Resource frontiers and agglomeration economies: The varied logics of transnational land-based investing in Southern and Eastern Africa

Actor-level data on large-scale commercial agriculture in Sub-Saharan Africa are scarce. The peculiar choice of transnational investing in African land has, therefore, been subject to conjecture. Addressing this gap, we reconstructed the underlying logics of investment location choices in a Bayesian network, using firm- and actor-level interview and spatial data from 37 transnational agriculture and forestry investments across 121 sites in Mozambique, Zambia, Tanzania, and Ethiopia. We distinguish four investment locations across gradients of resource frontiers and agglomeration economies to derive the preferred locations of different investors with varied skillsets and market reach (i.e., track record). In contrast to newcomers, investors with extensive track records are more likely to expand the land use frontier, but they are also likely to survive the high transaction costs of the pre-commercial frontier. We highlight key comparative advantages of Southern and Eastern African frontiers and map the most probable categories of investment locations.

Coproduce Conservation Technology With Conservation Decision Makers and Practitioners to Increase Its Impact

Addressing the biodiversity crisis will mean developing and adopting new resources and methods that effectively improve public conservation efforts. Technologies have a long track record of increasing the efficiency of carrying out time-consuming tasks or even making new feats possible, and if applied thoughtfully, can serve as a key means of strengthening conservation outcomes. Yet technology development sometimes proceeds without clear mechanisms for application and scaling, or key adopters like government agencies are not able to use the technologies. To overcome these discrepancies, we recommend the use of a coproduction model of conservation technology development that starts from detailed knowledge of conservation laws, regulations, policies, and their implementation; identifies choke points in those processes amenable to technological solutions; and then develops those solutions while integrating existing users and needs. To illustrate the model, we describe three tools recently developed to help improve the efficiency and effectiveness of implementing the U.S. Endangered Species Act. We also highlight several outstanding questions and challenges that the broad conservation technology and policy communities may help address.

Dynamic Pricing for New Products Using a Utility-Based Generalization of the Bass Diffusion Model

The Bass Model (BM) has an excellent track record in the realm of new product sales forecasting. However, its use for optimal dynamic pricing or advertising is relatively limited because the Generalized Bass Model (GBM), which extends the BM to handle marketing variables, uses only percentage changes in marketing variables, rather than their actual values. This restricts the GBM’s prescriptive use, for example, to derive the optimal price path for a new product, conditional on an assumed launch price, but not the launch price itself. In this paper, we employ a utility-based extension of the BM, which can yield normative prescriptions regarding both the introductory price and the price path after launch, for the new product. We offer two versions of this utility-based diffusion model, namely, the Bass-Gumbel Diffusion Model (BGDM) and the Bass-Logit Diffusion Model (BLDM), the latter of which has been previously used. We show that both the BGDM and BLDM handily outperform the GBM in forecasting new product sales using empirical data from four product categories. We discuss how to estimate the BGDM and BLDM in the absence of past sales data. We compare the optimal pricing policy of the BLDM with the GBM and derive optimal pricing policies that are implied by the BLDM under various ranges of model parameters. We illustrate a dynamic pricing approach that allows managers to derive optimal marketing policies in a computationally convenient manner and extend this approach to a competitive, multiproduct case. This paper was accepted by Gui Liberali for the Management Science Special Issue on Data-Driven Prescriptive Analytics.

Enhancements in Fracturing Fluid Engineering Reawakens a North Sea Giant

The Valhall field, operated by AkerBP, has been a major hub in the North Sea, on stream for thirty-eight years and recently passed one billion barrels of oil produced. The field requires stimulation for economical production. Mechanically strong formations are acid stimulated, while weaker formations require large tip-screenout design proppant fractures. Fracture deployment methods on Valhall have remained relatively unchanged since the nineties and are currently referred to as "conventional". Those consist in a sequence of placing a proppant frac, cleaning out the well with coiled tubing, opening a sleeve or shooting perforations, then coil pulling out of hole pumping the proppant frac. For the past few years, AkerBP and their service partners have worked on qualifying an adapted version of the annular coiled tubing fracturing practice for the offshore infrastructure - a first for the industry, which has been a strategic priority for the operator as it significantly reduces execution time and accelerates production. As with all technology trials, the implementation of this practice on Valhall had to begin on a learning curve through various forms of challenges. Whilst investigating the cause and frequency of premature screenouts during the initial implementation of annular fracturing, the team decided to challenge the conventional standards for fluid testing and quality control. Carefully engineered adjustments were made with regards to high shear testing conditions, temperature modelling, and mixing sequences, these did not only identify the root cause for the unexpected screenouts, but also helped create the current blueprint for engineering a robust fluid. Since the deployment of the redefined recipe, adjusted testing procedures and changes made to the stimulation vessel, there have not been any cases of fluid induced screenouts during the executions. The fewer types of additives now required for the recipe have lowered the cost of treatments and the lower gel loading leads to reduced damage in the fractures, thereby contributing to enhanced production over the lifetime of the wells. This paper describes the investigation, findings and the resulting changes made to the fluid formulation and quality control procedures to accommodate for high shear and dynamic wellbore temperature conditions. It discusses the rationale behind the "reality" testing model and, proves that significant value is created from investing time in thoroughly understanding fluid behaviour in the lab, prior to pumping it on large-scale capital-intensive operations. The study demonstrated that there is always value in innovating or challenging pre-conceived practices, and the learnings from this investigation significantly improved the track record for annular fracturing on Valhall, redefined fluid engineering for the North Sea and will inform future annular fracturing deployments on other offshore assets around the world.

