An Analysis of Residential Water Demand Schedules in Arkansas

Water has held man\u27s interest for centuries, and a considerable body of knowledqe has been developed about this subject, but it has only been considered only recently by decision makers in an economic sense. Because water is required to sustain life, the thought of its being an economic good to individuals has not been considered applicable or fair by those individuals who are concerned with its acquisition and distribution. Moreover, water has been in fairly abundant supply relative to demand for most of the country. However, as this situation is upset by increases in population and water use, a realization of the situation must be confronted

A Preliminiary Investigation to Determine the Economic Implications of the 404 Permit for Constructing Agriculturally Related Reservoirs in Arkansas

A descriptive inquiry of the economic consequences of federal regulations which restrict the construction of agriculturally related reservoirs in Arkansas\u27s wetlands is presented in this report. The applicable economic principles are identifyed and applied to the situation without the quantifiable information necessary to evaluate the alternatives. The difficulty of collecting the required quantifiable information necessitates the formulation of a different technique to unravel the dilemma. An alternative method for resolving the wetlands allocation question is presented for a public sector decision maker. This unconventional technique suggests that it may be desirable to estimate and compare the costs associated with the possible errors of a wetlands land use regulation in terms of both their consequences and likelihood

Crystalline ionic solutions

Systems of crystalline ionic solutions containing impurity cations and associated compensation defects are described. Interactions between aliovalent ions and compensation defects give rise to configuration partition functions which predict a distribution in ion-defect pair separation distances at low temperatures. At elevated temperatures such ion-defect pairs dissociate, and the concept of pair formation more appropriately gives way to the concept of pair correlation functions. The relative sizes of the aliovalent ion and the host ion which it replaces are seen to exert a pronounced effect on pair distribution. Salient features of the theory are applied to the KCl: Sr2+, NaCl: Mn2+, NaCl: Sr2+, LiCl: Mn2+ and (alkaline-earth halide): (rareearth)3+ systems. While the high-temperature treatment lends itself to comparisons with the Debye-Hückel theory for electrolytes, the low-temperature pair distribution theory is shown to be valid chiefly because of the specific nature of the crystalline ionic solutions

Understanding Afghan Opinion Leaders’ Viewpoints About Post-Conflict Foreign Agricultural Development: A Case Study in Herāt Province, Afghanistan

This investigation sprang from a yearlong immersion in post-conflict agricultural development environments in Herāt Province Afghanistan and from observing an array of NGO development projects. The purpose was to understand better the viewpoints of Afghan opinion leaders regarding the adoption–integration of foreign agricultural development. Objectives included (a) the identification of perceived strengths of foreign agricultural development, (b) perceived weaknesses, (c) opportunities, (d) threats, (e) anomalies, and (f)incentives and barriers. The case method fit the qualitative research design, and IRB approved the protocols. Researchers selected 15 opinion leaders (OLs) based on their knowledge, experience, and positional responsibilities. An interview guide framed 13 open-ended questions. A researcher fluent in Farsi/Pashto/English assisted with each interview. The findings from 15 interviews emerged as 11 themes. Fourteen OLs recognized agriculture and natural resources as strengths for development. Opinion leaders recognize government, infrastructure, and corruption as fundamental weaknesses. Opinion Leaders were slow to identify opportunities but generally identified opportunities to exploit labor, land, and water coupled with improving management and mechanization.They universally recognized threats related to to personal security and safety but had difficulty separating internal weaknesses from external threats. Two anomalies emerged as incongruous expectations about Afghan government and foreign NGOs. Improving market chains and increasing governmental subsidies were incentives for development. The authors conclude that indigenous knowledge is a fundamental resource and a foundation for local level decision making and sustainability. Opinion Leaders serve as channels to move the society from poverty and conflict toward security and peacebuilding. The tension between Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and Max Neef’s interrelated and interactive needs should be explore

Understanding Views Around the Creation of a Consented, Donated Databank of Clinical Free Text to Develop and Train Natural Language Processing Models for Research: Focus Group Interviews With Stakeholders

BACKGROUND: Information stored within electronic health records is often recorded as unstructured text. Special computerized natural language processing (NLP) tools are needed to process this text; however, complex governance arrangements make such data in the National Health Service hard to access, and therefore, it is difficult to use for research in improving NLP methods. The creation of a donated databank of clinical free text could provide an important opportunity for researchers to develop NLP methods and tools and may circumvent delays in accessing the data needed to train the models. However, to date, there has been little or no engagement with stakeholders on the acceptability and design considerations of establishing a free-text databank for this purpose. OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to ascertain stakeholder views around the creation of a consented, donated databank of clinical free text to help create, train, and evaluate NLP for clinical research and to inform the potential next steps for adopting a partner-led approach to establish a national, funded databank of free text for use by the research community. METHODS: Web-based in-depth focus group interviews were conducted with 4 stakeholder groups (patients and members of the public, clinicians, information governance leads and research ethics members, and NLP researchers). RESULTS: All stakeholder groups were strongly in favor of the databank and saw great value in creating an environment where NLP tools can be tested and trained to improve their accuracy. Participants highlighted a range of complex issues for consideration as the databank is developed, including communicating the intended purpose, the approach to access and safeguarding the data, who should have access, and how to fund the databank. Participants recommended that a small-scale, gradual approach be adopted to start to gather donations and encouraged further engagement with stakeholders to develop a road map and set of standards for the databank. CONCLUSIONS: These findings provide a clear mandate to begin developing the databank and a framework for stakeholder expectations, which we would aim to meet with the databank delivery

