ECONOMIC AND ENVIRONMENTAL BENEFITS OF SOIL/WATER NITROGEN TESTING: THE CASE OF CENTRAL NEBRASKA

This research presents a competitive dynamic model to evaluate the economic and groundwater quality benefits resulting from the adoption of soil/water nitrogen testing. The model is applied to an irrigated corn production county in the Nebraska Mid-State area where the groundwater contamination level from nitrates is reported to be, on average, 18.7 parts per million (ppm). Adoption of nutrient management practices would result in increased economic benefits to farmers and reduced nitrate stocks in groundwater.Environmental Economics and Policy,

An evaluation of the effects of a personal growth and development course on the self-esteem levels of college students at a selected institution

The purpose of this study was to determine if there was a positive change in levels of self-esteem for students who completed a Personal Growth and Development course at Purdue University. The study also examined if there was a greater change in levels of self-esteem for students enrolled in a Personal Growth and Development course compared to students enrolled in an Educational Psychology course;The 102 respondents were fall 1993 enrollees of two selected courses at Purdue University. The instrument employed in the study was the Tennessee Self Concept Scale (TSCS), a 100 item Likert inventory. A 100% response rate was achieved. The dependent variables were the pre- and post-tests, repeated measures within subject variable for Group I and Group II, between subject variables and the level of self-esteem. The independent variables consisted of gender, college level classification, community type and size, family size, and involvement in high school and college activities;The findings reported a significant difference in a positive change in students\u27 self-esteem levels enrolled in EDPS 100 based on pre- and post-test scores. There was also a significant difference in self-esteem gain scores of upper class students (juniors and seniors) versus lower class students (freshmen and sophomores). In addition, there was a larger gain score in self-esteem levels of students enrolled in EDPS 100 versus students\u27 enrolled in EDPS 230 as measured by the TSCS

Junior college movement with special application to New England.

Thesis (M.A.)--Boston University This item was digitized by the Internet Archive

Opera Education In The Upper Elementary Music Classroom

Adults are increasingly becoming uninvolved with the arts and it is therefore important to cultivate a new audience, beginning with a well-rounded musical education for elementary-age children. Opera can easily be implemented as a part of a well-rounded musical education and can be taught in conjunction with multiple subjects. Anecdotal evidence suggests that children are exposed to negative stereotypes about opera without receiving proper education on the subject and are thus more likely to not be interested in opera as they grow older. A short survey was sent to fourth and fifth grade music teachers around the state of Mississippi to discover if and why teachers include opera in their curriculum. Seventy-three teachers responded to the survey revealing that more than half of the respondents do not include opera in their curriculum. The most popular factor indicated by “No” respondents was lack of time in the school year. All “Yes” respondents indicated that they believed opera can be used to teach multiple musical and non-musical subjects. Both “No” and “Yes” respondents indicated that student interest and student age affected their inclusion or omission of opera in their curriculum. Research also revealed that lack of resources for music programs affects many schools and school districts around the state of Mississippi

How we know where we are in the smart city: Excerpts from conversations in Amsterdam (Netherlands)

In smart cities data from and about residents is captured in high volumes and through a variety of channels and devices. Some of these devices are part of the built environment, such as CCTV cameras or wireless sensors, capturing data as we pass by them. Other data flows within the digital sphere through our use of social media or text messages, for instance. How these data become combined and used, and by whom, is mostly unknown to the individuals who are both producers and users of digital data. This raises many questions about the social and spatial ordering of the city and its people. Spatial references of our past or current locations, places of residence and work, our movements through the city are deeply embedded into the data streams and databases of the smart city. Through integration of data from various sources, much can be known about our movements as well as social associations within physical space. At the same time, the spaces that we experience and live in increasingly take their shape across the digital and physical realms of life. In focus groups in 2015 in Amsterdam we discussed with citizen groups how they perceive of, enact and articulate the types of spaces and spatial references that emerge through diverse digital data flows. Through the analysis we are especially interested to understand how these articulations of digital and physical spaces interlink; and how the notions of public and private space may shift or intertwine in the processes that characterize smart urbanism from the perspective of citizens. The research represents some of the first empirical work exploring the emotionalconnections of residents to their digital city

El ecoturismo comunitario como altemativa económica en las comunidades de Musawas, Wilu y Panyawas, del Territorio Mayangna Sauni As

La iniciativa de esta investigación surge para poder contar con un estudio base de ecoturismo comunitario que dé a conocer la riqueza de recursos naturales y paisajísticos de tres comunidades del territorio Indígena Mayangna Sauni As, y que permita a la vez la conservación de estos recursos cuyos guardianes ancestraIes han sido los pobladores mayangnas que habitan este Territorio. También esta investigación se ha ejecutado con el fin de que las autoridades territoriales y los IIderes comunales cuenten con insumos que les permitan materiaIizar una idea de desarrollo ecoturistico, ya que en el estudio se señalan sitios específicos en tres comunidades (Musawas, Wilu y Panyawas) del territorio Mayangna Sauni As, donde pueden Ilevarse a cabo estas activdades ecoturísticas

