A PRELIMINARY SURVEY OF USERS OF AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS INFORMATION: PROCEDURES AND RESULTS

This survey of 100 economic analysts in agriculture, outside of government and academia, assesses the changing public-private balance in information services in agriculture. Its objectives were to: (1)contact front-line private-sector analysts who handle economic issues in agriculture and ask them about the data and information they most value and why, (2) experiment with measurement instruments to segment and describe information attributes that users value; and (3) assess the interest of front-line analysts in the changing public- private balance in information provision. The results provide a list of information services used by analysts, descriptive responses on attributes that contribute to value-added, and statistical analysis relating respondent characteristics to the use of information from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.Teaching/Communication/Extension/Profession,

Selection of Web Services Based on Opinion Mining of Free-Text User Reviews

When multiple web services exist that perform identical tasks, non-functional attributes must be considered in order to choose the best service. Quality-of-service (QoS) attributes are often used to differentiate functionally redundant web services. However, ranking services according to QoS attributes is a complex problem. Additionally, the use of test data to establish those QoS ratings does not always yield accurate results. Therefore, this paper proposes a method that utilizes opinion mining techniques to extract information about the QoS attributes of a web service based on free-text user reviews. This method not only has the advantage of using real-world data rather than test data, but it also ensures that a variety of use cases are tested that would be common in the everyday usage of that service

Functional Sequential Treatment Allocation

Consider a setting in which a policy maker assigns subjects to treatments, observing each outcome before the next subject arrives. Initially, it is unknown which treatment is best, but the sequential nature of the problem permits learning about the effectiveness of the treatments. While the multi-armed-bandit literature has shed much light on the situation when the policy maker compares the effectiveness of the treatments through their mean, much less is known about other targets. This is restrictive, because a cautious decision maker may prefer to target a robust location measure such as a quantile or a trimmed mean. Furthermore, socio-economic decision making often requires targeting purpose specific characteristics of the outcome distribution, such as its inherent degree of inequality, welfare or poverty. In the present paper we introduce and study sequential learning algorithms when the distributional characteristic of interest is a general functional of the outcome distribution. Minimax expected regret optimality results are obtained within the subclass of explore-then-commit policies, and for the unrestricted class of all policies

Avaliação de caracteres de interesse agronômico em uma coleção de germoplasma de batata com resistência a insetos-praga.

O presente trabalho teve como objetvo avaliar esta coleção de trabalho quanto a incidência de danos no tubérculo causado por Diabrotica sp, a produção total e comercial de tubérculos, e o comprimento e a largura de tubérculos

Individual Differences in Amygdala and Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex Activity are Associated with Evaluation Speed and Psychological Well-being

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we examined whether individual differences in amygdala activation in response to negative relative to neutral information are related to differences in the speed with which such information is evaluated, the extent to which such differences are associated with medial prefrontal cortex function, and their relationship with measures of trait anxiety and psychological well-being (PWB). Results indicated that faster judgments of negative relative to neutral information were associated with increased left and right amygdala activation. In the prefrontal cortex, faster judgment time was associated with relative decreased activation in a cluster in the ventral anterior cingulate cortex (ACC, BA 24). Furthermore, people who were slower to evaluate negative versus neutral information reported higher PWB. Importantly, higher PWB was strongly associated with increased activation in the ventral ACC for negative relative to neutral information. Individual differences in trait anxiety did not predict variation in judgment time or in amygdala or ventral ACC activity. These findings suggest that people high in PWB effectively recruit the ventral ACC when confronted with potentially aversive stimuli, manifest reduced activity in subcortical regions such as the amygdala, and appraise such information as less salient as reflected in slower evaluative speed

Amygdala and ventromedial prefrontal cortex are inversely coupled during regulation of negative affect and predict the diurnal pattern of cortisol secretion among older adults

Among younger adults, the ability to willfully regulate negative affect, enabling effective responses to stressful experiences, engages regions of prefrontal cortex (PFC) and the amygdala. Because regions of PFC and the amygdala are known to influence the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, here we test whether PFC and amygdala responses during emotion regulation predict the diurnal pattern of salivary cortisol secretion. We also test whether PFC and amygdala regions are engaged during emotion regulation in older (62- to 64-year-old) rather than younger individuals. We measured brain activity using functional magnetic resonance imaging as participants regulated (increased or decreased) their affective responses or attended to negative picture stimuli. We also collected saliva samples for 1 week at home for cortisol assay. Consistent with previous work in younger samples, increasing negative affect resulted in ventral lateral, dorsolateral, and dorsomedial regions of PFC and amygdala activation. In contrast to previous work, decreasing negative affect did not produce the predicted robust pattern of higher PFC and lower amygdala activation. Individuals demonstrating the predicted effect (decrease s attend in the amygdala), however, exhibited higher signal in ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC) for the same contrast. Furthermore, participants displaying higher VMPFC and lower amygdala signal when decreasing compared with the attention control condition evidenced steeper, more normative declines in cortisol over the course of the day. Individual differences yielded the predicted link between brain function while reducing negative affect in the laboratory and diurnal regulation of endocrine activity in the home environment

Summary and results of the comprehensive environmental monitoring program at the INEL's Raft River geothermal site

The Raft River Geothermal Program was designed to demonstrate that moderate temperature (approx. 150/sup 0/C) geothermal fluids could be used to generate electricity and provide an alternate energy source for direct-use applications. The environmental program was initiated soon after drilling began. The major elements of the monitoring program were continued during the construction and experimental testing of the 5-MW(e) power plant. The monitoring studies established pre-development baseline conditions of and assessed changes in the physical, biological, and human environment. The Physical Environmental Monitoring Program collected baseline data on geology, subsidence, seismicity, meteorology and air quality. The Biological Environmental Monitoring Program collected baseline data on the flora and fauna of the terrestrial ecosystem, studied raptor disturbances, and surveyed the aquatic communities of the Raft River. The Human Environmental Monitoring Program surveyed historic and archaeological sites, considered the socioeconomic environment, and documented incidences of fluorosis in the Raft River Valley. In addition to the environmental monitoring programs, research on biological direct applications using geothermal water was conducted at Raft River. Areas of research included biomass production of wetland and tree species, aquaculture, agricultural irrigation, and the use of wetlands as a treatment or pretreatment system for geothermal effluents

Improving Rainfall Effectiveness on Rangeland

6 pp., 1 graph, 1 table, 3 illustrationsRainfall is a major limiting factor for livestock production on Texas rangelands. This publication explains how to more effectively use water for forage production on rangelands, and how to reduce runoff, evaporation, soil erosion and undesirable weeds and brush