Understanding and improving environmental quality by reducing soil nutrient leaching losses, reducing bioavailability of environmental contaminants, sequestering C, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and enhancing crop productivity in highly weathered or degraded soils, has been the goal of agroecosystem researchers and producers for years. Biochar, produced by pyrolysis of biomass, may help at...

We study the costs and benefits of plasticity by evolving agents in environments with different rates of environmental change. Evolution allows both hard-coded strategies and learned strategies, with learning rates varying throughout life. We observe a range of change rates where the balance of costs and benefits are just right for evolving learning. Inside this range, we see two separate strat...

Article history: Received 9 September 2005 Accepted 27 July 2007 Available online 27 September 2007 Key features of U.S. agri-environmental programs are reviewed and analyzed using literature review and program data. We focus, in particular, on several key questions: Has benefit–cost targeting increased the environmental benefit obtained from program budgets? Has competitive bidding reduced pro...

Ecommerce models offer many benefits for business operations, such as convenience and easiness, decreased cost of inventory management, expanded customer base, enabled globalization and business analytics, etc. Virtual business models also promote sustainability by reducing energy and resource usage. Despite its pronounced benefits, ecommerce is still subject to challenges of environmental sust...