The Socioeconomic and Ecological Impact of Cool Season Forage Production: A Case of Black Belt Counties, Alabama

Abstract Raising livestock during the lean season of forage production has become a great challenge for small and limited resource farmers because of a high cost involved in procuring supplementary feed. This study was conducted to assess the impact of cultivating cool-season forages on the feeding costs for meat goats and cattle. Three case studies were conducted in three Black Belt Counties of Alabama, Russell, Dallas, and Bullock. The socioeconomic and ecological impacts of developing cool-season pastures were evaluated using the before versus after assessment approach. The findings revealed that all three cooperator farmers reduced costs of procuring hay and supplementary feed after establishing cool-season forages, on average $917 for two goat farms and$4,152 for a beef cattle farm. It is believed that an extensive outreach on forage production would help small and limited resource livestock farmers boost their farm income. Keywords: Socioeconomic Impact, Ecological Impact, Cool-Season Forage, Year-round Pasture, Alabama Black Bel

The Significance of Urban Gardening on the Household Economy: A Case of Minority Urban Gardeners

Urban gardening (UG) is an emerging approach to increase the consumption of fresh produce in the homestead. The objective of this exploratory case study was to enhance the technical and economic efficiency of small, socially disadvantaged, and minority (SSDM) urban gardeners in Maryland. Twenty-two SSDM producers engaged in UG participated in the study. The findings showed that farmers were operating rationally, and cultivating diversified specialty, medicinal, and ethnic crops, with an average of twenty specialty/ethnic crops on 1.2 acres. The farmers reported six primary reasons for sustaining urban gardening: family consumption (79%), outdoor and physical activity (79%), supplemental household income (57%), leisure (50%), experiential learning for family members (14%), and tax benefits (7%). Findings revealed that 96% of the farmers strengthened knowledge in reducing production costs, increasing farm income (86%), enhancing entrepreneurial skills (82%), improving farm management practices (73%), mitigating risk (59%), and changing UG behaviors and actions (100%)

Akimotoite to perovskite phase transition in MgSiO 3

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/94612/1/grl18182.pd

Arts of electrical impedance tomographic sensing

This paper reviews governing theorems in electrical impedance sensing for analysing the relationships of boundary voltages obtained from different sensing strategies. It reports that both the boundary voltage values and the associated sensitivity matrix of an alternative sensing strategy can be derived from a set of full independent measurements and sensitivity matrix obtained from other sensing strategy. A new sensing method for regional imaging with limited measurements is reported. It also proves that the sensitivity coefficient back-projection algorithm does not always work for all sensing strategies unless the diagonal elements of the transformed matrix, ATA, have significant values and can be approximate to a diagonal matrix. Imaging capabilities of few sensing strategies were verified with static set-ups, which suggest the adjacent electrode pair sensing strategy displays better performance compared to the diametrically opposite protocol, with both the back-projection and multi-step image reconstruction methods. An application of electrical impedance tomography for sensing gas in water two phase flows is demonstrated