2013 AAFP Feline Vaccination Advisory Panel Report

Rationale: This Report was developed by the Feline Vaccination Advisory Panel of the American Association of Feline Practitioners (AAFP) to provide practical recommendations to help clinicians select appropriate vaccination schedules for their feline patients based on risk assessment. The recommendations rely on published data as much as possible, as well as consensus of a multidisciplinary panel of experts in immunology, infectious disease, internal medicine and clinical practice

M87: A Misaligned BL LAC?

The nuclear region of M87 was observed with the Faint Object Spectrograph (FOS) on the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) at 6 epochs, spanning 18 months, after the HST image quality was improved with the deployment of the corrective optics (COSTAR) in December 1993. From the FOS target acquisition data, we have established that the flux from the optical nucleus of M87 varies by a factor ~2 on time scales of ~2.5 months and by as much as 25% over 3 weeks, and remains unchanged (<= 2.5%) on time scales of ~1 day. The changes occur in an unresolved central region <= 5 pc in diameter, with the physical size of the emitting region limited by the observed time scales to a few hundred gravitational radii. The featureless continuum spectrum becomes bluer as it brightens while emission lines remain unchanged. This variability combined with the observations of the continuum spectral shape, strong relativistic boosting and the detection of significant superluminal motions in the jet, strongly suggest that M87 belongs to the class of BL Lac objects but is viewed at an angle too large to reveal the classical BL Lac properties.Comment: 12 pages, 3 Postscript figure

Entropy production from stochastic dynamics in discrete full phase space

The stochastic entropy generated during the evolution of a system interacting with an environment may be separated into three components, but only two of these have a non-negative mean. The third component of entropy production is associated with the relaxation of the system probability distribution towards a stationary state and with nonequilibrium constraints within the dynamics that break detailed balance. It exists when at least some of the coordinates of the system phase space change sign under time reversal, and when the stationary state is asymmetric in these coordinates. We illustrate the various components of entropy production, both in detail for particular trajectories and in the mean, using simple systems defined on a discrete phase space of spatial and velocity coordinates. These models capture features of the drift and diffusion of a particle in a physical system, including the processes of injection and removal and the effect of a temperature gradient. The examples demonstrate how entropy production in stochastic thermodynamics depends on the detail that is included in a model of the dynamics of a process. Entropy production from such a perspective is a measure of the failure of such models to meet Loschmidt's expectation of dynamic reversibility

A consistent derivation of the quark--antiquark and three quark potentials in a Wilson loop context

In this paper we give a new derivation of the quark-antiquark potential in the Wilson loop context. This makes more explicit the approximations involved and enables an immediate extension to the three-quark case. In the $q\overline{q}$ case we find the same semirelativistic potential obtained in preceding papers but for a question of ordering. In the $3q$ case we find a spin dependent potential identical to that already derived in the literature from the ad hoc and non correct assumption of scalar confinement. Furthermore we obtain the correct form of the spin independent potential up to the $1/m^2$ order.Comment: 30 pages, Revtex (3 figures available as hard copies only), IFUM 452/F

Characterizing Multi-planet Systems with Classical Secular Theory

Classical secular theory can be a powerful tool to describe the qualitative character of multi-planet systems and offer insight into their histories. The eigenmodes of the secular behavior, rather than current orbital elements, can help identify tidal effects, early planet-planet scattering, and dynamical coupling among the planets, for systems in which mean-motion resonances do not play a role. Although tidal damping can result in aligned major axes after all but one eigenmode have damped away, such alignment may simply be fortuitous. An example of this is 55 Cancri (orbital solution of Fischer et al., 2008) where multiple eigenmodes remain undamped. Various solutions for 55 Cancri are compared, showing differing dynamical groupings, with implications for the coupling of eccentricities and for the partitioning of damping among the planets. Solutions for orbits that include expectations of past tidal evolution with observational data, must take into account which eigenmodes should be damped, rather than expecting particular eccentricities to be near zero. Classical secular theory is only accurate for low eccentricity values, but comparison with other results suggests that it can yield useful qualitative descriptions of behavior even for moderately large eccentricity values, and may have advantages for revealing underlying physical processes and, as large numbers of new systems are discovered, for triage to identify where more comprehensive dynamical studies should have priority.Comment: Published in Celestial Mechanics and Dynamical Astronomy, 25 pages, 10 figure