Using Alternative Non-Pour Renewable Energy Technologies in the Food Industry

Agribusiness,

Sustainable Economic, Marketing, Environmental and Financial Opportunities for Biogas Recovery Systems

Livestock producers operating large-scale confinement operations, such as dairies, are looking for ways to handle and dispose of manure that are cost effective and efficiently meet odor and pollution policies. Farm level production of biogas using anaerobic digesters is one solution that helps control methane emissions. Methane is an odorless gas that can be used to generate electricity, develop fiber products (such as fiber boards, decking, cow pots and building materials) and potting medium as a soil or peat replacement and livestock bedding, establish carbon credits, or provide other value-added products like fertilizer and raw gas or transport fuel, thereby having marketability and economic value. Substantial environmental benefits of odor control, water quality protection, and greenhouse gas reductions also exist. Because of the tangible and intangible benefits possible from reducing methane emissions via anaerobic digesters, biogas recovery systems are prudent financially as well, with single-digit payback periods, double-digit simple rates of return, approximately $1 million (USD) in net present value, double-digit internal rates of return, and relatively large benefit-cost ratios associated with the savings over time.Agribusiness,

FOOD AND THE MILLENNIAL GENERATION

Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety,

Conducting HACCP Audits Down on the Farm

Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety,

Generation of attenuation corrected images from lidar data

The interpretation of data generated by aerosol backscatter lidars is often facilitated by presentation of RHI and PPI images. These pictures are especially useful in studies of atmospheric boundary layer structure where convective elements, stratifications and aerosol laden plumes can be easily delineated. Procedures used at the University of Wisconsin to generate lidar images on a color enhanced raster scan display are described

Existence of tracial states on reduced group C*-algebras

Let $G$ be a locally compact group. It is not always the case that its reduced C*-algebra $C^*_r(G)$ admits a tracial state. We exhibit closely related necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of such. We gain a complete answer when $G$ compactly generated. In particular for $G$ almost connected, or more generally when $C^*_r(G)$ is nuclear, the existence of a trace is equivalent to amenability. We exhibit two examples of classes of totally disconnected groups for which $C^*_r(G)$ does not admit a tracial state.Comment: The proof of Remark 2.6 (ii) has been corrected, and a typo has been fixe