Visualization of Iron-Binding Micelles in Acidic Recombinant Biomineralization Protein, MamC

Biological macromolecules are utilized in low-temperature synthetic methods to exert precise control over nanoparticle nucleation and placement. They enable low-temperature formation of a variety of functional nanostructured materials with properties often not achieved via conventional synthetic techniques. Here we report on the in situ visualization of a novel acidic bacterial recombinant protein, MamC, commonly present in the magnetosome membrane of several magnetotactic bacteria, including Magnetococcus marinus, strain MC-1. Our findings provide an insight into the self-assembly of MamC and point to formation of the extended protein surface, which is assumed to play an important role in the formation of biotemplated inorganic nanoparticles. The self-organization of MamC is compared to the behavior of another acidic recombinant iron-binding protein, Mms6.This work was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences, Materials Sciences and Engineering Division. The research was performed at the Ames Laboratory, which is operated for the U.S. Department of Energy by Iowa State University under Contract no. DE-AC02-07CH11358. MamC cloning and purification were done at the University of Granada, Spain. Concepción Jiménez López acknowledges the support from the Spanish Government through Grant CGL2010-18274 and the program Salvador de Madariaga

Investigation of Enterohemorrhagic \u3ci\u3eEscherichia coli\u3c/i\u3e O157:H7 Adherence Characteristics and Invasion Potential Reveals a New Attachment Pattern Shared by Intestinal \u3ci\u3eE. coli\u3c/i\u3e

In this study, the interactions of enterohemorrhagic Escherichia coli (EHEC) O157 strains with human ileocecal (HCT-8) epithelial cells and HEp-2 cells were examined. EHEC adhered to, but did not invade, HCT-8 cells by the localized adherence mechanism and a heretofore unrecognized pattern which we called log jam. The log jam formation was (i) not observed on HEp-2 cells, (ii) independent of the EHEC eaeA gene required for localized adherence, and (iii) shared by pathogenic and nonpathogenic E. coli strains but not K-12 strains. The log jam phenotype may represent a basal means by which E. coli bacteria attach to the human intestine

Concordance of freshwater and terrestrial biodiversity

Efforts to set global conservation priorities have largely ignored freshwater diversity, thereby excluding some of the world\u27s most speciose, threatened, and valuable taxa. Using a new global map of freshwater ecoregions and distribution data for about 13,300 fish species, we identify regions of exceptional freshwater biodiversity and assess their overlap with regions of equivalent terrestrial importance. Overlap is greatest in the tropics and is higher than expected by chance. These high-congruence areas offer opportunities for integrated conservation efforts, which could be of particular value when economic conditions force conservation organizations to narrow their focus. Areas of low overlap-missed by current terrestrially based priority schemes-merit independent freshwater conservation efforts. These results provide new information to conservation investors setting priorities at global or regional scales and argue for a potential reallocation of future resources to achieve representation of overlooked biomes. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc

A VSA search for the extended Sunyaev-Zel'dovich Effect in the Corona Borealis Supercluster

We present interferometric imaging at 33 GHz of the Corona Borealis supercluster, using the extended configuration of the Very Small Array. A total area of 24 deg^2 has been imaged, with an angular resolution of 11 arcmin and a sensitivity of 12 mJy/beam. The aim of these observations is to search for Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) detections from known clusters of galaxies in this supercluster and for a possible extended SZ decrement due to diffuse warm/hot gas in the intercluster medium. We measure negative flux values in the positions of the ten richest clusters in the region. Collectively, this implies a 3.0-sigma detection of the SZ effect. In the clusters A2061 and A2065 we find decrements of approximately 2-sigma. Our main result is the detection of two strong and resolved negative features at -70+-12 mJy/beam (-157+-27 microK) and -103+-10 mJy/beam (-230+-23 microK), respectively, located in a region with no known clusters, near the centre of the supercluster. We discuss their possible origins in terms of primordial CMB anisotropies and/or SZ signals related to either unknown clusters or to a diffuse extended warm/hot gas distribution. Our analyses have revealed that a primordial CMB fluctuation is a plausible explanation for the weaker feature (probability of 37.82%). For the stronger one, neither primordial CMB (probability of 0.33%) nor SZ can account alone for its size and total intensity. The most reasonable explanation, then, is a combination of both primordial CMB and SZ signal. Finally, we explore what characteristics would be required for a filamentary structure consisting of warm/hot diffuse gas in order to produce a significant contribution to such a spot taking into account the constraints set by X-ray data.Comment: 16 pages, 10 figures. Accepted in MNRA