AN EVALUATION OF THE PRIA GRAZING FEE FORMULA

The federal grazing fee is currently set using the Public Rangeland Improvement Act (PRIA) fee formula established in 1978 and modified in 1986. The formula is adjusted annually using indices of private land grazing lease rates (Forage Value Index, FVI), prices received for beef cattle (Beef Cattle Price Index, BCPI), and costs of beef production (Prices Paid Index, PPI). The FVI tracks price movement in the private forage market and was the only index originally proposed to be included in the fee formula. Public land ranchers and an Interdepartmental Grazing Fee Technical Committee assigned to study grazing fee alternatives in the 1960s questioned the ability of the FVI to account for short-term demand, supply, and price equilibrium, and, for this reason, the BCPI and PPI were added to the fee formula. Over 30 years of data are now available to evaluate whether adding the BCPI and PPI did, in fact, help explain short-term market fluctuations. This analysis shows, as earlier studies did, that, if tracking the private forage market is the primary objective, then the fee formula should have included only the FVI. Including the BCPI and, especially, the PPI has caused calculated grazing fees to fall further and further behind private land lease rates. Had the $1.23 base fee in the PRIA formula been indexed by only the FVI, the federal grazing fee would have been$3.84/AUM instead of $1.35/AUM in 2000. It is time to consider the feasibility of a competitive bid system for public lands, or, at the very least, adopt a new fee formula that generates more equitable grazing fees.Land Economics/Use,

Predictive coupled-cluster isomer orderings for some Sin{}_nCm{}_m (m,n≤12m, n\le 12) clusters; A pragmatic comparison between DFT and complete basis limit coupled-cluster benchmarks

The accurate determination of the preferred ${\rm Si}_{12}{\rm C}_{12}$ isomer is important to guide experimental efforts directed towards synthesizing SiC nano-wires and related polymer structures which are anticipated to be highly efficient exciton materials for opto-electronic devices. In order to definitively identify preferred isomeric structures for silicon carbon nano-clusters, highly accurate geometries, energies and harmonic zero point energies have been computed using coupled-cluster theory with systematic extrapolation to the complete basis limit for set of silicon carbon clusters ranging in size from SiC$_3$ to ${\rm Si}_{12}{\rm C}_{12}$. It is found that post-MBPT(2) correlation energy plays a significant role in obtaining converged relative isomer energies, suggesting that predictions using low rung density functional methods will not have adequate accuracy. Utilizing the best composite coupled-cluster energy that is still computationally feasible, entailing a 3-4 SCF and CCSD extrapolation with triple-$\zeta$ (T) correlation, the {\it closo} ${\rm Si}_{12}{\rm C}_{12}$ isomer is identified to be the preferred isomer in support of previous calculations [J. Chem. Phys. 2015, 142, 034303]. Additionally we have investigated more pragmatic approaches to obtaining accurate silicon carbide isomer energies, including the use of frozen natural orbital coupled-cluster theory and several rungs of standard and double-hybrid density functional theory. Frozen natural orbitals as a way to compute post MBPT(2) correlation energy is found to be an excellent balance between efficiency and accuracy

Thiolated Janus silsesquioxane tetrapod : new precursors for functional materials

Herein, we report synthetic strategies for the development of a bifunctional Janus T4 tetrapod (Janus ring), in which the orthogonal silsesquioxane and organic faces are independently functionalized. An all‐cis T4 tetrasilanolate was functionalized to introduce thiol moieties on the silsesquioxane face and naphthyl groups on the organic face to introduce luminescent and self‐or‐ ganization properties. The stepwise synthesis conditions required to prepare such perfectly defined oligomers via a suite of well‐defined intermediates and to avoid polymerization or reactions over all eight positions of the tetrapod are explored via 29Si, 13C and 1H NMR, FTIR and TOF‐ESI mass spectroscopy. To the best of our knowledge, this is one of the few reports of Janus T4 tetrapods, with different functional groups located on both faces of the molecule, thus expanding the potential range of applications for these versatile precursors

Upregulation of IFNɣ-mediated chemokines dominate the immune transcriptome of muscle-invasive urothelial carcinoma

Tumor inflammation is prognostically significant in high-grade muscle-invasive bladder cancer (MIBC). However, the underlying mechanisms remain elusive. To identify inflammation-associated immune gene expression patterns, we performed transcriptomic profiling of 40 MIBC archival tumors using the NanoString nCounter Human v.1.1 PanCancer Panel. Findings were validated using the TCGA MIBC dataset. Unsupervised and supervised clustering identified a distinctive immune-related gene expression profile for inflammation, characterized by significant upregulation of 149 genes, particularly chemokines, a subset of which also had potential prognostic utility. Some of the most enriched biological processes were lymphocyte activation and proliferation, leukocyte adhesion and migration, antigen processing and presentation and cellular response to IFN-γ. Upregulation of numerous IFN-γ-inducible chemokines, class II MHC molecules and immune checkpoint genes was detected as part of the complex immune response to MIBC. Further, B-cell markers linked to tertiary lymphoid structures were upregulated, which in turn is predictive of tumor response to immunotherapy and favorable outcome. Our findings of both an overall activated immune profıle and immunosuppressive microenvironment provide novel insights into the complex immune milieu of MIBC with inflammation and supports its clinical significance for predicting prognosis and immunotherapeutic responsiveness, which warrants further investigation. This may open novel opportunities to identify mechanisms for developing new immunotherapeutic strategies

A light-front coupled-cluster method for the nonperturbative solution of quantum field theories

We propose a new method for the nonperturbative solution of quantum field theories and illustrate its use in the context of a light-front analog to the Greenberg--Schweber model. The method is based on light-front quantization and uses the exponential-operator technique of the many-body coupled-cluster method. The formulation produces an effective Hamiltonian eigenvalue problem in the valence Fock sector of the system of interest, combined with nonlinear integral equations to be solved for the functions that define the effective Hamiltonian. The method avoids the Fock-space truncations usually used in nonperturbative light-front Hamiltonian methods and, therefore, does not suffer from the spectator dependence, Fock-sector dependence, and uncanceled divergences caused by such truncations.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figures, RevTeX 4.1; expanded description of method and replaced QED with simpler model for illustratio