World population projections, 2020

The world's population, today numbering some 5.5 billion people, may approach 12 billion by the end of the next century. By the year 2020, 26 years from today, it will most likely have increased by about 2.5 billion to a total of 8 billion people, an increase of nearly 100 million a year. Over 93 percent of this growth will take place in the developing countries. Nygaard contends that two regions in particular merit attention. South Asia and Africa, where large percentages of the poor live today and where future food production is of concern, face substantial increases in their populations. India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh plus the continent of Africa will add another 1.5 billion people to the population roles.Population forecasting. ,Population Statistics. ,Population growth. ,Africa Economic conditions. ,Asia Economic conditions. ,Bangladesh. ,Pakistan. ,India. ,

Scattering and binding of different atomic species in a one-dimensional optical lattice

The theory of scattering of atom pairs in a periodic potential is presented for the case of different atoms. When the scattering dynamics is restricted to the lowest Bloch band of the periodic potential, a separation in relative and average discrete coordinates applies and makes the problem analytically tractable, and we present a number of new results and features compared to the case of identical atoms.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure

Theory of Feshbach molecule formation in a dilute gas during a magnetic field ramp

Starting with coupled atom-molecule Boltzmann equations, we develop a simplified model to understand molecule formation observed in recent experiments. Our theory predicts several key features: (1) the effective adiabatic rate constant is proportional to density; (2) in an adiabatic ramp, the dependence of molecular fraction on magnetic field resembles an error function whose width and centroid are related to the temperature; (3) the molecular production efficiency is a universal function of the initial phase space density, the specific form of which we derive for a classical gas. Our predictions show qualitative agreement with the data from [Hodby et al, Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf{94}}, 120402 (2005)] without the use of adjustable parameters

Pest management and food production: looking to the future

In their comprehensive paper, Montague Yudelman, Annu Ratta, and David Nygaard examine the key issues with regard to pest management and food production over the coming decades. They draw attention to the lack of adequate information on the magnitude and impact of pest losses; with out such information, policy makers are handicapped when devising strategies for meeting food needs. The authors address both chemical and nonchemical approaches to pest management, high lighting the importance of biotechnology. There is growing public sentiment against biotechnology but little appreciation as yet of its contributions to alleviating hunger by, among other things, controlling pest losses. The authors also adress the important subject of the roles of different actors in pest management, most notably the private sector. A world with out pests is unrealistic and probably undesirable. However, a world with severely reduced losses of food production to pests is achievable by 2020. This paper shows us how.Food crops Diseases and pests Control., Pests Integrated control.,

Forced board changes: Evidence from Norway.

The recently introduced gender quota on Norwegian corporate boards dramatically increased the share of female directors. This reform offers a natural experiment to investigate changes in corporate governance from forced increases in gender diver- sity, and whether these changes in turn impact firm performance. I find that investors anticipate the new directors to be more effective in firms with less information asymmetry between insiders of the firm and outsiders. Firms with low information asymmetry experience positive and significant cumulative abnormal returns (CAR) at the introduction of the quota, whereas firms with high information asymmetry show negative but insignificant CAR.Natural experiment; Regulation; Corporate governance; Gender quota.

Wheat, Allocative Error and Risk: Northern Tunisia

Crop Production/Industries,