A decision support system for planning and management of sustainable livestock production in the Midwest

Managing livestock operations in an environmentally sound way presents a major challenge to the livestock production industry. Excessive amounts of manure can cause major environmental problems if not properly managed. The contamination of surface and subsurface water supplies due to non-point source pollution from livestock production has increased public concern in regards to large livestock operations. Another source of pollution from livestock facilities is atmospheric pollution in the form of odor. Odorous gaseous, such as carbon dioxide, methane, ammonia, and other gaseous from livestock operations are a health hazard and nuisance to neighboring populations. Analysis of the environmental impacts of livestock production has depended on the use of emerging geospatial information systems as well as biophysical models to predict agricultural non-point source pollution.;The overall goal of this research was to develop a DSS to facilitate analysis and management of environmental problems associated with livestock production. To accomplish this objective, a GIS-based decision support system (DSS) was developed that integrates a multi-criteria site selection model, a biophysical model, and an atmospheric dispersion model into a framework that can assist planners and decision-makers in selecting suitable land areas both for siting livestock operations and for manure application, and to analyze the potential water quality and regional atmospheric consequences of production practices. In this study, LPRDSS was used to assess areas in Taylor County, Iowa for siting large-scale swine confinement operations and to evaluate the impacts on water quality in the Hundred and Two Mile River watershed. The DSS was also used to assess potential regional air quality problems associated with those sites

An evaluation of a remedial spelling program in grade III

Thesis (Ed.M.)--Boston University, 1949. This item was digitized by the Internet Archive

Sex trafficking in Nepal: survivor characteristics and long-term outcomes

Sex trafficking, the coercion of girls and women into forced prostitution, is a global problem. South Asia is a particular trouble spot for trafficking. Source countries in this region include Bangladesh, Vietnam, Myanmar (Burma), and Nepal. Destination countries include India and Thailand (Farr, 2005). The present research focuses on sex trafficking from Nepal. Although accurate figures are difficult to obtain, the best estimate is that 5,000 to 7,000 Nepali girls and women are trafficked each year, primarily to India, and at least 200,000 Nepali girls and women currently work in Indian brothels (Huntington, 2002)

Sex for sale: an investigation into the status of Nepali women as a root cause of sex trafficking

Trafficking is a major part of the social and economic structure of Nepal. Currently, very high numbers of young girls are taken from Nepal into India as trafficked sex workers. It is estimated that 5,000 to 7,000 girls are trafficked to India each year (Poudel & Carryer, 2000). There are many factors contributing to the continued practice of sex trafficking in Nepal, including poverty, migration (due to both high levels of poverty in rural areas and the Maoist insurgency), and the low status of women in Nepali society. The current research is focused on the status of women as a contributing factor to trafficking. Nepali women are encouraged to accept their submissive position in life without complaint and are discouraged from trying to control men. Even though 50 percent of rural Nepali children are enrolled in primary school, only 23 percent of girls attend secondary school. Girls are often sent off to find work to supplement family income, denying them a chance to receive a full education. Even today, an educated Nepali woman is seen as a potential threat to her husband (Asian Development Bank, 2003)

Two-frequency forced Faraday waves: Weakly damped modes and pattern selection

Recent experiments (Kudrolli, Pier and Gollub, 1998) on two-frequency parametrically excited surface waves exhibit an intriguing "superlattice" wave pattern near a codimension-two bifurcation point where both subharmonic and harmonic waves onset simultaneously, but with different spatial wavenumbers. The superlattice pattern is synchronous with the forcing, spatially periodic on a large hexagonal lattice, and exhibits small-scale triangular structure. Similar patterns have been shown to exist as primary solution branches of a generic 12-dimensional $D_6\dot{+}T^2$-equivariant bifurcation problem, and may be stable if the nonlinear coefficients of the bifurcation problem satisfy certain inequalities (Silber and Proctor, 1998). Here we use the spatial and temporal symmetries of the problem to argue that weakly damped harmonic waves may be critical to understanding the stabilization of this pattern in the Faraday system. We illustrate this mechanism by considering the equations developed by Zhang and Vinals (1997, J. Fluid Mech. 336) for small amplitude, weakly damped surface waves on a semi-infinite fluid layer. We compute the relevant nonlinear coefficients in the bifurcation equations describing the onset of patterns for excitation frequency ratios of 2/3 and 6/7. For the 2/3 case, we show that there is a fundamental difference in the pattern selection problems for subharmonic and harmonic instabilities near the codimension-two point. Also, we find that the 6/7 case is significantly different from the 2/3 case due to the presence of additional weakly damped harmonic modes. These additional harmonic modes can result in a stabilization of the superpatterns.Comment: 26 pages, 8 figures; minor text revisions, corrected figure 8; this version to appear in a special issue of Physica D in memory of John David Crawfor

Living expenditures of a selected group of Illinois farm and small-town families, 1929-30

Cover title

Purification and characterization of zyxin, an 82,000-Dalton component of adherens junctions

Journal ArticleWe describe here the purification and characterization of a recently identified adherens junction protein that has an apparent molecular mass of 82 kDa on sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gels (Beckerle, M. C. (1986) J. Cell Biol. 103, 1679-1687). The 82-kDa protein was isolated from avian smooth muscle by a low ionic strength alkaline pH extraction followed by ammonium sulfate fractionation

Interaction between zyxin and α-actinin

Journal ArticleZyxin is an 82-kD protein first identified as a component of adhesion plaques and the termini of stress fibers near where they associate with the cytoplasmic face of the adhesive membrane. We report here that zyxin interacts with the actin cross-linking protein α-actinin