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Electricity end-users have been increasingly generating their own electricity via rooftop solar panels. Our paper studies the implications of such “distributed renewable energy” for utility profits and social welfare under net metering that has sparked heated debates in practice. The common belief is that such type of generation significantly decreases utility profits because (i) distributed generation reduces utility’s market size, and (ii) under net metering, utilities must buy back the excess generation of their customers at a rate typically larger than their procurement cost. Based on this understanding, there have been various lobbying campaigns against the net-metered distributed solar energy. A distinctive feature of our paper is that it considers supply-side effects of distributed renewable energy on utilities by explicitly modeling the wholesale market dynamics, while also accounting for (i) and (ii). Our analysis shows that in contrast to the common belief, the presence of net-metered distributed renewable energy can strictly increase the expected profit for utilities (compared to the case with no such energy) when wholesale market dynamics are factored in. Specifically, we prove that the net-metered distributed renewable energy strictly improves the utility’s expected profit if and only if the equilibrium wholesale electricity price is sufficiently sensitive to the changes in the wholesale demand and the utility’s expected market-reliance level is above a threshold. Our numerical study uses data on distributed solar energy in California and the CAISO’s wholesale electricity market, and demonstrates that our results continue to be valid under realistic parameters.

Aerides crispa is an epiphytic plant that belongs to Orchidaceae family. Re-quirement of special habitat makes epiphytic orchids different from other plants. Day by day favourable conditions for these plants are decreasing. Here we have isolated six endophytic fungi from a single orchid. Isolated fungal cultures were molecularly characterized using ITS sequence region comparison with known fungi from NCBI data base and submitted to Gen-Bank. Homology of the fungi were confirmed by similarity matrix generation and phylogenetic tree construction. Thus, the endophytic fungi obtained were Cladosprium cladosporioides, Nigrospora sphaerica, Colletotricum gloe-osporioides, Fusarium circinatum, F.equiseti, Cl.cladosporioides. From the research study, it is revealed that genotypic characterization is a better method for identification of fungi than traditional methods, since same fungi were identified from different parts and also different species from same part of the same plant shows the interesting part of biodiversity. Richness of fungi in A crispaspeaks a lot about the importance of conservation of or-chids, endophytes and thereby biodiversity. The study describes endophytic fungi from an epiphytic orchid Acrispa to its sequence level identification.

Honey exhibits a potent antioxidant activity; it varies according to floral sources and the geographical origin of the honey. The study was aimed to evaluate the biochemical and antioxidant propert...

Aerides crispa is an epiphytic flowering orchid belongs to the family Orchidaceae.we have identified five different endophytic bacteria from this orchid. Genotypic characterization of the bacterial culture was done using 16S rDNA sequencing after PCR amplification. These sequences were compared with the known similar bacterial sequences from the NCBI GenBank database. Homological relationship of the bacteria was also compared by Phylogenetic tree generation. Bacteria obtained were Bacillus pumilus MT463728, Bacillus megaterium MT540506, Lysinibacillus fusiformis MT540507, Bacillus cereus MT540510, Aneurinibacillus migulanus. From the study, we have molecularly characterized and documented five different endophytic bacteria from the epiphytic orchid, A crispa. This shows the diversity of endophytes in orchids which speaks a lot about the urgent necessity of bioconservation without words.

Firms increasingly need to manage uncertainty and become more agile and adaptable. This study considers how a multi‐product firm can use its product mix, resource capacity allocation, and pricing decisions to manage challenges such as structural economic shifts or changes in consumers' willingness‐to‐pay. Firms that seek to develop and use such a product line face a fundamental trade‐off. On the one hand, multiple products compete for the demand externally (i.e., cannibalization effects), as well as for the limited resource capacity internally. On the other hand, a multi‐product firm does have the ability to change the product mix and to adjust the production quantity and pricing of each product in order to manipulate supply and demand as conditions change. In this study, we demonstrate that a multi‐product firm can become more agile and adaptable under consumer purchasing behavior uncertainty by employing postponement in product mix, quantity, and pricing decisions, and by allocating capacities appropriately. In particular, we show that a firm can use its product line flexibility to make strategic adjustments after understanding the realized economic conditions, and to decide whether to follow a focus or segmentation strategy. We also extend the model to look at the value of resource flexibility and find that it has little or no benefit above and beyond the product line flexibility studied here.

