[Review of] Barbara A. Curran, The Legal Needs of the Public: The Final Report of a National Survey

This is a substantial report sponsored by a number of legal associations (American Bar Association and American Bar Endowment) and foundations (Edna McConnel Clark Foundation and International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans) and the Carnegie Corporation of New York. By its own assertion: “This study is the first, and to date only, such survey based on a national sample representing the adult population of the United States. Moreover, it provides a more comprehensive examination of the legal experiences and perceptions of the public than has been undertaken by any earlier survey.

Extension Stakeholder Engagement: Adapting to the Twenty-First Century

Over the past 100 years, a number of societal trends have influenced how Cooperative Extension engages public audiences in its outreach and education efforts. These trends include rapid evolution in communication technology, greater specialization of Land-Grant University faculty, and diversification of funding sources. In response, Extension organizations have adapted their engagement approach, incorporated new technologies, modified their organizational structures, and even expanded the notion of public stakeholders to include funders, program nonparticipants, and others. This article explores the implications for future Extension efforts using two case studies—one which explores how a community visioning program incorporated new ways of engaging local audiences, and another which explores how an Extension business retention program used participatory action research and educational organizing approaches to strengthen participation in a research-based program

User Needs and Library Services in Agricultural Sciences

published or submitted for publicatio

Ten Years of Community Profiles in New Hampshire

Through a program called Community Profiles, the University of New Hampshire Cooperative Extension has helped 57 New Hampshire communities develop a vision for their future and mobilize local residents to act on that vision. The Community Profile process is based on the premise that communities must engage members in identifying and documenting common and deeply held values from which to craft a vision for the future if they are to build and sustain community vitality. The process also helps communities find new and creative ways to pursue that vision by leveraging resources within and outside of the community. These resources include individual skills, local organizational capacity, and local, state, and regional institutional-support structures. Since creating and pursuing a vision is a challenge for communities that often rely on volunteers, the Community Profiles program was conceived to help them achieve these functions. Community Profiles is, in essence, a process that enables community residents to take stock of current conditions, build a collective set of goals for their future, and develop an action plan for realizing that vision. In the past 10 years, UNH Cooperative Extension has helped nearly a quarter of the state’s incorporated cities and towns conduct Community Profiles. This retrospective shares with our stakeholders the various successes that communities have had as a result of the process. This publication was inspired by stories emerging from Community Profiles conducted between 1996 and 2006 in 42 communities. The communities selected for this report were either particularly successful at carrying out the Community Profiles process, or they achieved positive outcomes as a result of the process. Through this report we will tell their stories and illustrate how these and other communities can work together to shape their future through persistence, creativity and teamwork

Role of Insects and Diseases in a Jack Pine Provenance Study

Two jack pine plantations were established at the Cloquet Forestry Center, Cloquet, Minnesota, in 1942 and 1943, using trees originating from 22 sites in the United States and 10 in Canada. From 1945 to 1953 the incidence of attack by insects and diseases was recorded individually for all trees, and in 1980-1981 the diameter and form of both living and dead trees were recorded. There were differences in the incidence of attack by the pests and in tree response to early injury among the various seed sources. In 1980 and in 1981 there were differences in tree form resulting from insect and both living and dead pest-free trees had the best form. The diameter increases from 1955 to 1980-1981 were almost identical for all categories with the exception of the dead pest-free trees which had the smallest diameters

DEMAND AND PRICE-MARKUP FUNCTIONS FOR CANNED CLING PEACHES AND FRUIT COCKTAIL

This study formulates and estimates a six-equation model for canned cling peaches and fruit cocktail in which processors are viewed as price setters, with qualities not sold at the set price carried over to the next year. The system consists of two price-markup equations, two quantity-dependent demand equations and two inventory change identities. The three-stage least squares estimation results tend to support the behavioral hypotheses.Demand and Price Analysis,

Exploring Research through Design in Animal-Computer Interaction

This paper explores Research through Design (RtD) as a potential methodology for developing new interactive experiences for animals. We present an example study from an on-going project and examine whether RtD offers an appropriate framework for developing knowledge in the context of Animal-Computer Interaction, as well as considering how best to document such work. We discuss the design journey we undertook to develop interactive systems for captive elephants and the extent to which RtD has enabled us to explore concept development and documentation of research. As a result of our explorations, we propose that particular aspects of RtD can help ACI researchers gain fresh perspectives on the design of technology-enabled devices for non-human animals. We argue that these methods of working can support the investigation of particular and complex situations where no idiomatic interactions yet exist, where collaborative practice is desirable and where the designed objects themselves offer a conceptual window for future research and development

Loschmidt echoes in two-body random matrix ensembles

Fidelity decay is studied for quantum many-body systems with a dominant independent particle Hamiltonian resulting e.g. from a mean field theory with a weak two-body interaction. The diagonal terms of the interaction are included in the unperturbed Hamiltonian, while the off-diagonal terms constitute the perturbation that distorts the echo. We give the linear response solution for this problem in a random matrix framework. While the ensemble average shows no surprising behavior, we find that the typical ensemble member as represented by the median displays a very slow fidelity decay known as ``freeze''. Numerical calculations confirm this result and show, that the ground state even on average displays the freeze. This may contribute to explanation of the ``unreasonable'' success of mean field theories.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures (6 eps files), RevTex; v2: slight modifications following referees' suggestion