When thinking about their cow housing options, producers incorporate a number of factors into their ultimate decision. Obviously if the dairy wants to be competitive and remain in business in the long run, one of those factors needs to be the expected economic returns associated with the different housing types. While examining projected economic returns associated with various housing types (o...

I ncreasing production efficiency is becoming a major theme for producers in order to maintain or increase their economic return in an increasingly competitive global market. In the case of irrigated agriculture, producers must also address increasing public concern about water conservation, water quality, and environmental protection. Two irrigation management issues require attention in order...

We present an agent-based model of a minimal economy containing households, retail banks, and producers of consumer and capital goods. Household behavior is based on the buffer-stock savings model by Deaton (1961), while the profit-maximizing firms employ reinforcement learning to determine pricing and production. Competitive retail banks facilitate the flow of funds between households and prod...

today, in a competitive market, service organizations and producers have a great attention to optimization and customer satisfaction in order to become competitive. service organization must reduce the number of arrival, waiting time and service time in the queue to increase the customer satisfaction. in this paper by the aim of queuing theory we analyze the optimal amount of increment in a rep...

We present an agent-based model of a minimal economy containing households, retail banks, and producers of consumer and capital goods. Household behavior is based on the buffer-stock savings model by Deaton (1961), while the profit-maximizing firms employ reinforcement learning to determine pricing and production. Competitive retail banks facilitate the flow of funds between households and prod...

With globalization, small rural producers must compete in a competitive economic market. Due to their small size and limited financial capacity, they face significant challenges in doing so. We discuss the design and evaluation of two mobile phone based tools to help small producers achieve economies of scale and a quality premium. These tools were developed using CAM, a camera-based mobile pho...

The cost of electricity from wind is about 4 ¢ per kilowatt-hour (kWh) according to M. Z. Jacobson and G. M. Masters' estimate in their Policy Forum "Exploiting wind versus coal" (Science's Compass, 24 Aug., p. 1438), making wind energy competitive with new coal-fired generation. There is a 1.5-¢/kWh federal credit for wind energy producers, and, in addition, consumers are willing to pay a prem...