DETERMINANTS OF IRRIGATION TECHNOLOGY CHOICE

Two discrete choice models relate the probability of choosing two water-saving irrigation technologies - —sprinkler and tailwater recovery pits- —to the underlying physical and economic attributes of the farming using a national cross section of farm level data. The results show that small farm size, high water or labor costs, and soils with low water-holding capacity increase the likelihood of adopting sprinkler irrigation. For gravity irrigators, large farms, high water costs, and solid with high water-holding capacity increase the probability of recirculating field runoff. In both models soil characteristics and, to a lesser extent, climate dominate the selection probabilities.Farm Management,

Teacher qualification and the achievement gap in early primary grades.

Title I of the No Child Left Behind Act (P.L. 107-110, 115 Stat. 1245, 2002) holds schools accountable for reducing the academic achievement gap between the different ethnic groups and requires elementary school teachers to have at least a bachelors degree and a state certification. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship of the qualification requirement of NCLB to the goal of reducing the academic achievement gap. The study found that students with a certified teacher for most of their early school experience scored higher in reading than students who did not have a certified teacher. In addition, certification was associated with slightly narrowing the academic gap between African American and European American students across early elementary grades

Guide to understanding the lodging industry and one of its most attractive segments

Thesis (S.M. in Real Estate Development)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 2007.This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections."September 2007."Includes bibliographical references (leaves 128-133).This thesis serves as a pedagogical guide to the hospitality industry, and presents a broad overview of the unique issues that arise through the development, ownership and management of select-service franchised hotels. It attempts to answer the following four questions: * How is the lodging industry organized? * How has the industry changed over time, and where is the industry headed? * What hotel product type is particularly attractive from a development, investment and operational standpoint? * What are the issues to be aware of when developing this particular product? To answer the first two questions, Section One of this paper offers a full discussion of the industry evolution and focuses on three major innovations that have been gaining momentum in the lodging industry. These innovations are the trends toward franchising, market segmentation, and the "life-style" brand. The study will describe how franchise and management relationships have gained strength in the lodging industry since their introduction in the mid-twentieth century. The study will then explore the intricacies of the on-going process of market segmentation. Through market segmentation, hotel firms have been able to create and introduce greater operationally efficient hotel typologies, one of which is the select-service hotel. Finally, this section of the thesis will explain how the third innovation--that of the "life-style" brand hotel--combined with the ideas of franchising and of operationally efficient product types, has borne into the hotel market a new and exciting product, the select-service franchised life-style hotel called Aloft. Section Two of the study will address the third and fourth questions by presenting a broad overview of the development process for a hotel of this type, as well as highlight the most pertinent issues and requirements that are associated with such a development.(cont.) Additionally, this section will explore the relationships associated with owning and operating a franchised hotel, and the advantages and pitfalls of owning and building an asset under such an arrangement.by Brandon B. Berger and Donald J. Chiofaro, Jr.S.M.in Real Estate Developmen

The Values of Community Curling: A Case Study

This qualitative case study research shows that within the realm of curling, the professionalization of the sport, at the national level, has limited to no effect on the core values of respect, belonging, and giving back that the grassroots level of curling identify as important. Through an interview process with twelve community level curlers, from four separate clubs within the Niagara region, data were collected and analyzed using traditional coding techniques. Utilizing institutional theory, the research shows a growing gap between the national level of curling and the grassroots level. Data also shows that value alterations, at the community level, are based on the changing Canadian environment in regards to legislation (smoking and drinking laws) and social behaviours (the busier Canadian lifestyle) rather than changes at the national level. These findings have a profound effect on how sports are administered in the Canadian sport syste

Development and Validation of Implicit Measures of Emotional Intelligence Attributes

Emotional intelligence is important for success in a wide range of social and professional roles. Interest in EI has spawned a debate about whether EI should be defined and measured as a set of abilities or as a set of dispositional self-perceptions, the latter being typically assessed with self-report measures that are susceptible to inaccurate self-knowledge and impression management artifacts. This research used Implicit Association Test procedures to develop measures of emotional intelligence and examined their construct validity using a multitrait-multimethod design. The results of confirmatory factor analyses of nested latent trait models provided evidence of convergent and discriminant validity

Structural Conditions and Migration in the Dakotas

This study examines the influence of selected structural conditions on the county-level net-migration trends of North Dakota and South Dakota. Key principles from Lee’s Theory of Migration (1966) and Wallerstein’s World Systems model (1974) were integrated to explain how geographic context, economic dependency, and pace of economic development combine to serve as the main catalysts behind the migration patterns in these two states. Results indicate that commuting patterns, the percentage of workers employed in extractive industries, the percentage of workers employed in manufacturing, and job change rates were significant predictors of county migration patterns

Teacher Efficacy as a Multigroup Model Using Latent Class Analysis

Research measuring teacher efficacy suggests that participants are representative of one-efficacy group. Of the few studies, which measures efficacy as a multidimensional occurrence, teachers are presented as having either low or high efficacy. These studies often use mean or median splits to determine low and high efficacy groups. What is of concern is whether there is a significant probability that those in the low and high groups are actually representative of the data Further, a question exists of whether teacher efficacy is statistically representative of one-efficacy group or representative of more than two efficacy groups. Using Latent Class Analysis (LCA), this study found that mathematics efficacy groups of preservice teachers vary based on where they were in their academic program