Financing of Agricultural Cooperatives

Cooperatives through the years have become important in marketing of farm products in the United States. The last few years in the United States, farm cooperatives have shown a tremendous growth in volume of business and in membership. From 1939 to 1949, the membership in marketing and purchasing cooperatives doubled and the volume or business increased four times. At the same time there has been a slight reduction in the number or cooperatives South Dakota cooperatives show a similar trend. From 1939 to 1950 the membership in marketing and purchasing cooperatives doubled and the volume or business increased four times. At the same time the number or cooperative association has decreased. The purpous of this study was to examine and evaluate the financing methods of South Dakota Cooperatives. There has been no previous work done on this in South Dakota. Three previous studies have been made on South Dakota cooperative very little was included about financing. Minnesota conducted a study in 1950 on cooperatives in that state. Iowa conducted a study on farmers opinions of\u27 cooperatives; however, this was mainly a sociological study

Some Life History and Ecological Activites of the Richardson Ground Squirrel In South Dakota

Whenever man has gone he has changed his environment to suit his needs. Because of his need for food, man has plowed up the prairies and converted the grasslands to grain fields. Before white man settled the Great Plains, range rodents such as the prairie dog and the ground squirrel existed undisturbed and unmolested except by their natural predators. With the advent of cultivated crops, the range herbivores found a new and tasty source of food. Among these primary consumers which took advantage of man’s interference with the natural prairie was the Richardson ground squirrel, Citellus richardsoni (Figure 1). During the past few years, the Richardson ground squirrel has been found in increasing numbers in the central part of South Dakota. There has been very little investigation of this species of ground squirrel in the United States although some work has been done in Canada. The purpose of this study is (1) to determine the habits and activities in the life cycle of the Richardson ground squirrel; and (2) to compare these data with those indicated by other authors. Richardson ground squirrels do considerable damage to grain crops, soil, forage crops, and farm lands, and they are also a potential reservoir for bubonic plague

Deconstructing therapy outcome measurement with Rasch analysis of a measure of general clinical distress: the Symptom Checklist-90-Revised

Rasch analysis was used to illustrate the usefulness of item-level analyses for evaluating a common therapy outcome measure of general clinical distress, the Symptom Checklist-90-Revised (SCL-90-R; Derogatis, 1994). Using complementary therapy research samples, the instrument's 5-point rating scale was found to exceed clients' ability to make reliable discriminations and could be improved by collapsing it into a 3-point version (combining scale points 1 with 2 and 3 with 4). This revision, in addition to removing 3 misfitting items, increased person separation from 4.90 to 5.07 and item separation from 7.76 to 8.52 (resulting in alphas of .96 and .99, respectively). Some SCL-90-R subscales had low internal consistency reliabilities; SCL-90-R items can be used to define one factor of general clinical distress that is generally stable across both samples, with two small residual factors

Assessing domestic migration at the county level in the 4-corners region: Working paper series--07-06

This paper analyzes net domestic migration which occurred between 1995 and 2000 at the county level for the 4-Corners Region (Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah.) Regression techniques were used to explain approximately 70 percent of the variation in net migration rates within the region for all counties whose populations exceeded 10,000 persons at the beginning of the period. The results of the study suggest net migration rates in the region are a function of both economic and non-economic characteristics existing within each county. Initially, a number of amenity-related, recreation and socio-demographic variables were considered along with traditional economic indicators; however, only a few of the traditional variables were correlated with migration activity to and from this region. Further research is needed in order to explain the differences in migration rates for these locations compared with results discovered in other regions

When Does Income Inequality Cause Polarization?

Income inequality has increased across developed democracies in the past thirty years (Piketty, 2014). Conventional wisdom suggests that high income inequality should be associated with political parties taking polarized positions as the left struggles to increase redistribution to its relatively poor voters while the right aims to entrench the position of economic elites (Meltzer and Richard, 1981; Han, 2015; Winkler, 2019). However, this general argument masks substantial within-country and cross-sectional variation. I argue that the connection between party positions and income inequality is contingent upon the construction of partisanship and the content of national elections. This thesis uses data from European national elections from 1996 to 2016 to show that when partisanship is expressed along economic lines - as indicated by a high degree of income differentiation between parties - and when economic issues are salient, the predicted effect of income inequality holds. When these factors are weak, however, income inequality has no discernible relationship with polarization.Master of Art

Economic or amenity driven migration? A cluster-based analysis of county migration in the American southwest: Working paper series--08-01

This paper initially analyzes the determinants of net domestic migration which occurred from 1995 to 2000 at the county level in the 4-Corners Region of the U.S. (Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah.) Regression techniques were used to explain approximately 70 percent of the variation in net migration rates within the region for counties whose populations exceeded 10,000 persons at the beginning of the period. The results of the study suggest net migration flows in the region are a dual function of both economic and non-economic characteristics existing within each county. The analysis is extended through the use of additional multivariate techniques in order to group the counties into clusters that reflect natural groupings based on a similar profile of variables used in the analysis. Migration activity differed statistically from cluster to cluster based upon variations in the predictor variables used in the analysis. Further research is suggested in order to extend these results to the broader economy

