Interview with J. Randy Winter, Professor of Agricultural Economics

Oral history interview with Illinois State University Professor J. Randy Winter. The interview was conducted on June 19, 2007, by Elaine Graybill, as part of the Illinois State University Oral History Project. Dr. Winter was professor of agricultural economics, who joined the Illinois State University faculty in 1981. He was agriculture department chairperson from 1993 to 2004 and was instrumental in the 2001 relocation of the university farm from Gregory Street to Lexington, Illinois.https://ir.library.illinoisstate.edu/soh/1015/thumbnail.jp

Temperature-sensitive Tien Shan tree ring chronologies show multi-centennial growth trends

Two millennia-length juniper ring width chronologies, processed to preserve multi-centennial growth trends, are presented for the Alai Range of the western Tien Shan in Kirghizia. The chronologies average the information from seven near-timberline sampling sites, and likely reflect summer temperature variation. For comparison, chronologies are also built using standard dendrochronological techniques. We briefly discuss some qualities of these "inter-decadal” records, and show the low frequency components removed by the standardization process include a long-term negative trend in the first half of the last millennium and a long-term positive trend since about AD 1800. The multi-centennial scale Alai Range chronologies, where these trends are retained, are both systematically biased (but in an opposite sense) in their low frequency domains. Nevertheless, they represent the best constraints and estimates of long-term summer temperature variation, and reflect the Medieval Warm Period, the Little Ice Age, and a period of warming since about the middle of the nineteenth centur

Effects of insider trading under different market structures

In this paper, we study the relationship between the market structure in the real sector and the effects of insider trading. We find that the market structure in the real sector matters. When the monopolist insider chooses the price of the real good rather than the output, insider trading increases the price rather than the quantity. When the insider competes with another firm in the real sector, and chooses quantity, the output increases due to insider trading but by less than in monopoly models. In addition, the stock price is more informative than in monopoly models

Dealing with a traumatic past: the victim hearings of the South African truth and reconciliation commission and their reconciliation discourse

In the final years of the twentieth and the beginning of the twenty-first century, there has been a worldwide tendency to approach conflict resolution from a restorative rather than from a retributive perspective. The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), with its principle of 'amnesty for truth' was a turning point. Based on my discursive research of the TRC victim hearings, I would argue that it was on a discursive level in particular that the Truth Commission has exerted/is still exerting a long-lasting impact on South African society. In this article, three of these features will be highlighted and illustrated: firstly, the TRC provided a discursive forum for thousands of ordinary citizens. Secondly, by means of testimonies from apartheid victims and perpetrators, the TRC composed an officially recognised archive of the apartheid past. Thirdly, the reconciliation discourse created at the TRC victim hearings formed a template for talking about a traumatic past, and it opened up the debate on reconciliation. By discussing these three features and their social impact, it will become clear that the way in which the apartheid past was remembered at the victim hearings seemed to have been determined, not so much by political concerns, but mainly by social needs

Simulated Response of St. Joseph Bay, Florida, Seagrass Meadows and Their Belowground Carbon to Anthropogenic and Climate Impacts

Seagrass meadows are degraded globally and continue to decline in areal extent due to human pressures and climate change. This study used the bio-optical model GrassLight to explore the impact of climate change and anthropogenic stressors on seagrass extent, leaf area index (LAI) and belowground organic carbon (BGC) in St. Joseph Bay, Florida, using water quality data and remotely-sensed sea surface temperature (SST) from 2002 to 2020. Model predictions were compared with satellite-derived measurements of seagrass extent and shoot density from the Landsat images for the same period. The GrassLight-derived area of potential seagrass habitat ranged from 36.2 km2 to 39.2 km2, averaging 38.0 ± 0.8 km2 compared to an observed seagrass extent of 23.0 ± 3.0 km2 derived from Landsat (range = 17.9–27.4 km2). GrassLight predicted a mean seagrass LAI of 2.7 m2 leaf m−2 seabed, compared to a mean LAI of 1.9 m2 m−2 estimated from Landsat, indicating that seagrass density in St. Joseph Bay may have been below its light-limited ecological potential. Climate and anthropogenic change simulations using GrassLight predicted the impact of changes in temperature, pH, chlorophyll a, chromophoric dissolved organic matter and turbidity on seagrass meadows. Simulations predicted a 2–8% decline in seagrass extent with rising temperatures that was offset by a 3–11% expansion in seagrass extent in response to ocean acidification when compared to present conditions. Simulations of water quality impacts showed that a doubling of turbidity would reduce seagrass extent by 18% and total leaf area by 21%. Combining climate and water quality scenarios showed that ocean acidification may increase seagrass productivity to offset the negative effects of both thermal stress and declining water quality on the seagrasses growing in St. Joseph Bay. This research highlights the importance of considering multiple limiting factors in understanding the effects of environmental change on seagrass ecosystems

Vertical Artifacts in High-Resolution WorldView-2 and Worldview-3 Satellite Imagery of Aquatic Systems

Satellite image artefacts are features that appear in an image but not in the original imaged object and can negatively impact the interpretation of satellite data. Vertical artefacts are linear features oriented in the along-track direction of an image system and can present as either banding or striping; banding are features with a consistent width, and striping are features with inconsistent widths. This study used high-resolution data from DigitalGlobeʻs (now Maxar) WorldView-3 satellite collected at Lake Okeechobee, Florida (FL), on 30 August 2017. This study investigated the impact of vertical artefacts on both at-sensor radiance and a spectral index for an aquatic target as WorldView-3 was primarily designed as a land sensor. At-sensor radiance measured by six of WorldView-3ʻs eight spectral bands exhibited banding, more specifically referred to as non-uniformity, at a width corresponding to the multispectral detector sub-arrays that comprise the WorldView-3 focal plane. At-sensor radiance measured by the remaining two spectral bands, red and near-infrared (NIR) #1, exhibited striping. Striping in these spectral bands can be attributed to their time delay integration (TDI) settings at the time of image acquisition, which were optimized for land. The impact of vertical striping on a spectral index leveraging the red, red edge, and NIR spectral bands—referred to here as the NIR maximum chlorophyll index (MCINIR)—was investigated. Temporally similar imagery from the European Space Agencyʻs Sentinel-3 and Sentinel-2 satellites were used as baseline references of expected chlorophyll values across Lake Okeechobee as neither Sentinel-3 nor Sentinel-2 imagery showed striping. Striping was highly prominent in the MCINIR product generated using WorldView-3 imagery, as noise in the at-sensor radiance exceeded any signal of chlorophyll in the image. Adjusting the image acquisition parameters for future tasking of WorldView-3 or the functionally similar WorldView-2 satellite may alleviate these artefacts. To test this, an additional WorldView-3 image was acquired at Lake Okeechobee, FL, on 26 May 2021 in which the TDI settings and scan line rate were adjusted to improve the signal-to-noise ratio. While some evidence of non-uniformity remained, striping was no longer noticeable in the MCINIR product. Future image tasking over aquatic targets should employ these updated image acquisition parameters. Since the red and NIR #1 spectral bands are critical for inland and coastal water applications, archived images not collected using these updated settings may be limited in their potential for analysis of aquatic variables that require these two spectral bands to derive