Conservation Reserve and Conservation Compliance Programs: Implications for Resource Adjustment

Conservation Titles of the 1985 Food Security Act lead to agricultural market and resource use adjustments. This study explores how the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) and the Conservation Compliance (CC) Program influence land use, commodity markets, input and technology use, production costs, and the environment. In the case of the Conservation Reserve Program, CARD/FAPRI commodity models are used to generate a baseline and to evaluate the impacts of increasing the amount of land in the reserve. In the case of the Conservation Compliance Program, the CARD ARIMS model is used to generate a baseline without the program and then to evaluate the impacts of imposing erosion restrictions consistent with the conservation compliance provisions. Lower stocks and higher commodity prices would be consequences of expanding the CRP. Resource adjustment associated with conservation compliance can be protracted and may be costly. Insofar as CRP reduces production and strengthens prices, it also can have the effect of increasing the intensity of input use in the remaining planted area. Conservation compliance clearly influences cropping patterns and choices of technology, as well as rates of soil erosion. While production cost increases of 2-4 percent seem relatively small, this could mean as much as 6-15 percent decline in net farm income

The Skn7 Response Regulator of \u3ci\u3eSaccharomyces cerevisiae\u3c/i\u3e Interacts with Hsf1 In Vivo and Is Required for the Induction of Heat Shock Genes by Oxidative Stress

The Skn7 response regulator has previously been shown to play a role in the induction of stress-responsive genes in yeast, e.g., in the induction of the thioredoxin gene in response to hydrogen peroxide. The yeast Heat Shock Factor, Hsf1, is central to the induction of another set of stress-inducible genes, namely the heat shock genes. These two regulatory trans-activators, Hsf1 and Skn7, share certain structural homologies, particularly in their DNA-binding domains and the presence of adjacent regions of coiled-coil structure, which are known to mediate protein–protein interactions. Here, we provide evidence that Hsf1 and Skn7 interact in vitro and in vivo and we show that Skn7 can bind to the same regulatory sequences as Hsf1, namely heat shock elements. Furthermore, we demonstrate that a strain deleted for the SKN7 gene and containing a temperature-sensitive mutation in Hsf1 is hypersensitive to oxidative stress. Our data suggest that Skn7 and Hsf1 cooperate to achieve maximal induction of heat shock genes in response specifically to oxidative stress. We further show that, like Hsf1, Skn7 can interact with itself and is localized to the nucleus under normal growth conditions as well as during oxidative stress

Investigation of the Drag of Various Axially Symmetric Nose Shapes of Fineness Ratio 3 for Mach Numbers from 1.24 to 7.4

Experimental drag measurements at zero angle of attack for various theoretical minimum drag nose shapes, hemispherically blunted cones, and other more common profiles of fineness ratios of about 3 are compared with theoretical results for a Mach number and Reynolds number range of 1.24 to 7.4 and 1.0 x 10 to the 6th power to 7.5 x 10 to the 6th power (based on body length), respectively. The results of experimental pressure-distribution measurements are used for the development of an empirical expression for predicting the pressure drag of hemispherically blunted cones

Spin Waves in Detwinned BaFe2_2As2_2

Understanding magnetic interactions in the parent compounds of high-temperature superconductors forms the basis for determining their role for the mechanism of superconductivity. For parent compounds of iron pnictide superconductors such as $A$Fe$_2$As$_2$ ($A=$ Ba, Ca, Sr), although spin excitations have been mapped out throughout the entire Brillouin zone (BZ), measurements were carried out on twinned samples and did not allow for a conclusive determination of the spin dynamics. Here we use inelastic neutron scattering to completely map out spin excitations of $\sim$100\% detwinned BaFe$_2$As$_2$. By comparing observed spectra with theoretical calculations, we conclude that the spin excitations can be well described by an itinerant model with important contributions from electronic correlations.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, with supplemental materia

Use of Foliar Chemical Treatments to Induce Disease Resistance in Rhododendrons Inoculated with Phytophthora ramorum

