The forms of credit and their uses

Author(s):  
Chris Briggs

Interactions and exchanges in medieval Europe were dominated by the involvement of credit. In the broad sense, it means allowing someone a benefit or granting them a service on the premise and understanding that one would be able to make claim upon that person or their family in the future. Although credit in medieval Europe has the potential for diversity, most credit in medieval villages took a number of similar and familiar forms. This chapter aims to determine which forms of credit transaction were in use in England in the period and to establish which was the most important. The chapter also assesses the uses of credit and the amount and quantities of credit extended to the villages. In addition to determining the meaning of debt in the fourteenth-century context, the chapter also addresses the strengths and weaknesses of the English rural credit system compared with the contemporary regions of Europe. It also tackles two propositions concerning the credit system of medieval England. The first proposition assumes that the credit transactions in this period were generally small-scale and tended towards providing essentials on a short-term basis. The second proposition addressed herein assumes that borrowing during this period was large-scale, a reflection of the orientation of the transactions to enhance the borrower's future as well as the lender's.

Author(s):  
Jane J. Aggrey ◽  
Mirjam A. F. Ros-Tonen ◽  
Kwabena O. Asubonteng

AbstractArtisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) in sub-Saharan Africa creates considerable dynamics in rural landscapes. Many studies addressed the adverse effects of mining, but few studies use participatory spatial tools to assess the effects on land use. Hence, this paper takes an actor perspective to analyze how communities in a mixed farming-mining area in Ghana’s Eastern Region perceive the spatial dynamics of ASM and its effects on land for farming and food production from past (1986) to present (2018) and toward the future (2035). Participatory maps show how participants visualize the transformation of food-crop areas into small- and large-scale mining, tree crops, and settlement in all the communities between 1986 and 2018 and foresee these trends to continue in the future (2035). Participants also observe how a mosaic landscape shifts toward a segregated landscape, with simultaneous fragmentation of their farming land due to ASM. Further segregation is expected in the future, with attribution to the expansion of settlements being an unexpected outcome. Although participants expect adverse effects on the future availability of food-crop land, no firm conclusions can be drawn about the anticipated effect on food availability. The paper argues that, if responsibly applied and used to reveal community perspectives and concerns about landscape dynamics, participatory mapping can help raise awareness of the need for collective action and contribute to more inclusive landscape governance. These findings contribute to debates on the operationalization of integrated and inclusive landscape approaches and governance, particularly in areas with pervasive impacts of ASM.


Sensors ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (11) ◽  
pp. 3055
Author(s):  
Olivier Pieters ◽  
Tom De Swaef ◽  
Peter Lootens ◽  
Michiel Stock ◽  
Isabel Roldán-Ruiz ◽  
...  

The study of the dynamic responses of plants to short-term environmental changes is becoming increasingly important in basic plant science, phenotyping, breeding, crop management, and modelling. These short-term variations are crucial in plant adaptation to new environments and, consequently, in plant fitness and productivity. Scalable, versatile, accurate, and low-cost data-logging solutions are necessary to advance these fields and complement existing sensing platforms such as high-throughput phenotyping. However, current data logging and sensing platforms do not meet the requirements to monitor these responses. Therefore, a new modular data logging platform was designed, named Gloxinia. Different sensor boards are interconnected depending upon the needs, with the potential to scale to hundreds of sensors in a distributed sensor system. To demonstrate the architecture, two sensor boards were designed—one for single-ended measurements and one for lock-in amplifier based measurements, named Sylvatica and Planalta, respectively. To evaluate the performance of the system in small setups, a small-scale trial was conducted in a growth chamber. Expected plant dynamics were successfully captured, indicating proper operation of the system. Though a large scale trial was not performed, we expect the system to scale very well to larger setups. Additionally, the platform is open-source, enabling other users to easily build upon our work and perform application-specific optimisations.


2018 ◽  
Vol 170 ◽  
pp. 08003
Author(s):  
L. Berge ◽  
N. Estre ◽  
D. Tisseur ◽  
E. Payan ◽  
D. Eck ◽  
...  

The future PLINIUS-2 platform of CEA Cadarache will be dedicated to the study of corium interactions in severe nuclear accidents, and will host innovative large-scale experiments. The Nuclear Measurement Laboratory of CEA Cadarache is in charge of real-time high-energy X-ray imaging set-ups, for the study of the corium-water and corium-sodium interaction, and of the corium stratification process. Imaging such large and high-density objects requires a 15 MeV linear electron accelerator coupled to a tungsten target creating a high-energy Bremsstrahlung X-ray flux, with corresponding dose rate about 100 Gy/min at 1 m. The signal is detected by phosphor screens coupled to high-framerate scientific CMOS cameras. The imaging set-up is established using an experimentally-validated home-made simulation software (MODHERATO). The code computes quantitative radiographic signals from the description of the source, object geometry and composition, detector, and geometrical configuration (magnification factor, etc.). It accounts for several noise sources (photonic and electronic noises, swank and readout noise), and for image blur due to the source spot-size and to the detector unsharpness. In a view to PLINIUS-2, the simulation has been improved to account for the scattered flux, which is expected to be significant. The paper presents the scattered flux calculation using the MCNP transport code, and its integration into the MODHERATO simulation. Then the validation of the improved simulation is presented, through confrontation to real measurement images taken on a small-scale equivalent set-up on the PLINIUS platform. Excellent agreement is achieved. This improved simulation is therefore being used to design the PLINIUS-2 imaging set-ups (source, detectors, cameras, etc.).


