THINKING GLOBALLY -- FARMING GLOBALLY

The agriculture industry continues to adopt business practices based on strategic alliances. Generally these alliances emphasize vertical coordination wherein producers enter into long-term agreements with suppliers, processors, and businesses in other sectors of the food and fiber industry. Alternatively, producers should explore initiating horizontal linkages; that is, strategic alliances among producers. Sharing ownership of seasonal equipment, multi-year land rotations among specialized farm operations, and sharing ownership of several farm businesses are strategies that can offer production and marketing efficiencies, as well as risk management opportunities.Agribusiness,

Case Study: Value Added in the Oats Industry in Alberta and Western Canada 1998

Crop Production/Industries,

Thermal-Expansion and Fracture Toughness Properties ofParts made from Liquid Crystal Stereolithography Resins

Liquid crystal (LC) resins are a new kind ofstereolithography material that can produce parts with structured or ordered morphologies instead ofthe amorphous morphologies that result from standard resins. The LC molecules can be aligned before cure resulting in an anisotropic crosslinked network when the laser induced polymerization "locks-in" the alignment. Previous papers have explored liquid crystal orientation dynamics [1], the effects of orientation on viscoelastic and mechanical properties [2,3], and the processing ofLC resins by stereolithography [4]. This paper considers the effects ofmorphology on fracture toughness and thermal-expansion properties. Both toughness and thermal-stability continue to be important issues for stereolithography parts. The use ofLC resins may provide a way to significantly improve performance in both ofthese areas, and in addition result in parts with high upper use . temperatures.Mechanical Engineerin