A field study was conducted at the National Ornamental Research Site at Dominican University California (NORS-DUC). The study goal was to evaluate three chemical inducers applied as foliar treatments for controlling Phytophthora ramorum, on Rhododendron x ‘Cunningham’s White’ nursery plants. The inducers were chlorine dioxide (ElectroBiocide), hydrogen peroxide (OxiDate 2.0), and acibenzolar-s methyl (Actigard). Water samples from the electrostatic sprayer were measured for three physicochemical water properties. Visual assessment of plant foliage, based on the Horsfall- Barratt scale, was conducted at three and five months after chemical treatments. Foliar fluorescence (Fv/Fm) was measured over three dates. The success of P. ramorum inoculations were determined using qPCR methods. Visual assessment across both months showed no signs of P. ramorum infection or chemical injury symptoms. However, P. ramorum infection vis-à-vis qPCR analysis was confirmed. The September Fv/Fm results revealed that all the chemical inducer treatments were equivalent to the water treatment, except for Actigard. The qPCR results were in general agreement with the Fv/Fm results indicating that the rhododendrons were successfully inoculated with P. ramorum but were non-symptomatic. The electrostatic sprayer ionized the water droplets, resulting in increased Fv/Fm values for the water treatments 90 days after application. There was a three-month delay in fluorescence responses to the most effective chemical applications, indicating that woody plants may need to be monitored over the long term to determine accurate responses to foliar treatments

How U.S. Ocean Policy and Market Power Can Reform the Coral Reef Wildlife Trade

As the world’s largest importer of marine ornamental species for the aquaria, curio, home décor, and jewelry industries, the United States has an opportunity to leverage its considerable market power to promote more sustainable trade and reduce the effects of ornamental trade stress on coral reefs worldwide. Evidence indicates that collection of some coral reef animals for these trades has caused virtual elimination of local populations, major changes in age structure, and promotion of collection practices that destroy reef habitats. Management and enforcement of collection activities in major source countries such as Indonesia and the Philippines remain weak. Strengthening US trade laws and enforcement capabilities combined with increasing consumer and industry demand for responsible conservation can create strong incentives for improving management in source countries. This is particularly important in light of the March 2010 failure of the parties to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) to take action on key groups of corals

National and Regional Implications of Targeting the Conservation Reserve

Within the Conservation Reserve (CR) program, a change in program criteria could reduce the amount of erosion material entering our nation\u27s waterways. The inclusion of land adjacent to water bodies, flowing streams, and river waterways may reduce erosion from these lands and improve water quality. These buffer strip areas, removed from production and placed in the reserve with a vegetative cover, would limit sedimentation and act to prevent upland erosion materials from reaching waterway channels, thus enhancing the programs\u27 environmental benefits. This paper analyzes the economic benefits of including buffer strups as eligible CR land, and it reviews the problems of identifying such areas

Heuristic Segmentation of a Nonstationary Time Series

Many phenomena, both natural and human-influenced, give rise to signals whose statistical properties change under time translation, i.e., are nonstationary. For some practical purposes, a nonstationary time series can be seen as a concatenation of stationary segments. Using a segmentation algorithm, it has been reported that for heart beat data and Internet traffic fluctuations--the distribution of durations of these stationary segments decays with a power law tail. A potential technical difficulty that has not been thoroughly investigated is that a nonstationary time series with a (scale-free) power law distribution of stationary segments is harder to segment than other nonstationary time series because of the wider range of possible segment sizes. Here, we investigate the validity of a heuristic segmentation algorithm recently proposed by Bernaola-Galvan et al. by systematically analyzing surrogate time series with different statistical properties. We find that if a given nonstationary time series has stationary periods whose size is distributed as a power law, the algorithm can split the time series into a set of stationary segments with the correct statistical properties. We also find that the estimated power law exponent of the distribution of stationary-segment sizes is affected by (i) the minimum segment size, and (ii) the ratio of the standard deviation of the mean values of the segments, and the standard deviation of the fluctuations within a segment. Furthermore, we determine that the performance of the algorithm is generally not affected by uncorrelated noise spikes or by weak long-range temporal correlations of the fluctuations within segments.Comment: 23 pages, 14 figure

Large Scale Cross-Correlations in Internet Traffic

The Internet is a complex network of interconnected routers and the existence of collective behavior such as congestion suggests that the correlations between different connections play a crucial role. It is thus critical to measure and quantify these correlations. We use methods of random matrix theory (RMT) to analyze the cross-correlation matrix C of information flow changes of 650 connections between 26 routers of the French scientific network `Renater'. We find that C has the universal properties of the Gaussian orthogonal ensemble of random matrices: The distribution of eigenvalues--up to a rescaling which exhibits a typical correlation time of the order 10 minutes--and the spacing distribution follow the predictions of RMT. There are some deviations for large eigenvalues which contain network-specific information and which identify genuine correlations between connections. The study of the most correlated connections reveals the existence of `active centers' which are exchanging information with a large number of routers thereby inducing correlations between the corresponding connections. These strong correlations could be a reason for the observed self-similarity in the WWW traffic.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figures, final versio