Effects of Various Combinations and Numbers of Lead: Iron Pellets Dosed in Wild-Type Captive Mallards

Final Report, Contract No. 14-16-0008-914INHS Technical Report prepared for unspecified recipien

Reducing Investment Risk in Tractors and Combines with Improved Terminal Asset Value Forecasts

Secondary asset market data for combines and tractors are used to estimate and separate out historical economic depreciation, embodied technological change and time value change. Combines and tractors generally exhibit constant geometric economic depreciation on a year to year basis. Depreciation rates vary by manufacturer. Farm investors can use these manufacturer specific depreciation rates reported here to estimate terminal asset values. The study found significant seasonal differences in machinery depreciation rates. A major source of error in forecasting terminal asset values comes from changes related to time. There is a predictable time component to the constant quality asset index that has not been investigated in previous studies. Unanticipated shocks to demand should be followed by price reversion to long-run average manufacturing costs as industry capacity adjusts to demand. This reversion component is predicable. Investment risk over longer planning horizons may be lower when both depreciation coefficients and time component estimates are employed.Farm Management,

Risk Premia in Tractor and Combine Investments

A farmer planning to use Net Present Value (NPV) analysis on machinery requires estimates of operating benefits over time, an estimate of terminal or salvage values and a risk-adjusted discount rate. Using financial market information and related Root Mean Square Errors on machinery value forecasts, risk premia for combine and tractor investments are estimated for non-diversified investors. These risk premia can be added to the risk free rate in comparable maturity long term bonds to derive an appropriate discount rate for NPV analysis. Where machines are held as single-asset portfolios, risk premia identified for discounting terminal value vary between 5.5% and 8.3% for combines and between 2.4% and 3.6% for tractors, depending on age during the holding period. Where machines are held as parts of multi-asset portfolios, risk premia are usually lower, depending on machinery's weight in the multi-asset portfolio and its covariance with the rest of the portfolio.Farm Management, Risk and Uncertainty,

Survey of recent economic policies in Japan

Thesis (M.B.A.)--Boston University, 1934. This item was digitized by the Internet Archive

Theatricality: A critical genealogy

ABSTRACT The notion of theatricality has, in recent years, emerged as a key term in the fields of Theatre and Performance Studies. Unlike most writings dealing with theatricality, this thesis presents theatricality as a rubric for a particular discourse. Beginning with a case-study of a theatre review, I read an anti-theatricalist bias in the writer’s genre distinctions of “theatre” and “performance”. I do not, however, test the truth of these claims; rather, by deploying Foucauldian discourse analysis, I interpret the review as a “statement” and analyse how the reviewer activates notions of “theatricality” and “performance” as objects created by an already existing discourse. Following this introduction, the body of thesis is divided into two parts. The first, “Mapping the Discursive Field”, begins by surveying a body of literature in which a struggle for interpretive dominance between contesting stakeholders in the fields of Theatre and Performance Studies is fought. Using Samuel Weber’s reframing of Derrida’s analysis of interpretation of interpretation, in Chapter 2, I argue that the discourse of the field is marked by the struggle between “nostalgic” and “affirmative” interpretation, and that in the discourse that emerges, certain inconsistencies arise. The disciplines of Theatre, and later, Performance Studies in the twentieth century are characterised, as Alan Woods (1989) notes, by a fetishisation of avant-gardist practices. It is not surprising, therefore, that the values and concerns of the avant-garde emerge in the discourse of Theatre and Performance Studies. In Chapter 3, I analyse how key avant-gardist themes—theatricality as “essence”, loss of faith in language and a valorisation of corporeality, theatricality as personally and politically emancipatory—are themselves imbricated in the wider discourse of modernism. In Chapter 4, I discuss the single English-language book, published to date, which critically engages with theatricality as a concept: Elizabeth Burns’s Theatricality: A Study of Convention in the Theatre and Social Life (1972). As I have demonstrated with my analysis of the discursive field and genealogy of avant-gardist thematics, I argue that implicit theories of theatricality inform contemporary discourses; theories that, in fact, deny this genealogy. Approaching her topic through the two instruments of sociology and theatre history, Burns explores how social and theatrical conventions of behaviour, and the interpretations of that behaviour, interact. Burns’s key insight is that theatricality is a spectator operation: it depends upon a spectator, who is both culturally competent to interpret and who chooses to do so, thereby deciding (or not) that something in the world is like something in the theatre. Part Two, “The Heritage of Theatricality”, delves further, chronologically, into the genealogy of the term. This part explores Burns’s association of theatricality with an idea of theatre by paraphrasing a question asked by Joseph Roach (after Foucault): what did people in the sixteenth century mean by “theatre” if it did not exist as we define today? This question threads through Chapters 5 to 7 which each explore various interpretations of theatricality not necessarily related to the art form understood by us as theatre. I begin by examining the genealogy of the theatrical metaphor, a key trope of the Renaissance, and one that has been consistently invoked in a range of circumstances ever since. In Chapter 5 explore the structural and thematic elements of the theatrical metaphor, including its foundations, primarily, in Stoic and Satiric philosophies, and this provides the ground for the final two chapters. In Chapter 6 I examine certain aspects of Renaissance theories of the self and how these, then, related to public magnificence—the spectacular stagings of royal and civic power that reached new heights during the Renaissance. Finally, in Chapter 7, I show how the paradigm shift from a medieval sense of being to a modern sense of being, captured through the metaphor of a world view, manifested in a theatricalised epistemology that emphasised a relationship between knowing and seeing. The human spectator thus came to occupy the dual positions of being on the stage of the world and, through his or her spectatorship, making the world a stage

