Economic Impacts of Alternative Sized Dairy Farms in South Dakota

South Dakota dairy industry has shifted toward large operations to offset declining numbers of dairy cows and milk production stemming from rapid exodus of smaller (Dariy Farms, Farm Size, farm technology

Audere est Facere: Reconsidering Proactivity and Examining its Impact on Teams

Proactivity has become one of the most prominent phenomena in organizational behavior over the last twenty-five years. Scholars have established several different methods of assessing proactivity as a dispositional trait, and identified numerous different types of proactive behaviors. Further, interest in proactivity as a phenomenon within and among teams has been an area of growing recent interest. However, the literature is plagued with a number of problems that limit our understanding of proactivity and impede the growth of the field. At the conceptual level, scholars frequently lament the lack of theoretical unity and the proliferation of overlapping constructs that results from the lack of parsimony. Likewise, at the team-level, little is known so far about how proactivity arises within and benefits teams, despite growing research in that area. This work addresses these prominent issues in three parts. The first part of this dissertation directly addresses the lack of theoretical synthesis by offering social cognitive theory (SCT) as a unifying framework for understanding proactivity, and suggesting a theoretical typology of agentic behaviors drawing from the core properties of human agency offered by SCT (i.e., intentionality, forethought, and self-reactiveness). The second part of this work proposes a model of team-oriented proactivity upon team task performance as mediated by team coordination. Results suggest that team coordination is the critical factor in converting team-oriented proactivity into team task performance, and that proactivity has curvilinear effects on team performance, with a positive effect from low to moderate levels, but a diminishing effect at high and very high levels of proactivity. In the final part of this dissertation, I investigate how proactivity arises within work teams and contributes to emergent team states and important team outcomes. Specifically, I suggest behavioral contagion as a mechanism by which proactivity arises within teams, and develop hypotheses for the effect of team-oriented proactive behaviors upon team emergent states and, subsequently, team viability, and task performance. Testing this model with results from a lab study reveals that perceptions of team-oriented proactive behavior within the team significantly influences team processes and, to a lesser extent, team performance outcomes

Structural characterization of decomposition in rate-insensitive stochastic Petri nets

This paper focuses on stochastic Petri nets that have an equilibrium distribution that is a product form over the number of tokens at the places. We formulate a decomposition result for the class of nets that have a product form solution irrespective of the values of the transition rates. These nets where algebraically characterized by Haddad et al.~as $S\Pi^2$ nets. By providing an intuitive interpretation of this algebraical characterization, and associating state machines to sets of $T$-invariants, we obtain a one-to-one correspondence between the marking of the original places and the places of the added state machines. This enables us to show that the subclass of stochastic Petri nets under study can be decomposed into subnets that are identified by sets of its $T$-invariants

MODELLING THE DISTRIBUTIONAL IMPACTS OF AGRICULTURAL POLICIES IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES: THE DEVELOPMENT POLICY EVALUATION MODEL (DEVPEM)

The purpose of the Development Policy Evaluation Model (DEVPEM) is to provide an appropriate modelling structure for analysing the welfare and distributional implications of alternative agricultural policies in developing countries. The aim of the model is to provide illustrative results that show how structural diversity among developing countries, and systemic differences from developed OECD countries, can affect the outcomes of alternative policy interventions. The model is relatively stylised, seeking to capture, as simply as possible, four critical aspects of rural economies in developing countries that are important when evaluating the impacts of agricultural and trade policies. These are: (1). The role of the household as both a producer and a consumer of food crops. (2). High transaction costs of participating in markets, resulting in a subsistence sector that often is important in terms of the number of households and the amount of food production it encompasses. (3). Market linkages that can transmit impacts of policy and market shocks among heterogeneous rural producers and consumers, particularly via factor markets (for labour, land or capital, when those markets exist). (4). The imperfect convertibility of land from one use to another.International Relations/Trade,

CMS Centres Worldwide: a New Collaborative Infrastructure

The CMS Experiment at the LHC is establishing a global network of inter-connected "CMS Centres" for controls, operations and monitoring. These support: (1) CMS data quality monitoring, detector calibrations, and analysis; and (2) computing operations for the processing, storage and distribution of CMS data. We describe the infrastructure, computing, software, and communications systems required to create an effective and affordable CMS Centre. We present our highly successful operations experiences with the major CMS Centres at CERN, Fermilab, and DESY during the LHC first beam data-taking and cosmic ray commissioning work. The status of the various centres already operating or under construction in Asia, Europe, Russia, South America, and the USA is also described. We emphasise the collaborative communications aspects. For example, virtual co-location of experts in CMS Centres Worldwide is achieved using high-quality permanently-running "telepresence" video links. Generic Web-based tools have been developed and deployed for monitoring, control, display management and outreach

The automation of microarray data analysis to ameliorate biochemical pathways [abstract]

