SHGs in Vellore district is studies under the three dimensions of Cognitive role, leadership role and role towards entrepreneurship.


Author(s):  
Donald C. Williams

This chapter is the first of this book to deal specifically with the metaphysics of time. This chapter defends the pure manifold theory of time. On this view, time is just another dimension of extent like the three dimensions of space, the past, present, and future are equally real, and the world is at bottom tenseless. What is true is eternally true. For example, it is now true that there will be a sea fight tomorrow or that there will not be a sea fight tomorrow. It is argued that the pure manifold theory does not entail fatalism and that contingent statements about the future do not imply that only the past and present exist.


Recycling ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 3 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda Godfrey

With changing consumption patterns, growing populations and increased urbanisation, developing countries face significant challenges with regards to waste management. Waste plastic is a particularly problematic one, with single-use plastic leaking into the environment, including the marine environment, at an unprecedented rate. Around the world, countries are taking action to minimise these impacts, including banning single-use plastics; changing petroleum-based plastics to alternative bio-benign products such as paper, glass or biodegradable plastics; and improving waste collection systems to ensure that all waste is appropriately collected and reprocessed or safely disposed. However, these “solutions” are often met with resistance, from business, government or civil society, due to the intended and unintended consequences, leaving many questioning the most appropriate solution to reducing the leakage. This paper argues that there is no one single solution to addressing the leakage of plastic into the environment, but that the solution is likely to be a combination of the three approaches, based on local considerations.


Author(s):  
Gabriel Lefebvre-Ropars ◽  
Catherine Morency ◽  
Paula Negron-Poblete

The increasing popularity of street redesigns highlights the intense competition for street space between their different users. More and more cities around the world mention in their planning documents their intention to rebalance streets in favor of active transportation, transit, and green infrastructure. However, few efforts have managed to formalize quantifiable measurements of the balance between the different users and usages of the street. This paper proposes a method to assess the balance between the three fundamental dimensions of the street—the link, the place, and the environment—as well as a method to assess the adequation between supply and demand for the link dimension at the corridor level. A series of open and government georeferenced datasets were integrated to determine the detailed allocation of street space for 11 boroughs of the city of Montréal, Canada. Travel survey data from the 2013 Origine-Destination survey was used to model different demand profiles on these streets. The three dimensions of the street were found to be most unbalanced in the central boroughs of the city, which are also the most dense and touristic neighborhoods. A discrepancy between supply and demand for transit users and cyclists was also observed across the study area. This highlights the potential of using a distributive justice framework to approach the question of the fair distribution of street space in an urban context.


Designs ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 8
Author(s):  
Pyrrhon Amathes ◽  
Paul Christodoulides

Photography can be used for pleasure and art but can also be used in many disciplines of science, because it captures the details of the moment and can serve as a proving tool due to the information it preserves. During the period of the Apollo program (1969 to 1972), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) successfully landed humans on the Moon and showed hundreds of photos to the world presenting the travel and landings. This paper uses computer simulations and geometry to examine the authenticity of one such photo, namely Apollo 17 photo GPN-2000-00113. In addition, a novel approach is employed by creating an experimental scene to illustrate details and provide measurements. The crucial factors on which the geometrical analysis relies are locked in the photograph and are: (a) the apparent position of the Earth relative to the illustrated flag and (b) the point to which the shadow of the astronaut taking the photo reaches, in relation to the flagpole. The analysis and experimental data show geometrical and time mismatches, proving that the photo is a composite.


2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Brittany Kovacs ◽  
Lindsey Miller ◽  
Martin C. Heller ◽  
Donald Rose

Abstract Background Do the environmental impacts inherent in national food-based dietary guidelines (FBDG) vary around the world, and, if so, how? Most previous studies that consider this question focus on a single country or compare countries’ guidelines without controlling for differences in country-level consumption patterns. To address this gap, we model the carbon footprint of the dietary guidelines from seven different countries, examine the key contributors to this, and control for consumption differences between countries. Methods In this purposive sample, we obtained FBDG from national sources for Germany, India, the Netherlands, Oman, Thailand, Uruguay, and the United States. These were used to structure recommended diets using 6 food groups: protein foods, dairy, grains, fruits, vegetables, and oils/fats. To determine specific quantities of individual foods within these groups, we used data on food supplies available for human consumption for each country from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s food balance sheets. The greenhouse gas emissions (GHGE) used to produce the foods in these consumption patterns were linked from our own database, constructed from an exhaustive review of the life cycle assessment literature. All guidelines were scaled to a 2000-kcal diet. Results Daily recommended amounts of dairy foods ranged from a low of 118 ml/d for Oman to a high of 710 ml/d for the US. The GHGE associated with these two recommendations were 0.17 and 1.10 kg CO2-eq/d, respectively. The GHGE associated with the protein food recommendations ranged from 0.03 kg CO2-eq/d in India  to 1.84 kg CO2-eq/d in the US, for recommended amounts of 75 g/d and 156 g/d, respectively. Overall, US recommendations had the highest carbon footprint at 3.83 kg CO2-eq/d, 4.5 times that of the recommended diet for India, which had the smallest footprint. After controlling for country-level consumption patterns by applying the US consumption pattern to all countries, US recommendations were still the highest, 19% and 47% higher than those of the Netherlands and Germany, respectively. Conclusions Despite our common human biology, FBDG vary tremendously from one country to the next, as do the associated carbon footprints of these guidelines. Understanding the carbon footprints of different recommendations can assist in future decision-making to incorporate environmental sustainability in dietary guidance.


Author(s):  
Dmitri A. Gusev

We present the results of our image analysis of portrait art from the Roman Empire’s Julio-Claudian dynastic period. Our novel approach involves processing pictures of ancient statues, cameos, altar friezes, bas-reliefs, frescoes, and coins using modern mobile apps, such as Reface and FaceApp, to improve identification of the historical subjects depicted. In particular, we have discovered that the Reface app has limited, but useful capability to restore the approximate appearance of damaged noses of the statues. We confirm many traditional identifications, propose a few identification corrections for items located in museums and private collections around the world, and discuss the advantages and limitations of our approach. For example, Reface may make aquiline noses appear wider or shorter than they should be. This deficiency can be partially corrected if multiple views are available. We demonstrate that our approach can be extended to analyze portraiture from other cultures and historical periods. The article is intended for a broad section of the readers interested in how the modern AI-based solutions for mobile imaging merge with humanities to help improve our understanding of the modern civilization’s ancient past and increase appreciation of our diverse cultural heritage.


Author(s):  
Mark Schroeder

The last fifty years or more of ethical theory have been preoccupied by a turn to reasons. The vocabulary of reasons has become a common currency not only in ethics, but in epistemology, action theory, and many related areas. It is now common, for example, to see central theses such as evidentialism in epistemology and egalitarianism in political philosophy formulated in terms of reasons. And some have even claimed that the vocabulary of reasons is so useful precisely because reasons have analytical and explanatory priority over other normative concepts—that reasons in that sense come first. Reasons First systematically explores both the benefits and burdens of the hypothesis that reasons do indeed come first in normative theory, against the conjecture that theorizing in both ethics and epistemology can only be hampered by neglect of the other. Bringing two decades of work on reasons in both ethics and epistemology to bear, Mark Schroeder argues that some of the most important challenges to the idea that reasons could come first are themselves the source of some of the most obstinate puzzles in epistemology—about how perceptual experience could provide evidence about the world, and about what can make evidence sufficient to justify belief. And he shows that along with moral worth, one of the very best cases for the fundamental explanatory power of reasons in normative theory actually comes from knowledge.


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