Development of an Instructional Course on Fire-Protective and Low-Water Landscaping in Utah

Because of climate change, population expansion, and other factors, both wildfire and drought are becoming pressing concerns in Utah. Home landscaping can reduce risk of damage from wildfire (fire-protective landscaping) and contribute to lower water use (low-water landscaping). While it is important for homes in the wildland-urban interface in Utah to have landscaping that is both fire-protective and low-water, best practices for the two are often taught in ways that make them seem mutually exclusive. This project used existing research and best practices to develop a learning experience to teach homeowners how to implement landscaping that is both fire-protective and low-water. The ADDIE model of instructional design was used to guide the process of making the learning experience. The final product is an interactive, online course that will be published through Utah State University Extension and made available to the public. The course teaches best practices of fire-protective and low-water landscaping, how to make a landscape enjoyable to use, and the importance of making informed decisions about landscaping based on personal values

Vacuum Landscaping: Cause of Nonlocal Influences without Signaling

In the quest for an understanding of nonlocality with respect to an appropriate ontology, we propose a "cosmological solution". We assume that from the beginning of the universe each point in space has been the location of a scalar field representing a zero-point vacuum energy that nonlocally vibrates at a vast range of different frequencies across the whole universe. A quantum, then, is a nonequilibrium steady state in the form of a "bouncer" coupled resonantly to one of those (particle type dependent) frequencies, in remote analogy to the bouncing oil drops on an oscillating oil bath as in Couder's experiments. A major difference to the latter analogy is given by the nonlocal nature of the vacuum oscillations. We show with the examples of double- and $n$-slit interference that the assumed nonlocality of the distribution functions alone suffices to derive the de Broglie-Bohm guiding equation for $N$ particles with otherwise purely classical means. In our model, no influences from configuration space are required, as everything can be described in 3-space. Importantly, the setting up of an experimental arrangement limits and shapes the forward and osmotic contributions and is described as vacuum landscaping.Comment: 21 pages, 3 figures; talk presented at the 4th international symposium on "Emergent Quantum Mechanics" (London, UK, 26-28 October, 2017); http://emqm17.org

Valuing House and Landscape Attributes: Application of the Hedonic Pricing Technique

Hedonic pricing is used to determine the effect of a landscape element such as the lawn area on the home selling price of single-family homes in Athens, Georgia. Results show that lawn area and the use of zoysiagrass as the dominant species positively and significantly influenced the selling price.Land Economics/Use,

Product Innovation and Firm Growth: Evidence from the Integrated Circuits Industry

Applied research on growth and innovation seems to suggest that successful innovations do not significantly enhance firm growth. This paper tests the hypothesis that the level of observation at which applied research is typically conducted hampers identification of a significant association between innovation and sales growth rates. Exploiting a unique data set, we find that product innovations commercialized in the immediate past positively affect the corporate revenue streams of semiconductor companies.