Buying Local in Marshall County and Marshalltown, Iowa: An Economic Impact Assessment

Many communities are trying to shore up their local economies. One strategy is to work with local industries and with households to increase the amount of purchases that they make from local suppliers of goods and services. This import substitution strategy can yield measurable and significant impacts. This case study looks at Marshalltown, Iowa, and investigates the regional economic gains from a 5% increase in local purchases.

Applied Remote Sensing Program (ARSP) to state and local government

Environmental surveys of arid land areas (Arizona) in the United States are presented. Maps of soils, vegetation, drainage patterns, and land use are shown. The distribution of uranium deposits, oil and gas pools, is also shown. Legislation pertaining to the preservation of natural resources is discussed

Credit Ratings and UK Defined Pension Fund Portfolio Values

The emergence, in recent years, of large financing deficits in the portfolio values of UK DB pension funds, along with changes in the way such funds are valued by actuaries, has led fund managers to increase the weighting of fixed income securities, including corporate bonds, relative to equities in the portfolios they manage. Since bond prices tend to be less volatile than those of equities, greater bond holdings are attractive in the context of an accounting framework which now values funds on the basis of the current market values of the assets they hold and does not permit the smoothing of asset values over time. When selecting the fixed income securities to be held in the portfolios they manage, fund managers will have regard to the credit ratings assigned to corporate bond issuers. Through a consideration of some key credit rating metrics, and a survey of some relevant literature, this paper seeks to shed light on the ways, and the extent to which, the actions of the credit rating agencies may impact upon the values of defined benefit pension fund portfolios. The paper is organized as follows. Section i provides a general introduction to the theory and practice of credit rating and notes the relevance of credit ratings to defined benefit pension funds. Section ii presents a discussion of pension fund portfolios and their asset allocations. Sections iii and iv analyse the significance of credit ratings and the behaviour of rating agencies for defined benefit pension funds. Section v draws some tentative conclusions and offers some suggestions on the direction that future research on this topic might take.credit ratings; pension funds; portfolios

Time-varying Yield Distributions and the U.S. Crop Insurance Program

The objective of this study is to evaluate and model the yield risk associated with major agricultural commodities in the U.S. We are particularly concerned with the nonstationary nature of the yield distribution, which primarily arises because of technological progress and changing environmental conditions. Precise risk assessment depends on the accuracy of modeling this distribution. This problem becomes more challenging as the yield distribution changes over time, a condition that holds for nearly all major crops. A common approach to this problem is based on a two-stage method in which the yield is first detrended and then the estimated residuals are treated as observed data and modeled using various parametric or nonparametric methods. We propose an alternative parametric model that allows the moments of the yield distributions to change with time. Several model selection techniques suggest that the proposed time-varying model outperforms more conventional models in terms of in-sample goodness-of-fit, out-of- sample predictive power and the prediction accuracy of insurance premium rates.Risk and Uncertainty,

Feasibility of Solar Technology (Photovoltaic) Adoption: A Case Study on Tennessee's Poultry Industry

The advantages and limitations of solar photovoltaic (PV) systems for energy generation are reviewed under various physical efficiency limits, operational design and financial assistance programs. Recent increases in utility and fuel costs in poultry production as well as public awareness of and demand for green power or renewable energy sources has given renewed interest in alternative energy sources. This study seeks to investigate the impact of alternative energy programs, grants and other incentives on the feasibility of solar PV systems in two solar regions within Tennessee's poultry industry. Preliminary results show that incentives must exceed current levels before adoption of solar PV systems would be financially beneficial.Livestock Production/Industries, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Estimation and prediction of parameters and breeding values in soybean using REML/BLUP and Least Squares

The aim of this study was to compare REML/BLUP and Least Square procedures in the prediction andestimation of genetic parameters and breeding values in soybean progenies. F2:3 and F4:5 progenies were evaluated in the2005/06 growing season and the F2:4 and F4:6 generations derived thereof were evaluated in 2006/07. These progenies wereoriginated from two semi-early experimental lines that differ in grain yield. The experiments were conducted in a lattice designand plots consisted of a 2 m row, spaced 0.5 m apart. The trait grain yield per plot was evaluated. It was observed that earlyselection is more efficient for the discrimination of the best lines from the F4 generation onwards. No practical differences wereobserved between the least square and REML/BLUP procedures in the case of the models and simplifications for REML/BLUPused here

Towards Hybrid Density Functional Calculations of Molecular Crystals via Fragment-Based Methods

We introduce and employ two QM:QM schemes (a quantum mechanical method embedded into another quantum mechanical method) and report their performance for the X23 set of molecular crystals. We furthermore present the theory to calculate the stress tensors necessary for the computation of optimized cell volumes of molecular crystals and compare all results to those obtained with various density functionals and more approximate methods. Our QM:QM calculations with PBE0:PBE+D3, PBE0:PBE+MBD, and B3LYP:BLYP+D3 yield at a reduced computational cost lattice energy errors close to the ones of the parent hybrid density functional method, whereas for cell volumes, the errors of the QM:QM scheme methods are in between the GGA and hybrid functionals.Comment: Revised Manuscript accepted in "The Journal of Chemical Physics" (AIP