Lumbosacral transitional vertebrae morphology: a South African population

Lumbosacral transitional vertebrae (LSTV) are defined as congenital anatomical variations, observed unilaterally or bilaterally, in which the transverse process of the last lumbar vertebra exhibits signs of dysplasia evident as increased craniocaudal height, with varying degrees of articulation or fusion to the ‘first' sacral vertebra. Such variations give rise to vertebral morphology that may display lumbar or sacral characteristics at the terminal lumbar spine, together with subsequent enumeration variation. The purpose of this study was to establish baseline data on the prevalence rates of LSTV and to describe the morphological characteristics (Type, subtype, frequency of side and spinal enumeration) of LSTV in the South African population. This study was subdivided into two main sections, namely Part 1: medical imaging appraisal and Part 2: osteological morphology appraisal. In Part 1, both retrospective and prospective cohort randomised sampling methods of data collection of medical images were used. The appraisal of the medical images included radiographs, magnetic resonance imagers and computerised tomography scans. Prevalence rates, utilising the Castellvi et al. (1984) classification, were established via radiographs only. Additionally, lumbar spine enumeration, namely lumbarisation and sacralisation, was made through the appraisal of lumbar radiographs. Images were obtained from medical radiology practices located at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town, Western Cape Province and Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg Academic Hospital in Johannesburg, Gauteng Province. The total imaging cohort included 3096 individuals of which 308 individuals (10%) were found to contain LSTV. Prevalence rates were further evaluated by subdivision of the three largest ancestries in South Africa. Ancestries were classified as African (n=1032), Mixed (n=1032) and European (n=1032). The prevalence of LSTV in the three ancestral groups was 10.5%, 9.3% and 9.9% respectively and the sex distribution was greater in females (52.1%) then in males (47.9%). The morphological assessment found the prevalence of LSTV by Type was Type II (67.9%) followed by Types III (27.6%) and IV (4.5%). The most frequent subtype by prevalence was Type IIA (41.9%) followed by Type IIB (26%), Type IIIB (21.8%), and Type IV (5.8%). Additionally, the frequency of side was bilateral (47.7%), left (26.6%), right (21.1%), and other (4.5%). Comparison of ancestry and spinal enumeration analyses established statistical significance for individuals of African-ancestry (67.0%) and Mixed-ancestry (72.9%) both of which demonstrated a greater affinity of prevalence for sacralisation (p=0.008), with a small effect size (V=0.178) over the European-ancestry subgroup (52.4%). Furthermore, a statistical significance with a medium effect size (V=0.256) was found in males (p=0.010) when comparing ancestry and spinal enumeration between sexes. In Part 2, a systematic search of the total cadaveric skeletal collection housed at the University of Witwatersrand (the Dart Collection of skeletons) yielded 1797 human skeletal specimens of between 21 and 65 years of age at time of death. One-hundred and fourteen skeletal remains were identified as containing LSTV. Damage and loss of vertebral elements resulted in a subset of 91 LSTV for study. A sex balanced control group cohort of 30 males and 30 females was selected at random from the Dart Collection for comparative analyses. A number of osteometric measurements were evaluated comparing the LSTV and control group cohorts. Numerous osteometric comparisons were statistically significant highlighting the many changes in lumbar and sacral morphology associated with LSTV. There are several original findings to emerge. Thisis the first study to establish the prevalence of LSTV in a large sample from the South African population, subdivided into the three largest ancestral groups. Novel findings associated with LSTV include iliolumbar articulation, bipartition of the sacral foramen, intra-articular vacuum phenomenon of accessory articulations of LSTV, enlargement of the contralateral TVP associated with Types III and IV LSTV, lumbar ossified bridging syndrome and a novel complex named by the researcher as the transverso-sacro-iliac articulation. Furthermore, the researcher has proposed three modifications to the Castellvi et al. (1984) classification, namely (1) that there should be a sub-classification of the Type IV LSTV into right and left nomenclature, (2) the inclusion of a new subtype of Type II LSTV morphology, a unilateral right or left iliolumbar articulation associated with contralateral Type IIA morphology, and (3) a modified morphological classification of LSTV based on the presence of an extended sacroiliac articulation either directly or via the transverso-sacro-iliac articulation. The latter effectively increases the size of the sacroiliac joint and is thought to increase spinopelvic stability. The transverso-sacroiliac articulation was demonstrated for all clinically significant LSTV Types (II-IV), both unilateral (right or left) and bilateral. Finally, this is the first study to incorporate an in situ and an ex situ study in the same population by examining spinal morphology of LSTV using medical images and skeletal remains for descriptive analyses

