Composition of North Dakota's Economic Base: A Regional Analysis

The economic base of North Dakota and its eight substate regions has changed over the past couple of decades. This report takes an in-depth look at the economic base for each of these areas over the 1958-1984 period. Each of the regions has a unique composition of basic activities that have been responsible for its growth. Natural resource related activities, either in the form of agricultural or energy production, have been the largest source of real economic growth within the state. The purpose of this report is to identify the components of the economic base at substate levels and to show the changes in relative composition for these activities. Price and production data are presented to support and explain the changes that have occurred.Community/Rural/Urban Development, Production Economics,

Economic Impact of the North Dakota University System in 2009

Financial Economics, Public Economics,

Expanding the North Dakota Input-Output Model to Include Recreation and Tourism

Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Feasibility of Establishing Small Livestock Slaughter Plants in North Dakota

Agribusiness,

Economic Impact of the Conservation Reserve Program in North Dakota

Environmental Economics and Policy, Land Economics/Use,

Automating biomedical data science through tree-based pipeline optimization

Over the past decade, data science and machine learning has grown from a mysterious art form to a staple tool across a variety of fields in academia, business, and government. In this paper, we introduce the concept of tree-based pipeline optimization for automating one of the most tedious parts of machine learning---pipeline design. We implement a Tree-based Pipeline Optimization Tool (TPOT) and demonstrate its effectiveness on a series of simulated and real-world genetic data sets. In particular, we show that TPOT can build machine learning pipelines that achieve competitive classification accuracy and discover novel pipeline operators---such as synthetic feature constructors---that significantly improve classification accuracy on these data sets. We also highlight the current challenges to pipeline optimization, such as the tendency to produce pipelines that overfit the data, and suggest future research paths to overcome these challenges. As such, this work represents an early step toward fully automating machine learning pipeline design.Comment: 16 pages, 5 figures, to appear in EvoBIO 2016 proceeding

Economic Feasibility of Utilizing Waste-Water Heat from Coal-Fired Electrical Generating Plants in Commercial Greenhouses in North Dakota

This study provides information on the economic feasibility of establishing commercial greenhouses utilizing waste-water heat in North Dakota.Production Economics, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

A Linkage Map for the Newt \u3cem\u3eNotophthalmus viridescens\u3c/em\u3e: Insights in Vertebrate Genome and Chromosome Evolution

Genetic linkage maps are fundamental resources that enable diverse genetic and genomic approaches, including quantitative trait locus (QTL) analyses and comparative studies of genome evolution. It is straightforward to build linkage maps for species that are amenable to laboratory culture and genetic crossing designs, and that have relatively small genomes and few chromosomes. It is more difficult to generate linkage maps for species that do not meet these criteria. Here, we introduce a method to rapidly build linkage maps for salamanders, which are known for their enormous genome sizes. As proof of principle, we developed a linkage map with thousands of molecular markers (N=2349) for the Eastern newt (Notophthalmus viridescens). The map contains 12 linkage groups (152.3–934.7cM), only one more than the number of chromosome pairs. Importantly, this map was generated using RNA isolated from a single wild caught female and her 28 offspring. We used the map to reveal chromosome-scale conservation of synteny among N. viridescens, A. mexicanum (Urodela), and chicken (Amniota), and to identify large conserved segments between N. viridescens and Xenopus tropicalis (Anura). We also show that met1, a major effect QTL that regulates the expression of alternate metamorphic and paedomorphic modes of development in Ambystoma, associates with a chromosomal fusion that is not found in the N. viridescens map. Our results shed new light on the ancestral amphibian karyotype and reveal specific fusion and translocation events that shaped the genomes of three amphibian model taxa. The ability to rapidly build linkage maps for large salamander genomes will enable genetic and genomic analyses within this important vertebrate group, and more generally, empower comparative studies of vertebrate biology and evolution