Impacts of a Standing Disaster Payment Program on U.S. Crop Insurance

This research investigates the potential effects of the standing disaster assistance program proposed in the Senate version of the 2008 Farm Bill. Results suggest no significant impact on producer crop insurance purchase decisions. Payments under the program should be expected to differ considerably across geographic regions and levels of diversification, with the program providing the greatest benefit to undiversified producers in more risky production regions (e.g., the Southern Plains).

Impacts of the SURE Standing Disaster Assistance Program on Producer Risk Management and Crop Insurance Programs

This research investigates the potential effects of the row crop provisions of the standing disaster assistance program (SURE) in the 2008 Farm Bill. Results suggest little impact on producer crop insurance purchase decisions, though the program does seem to provide an incentive for mid-level coverage. Payments under the program should be expected to differ considerably across geographic regions and levels of diversification, with the program providing the greatest benefit to undiversified producers in more risky production regions.crop insurance, disaster assistance, Farm Bill, SURE, Agricultural and Food Policy, Farm Management, Risk and Uncertainty, Q12, Q18,

Effects of Increasing Zn from Zinc Sulfate or Zinc Hydroxychloride on Finishing Pig Growth Performance, Carcass Characteristics, and Economic Return

A total of 1,008 pigs [TR4 (Fast × L02 PIC; initially 70.6 lb BW)] were used in a 103-d growth study to determine the effects of Zn source and level on finishing pig growth performance, carcass characteristics, and economic return. The 6 dietary treatments were arranged as a 2 × 3 factorial with main effects of Zn source (ZnSO4; Agrium Advance Technology, Loveland, CO, or Zn hydroxychloride; Intellibond-Z®; Micronutrients, Indianapolis, IN) and level (50, 100, or 150 ppm added Zn). The trace mineral premix was formulated to contain no added Zn. There were 21 pigs per pen and 8 pens per treatment. Overall, there was no effect of Zn source for growth performance criteria observed. Increasing added Zn maximized (quadratic, P = 0.007) ADG when diets contained 100 ppm Zn; however, F/G tended to worsen (source × level, linear, P = 0.068) as Zn from Zn hydroxychloride increased, but was relatively unchanged when pigs were fed increasing Zn from ZnSO4. Carcass yield increased (linear, P = 0.027) as Zn level increased. Pigs fed diets with Zn hydroxychloride had heavier (P = 0.041) HCW, and increased HCW ADG (P = 0.036) than those fed ZnSO4. Hot carcass weight and HCW ADG were maximized (quadratic, P ≤ 0.006) when diets contained 100 ppm Zn. There was a tendency for income over feed cost (IOFC) to be maximized when pigs were fed diets with 100 ppm Zn when economic analysis was calculated on both a constant day (quadratic, P = 0.059) and constant carcass weight (quadratic, P = 0.070) basis, respectively.In summary, these results suggest that a total of 100 ppm added Zn is adequate to maximize ADG, HCW, HCW ADG, and IOFC, but F/G worsened as Zn level increased. Zinc source did not affect growth performance; however, pigs fed Zn hydroxychloride had increased HCW and HCW ADG compared to those fed ZnSO4

New CMB Power Spectrum Constraints from MSAMI

We present new cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropy results from the combined analysis of the three flights of the first Medium Scale Anisotropy Measurement (MSAM1). This balloon-borne bolometric instrument measured about 10 square degrees of sky at half-degree resolution in 4 frequency bands from 5.2 icm to 20 icm with a high signal-to-noise ratio. Here we present an overview of our analysis methods, compare the results from the three flights, derive new constraints on the CMB power spectrum from the combined data and reduce the data to total-power Wiener-filtered maps of the CMB. A key feature of this new analysis is a determination of the amplitude of CMB fluctuations at $\ell \sim 400$. The analysis technique is described in a companion paper by Knox.Comment: 9 pages, 6 included figure

Effects of Feeding a Finishing Diet Blended with Different Phases of Nursery Diets on Growth Performance and Economics of Nursery Pigs