‘Community means the World to me’: an ethnographic study of a public house and bowling club

This thesis is an ethnographic study of two local institutions within the community of Fallin which explores how twenty-four men understand, maintain and reproduce community and belonging. Throughout, the thesis suggests that the past acts as a stable reference point for the men to deal with social change. The Bowling Club and the Pub are suggested as being sanctuaries for this type of collective remembering to take place as they still reflect a mode of life associated with the past. It is argued that imagined histories were recollected, recreated and maintained through the power of storytelling and sharing experiences to the younger generations or outsiders (Blenkinsopp, 2012; Homans, 1974). This thesis suggests that perceived threats from outsiders only serve to further galvanise the central values of their community (Cohen, 1985; Homans, 1974). Chapter Two provides a review of the literature and theoretical concepts which sets out the academic foundations of this thesis. The work of Bourdieu shapes the theoretical, methodological and reflexive nature of this project. Chapter Three introduces the ethnographic method which gives this study an in-depth account of the narratives and identities of the men in this project. Chapter Four outlines the reflexive nature of the author’s relationship with the community, the Bowling Club and The Goth and how this affects the interpretations presented in this thesis. Chapter Five provides the reader with descriptive and demographic data of the community of Fallin and the research sites. Chapters Six and Seven analyse the data and directly answer the research question through interpreting interview data and using field notes. Concluding in Chapter Eight, this thesis suggests that the version of community that the men helped to reproduce and maintain is strongly associated with a historical working-class mode of life. This thesis suggests that these local institutions reproduce historical notions of community and belonging through outside forces and incomers challenging this traditional mode of life. Of particular interest is how the younger men in the study often adopt this shared habitus and learn how to be a man through regular interactions in The Goth and the Bowling Club