Dairy Farm Revenue Insurance: Is the Application Viable?

Risk and Uncertainty,

An Examination of US Consumer Pet and Veterinary Expenditures, 1980-1999

The veterinary medical profession touches nearly everyone's life, either directly or indirectly. An estimated 58.3% of US households own pets (AVMA, 2002), and most people consume livestock products in the form of meat, dairy products, wool, or leather. The health and well being of all these animals depend heavily on relationships with veterinarians. Veterinarians also contribute to public health through the FDA, CDC, USDA, and numerous other government agencies at the federal, state, and local levels. Issues of primary concern include food safety, biosecurity, and the numerous emerging (and re-emerging) infectious diseases that are zoonotic in nature. Finally, veterinarians have an additional impact through their research contributions. Virtually all of the laboratory animals used in research are raised, housed, and managed under the care of veterinarians, and veterinary researchers regularly provide valuable contributions to the knowledge base in the biomedical sciences. This study was designed to assess the general trends in pet and veterinary expenditures as well as factors associated with pet ownership and expenditures on veterinary medical services. Providing such key information on the sector of greatest economic importance will enhance the probability of sustained economic viability in the veterinary medical profession as a whole.Health Economics and Policy,

THE AGRICULTURAL RISK MANAGEMENT SIMULATOR MICROCOMPUTER PROGRAM

The Agricultural Risk Management Simulator (ARMS) is a microcomputer program designed to help users evaluate strategies for managing yield and price risk in crop farming operations. Risk management strategies are defined by choices regarding crop mix, the purchase of multiple peril crop insurance, and the use of forward contracting. Probabilistic budgeting is used to determine the net cash flow probability distribution for each strategy considered. Flexibility with regard to both sources of probabilistic information and the form of yield and price probability distributions is a noteworthy feature of the program.Risk and Uncertainty,

Incorporating Environmentally Compliant Manure Nutrient Disposal Costs into Least-Cost Livestock Ration Formulation

Livestock rations are formulated to minimize feed cost subject to nutritional requirements for a target performance level, which ignores the potentially substantial cost of disposing of nutrients fed in excess of nutritional requirements. We incorporate nutrient disposal costs into a modified least-cost ration formulation model to arrive at a joint least-cost decision that minimizes the sum of feed and net nutrient disposal costs. The method is demonstrated with phosphorus disposal costs on a representative dairy farm. Herd size, land availability and proximity, crop rotation, and initial soil phosphorus content are shown to be important in determining phosphorus disposal costs.environmental compliance, linear programming, livestock rations, manure disposal, Agribusiness, Environmental Economics and Policy, Livestock Production/Industries, C61, Q12, Q52,

AN ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORK FOR DISCUSSING FARM BUSINESS INTERRUPTION INSURANCE FOR CLASSICAL SWINE FEVER

This paper studies farm business interruption insurance for Classical Swine Fever epidemics. Insight into the size of risk is obtained by a very detailed Monte-Carlo simulation model that includes both epidemiological and economic factors. The paper also considers issues such as farmers' and governments' influence on the size of risk.Livestock Production/Industries, Risk and Uncertainty,

An assessment of ADAMs in bone cells: absence of TACE activity prevents osteoclast recruitment and the formation of the marrow cavity in developing long bones

AbstractADAMs (A Disintegrin And Metalloprotease domain) are metalloprotease–disintegrin proteins that have been implicated in cell adhesion, protein ectodomain shedding, matrix protein degradation and cell fusion. Since such events are critical for bone resorption and osteoclast recruitment, we investigated whether they require ADAMs. We report here which ADAMs we have identified in bone cells, as well as our analysis of the generation, migration and resorptive activity of osteoclasts in developing metatarsals of mouse embryos lacking catalytically active ADAM 17 [TNFα converting enzyme (TACE)]. The absence of TACE activity still allowed the generation of cells showing an osteoclastic phenotype, but prevented their migration into the core of the diaphysis and the subsequent formation of marrow cavity. This suggests a role of TACE in the recruitment of osteoclasts to future resorption sites

Rates of referable eye disease in the Scottish National Diabetic Retinopathy Screening Programme

Published by the BMJ Publishing Group Limited. For permission to use (where not already granted under a licence) please go to http://group.bmj.com/group/rights-licensing/permissions.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Characterizing the Decision Process in Setting Corn and Soybean Seeding Rates

Selecting optimal corn and soybean seeding rates are difficult decisions to make. A survey of Ohio and Michigan farm operators finds that, although generally keen to learn from others, they tend to emphasize their own experience over outside information sources. Soybean growers declare university and extension recommendations as more important than do corn growers. In response to direct queries and in free comments, growers place more emphasis on understanding the agronomic and technological problems at hand than on adjusting to the market environment. Given the decision environment, we argue that these responses are reasonable

Temperature dependence of the Casimir effect between metallic mirrors

We calculate the Casimir force and free energy for plane metallic mirrors at non-zero temperature. Numerical evaluations are given with temperature and conductivity effects treated simultaneously. The results are compared with the approximation where both effects are treated independently and the corrections simply multiplied. The deviation between the exact and approximated results takes the form of a temperature dependent function for which an analytical expression is given. The knowledge of this function allows simple and accurate estimations at the % level.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures, uses RevTe

Natural soda lakes provide compatible conditions for RNA and membrane function that could have enabled the origin of life

The origin of life likely occurred within environments that concentrated cellular precursors and enabled their co-assembly into cells. Soda lakes (those dominated by Na+ ions and carbonate species) can concentrate precursors of RNA and membranes, such as phosphate, cyanide, and fatty acids. Subsequent assembly of RNA and membranes into cells is a long-standing problem because RNA function requires divalent cations, e.g. Mg2+, but Mg2+ disrupts fatty acid membranes. The low solubility of Mg-containing carbonates limits soda lakes to moderate Mg2+ concentrations (∼1 mM), so we investigated whether both RNAs and membranes function within these lakes. We collected water from Last Chance Lake and Goodenough Lake in Canada. Because we sampled after seasonal evaporation, the lake water contained ∼1 M Na+ and ∼1 mM Mg2+ near pH 10. In the laboratory, nonenzymatic, RNA-templated polymerization of 2-aminoimidazole-activated ribonucleotides occurred at comparable rates in lake water and standard laboratory conditions (50 mM MgCl2, pH 8). Additionally, we found that a ligase ribozyme that uses oligonucleotide substrates activated with 2-aminoimidazole was active in lake water after adjusting pH from ∼10 to 9. We also observed that decanoic acid and decanol assembled into vesicles in a dilute solution that resembled lake water after seasonal rains, and that those vesicles retained encapsulated solutes despite salt-induced flocculation when the external solution was replaced with dry-season lake water. By identifying compatible conditions for nonenzymatic and ribozyme-catalyzed RNA assembly, and for encapsulation by membranes, our results suggest that soda lakes could have enabled cellular life to emerge on Earth, and perhaps elsewhere