Wheat Cleaning and its Effect on U.S. Wheat Exports

This analysis shows that there could be net gains to the U.S. wheat industry if all U.S. export wheat were to be cleaned to a dockage level between 0.35 to 0.40 percent. These results are based on survey results of major importers of U.S. wheat, and a model of world wheat trade. Larger benefits to the U.S. wheat industry would be possible from cleaning only wheat destined to countries that demand higher quality U.S. wheat. However, these gains in export revenue from selling cleaner wheat could be offset if other exporters, especially Canada, responded in ways that would maintain their market share.wheat, grain quality, trade model, Crop Production/Industries, International Relations/Trade,

Sensorimotor adjustments after unilateral spinal cord injury in adult rats

A variety of behavioural tests were used to examine both sensory and motor function of freely behaving unilaterally spinal cord-injured and uninjured rats. The first experiment was designed to determine whether sensory and motor differences existed between uninjured Fischer, Lewis, Long-Evans, Sprague-Dawley and Wistar rats using endpoint, quantitative kinematic, and kinetic measurements. The second experiment examined differences in sensorimotor responses to cervical spinal cord hemisection in Lewis, Long-Evans and Wistar rats. For the third experiment, reflex and locomotor abilities of unilateral cervical or thoracic spinal cord hemisected Long-Evans rats were determined using endpoint, semi-quantitative kinematic, and kinetic measurements. The fourth experiment was designed to investigate the importance of the rubrospinal tract and ascending dorsal column pathways to overground locomotion. This experiment was conducted to help explain the behavioural observations made following cervical spinal cord hemisection. Furthermore, this experiment examined the effects of combined unilateral rubrospinal and dorsal column injury on overground locomotion using endpoint and kinetic measurements. Finally, the fifth experiment set out to investigate the contribution of tracts running in the ventrolateral spinal cord on overground locomotion in freely behaving Long-Evans rats. These animals were assessed using endpoint and kinetic measurements. The results of these studies revealed that motor and sensory functions are not similar for all uninjured strains of rats. Specifically, Fischer rats tend to have considerable differences in their morphological features and sensorimotor abilities compared to the other strains examined. Results from the other experiments indicate that adult freely behaving female rats develop a characteristic gait when pathways important for locomotion are injured unilaterally, regardless of strain. The rubrospinal tract and ascending dorsal column pathways appear to be important for both skilled and flat-ground locomotion as well as forelimb use while rearing. Pathways traveling within the ventrolateral pathway, however, are not necessary or sufficient for locomotion or limb useage while rearing when injured by themselves. Animals with ventrolateral spinal funiculus injuries regain normal forelimb use and skilled locomotor abilities. Injury to the ventrolateral spinal funiculus, however, results in mild (compared to rubrospinal and dorsal column injured animals) yet long-lasting locomotor changes based on ground reaction force determination. These findings are in agreement with the current opinion that there is a substantial amount of functional redundancy of pathways traveling in the ventral and ventrolateral funiculi

Enhancing feedback for engineering students

This guide aims to provide a starting point for those tutoring and assessing engineering students. It offers a brief introduction to the topic, including definitions of much of the terminology associated with assessment and feedback processes. It aims, through links to literature and examples from engineering, to support engineering academics in providing more effective feedback to their students and will hopefully act as a catalyst for reflection on current practice and future developments

User Personas: Participatory Systemic Engagement: Data Users and User Needs

Personas are short profiles of fictional but realistic individuals that we use to describe particular groups of users and stakeholders. They are useful for thinking about the design of interventions and / or programmes in a particular process from the user perspective – particularly (but not limited to) in situations when access to “real” users is difficult due to time, resources or geography. Each persona represents an archetype or user group. They are typically given a name, age, gender and short backstory describing their daily lives, aspirations and motivations. This is often combined with information about particular skills, knowledge and behaviours that would be representative of that group and might differ from other user groups. This information is traditionally aggregated from pre-existing survey data or other available metrics. We commonly use personas to explore how a particular intervention will meet the needs of users, to develop scenarios and use cases for user testing and to identify learning and engagement strategies

Planning a portfolio of controls for software development

A growing number of software development projects successfully exhibit a mix of agile and traditional software development methodologies. Many of these mixed methodologies are organization specific and tailored to a specific project. Our objective in this research-in-progress paper is to develop an artifact that can guide the development of such a mixed methodology. Using control theory, we design a process model that provides theoretical guidance to build a portfolio of controls that can support the development of a mixed methodology for software development. Controls, embedded in methods, provide a generalizable and adaptable framework for project managers to develop their mixed methodology specific to the demands of the project. A research methodology is proposed to test the model. Finally, future directions and contributions are discussed

Sulphur-isotope compositions of pig tissues from a controlled feeding study

Sulphur-isotope determinations are becoming increasingly useful for palaeodietary reconstruction, but knowledge of isotopic discrimination between diet and various tissues remains inadequate. In this study, we explore the sensitivity of δ34Stissue values to changes in δ34Sdiet values, sulphur isotopic discrimination between diet and consumer, and the potential impact of terrestrial vs. marine protein consumption on these discrimination offsets. We present new δ34S values of bone collagen, muscle, liver, hair, milk and faeces from ten mature sows, ten piglets and fifteen adolescent pigs from a controlled feeding study. The δ34Stissue values were found to co-vary with the δ34Sdiet values, the δ34Stissue – δ34Sdiet isotopic offsets (Δ34Stissue-diet) are small but consistent, and dietary protein source does not systematically alter the Δ34Stissue-diet isotopic discrimination. The outcomes of this study are of particular relevance to questions that are difficult to resolve using carbon and nitrogen stable isotopes alone, and will also be useful in regions where terrestrial, freshwater, and marine resources could have all potentially contributed to human diet

Management of Softwrare Product Development, Innovation and Adaptability

This inductive study develops a model of innovation and adaptability in software product development. It is based on a case study of a company that is transitioning from a custom development approach to a product-based solution. The emergent model represents a synthesis of the case study findings and the enfolding literature from traditional product development and software development. The goal of the emergent software product development model is to guide organizations in their selection of development processes

FOVQA: Blind Foveated Video Quality Assessment

Previous blind or No Reference (NR) video quality assessment (VQA) models largely rely on features drawn from natural scene statistics (NSS), but under the assumption that the image statistics are stationary in the spatial domain. Several of these models are quite successful on standard pictures. However, in Virtual Reality (VR) applications, foveated video compression is regaining attention, and the concept of space-variant quality assessment is of interest, given the availability of increasingly high spatial and temporal resolution contents and practical ways of measuring gaze direction. Distortions from foveated video compression increase with increased eccentricity, implying that the natural scene statistics are space-variant. Towards advancing the development of foveated compression / streaming algorithms, we have devised a no-reference (NR) foveated video quality assessment model, called FOVQA, which is based on new models of space-variant natural scene statistics (NSS) and natural video statistics (NVS). Specifically, we deploy a space-variant generalized Gaussian distribution (SV-GGD) model and a space-variant asynchronous generalized Gaussian distribution (SV-AGGD) model of mean subtracted contrast normalized (MSCN) coefficients and products of neighboring MSCN coefficients, respectively. We devise a foveated video quality predictor that extracts radial basis features, and other features that capture perceptually annoying rapid quality fall-offs. We find that FOVQA achieves state-of-the-art (SOTA) performance on the new 2D LIVE-FBT-FCVR database, as compared with other leading FIQA / VQA models. we have made our implementation of FOVQA available at: http://live.ece.utexas.edu/research/Quality/FOVQA.zip