DO PROFITABLE GRAIN MARKETING STRATEGIES EXIST FOR KANSAS CROPS?

The issue of whether profitable preharvest and postharvest marketing strategies exist relative to harvest sales for Kansas crops for the 1985-1998 marketing years is addressed. Practical application of market efficiency concepts is discussed. Nonharvest wheat marketing strategies offered less opportunity relative to harvest sales than for feedgrains and especially soybeans.Grain marketing, efficient markets, futures, options, marketing strategies, Crop Production/Industries, Marketing,

L-carnitine attenuates cardiac impairment but not vascular dysfunction in DOCA-salt hypertensive rats

L-Carnitine is an important co-factor in fatty acid metabolism by mitochondria. This study has determined whether oral administration of L-carnitine prevents remodelling and the development of impaired cardiovascular function in deoxycorticosterone acetate (DOCA)-salt hypertensive rats (n = 6–12; #p < 0.05 versus DOCA-salt). Uninephrectomized rats administered DOCA (25 mg every 4th day s.c.) and 1% NaCl in drinking water for 28 days developed cardiovascular remodelling shown as systolic hypertension, left ventricular hypertrophy, increased thoracic aortic and left ventricular wall thickness, increased left ventricular inflammatory cell infiltration together with increased interstitial collagen and increased passive diastolic stiffness and vascular dysfunction with increased plasma malondialdehyde concentrations. Treatment with L-carnitine (1.2% in food; 0.9 mg⁄g⁄day in DOCA-salt rats) decreased blood pressure (DOCA-salt 169 € 2; + L-carnitine 148 € 6# mmHg), decreased left ventricular wet weights (DOCA-salt 3.02 € 0.07; + L-carnitine 2.72 € 0.06# mg⁄ g body-wt), decreased inflammatory cells in the replacement fibrotic areas, reduced left ventricular interstitial collagen content (DOCA-salt 14.4 € 0.2; + L-carnitine 8.7 € 0.5# % area), reduced diastolic stiffness constant (DOCA-salt 26.9 € 0.5; + L-carnitine 23.8 € 0.5# dimensionless) and decreased plasma malondialdehyde concentrations (DOCA-salt 26.9 € 0.8; + L-carnitine 21.2 € 0.4# lmol ⁄ l) without preventing endothelial dysfunction. L-carnitine attenuated the cardiac remodelling and improved cardiac function in DOCA-salt hypertension but produced minimal changes in aortic wall thickness and vascular function. This study suggests that the mitochondrial respiratory chain is a significant source of reactive oxygen species in the heart but less so in the vasculature in DOCA-salt rats, underlying the relatively selective cardiac responses to L-carnitine treatment

A Penny Saved Is Mobility Earned

Analyzes data on how one's or one's parents' level of savings affects economic mobility, by income; examines savings incentives and disincentives in the federal tax code and public assistance programs; and recommends policy options to encourage savings

Endogenous Price Leadership: A Bargaining Model of International Telecommunications Settlements

This article develops a noncooperative bargaining model to address the effects of the uniform settlements policy (USP) in international telecommunications. The model predicts that the USP is more likely to increase (decrease) access charges in markets where, under the USP, U.S. firms carry more (less) outbound than inbound traffic. This is due to the model's more general prediction that forbidding price discrimination may allow an upstream monopolist to credibly commit to a take-it or leave-it intermediate product price. Two brief case studies from the international telegraph market lend support to this prediction.Center for Research on Economic and Social Theory, Department of Economics, University of Michiganhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/100894/1/ECON345.pd

Cost of production and equitable leasing arrangements for center pivot irrigated corn in central Nebraska

Presented at the 2007 Central Plains irrigation conference on February 27-28 in Kearney, Nebraska

The Economics of Selling Crop Residue Biomass for Cellulosic Ethanol Production at the Farm Level

A partial budget decision making framework has been developed to assist crop producers in analyzing the profitability of selling cellulosic biomass from their fields for ethanol production. A multidisciplinary approach is taken in assessing the agronomic and economic factors relevant to biomass contract sales decisions – with direct application made to western Great Plains cropping systems and enterprises. Within this framework the benefits of increased revenue from cellulosic biomass contract sales and potential government assistance payments are considered against possible decreased revenue from diminished crop yields resulting from less crop residue cover and subsequent soil moisture evaporation. Increased biomass harvesting and handling are also considered, as is the cost of replacing crop nutrients removed as part of biomass harvest operations. Examples of the profitability of cellulosic biomass contract sales in center pivot irrigated corn and non-irrigated wheat enterprises are shown.Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Earths in Other Solar Systems N-body simulations: the Role of Orbital Damping in Reproducing the Kepler Planetary Systems

The population of exoplanetary systems detected by Kepler provides opportunities to refine our understanding of planet formation. Unraveling the conditions needed to produce the observed exoplanets will sallow us to make informed predictions as to where habitable worlds exist within the galaxy. In this paper, we examine using N-body simulations how the properties of planetary systems are determined during the final stages of assembly. While accretion is a chaotic process, trends in the ensemble properties of planetary systems provide a memory of the initial distribution of solid mass around a star prior to accretion. We also use EPOS, the Exoplanet Population Observation Simulator, to account for detection biases and show that different accretion scenarios can be distinguished from observations of the Kepler systems. We show that the period of the innermost planet, the ratio of orbital periods of adjacent planets, and masses of the planets are determined by the total mass and radial distribution of embryos and planetesimals at the beginning of accretion. In general, some amount of orbital damping, either via planetesimals or gas, during accretion is needed to match the whole population of exoplanets. Surprisingly, all simulated planetary systems have planets that are similar in size, showing that the "peas in a pod" pattern can be consistent with both a giant impact scenario and a planet migration scenario. The inclusion of material at distances larger than what Kepler observes has a profound impact on the observed planetary architectures, and thus on the formation and delivery of volatiles to possible habitable worlds.Comment: Resubmitted to ApJ. Planet formation models available online at http://eos-nexus.org/genesis-database