PARTY BRANDS AND POLITICAL CHANGE

This dissertation examines the long-term development of party brands in advanced democracies and their implications for party strategy and citizens’ engagement with democratic politics. Today, European electorates and party systems are at their most volatile since the Second World War, citizens are less likely to participate in elections, and most of the parties that built the thirty golden years of capitalism and democracy across the West are in retreat. Although many factors have contributed to this change, this dissertation focuses on the extent to which parties, particularly mainstream parties, have struggled to maintain distinct images in voters’ minds and how those images affect public opinion and voter behavior. The first study calculates issue salience divergence—the extent to which parties’ issue emphases diverge—for thirty European countries from 1945 to 2021. By moving beyond country case studies, I am able to identify that issue salience divergence has declined in most European countries. I also identify the effect of the electoral system and party type. The second study assesses the implications of issue salience divergence on the public. First, I verify that citizens notice greater differences between parties when issue salience divergence is elevated. Then, I use mediation analysis to chart the effect of issue salience divergence on satisfaction with democracy and self-reported voter turnout. Low levels of issue salience divergence depress both outcomes. At high levels, turnout becomes more likely, but the relationship between party differences and satisfaction is non-linear, with the most satisfaction occurring at intermediate levels of differentiation. The third study argues that party brands structure the returns to ambivalent and ambiguous electoral appeals. Because ambiguity allows voters to default to their priors, i.e., the party’s brand, they can be used effectively on issues that are central to a party’s brand. Ambivalence, however, signals potential brand deviation. Using an online survey experiment, I identify heterogeneous responses across issues’ brand centrality, appeal type, and the respondent’s partisanship. Together, these studies indicate that parties have become less distinct in the issues they emphasize, electorates incorporate these changes into their decision-making processes, and party brands constrain parties’ strategic opportunities.Doctor of Philosoph

Manure microbial communities and resistance profiles reconfigure after transition to manure pits and differ from those in fertilized field soil

In agricultural settings, microbes and antimicrobial resistance genes (ARGs) have the potential to be transferred across diverse environments and ecosystems. The consequences of these microbial transfers are unclear and understudied. On dairy farms, the storage of cow manure in manure pits and subsequent application to field soil as a fertilizer may facilitate the spread of the mammalian gut microbiome and its associated ARGs to the environment. To determine the extent of both taxonomic and resistance similarity during these transitions, we collected fresh manure, manure from pits, and field soil across 15 different dairy farms for three consecutive seasons. We used a combination of shotgun metagenomic sequencing and functional metagenomics to quantitatively interrogate taxonomic and ARG compositional variation on farms. We found that as the microbiome transitions from fresh dairy cow manure to manure pits, microbial taxonomic compositions and resistance profiles experience distinct restructuring, including decreases in alpha diversity and shifts in specific ARG abundances that potentially correspond to fresh manure going from a gut-structured community to an environment-structured community. Further, we did not find evidence of shared microbial community or a transfer of ARGs between manure and field soil microbiomes. Our results suggest that fresh manure experiences a compositional change in manure pits during storage and that the storage of manure in manure pits does not result in a depletion of ARGs. We did not find evidence of taxonomic or ARG restructuring of soil microbiota with the application of manure to field soils, as soil communities remained resilient to manure-induced perturbation

The presence of the casein kinase II phosphorylation sites of Vpu enhances the CD4+ T cell loss caused by the simian–human immunodeficiency virus SHIVKU-lbMC33 in pig-tailed macaques

AbstractThe simian–human immunodeficiency virus (SHIV)/ macaque model for human immunodeficiency virus type 1 has become a useful tool to assess the role of Vpu in lentivirus pathogenesis. In this report, we have mutated the two phosphorylated serine residues of the HIV-1 Vpu to glycine residues and have reconstructed a SHIV expressing this nonphosphorylated Vpu (SHIVS52,56G). Expression studies revealed that this protein was localized to the same intracellular compartment as wild-type Vpu. To determine if this virus was pathogenic, four pig-tailed macaques were inoculated with SHIVS52,56G and virus burdens and circulating CD4+ T cells monitored up to 1 year. Our results indicate that SHIVS52,56G caused rapid loss in the circulating CD4+ T cells within 3 weeks of inoculation in one macaque (CC8X), while the other three macaques developed no or gradual numbers of CD4+ T cells and a wasting syndrome. Histological examination of tissues revealed that macaque CC8X had lesions in lymphoid tissues (spleen, lymph nodes, and thymus) that were typical for macaques inoculated with pathogenic parental SHIVKU-1bMC33 and had no lesions within the CNS. To rule out that macaque CC8X had selected for a virus in which there was reversion of the glycine residues at positions 52 and 56 to serine residues and/or compensating mutations occurred in other genes associated with CD4 down-regulation, sequence analysis was performed on amplified vpu sequences isolated from PBMC and from several lymphoid tissues at necropsy. Sequence analysis revealed a reversion of the glycine residues back to serine residues in this macaque. The other macaques maintained low virus burdens, with one macaque (P003) developing a wasting syndrome between months 9 and 11. Histological examination of tissues from this macaque revealed a thymus with severe atrophy that was similar to that of a previously reported macaque inoculated with a SHIV lacking vpu (Virology 293, 2002, 252). Sequence analysis revealed no reversion of the glycine residues in the vpu sequences isolated from this macaque. These results contrast with those from four macaques inoculated with the parental pathogenic SHIVKU-1bMC33, all of which developed severe CD4+ T cell loss within 1 month after inoculation. Taken together, these results indicate that casein kinase II phosphorylation sites of Vpu contributes to the pathogenicity of the SHIVKU-1bMC33 and suggest that the SHIVKU-1bMC33/pig-tailed macaque model will be useful in analyzing amino acids/domains of Vpu that contribute to the pathogenesis of HIV-1