A total of 1,260 weaned pigs (PIC TR4 × (Fast LW × PIC L02); initially 12.9 lb BW)) were housed in a commercial research barn and used in a 47-d study to determine the effects of blending a finishing diet into different phases of nursery diets on pig growth performance. Pens of pigs were blocked by initial BW and gender and allotted to 1 of 4 treatment groups (15 pens/treatment). In a 5-phase feeding program, the 4 treatments were: 1) standard nursery diets throughout (control); or standard nursery diets with 5.5 lb/pig of late finishing feed blended at the beginning of 2) Phase 2; 3) Phase 3; or 4) Phase 4. Phase changes were based on feed budgets. From d 0 to 7, all pigs received the same standard Phase 1 diet and had similar growth performance. Compared with pigs from control, blending finishing feed into the Phase 2 period resulted in poorer (P \u3c 0.01) ADG, ADFI, and F/G from d 7 to 14, poorer (P = 0.025) F/G from d 21 to 28, decreased (P = 0.028) ADG from d 28 to 35, and decreased (P \u3c 0.05) ADFI and F/G from d 35 to 47. Blending finishing feed during Phase 3 resulted in worsened (P \u3c 0.001) ADG and F/G from d 14 to 21, decreased (P = 0.010) ADG from d 21 to 28, and lower (P \u3c 0.05) ADFI and F/G from d 35 to 47 compared with control pigs. Pigs that received blended diet in Phase 4 had impaired (P \u3c 0.001) ADG and F/G from d 21 to 28, but had improved (P = 0.010) F/G from d 35 to 47. Overall (d 0 to 47), blending the finishing diet into Phase 2 decreased (P \u3c 0.05) ADG, ADFI, and final BW, but did not affect F/G compared with control pigs or pigs that had finishing feed blended into the Phase 4. Blending finishing feed into Phase 3 or 4 did not influence overall growth performance. Pigs that had finishing feed blended into Phase 2 or 3 had lower (P \u3c 0.05) overall feed costs than pigs from control and Phase 4 blending treatments. Gain value was decreased (P \u3c 0.05) when finishing feed was blended into Phase 2 compared with the control or when feed was blending into Phase 4. However, no differences in feed cost per lb of gain and only numerical differences in income over feed cost were observed among the treatments. In conclusion, feeding finishing feed in early nursery phase negatively affected pig growth performance; however, blending approximately 5.5 lb/pig finishing feed into nursery diets for pigs greater than 22 lb BW did not affect overall growth performance

Anisotropy in the Cosmic Microwave Background at Degree Angular Scales: Python V Results

Observations of the microwave sky using the Python telescope in its fifth season of operation at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station in Antarctica are presented. The system consists of a 0.75 m off-axis telescope instrumented with a HEMT amplifier-based radiometer having continuum sensitivity from 37-45 GHz in two frequency bands. With a 0.91 deg x 1.02 deg beam the instrument fully sampled 598 deg^2 of sky, including fields measured during the previous four seasons of Python observations. Interpreting the observed fluctuations as anisotropy in the cosmic microwave background, we place constraints on the angular power spectrum of fluctuations in eight multipole bands up to l ~ 260. The observed spectrum is consistent with both the COBE experiment and previous Python results. There is no significant contamination from known foregrounds. The results show a discernible rise in the angular power spectrum from large (l ~ 40) to small (l ~ 200) angular scales. The shape of the observed power spectrum is not a simple linear rise but has a sharply increasing slope starting at l ~ 150.Comment: 5 page

Effect of Diet Type and Added Copper on Growth Performance, Carcass Characteristics, Energy Digestibility, Gut Morphology, and Mucosal mRNA Expression of Finishing Pigs

A total of 757 pigs (PIC 337 × 1050, initially 60.8 lb) were used to determine the effects of added Cu (TBCC, tribasic copper chloride, IntelliBond C; Micronutrients, Inc., Indianapolis, IN) and diet type on growth performance, carcass characteristics, energy digestibility, gut morphology, and mucosal mRNA expression of finishing pigs. Pens of pigs were allotted to 1 of 4 dietary treatments, balanced on average pen weight in a randomized complete-block design with 26 to 28 pigs per pen and 7 replications per treatment. Treatments were arranged as a 2 × 2 factorial with main effects of diet type, a corn-soybean meal-based diet or a high by-product diet with 30% distillers dried grains with solubles (DDGS) and 15% bakery meal (by-product), and with or without added Cu (0 or 150 ppm added Cu). There were no Cu × diet type interactions for growth performance. Overall, neither added Cu nor diet type influenced growth performance. Pigs fed the by-product diet had decreased carcass yield (P = 0.007) and HCW F/G (P = 0.013), and tended to have decreased HCW (P = 0.067) and HCW ADG (P = 0.056) compared to pigs fed the corn-soybean meal-based diet. A Cu × diet type interaction (P \u3c 0.05) existed for DM and GE digestibility during the early finishing period as added Cu improved digestibility of DM and GE in the corn-soybean mealbased diet, but not in the by-product diet. During the late finishing period, added Cu increased DM and GE digestibility (P = 0.060), while pigs fed the by-product diet had decreased DM and GE digestibility (P = 0.001). For gut morphology, pigs fed added Cu had decreased crypt depth (P = 0.017) in the distal small intestine. Relative mRNA expression of intestinal fatty acid binding protein (iFABP) was decreased (P = 0.032) in pigs fed added Cu. In summary, adding 150 ppm added Cu or including 30% DDGS and 15% bakery meal into a corn-soybean meal-based diet did not influence growth performance. However, HCW ADG and HCW G/F were reduced in pigs fed the by-product diet. Only minor differences in gut morphology or mRNA expression were observed from pigs fed diets with high levels of Cu or by-products compared to those fed a corn-soybean meal-based diet

