Conveying the Role of Professional Farm Managers to Potential Clientele

Many farmland owners opt to work directly with farmer-tenants while others choose to hire a professional farm manager to assist in the management of their land. As absentee landownership increases and more landowners become less associated with farming, professional farm managers have increased opportunity to communicate their role to potential clientele. Some landowners have an opportunity to make the most of their situation by enlisting the services of a professional farm manager, but only if they know what can be expected from a professional farm manager. We discuss some of the benefits and disadvantages to landowners and tenants of professional farm management and how professional farm managers can convey these ideas to potential clients and assist landowners to choose the best farm manager for their farm.Farm Management,

Modeling and Control of Rare Segments in BitTorrent with Epidemic Dynamics

Despite its existing incentives for leecher cooperation, BitTorrent file sharing fundamentally relies on the presence of seeder peers. Seeder peers essentially operate outside the BitTorrent incentives, with two caveats: slow downlinks lead to increased numbers of "temporary" seeders (who left their console, but will terminate their seeder role when they return), and the copyright liability boon that file segmentation offers for permanent seeders. Using a simple epidemic model for a two-segment BitTorrent swarm, we focus on the BitTorrent rule to disseminate the (locally) rarest segments first. With our model, we show that the rarest-segment first rule minimizes transition time to seeder (complete file acquisition) and equalizes the segment populations in steady-state. We discuss how alternative dissemination rules may {\em beneficially increase} file acquisition times causing leechers to remain in the system longer (particularly as temporary seeders). The result is that leechers are further enticed to cooperate. This eliminates the threat of extinction of rare segments which is prevented by the needed presence of permanent seeders. Our model allows us to study the corresponding trade-offs between performance improvement, load on permanent seeders, and content availability, which we leave for future work. Finally, interpreting the two-segment model as one involving a rare segment and a "lumped" segment representing the rest, we study a model that jointly considers control of rare segments and different uplinks causing "choking," where high-uplink peers will not engage in certain transactions with low-uplink peers.Comment: 18 pages, 6 figures, A shorter version of this paper that did not include the N-segment lumped model was presented in May 2011 at IEEE ICC, Kyot

Reports and Maps of the Geological Survey Released Only in the Open Files, 1966

There is a reference to the Espey "Some effects on urbanization on storm runoff, Waller Creek".Waller Creek Working Grou

Evaluation of the Effects of Oil Production Platforms on the Turbidity of Louisiana Shelf Waters

Paper by George M. Griffi

Computerized Flow Process Charting System and Applications

A computerized flow process charting application program of dBase III+ has been developed to aid in resource requirements planning and operations analysis. Traditional flow process charting has used as the following data elements: assembly number, assembly sequence number, distance travelled, time required for the activity and an activity symbol. The computerized system adds several variables to these in order to customize the application at Martin Marietta Electronic Systems. These additional variables include work center identification, machine number identification, lot sizes, set up and run times and manufacturing specifications. Additionally, the circle or operations symbol has been expanded to differentiate between manual, process and test activities. Resources requirements planning and analysis is accomplished by a series of reports where a user defines search requirements and enters three independent equation variables for the calculations. The three variables are realization factor or safety factor, resource availability in hours per month and monthly production demand. The resource requirements can be used in methods engineering, make-buy decisions and resource planning. Sensitivity analyses can be easily accomplished by changing the input variables and/or data

CSMA Local Area Networking under Dynamic Altruism

In this paper, we consider medium access control of local area networks (LANs) under limited-information conditions as befits a distributed system. Rather than assuming "by rule" conformance to a protocol designed to regulate packet-flow rates (e.g., CSMA windowing), we begin with a non-cooperative game framework and build a dynamic altruism term into the net utility. The effects of altruism are analyzed at Nash equilibrium for both the ALOHA and CSMA frameworks in the quasistationary (fictitious play) regime. We consider either power or throughput based costs of networking, and the cases of identical or heterogeneous (independent) users/players. In a numerical study we consider diverse players, and we see that the effects of altruism for similar players can be beneficial in the presence of significant congestion, but excessive altruism may lead to underuse of the channel when demand is low

The Price of Beauty: An Economic Approach to Aesthetic Nuisance

This Article advocates a wider judicial recognition of nuisance actions based on aesthetic considerations. Contrary to the majority of legal opinion to the contrary, it is argued that a right to enjoy property should include a right to be free from non-invasive aesthetic or visual nuisances. With modern real estate appraisal methods making it possible to express community aesthetic preferences in monetary terms, courts are now no longer prevented from using these tools in assessing injuries to real estate. Thus, determinations of aesthetic nuisance actions are not any more subjective than the current task of courts in the context of aural and olfactory nuisance disputes. Indeed, the judiciary should resolve conflicts emanating from the unaesthetic uses of land through the Restatement of Torts “objective” balancing test in order to determine what, according to prevailing community standards, is reasonable under the circumstances.The expanded popularity of aesthetic zoning in many municipalities demonstrates anew the social value of aesthetics and thereby illustrates with clarity a very conscious relationship which exists between economic development and American nuisance law. Judicial recognition of police powers to enforce zoning regulations of this order contradicts - clearly - the heretofore seen reluctance of the Common Law to confront aesthetics in the realm of nuisance and thus invites a more contemporary and enlightened judicial response to this legal issue