Heredity ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 113 (3) ◽  
pp. 205-214 ◽  
Author(s):  
J C Habel ◽  
R K Mulwa ◽  
F Gassert ◽  
D Rödder ◽  
W Ulrich ◽  
...  

1996 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 353-386 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. M LEMKOWITZ ◽  
B. H BIBO ◽  
G. H LAMERIS ◽  
J. A. B. A. F. BONNET

2001 ◽  
Vol 43 (5) ◽  
pp. 79-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. Aspegren ◽  
C. Bailly ◽  
A. Mpé ◽  
N. Bazzurro ◽  
A. Morgavi ◽  
...  

There has been an increasing demand for accurate rainfall forecast in urban areas from the water industry. Current forecasting systems provided mainly by meteorological offices are based on large-scale prediction and are not well suited for this application. In order to devise a system especially designed for the dynamic management of a sewerage system the “RADAR” project was launched. The idea of this project was to provide a short-term small-scale prediction of rain based on radar images. The prediction methodology combines two methods. An extrapolation method based on a sophisticated cross correlation of images is optimised by a neural network technique. Three different application sites in Europe have been used to validate the system.


Author(s):  
Chris Briggs

This book began by describing the transformation that occurred in the 1990s in the impression and ideas of credit systems in the medieval countryside. Through this change in attitude on the medieval credit system, the sophistication of rural credit mechanisms and their positive effects within the traditional economies were established. Before this time, the consensus on medieval credit mechanism was of a vehicle of poverty and stagnation. By changing the perspective of credit as a framework of crisis to focusing on credit as mere credit itself, the mechanism of lending and borrowing during the medieval period was not constantly borne out of crisis. It has been found out that credit supply did not always fail in problem periods, that debtors were not always worse off than their lenders, and that leasing of land by debtors was an effective strategy compatible with individual prosperity and not an indication of economic failure. In sum, the credit system of medieval Europe had bearings on the economy of the country. Although rural credit had little effect on the overall contours of the economic change of Europe, it nonetheless shaped other significant forces. In the earlier part of the century, the rural credit system was there to reinforce wealth, and influenced in such a way to separate the peasants from the upper strata. In the second half of the century, market opportunities were exploited by the means of credit mechanisms. However, when economic contraction happened at the end of the century due to the sustained demographic collapse and monetary difficulties, rural credit mechanisms fell into abeyance.


1984 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 83-89
Author(s):  
Ian B. Howie

Matching production to the markets for meat makes the assumption that individual producers can have an influence on market forces. This may well apply nowadays to some of the very large scale poultry production units but, individually, beef producers can have little if any influence on the marketing scene. Although there are farmers who produce several hundred fat cattle a year, the bulk of the beef produced comes from fairly small scale producers. Much of beef production is on a fairly haphazard basis with little or no recording or budgeting.Nevertheless, small scale producers and feeders who move in and out of the market can exploit local or short-term, favourable, market fluctuations and, with skilful buying and selling, make good profits on a quick turnover. Larger scale producers who have pre-planned fully integrated production systems cannot react as quickly to any great extent to short-term marketing opportunities. I regard marketing as only one of the many variable factors to be taken into account when planning a beef enterprise within a whole farming system, in which it is likely to be one of a number of enterprises which have to be kept in balance.


1980 ◽  
Vol 209 (1174) ◽  
pp. 183-186 ◽  

Crystal ball gazing is a hazardous occupation: the sharper the picture, the greater the possibility of error. In the future, appropriate technologies that will raise standards of health and diminish the prevalence of disease in the Third World must take cognizance of such factors as burgeoning population growth, impossibly high cost of energy sources, a widening gap between food requirements and food production, increasing urbanization, and inherent difficulties of control of disease vectors and water-borne diseases. The technologies that must be made available will be both large-scale and small-scale, low-cost and simple, improving life for the individual and the community, mediated by appropriately trained and adequately supervised polycompetent auxiliaries. The present reappraisal of health needs in the context of food (seeds, soils, irrigation, protection against loss of the harvested products) and of prevention of disease by appropriate prophylactic measures and its treatment, will necessitate hard thinking and greater cooperation between all concerned.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeyakumar P ◽  
Vishnu V ◽  
Srinitha S ◽  
Muthuchuchidambaranathan P ◽  
Arvind Ramesh

Abstract Terahertz (THz) communication is becoming an up-and-coming technology for the future 6G networks as it provides an ultra-wide bandwidth.Appropriate channel models and precoding techniques are essential for supporting the desired coverage and mainly to resolve the severe path loss in THz signals. Initially, the Sub-THz channel (140 GHz) impulse response by using NYUSIM Channel Simulator for 6G indoor office scenario is investigated in this work. The highlight is on Large scale and Small scale parameters like propagation delay and path loss, antenna array gain, etc. The beam split effect is a critical challenge of THz wideband communication.Therefore We have proposed three different THz precoding methodologies like the hybrid precoding, analog beamforming, and the delay-phase precoding to address this challenge. We then extensively investigate its diverse number of time delayers, varying number of antenna elements, and comparison with frequency - mmWave and Sub-THz have been discussed. Finally, the proposed delay-phase precoding techniques outperforms the other precoding techniques with 97% of optimal precoding. So, this an efficient approach for implementing the future indoor communication network deployment for 6G.


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