Previous research has revealed a negative impact of orphanhood and HIV-related stigma on the psychological well-being of children affected by HIV/AIDS. Little is known about psychological protective factors that can mitigate the effect of orphanhood and HIV-related stigma on psychological...

In this paper, the combustion characteristics of Diesel and biodiesel fuels are investigated and compared. Based on the experimental data obtained from a medium-duty Diesel engine, a multi-phase combustion model, which is applicable to both Diesel and biodiesel fuels, is developed and it shows...

Replaced with revised version of paper 06/17/08.

In this article we price a precipitation option based on empirical weather data from Germany using different pricing methods, among them Burn Analysis, Index Value Simulation and Daily Simulation. For that purpose we develop a daily precipitation model. Moreover, a de-correlation analysis is...

A remarkable disagreement/deviation between the rate of ISO 14001 registration and the rate of implementation of environmental impact assessment in the Chinese construction industry indicates that the contractors there might not have really applied environmental management (EM) in construction...

This article develops an Indifference Pricing model for a weather derivative that is traded over the counter. The model is used to calculate ask and bid prices for a put option on a weather index in Germany. We find that under moderate risk aversion the maximal bid prices of grain producers...

In this paper we price a precipitation option based on empirical weather data from Germany using different pricing methods, among them the burn analysis, index value simulation and daily simulation. For that purpose we develop a daily precipitation model. Moreover, a decorrelation analysis is...

Systemic weather risk is a major obstacle for the formation of private (nonsubsidized) crop insurance. This paper explores the possibility of spatial diversification of insurance by estimating the joint occurrence of unfavorable weather conditions in different locations. For that purpose copula...

During transesterification process in the fixed-bed reactor, traditional heterogeneous catalyst cannot stand the high pressure drop and would easily breaks at the reactor bottom thus blocking the outlets. KF/γ-Al2O3/honeycomb ceramic (HC) monolithic catalyst which was prepared in this research...

This paper is devoted to investigate the stochastic stationary responses of a viscoelastic system with impacts under additive Gaussian white noise excitation. First, the viscoelastic force is approximated as equivalent stiffness and damping terms, and the original system is replaced by a system...