Rangelands cover 70% of the world's land surface, and provide critical ecosystem services primary production, soil carbon storage, nutrient cycling. These are governed by very fine-scale spatial patterning carbon, nutrients, plant species at centimeter-to-meter scales, a phenomenon known as “islands fertility”. Such dynamics challenging to detect with most satellite manned airborne platforms. R...

As franchisors add same brand outlets to a geographical market, the resulting encroachment from multiple locations creates con ict via revenue cannibalization. We empirically explore the possibility that encroachment could, in fact, have the opposite e ect by increasing revenues as more same brand units are added. In particular, we propose that same brand units create a spillover e ect that can...

Franchisees within large branded chains loudly complain of a form of channel conflict known as “encroachment” or “impact.” Encroachment occurs when franchisors add new units of their brand proximately to their franchisees’ existing units. Franchisees claim that their revenues have substantially decreased as a result of encroaching same-brand entry. The topic of encroachment has not only dominat...

Drylands cover about 40 % of the terrestrial land surface and account for approximately 40 % of global net primary productivity. Water is fundamental to the biophysical processes that sustain ecosystem function and food production, particularly in drylands where a tight coupling exists between ecosystem productivity, surface energy balance, biogeochemical cycles, and water resource availability...

Opportunistic land encroachment, resulting from costly and incomplete enforcement of common land boundaries, is a problem in many less-developed countries. A multi-period model of such encroachment is presented in this paper. The model accounts explicitly for the cumulative effects of non-compliance of regulations designed to protect a finite, non-renewable resource – in this case common land –...

This paper presents the lubrication characteristics between a bush and a blade of a swing compressor that was developed for a new type of compressor for an air conditioner using alternative refrigerants. The mixed lubrication analysis that simultaneously solved the motion equations of the bush and the blade, the lubrication equation and the rough surface contact equation was performed. Moreover...

Harvesting of wild ruminants occurs to an appreciable extent in several countries, but the potential world production of meat from these animals is greatly in excess of the current yield. Any increase in the utilization of this important source of protein may be obtained by either an increase in the cropping of present animal systems or through the introduction of changes such as those imposed ...

Indigenous forest biome in South Africa is highly fragmented into patches of various sizes (most patches < 1 km). The utilization of timber and non-timber resources by poor rural communities living around protected forest patches produces subtle changes in the forest canopy which can be hardly detected on a timely manner using traditional field surveys. The aims of this study were to assess: (i...