Structure and Strategy, How Do They Match in the Netherlands?

Farm organization, and the balance between the household and the farm have changed. This paper explores the relation between the organizational form and strategy of Dutch farmers and shows that strategy and structure are related. Legal persons and partnerships with multiple households can be especially found among the farmers focusing on economies of scale. One-man businesses and the one household partnerships more often show diversification strategies. One-man businesses are relatively more encountered amongst the life style farmers, whilst one household partnerships are stronger present amongst rural entrepreneurs.family farm, household, legal form, strategy, typology, Farm Management,

Loop quantum gravity induced modifications to particle dynamics

The construction of effective Hamiltonians arising from Loop Quantum Gravity and incorporating Planck scale corrections to the dynamics of photons and spin 1/2 particles is summarized. The imposition of strict bounds upon some parameters of the model using already existing experimental data is also reviewed.Comment: 9 pages, 0 figures, talk presented at the X Mexican School of Particles and Fields, latex, aipproc style 6x

MICROWAVE: A GENERIC FRAMEWORK FOR MICRO SIMULATIONBASED EX ANTE POLICY EVALUATION

This paper presents the MicroWave approach that has been developed to improve the process of modeling in the context of micro simulation. It leads to a more efficient model development, better quality of models and their output and improvement in knowledge management. A conceptual framework has been developed and translated into a hierarchical structure of GAMS program code. Besides, several software applications and other tools have been developed for support. These products are presented and some examples illustrate how MicroWave can be applied. MicroWave is especially useful in interdisciplinary research in which different persons are involved in the modeling process and when different models have to be combined.Research Methods/ Statistical Methods,

Informatienet 2003 in zicht: Totstandkoming en kwaliteit van de steekproef land- en tuinbouwbedrijven van het Bedrijven- Informatienet

The EU Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN) requires the Netherlands to yearly sent bookkeeping data of 1,500 farms to Brussels. This task is carried out by LEI and CEI. The data send to Brussels mainly involves technical and financial economic information. For national policy purposes additional data is collected, such as pesticide use, manure production, nature management, non-farm income and rural development. This report explains the background of the farm sample for the year 2003. The report mainly focuses on the Dutch contribution to the European Farm Accountancy Data Network. All phases from the determination of the selection plan, the recruitment of farms to the quality control of the final sample are described in this report. Mede voor de Europese Unie organiseren het CEI en het LEI jaarlijks de verzameling van technische en financieel-economische gegevens van circa 1.500 bedrijven in de akkerbouw, tuinbouw en veehouderij. Voor nationaal beleidsgericht onderzoek wordt die informatie aangevuld met gegevens over bijvoorbeeld milieubelasting, natuurbeheer en plattelandsontwikkeling. Alle gegevens worden vastgelegd in het Bedrijven-Informatienet. In dit rapport wordt verantwoording afgelegd over de steekproef 2003, toegespitst op de Nederlandse bijdrage aan het Farm Accountancy Data Network van de Europese Unie. De diverse fasen, van het opstellen van het selectieplan, het werven van de bedrijven tot het beoordelen van de kwaliteit van de resulterende steekproef worden beschreven.Agricultural Finance,

Are we overusing IVF?

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Proton Motive Force-Dependent Hoechst 33342 Transport by the ABC Transporter LmrA of Lactococcus lactis

The fluorescent compound Hoechst 33342 is a substrate for many multidrug resistance (MDR) transporters and is widely used to characterize their transport activity. We have constructed mutants of the adenosine triphosphate (ATP) binding cassette (ABC)-type MDR transporter LmrA of Lactococcus lactis that are defective in ATP hydrolysis. These mutants and wild-type LmrA exhibited an atypical behavior in the Hoechst 33342 transport assay. In membrane vesicles, Hoechst 33342 transport was shown to be independent of the ATPase activity of LmrA, and it was not inhibited by orthovanadate but sensitive to uncouplers that collapse the proton gradient and to N,N'-dicyclohexylcarbodiimide, an inhibitor of the F0F1-ATPase. In contrast, transport of Hoechst 33342 by the homologous, heterodimeric MDR transporter LmrCD showed a normal ATP dependence and was insensitive to uncouplers of the proton gradient. With intact cells, expression of LmrA resulted in an increased rate of Hoechst 33342 influx while LmrCD caused a decrease in the rate of Hoechst 33342 influx. Cellular toxicity assays using a triple knockout strain, i.e., L. lactis ΔlmrA ΔlmrCD, demonstrate that expression of LmrCD protects cells against the growth inhibitory effects of Hoechst 33342, while in the presence of LmrA, cells are more susceptible to Hoechst 33342. Our data demonstrate that the LmrA-mediated Hoechst 33342 transport in membrane vesicles is influenced by the transmembrane pH gradient due to a pH-dependent partitioning of Hoechst 33342 into the membrane.

The footprint of cometary dust analogues: II. Morphology as a tracer of tensile strength and application to dust collection by the Rosetta spacecraft

The structure of cometary dust is a tracer of growth processes in the formation of planetesimals. Instrumentation on board the Rosetta mission to comet 67P/Churyumov- Gerasimenko captured dust particles and analysed them in situ. However, these deposits are a product of a collision within the instrument. We conducted laboratory experiments with cometary dust analogues, simulating the collection process by Rosetta instruments (specifically COSIMA, MIDAS). In Paper I we reported that velocity is a key driver in determining the appearance of deposits. Here in Paper II we use materials with different monomer sizes, and study the effect of tensile strength on the appearance of deposits. We find that mass transfer efficiency increases from $\sim$1 up to $\sim$10% with increasing monomer diameter from 0.3 $\mu$m to 1.5 $\mu$m (i.e. tensile strength decreasing from $\sim$12 to $\sim$3 kPa), and velocities increasing from 0.5 to 6 m/s. Also, the relative abundance of small fragments after impact is higher for material with higher tensile strength. The degeneracy between the effects of velocity and material strength may be lifted by performing a closer study of the deposits. This experimental method makes it possible to estimate the mass transfer efficiency in the COSIMA instrument. Extrapolating these results implies that more than half of the dust collected during the Rosetta mission has not been imaged. We analysed two COSIMA targets containing deposits from single collisions. The collision that occurred closest to perihelion passage led to more small fragments on the target.Comment: 13 pages, 11 figures, accepted for publication in MNRA

Experimental and numerical study of SiON microresonators with air and polymer cladding

A systematic experimental and numerical study of the device performance of waveguide-coupled SiON microresonators with air and polymer cladding is presented. Values of device parameters like propagation losses of the microresonator modes, the off-resonance insertion losses, and the straight waveguide to microresonator coupling are determined by applying a detailed fitting procedure to the experimental results and compared to results of detailed numerical simulations. By comparing the propagation losses of the fundamental TE polarized microresonator mode obtained by fitting to the measured spectra to the also experimentally determined propagation losses in the adjacent straight waveguide and the materials losses, it is possible to identify the loss mechanisms in the microresonator. By comparing experimental results for microresonators with air and polymethylmethacrylate cladding and a detailed numerical study, the influence of the cladding index on the bend losses is evaluated. It is demonstrated that the presence of an upper cladding can, under the right conditions, actually be beneficial for loss reduction