Problem definition: We study the optimal seeding policy under rainfall uncertainty in rain-fed agriculture and explore its advantage over commonly used heuristics in practice. Academic/practical relevance: Our work is in the area of agriculture operations, and we focus on the improvement of farmer’s expected total profit by optimizing planting schedules. Methodology: We model a farmer’s planting problem under limited planting capacity in a finite-horizon stochastic dynamic program. Results: We show that the optimal planting policy is a time-dependent, threshold-type policy, and the optimal threshold is dependent on the soil water content and planting capacity. In our computational study, we use the well-known Decision Support System for Agrotechnology Transfer simulator used in agriculture to obtain the expected yield when planting in any given period. Utilizing field weather data from Southern Africa, in a real-size, large-scale problem, we demonstrate a significant relative profit advantage of the optimal planting schedule over commonly used heuristics in practice. We show that the relative advantage of the optimal policy increases as the climate condition becomes more severe for planting. We also develop a heuristic based on the secretary problem and demonstrate the increased efficacy of the secretary heuristic. Managerial implications: We show that the farmer should plant down to the optimal threshold of seed amount. However, in practice, farmers start to plant each year after observing enough cumulative rainfall. Utilizing field weather data, in a real-size, large-scale problem, we show significant improvement of the expected total profit if the farmer could adopt the optimal policy.

Western Ghats is one of the hottest hot spot in the world. Cleisostoma tenuifolium is an epiphytic orchid from the heart of this region. We have isolated and identified four endophytic fungi from this plant. Characterization of these fungi were done by analyzing the sequences. Genome were quantified and sequenced. Sequence similarity matrix were prepared by comparing the ITS region sequence of obtained fungi with its closely related fungal species from NCBI database. Phylogenetic tree were also constructed for further comparing the homological features of these fungi. From the study, the obtained fungi were Aspergillus flavus MT464452, Cladosporium xanthochromaticum MT464453, Colletotrichum cymbidicola MT464454, Aspergillus aculeatus MT464455. The wide variety of endophytic fungi isolated from the plant C. tenuifolium that belongs to Orchidaceae family further highlights the importance of orchids as reservoirs of fungal biodiversity and its conservation.

Western Ghats is considered as one of the most important biogeographic zones of India and also major tropical evergreen-forested region that possesses enormous biodiversity. Challenging biodiversity due to decreasing forests and thereby related habitat loss triggered us to give a hand on conservation of microbial diversity in such regions. Vanda testacea a vulnerable epiphytic orchid from Kodagu, is in the heart of Western Ghats which was used for endophyte isolation and characterization in the current study. From leaves of V. testacea fungal and bacterial strains were isolated. Further, by using molecular methods, the genomic DNA of isolated strains was extracted. The ITS region from fungi and 16S rDNA from bacteria were amplified by PCR, and then sequenced. Nucleotide sequences were compared with the known sequences available in NCBI database. Sequence similarity matrix were prepared with closely related species and phylogenetic tree was also generated for homology comparison. Identity of isolated strains was established as two different endophytic fungi, Cladosporium perangustum and Pestalotiopsis maculans and two different strains of Bacillus pumilus upto its genotypic level from the epiphytic orchid, V. testacea. Studies related to endophyte from orchids and identifying them by comparing its sequence are meagre. However, further rigorous trials are necessary to identify diversified endophytes from the epiphytic vulnerable orchid plant habitat and so as to make strategies for biodiversity conservation of Western Ghats, one of the hottest biodiversity hotspots of the World.

Warehouse solutions in emerging countries near suppliers have been adopted to achieve cost efficiency in offshore procurement. Previous academic literature ignores logistics operations costs in supply chain contracting. In this paper, we study contracting between a retailer in a developed country and a supplier in an emerging country while incorporating total landed cost (including logistics operations costs) in contracting. The retailer faces stochastic demand and stochastic lead time and determines the warehousing strategy. She can hold cycle stock and safety stock at the retail location (developed country warehousing) or allow the supplier to hold second‐tier cycle stock at a warehouse in the emerging country in addition to her holding inventory at the retail location (emerging country warehousing). We study the retailer’s optimal warehousing strategy in a centralized supply chain and a decentralized supply chain with the retailer as the Stackelberg leader. When emerging country warehousing is adopted in the decentralized supply chain, the retailer and supplier could achieve a win–win or a win–lose outcome compared to developed country warehousing. Our results show that the retailer’s warehousing strategies in the centralized and decentralized supply chains could be different. We further study the retailer’s optimal warehousing strategy under the Nash bargaining framework where the wholesale price and logistics decisions are negotiated simultaneously given the warehousing strategy. We compare this contract to that where logistics costs are excluded from contract negotiation. Our results show that by including logistics costs into contract negotiation the retailer and supplier could achieve lose–win, win–win and win–lose outcomes.