Abstract only availableFaculty Mentor: Dr. Dong Xu, Computer ScienceThe goal of this study is the annotation of a gene cluster in microarray data with probable biochemical pathways. In our experiment each gene from Arabidopsis microarray data was compared to each gene from Arabidopsis KEGG pathway, and a similarity calculation was made. For the 180 unique pathways for Arabidopsis in KEGG, the maximum similarity was annotated based on which gene with KEGG pathway annotation the microarray gene was most similar to. A single gene will likely have many GO ID terms, creating a good thoroughfare for calculation of gene similarity. When two GO IDs were compared a number that is based on parent GO terms between zero and one was assigned. Each term to term similarity was summed, and divided by the number of comparisons, giving a similarity rating between zero and one for two genes. The genes are next grouped using fuzzy c-means clustering, and each cluster is annotated based on maximum pathway membership. Two different matrixes were constructed for data analysis: Sim contained KEGG genes matched at similarity 1 and all other matches with a number between zero and one, called fuzzy matches generated by GO ID similarity described above, and Sim4 contained all fuzzy matches. Analysis of both matrixes for KEGG genes in properly labeled pathways was done at 19, 22, and 40 clusters resulting in Sim with 73, 82, and 97 percent matched respectively and Sim4 with 24, 32, and 51 percent matched respectively. Analysis of each cluster is done using a similarity sum for each pathway to find a maximum, and division by the number of genes in the cluster. Validity of this is found using the Sim matrix, and the analysis of clusters that only contain KEGG genes, where a return of 1 is found. Other clusters with significant values were found, often containing only unknown genes

Bias-free Measurement of Giant Molecular Cloud Properties

(abridged) We review methods for measuring the sizes, line widths, and luminosities of giant molecular clouds (GMCs) in molecular-line data cubes with low resolution and sensitivity. We find that moment methods are robust and sensitive -- making full use of both position and intensity information -- and we recommend a standard method to measure the position angle, major and minor axis sizes, line width, and luminosity using moment methods. Without corrections for the effects of beam convolution and sensitivity to GMC properties, the resulting properties may be severely biased. This is particularly true for extragalactic observations, where resolution and sensitivity effects often bias measured values by 40% or more. We correct for finite spatial and spectral resolutions with a simple deconvolution and we correct for sensitivity biases by extrapolating properties of a GMC to those we would expect to measure with perfect sensitivity. The resulting method recovers the properties of a GMC to within 10% over a large range of resolutions and sensitivities, provided the clouds are marginally resolved with a peak signal-to-noise ratio greater than 10. We note that interferometers systematically underestimate cloud properties, particularly the flux from a cloud. The degree of bias depends on the sensitivity of the observations and the (u,v) coverage of the observations. In the Appendix to the paper we present a conservative, new decomposition algorithm for identifying GMCs in molecular-line observations. This algorithm treats the data in physical rather than observational units, does not produce spurious clouds in the presence of noise, and is sensitive to a range of morphologies. As a result, the output of this decomposition should be directly comparable among disparate data sets.Comment: Accepted to PASP (19 pgs., 12 figures). The submission describes an IDL software package available from http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/~erosolow/cprops

Computable decision making on the reals and other spaces via partiality and nondeterminism

Though many safety-critical software systems use floating point to represent real-world input and output, programmers usually have idealized versions in mind that compute with real numbers. Significant deviations from the ideal can cause errors and jeopardize safety. Some programming systems implement exact real arithmetic, which resolves this matter but complicates others, such as decision making. In these systems, it is impossible to compute (total and deterministic) discrete decisions based on connected spaces such as $\mathbb{R}$. We present programming-language semantics based on constructive topology with variants allowing nondeterminism and/or partiality. Either nondeterminism or partiality suffices to allow computable decision making on connected spaces such as $\mathbb{R}$. We then introduce pattern matching on spaces, a language construct for creating programs on spaces, generalizing pattern matching in functional programming, where patterns need not represent decidable predicates and also may overlap or be inexhaustive, giving rise to nondeterminism or partiality, respectively. Nondeterminism and/or partiality also yield formal logics for constructing approximate decision procedures. We implemented these constructs in the Marshall language for exact real arithmetic.Comment: This is an extended version of a paper due to appear in the proceedings of the ACM/IEEE Symposium on Logic in Computer Science (LICS) in July 201

The use of superparamagnetic nanoparticles for prosthetic biofilm prevention

As with all surgical procedures, implantation comes with the added risk of infection. The goal of this in vitro study was to explore the use of superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles (SPION) as a multifunctional platform to prevent biofilm formation. Results showed for the first time decreased Staphylococcus epidermidis numbers when exposed to 100 μg/ml of SPION for 12 hours and this trend continued for up to 48 hours. Prevention of colony assembly, a prerequisite to biofilm formation, was also observed at lower SPION dosages of 10 μg/ml after 12 hours. Coupled with previous studies demonstrating enhanced bone cell functions in the presence of the same concentration of SPION, the present results provided much promise for the use of SPION for numerous anti-infection orthopedic applications

Management of a Traumatic Flap Dislocation Seven Years after LASIK

Seven years after uneventful laser in situ keratomileusis (LASIK), a 48-year-old woman presented one week after being hit with an iron cord with blurry vision, pain, and irritation. The injury resulted in traumatic flap dislocation, epithelial ingrowth, and macrostriae. Following epithelial removal, the flap was refloated and repositioned. Nine interrupted sutures were used to secure the flap. Three-weeks after surgery with no sutures remaining, the epithelial ingrowth and macrostriae had resolved with a visual acuity of 20/20