Intravitreal chemotherapy in the management of retinoblastoma in a resource-limited setting

Intravitreal chemotherapy (IVitC) in the management of retinoblastoma has increased the rate of globe salvage, specifically in patients with recurrent disease and associated vitreous seeds. A significant number of children with retinoblastoma in developing countries present late, resulting in higher intraocular tumour-stage at presentation. Treatment requirements for such tumours usually include intravenous chemotherapy (IVC) and/or intra-arterial chemotherapy (IAC). While IVC has a long usage track record and a good efficacy, it has been reported to be associated with higher recurrence rates in a significant number of patients. Intra-arterial chemotherapy has the advantage of lower recurrence rates but requires personnel with advanced interventional radiology skills and has limited efficacy in treating intravitreal seeds. Intravitreal chemotherapy has gained popularity recently, largely because of its superior efficacy in the management of vitreous seeds, subretinal seeds and recurrent retinal tumour. An 8-month-old male infant initially presented with bilateral retinoblastoma, International Classification System for Intraocular Retinoblastoma (ICRB) Group E in the right eye and Group B on the left eye. The right eye was enucleated and currently has a prosthesis. The left eye had tumours that initially responded to brachytherapy and transpupillary thermotherapy (TTT). Approximately two years later his tumours recurred with vitreous seeds and were successfully managed with the use of cryotherapy and intravitreal chemotherapy. The simplicity of the technique of IVitC and its efficacy in controlling vitreous seeds and recurrent retinal tumours makes this route of regional chemotherapy a viable one in areas with limited expertise and resources such as South Africa.

Rocky politics will slow Tunisia's renewable progress

Significance Once finished, the projects will make up 6% of Tunisia’s electricity generation capacity. Although new projects promise increased renewable energy development, a combination of political and economic uncertainty, combined with cumbersome investment requirements, mean foreign investor interest remains limited. Impacts The country’s climate change targets are unlikely to be met. The decline of domestic gas production will leave Tunisia exposed to high international prices. The lack of a foreign investment track record in electricity suggests only small projects are likely to proceed in coming years.

Deconstructing the Role of Film Censorship, as a Constraint on Free Speech

This paper attempts to illustrate how film censorship as a practice, hampers the ‘free’ usage of the right to free speech and expression under Article 19(1)(a) of the Indian Constitution. To undertake this research objective, reliance has been placed on the judiciary’s track record in handling censorship cases. The findings of this paper show that even while the judiciary has recognised that cinema falls under the ambit of Article 19(1)(a), it has not always been proactive in advocating in favour of the right to free speech and in fact, has often justified censorship by giving certain reasons, which nevertheless seem problematic. When the judiciary takes such steps, it not only cripples the right to free speech and expression but also frightens and raises inhibitions in the minds of the citizens, and thereby giving rise to consequences. Therefore, by using judicial pronouncements from various landmark judgements, this paper highlights that right to free speech in censorship cases has not been a value dear to judiciary as it has more often than not, favoured censorship, thereby showing how censorship acts as a constraint in being able to freely exercise right to free speech. Further, the paper also unveils the ramifications of such actions of the judiciary alongside discussing some of the recent debates on film censorship and the right to free speech.

Penerapan Algoritma Cosine Similarity untuk Deteksi Kesamaan Konten pada Sistem Informasi Penelitian dan Pengabdian Kepada Masyarakat

Research and community service activities are the obligations of a lecturer that must be carried out from part of the Tri Dharma of Higher Education in addition to teaching, where research activities should have a level of innovation in the form of development or discovery of something new, but with a large number of lecturers, this results in research activities. and community service has many similarities with previous activities. At the Lembaga Penelitian dan Pengabdian kepada Masyarakat (LPPM), Pamulang University, experiencing several problems in the management of research and community service activities, namely the absence of a system used to manage research and community service activities and data related to the track record of research and community service activities that have been carried out by 2,613 lecturers who impact on the difficulty in finding data, efficiency of storage space and more importantly is the number of similar proposals in the research itself. The research carried out aims to develop an information system that can process research and community service activities and detect similarities in content by applying the Cosine Similarity algorithm, so that it can overcome existing problems. The system development method uses a waterfall. From the results of making the system that has been carried out, it shows that the system is capable of processing activities in the field of research and community service carried out by lecturers, supporting storage, and facilitating screening of proposals for research and community service activities that will be approved.

Law on Asset Recovery for Corruption in Indonesia: An Urgent Need

Corruption is an organized crime, so that its existence is required to complete the law not only for the perpetrators but also for the results of acts of corruption which are often not found with a track record of all assets of corruption. This study aims to examine legal products in Indonesia regarding the seizure of assets resulting from criminal acts of corruption. Philosophically, the existence of criminal acts of corruption is a form of state responsibility to eradicate because there is not yet a strong legal basis to regulate the mechanism of confiscation effectively in the enforcement of corruption. This research method uses normative juridical with conceptual legal approach with qualitative descriptive research type. The results of this study can be concluded that the urgency of the establishment of the Draft Law on the confiscation of assets resulting from acts of corruption is to change the legal paradigm in law enforcement of criminal acts of corruption which is not only focused on perpetrators of corruption but assets resulting from criminal acts of corruption can be returned based on the amount of losses suffered by the perpetrators of corruption. country. The effectiveness of the law with the formation of these legal products closes the gaps that have so far arisen so that it triggers the existence of criminal acts of corruption.