THE EFFECT OF FEEDGRAIN PROGRAM PARTICIPATION ON CHEMICAL USE

Economic incentives created by the commodity programs are hypothesized to cause program participants to apply agrichemicals at greater rates than nonparticipants. Corn producers who participate in the USDA feedgrain program are shown to apply nitrogen, herbicides, and insecticides at statistically greater rates than those who do not participate.Crop Production/Industries,

AGRICULTURE IN AN ECOSYSTEMS FRAMEWORK

By broadening the definition of an ecosystem to include economic activities, can we better characterize the interactions and relationships among agricultural activities and important indicators of ecological system health? This paper addresses research approaches for assessing the role of agriculture in an ecosystems context. Environmental regulation and resource management policies have heightened the interest in understanding interactions among agricultural activities and the natural resource base, including the impacts of agriculture on environmental quality and the impacts on agriculture of ecosystem restoration efforts. What are the most meaningful indicators of environmental quality? Which agricultural practices and policies should be considered, along with which nonagricultural resource uses? Finally, does the evolving thinking about ecosystems permit us to link agricultural practices and policies more directly and meaningfully to conceptions of sustainability, of both natural and socioeconomic systems? This paper presents a brief synopsis of ecosystem management, drawing from several recent governmental initiatives. It then provides an overview of the economics of ecosystem management from the perspective of the role of agriculture; discusses two specific cases, the Pacific Northwest and South Florida; and concludes with a discussion of promising economic approaches, data needs, and caveats to those engaged in policy analysis involving ecosystem restoration.Environmental Economics and Policy,

15 Years: 15 Points of Progress, Transformational Leadership, 1997-2010 [Western Kentucky University]

This report, 15 Years: 15 Points of Progress, documents the most significant changes at WKU since our transformation began in late Fall, 1997. Our success is measurable. Our achievements are significant. Most importantly, our transformation is a lasting one

Compactness for Holomorphic Supercurves

We study the compactness problem for moduli spaces of holomorphic supercurves which, being motivated by supergeometry, are perturbed such as to allow for transversality. We give an explicit construction of limiting objects for sequences of holomorphic supercurves and prove that, in important cases, every such sequence has a convergent subsequence provided that a suitable extension of the classical energy is uniformly bounded. This is a version of Gromov compactness. Finally, we introduce a topology on the moduli spaces enlarged by the limiting objects which makes these spaces compact and metrisable.Comment: 38 page

An exact sequence for contact- and symplectic homology

A symplectic manifold $W$ with contact type boundary $M = \partial W$ induces a linearization of the contact homology of $M$ with corresponding linearized contact homology $HC(M)$. We establish a Gysin-type exact sequence in which the symplectic homology $SH(W)$ of $W$ maps to $HC(M)$, which in turn maps to $HC(M)$, by a map of degree -2, which then maps to $SH(W)$. Furthermore, we give a description of the degree -2 map in terms of rational holomorphic curves with constrained asymptotic markers, in the symplectization of $M$.Comment: Final version. Changes for v2: Proof of main theorem supplemented with detailed discussion of continuation maps. Description of degree -2 map rewritten with emphasis on asymptotic markers. Sec. 5.2 rewritten with emphasis on 0-dim. moduli spaces. Transversality discussion reorganized for clarity (now Remark 9). Various other minor modification

Appearance as Social Code in Commercial Bank Service Encounter in Ibadan, Oyo State

For service organizations like banks, the interaction between bankers and the customers is crucial as it can enhance the quality of service encounter and minimize service breakdown. Using four purposively sampled banks and Chandler’s framework for code types, the study explores physical appearance as social code explored by bankers in commercial banks during service encounters in Ibadan, Nigeria. Still life photographs were taken of appearance codes employed during banker- customer service encounters and discussed along the framework of Chandler’s typology of social codes. Findings reveal that appearance as non-verbal social code is used by commercial banks as a way of projecting the credibility, professionalism, trust worthiness and authority of the service provider which is particularly important in the corporate banking sector. This is done through the use of formal attire, same colour code, bank logo lapel badges and visual uniformity.&nbsp

General Spectral Flow Formula for Fixed Maximal Domain

We consider a continuous curve of linear elliptic formally self-adjoint differential operators of first order with smooth coefficients over a compact Riemannian manifold with boundary together with a continuous curve of global elliptic boundary value problems. We express the spectral flow of the resulting continuous family of (unbounded) self-adjoint Fredholm operators in terms of the Maslov index of two related curves of Lagrangian spaces. One curve is given by the varying domains, the other by the Cauchy data spaces. We provide rigorous definitions of the underlying concepts of spectral theory and symplectic analysis and give a full (and surprisingly short) proof of our General Spectral Flow Formula for the case of fixed maximal domain. As a side result, we establish local stability of weak inner unique continuation property (UCP) and explain its role for parameter dependent spectral theory.Comment: 22 page