Accelerating LSTM-based High-Rate Dynamic System Models

In this paper, we evaluate the use of a trained Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) network as a surrogate for a Euler-Bernoulli beam model, and then we describe and characterize an FPGA-based deployment of the model for use in real-time structural health monitoring applications. The focus of our efforts is the DROPBEAR (Dynamic Reproduction of Projectiles in Ballistic Environments for Advanced Research) dataset, which was generated as a benchmark for the study of real-time structural modeling applications. The purpose of DROPBEAR is to evaluate models that take vibration data as input and give the initial conditions of the cantilever beam on which the measurements were taken as output. DROPBEAR is meant to serve an exemplar for emerging high-rate "active structures" that can be actively controlled with feedback latencies of less than one microsecond. Although the Euler-Bernoulli beam model is a well-known solution to this modeling problem, its computational cost is prohibitive for the time scales of interest. It has been previously shown that a properly structured LSTM network can achieve comparable accuracy with less workload, but achieving sub-microsecond model latency remains a challenge. Our approach is to deploy the LSTM optimized specifically for latency on FPGA. We designed the model using both high-level synthesis (HLS) and hardware description language (HDL). The lowest latency of 1.42 $\mu$S and the highest throughput of 7.87 Gops/s were achieved on Alveo U55C platform for HDL design.Comment: Accepted at 33rd International Conference on Field-Programmable Logic and Applications (FPL

Evaluation of Extreme Thermal Processing Methods to Improve Nutrient Utilization of Low-Energy Diets for Finishing Pigs

A total of 270 pigs (PIC 337 × 1050; initially 115.7 lb) were used in a 79-d experiment to determine the effects of long-term conditioning or extrusion on finishing pig nutrient digestibility, growth performance, and carcass characteristics. There were 7 or 8 pigs per pen and 9 pens per treatment. Treatments included the same basal diet processed as: 1) nonprocessed mash; 2) pelleted with 45-s conditioner retention time; 3) pelleted with 90-s conditioner retention time; or 4) extruded. Diets were fed in three phases with the same low-energy diet formulation fed across treatments, containing 30% corn dried distillers grains with solubles and 19% wheat middlings. Pigs fed thermally processed feed, regardless of method, had improved ADG, F/G, ether extract, and crude fiber apparent total tract digestibility (P \u3c 0.05) compared to those fed the mash diet, but thermal processing did not affect ADFI . Extruded diets tended to improve F/G compared to pelleted diets (P = 0.09). Pigs fed any thermally processed treatment had greater HCW compared to those fed mash (P \u3c 0.05). Improvements in fat and crude fiber digestibility (P \u3c 0.05) led to improved caloric efficiency in pigs fed thermally processed diets. Thermal processing did not influence percentage yield, backfat, or loin depth when HCW was used as a covariate. However, pigs fed thermally processed diets had greater jowl fat iodine value compared to those fed mash diets (P \u3c 0.05). Electrical energy usage during thermal processing was recorded. Pigs fed mash diets had greater (P \u3c 0.05) cost per lb of gain, as well as reduced gain value and income over feed costs, compared to those fed thermally processed diets. This experiment confirms the benefits of thermally processing feeds to improve ADG and F/G, but compromises carcass fat iodine value. Additionally, this research suggests that more extreme thermal processing conditions may be used without hindering nutrient utilization