Iowa Cooperative Fertilizer Retail Outlets: Farmers' Attitudes and Perceptions

Based on a sample of Iowa farmers, attributes of fertilizer retail dealers are evaluated. Honest management, making deliveries on time, relative size, willingness to negotiate price, and marketing grain are the most important attributes affecting a farmer's decision to patronize an independent or cooperative dealer. Cooperative outlets are generally in a strong competitive position. The study also shows much salient information can be generated by using such statistical methods as segmentation analysis, factor analysis, and the choice model approach.Fertilizer, supply cooperative, farmers' perception, dealer attributes, segmentation analysis, factor analysis, choice model, logit, Agribusiness,

Preparation of Translationally Competent tRNA by Direct Chemical Acylation

Nonsense codon suppression for unnatural amino acid incorporation requires the preparation of a suppressor aminoacyl-tRNA. Chemical acylation strategies are general but inefficient and arduous. A recent report (J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2007, 129, 15848) showed acylation of RNA mediated by lanthanum(III) using amino acid phosphate esters. The successful implementation of this methodology to full-length suppressor tRNA is described, and it is shown that the derived aminoacyl-tRNA is translationally competent in Xenopus oocytes

Plan variants and a plan refinement algorithm

The relational production model of problem solving, due to Vere, is used to analyze plan inefficiency. The concept of plan variant is introduced and precisely related to the triangle tables of Nilsson. The concept is used to extend certain classes of inefficiencies. A method is described which "tightens up" plans containing these inefficiencies, often producing optimal ones

Attractor Solutions in Tachyacoustic Cosmology

We study the dynamical stability of "tachyacoustic" cosmological models, in which primordial perturbations are generated by a shrinking sound horizon during a period of decelerating expansion. Such models represent a potential alternative to inflationary cosmology, but the phase-space behavior of tachyacoustic solutions has not previously been investigated. We numerically evaluate the dynamics of two non-canonical Lagrangians, a cuscuton-like Lagrangian and a Dirac-Born-Infeld Lagrangian, which generate a scale-invariant spectrum of perturbations. We show that the power-law background solutions in both cases are dynamical attractors.Comment: Some references and comments added. Accepted for publication in Physical Review

The Demand For Money in the U.S. During the Great Depression: Estimates and Comparison with the Post War Experience

This study investigates the equilibrium demand for narrowly defined monetary aggregate during the Great Depression. We find evidence in support of a stable demand for real balance, but no evidence in support of stable demand functions for real currency and real monetary base. This is consistent with the Friedman-Schwartz interpretation of this period. We do not reject the hypothesis that the equilibrium demand for real Ml is stable between the pre and post WWII sample periods. We find that the "shift in the drift" of Ml velocity after 1945 and at the end of 1981 as well as the "shift in the drift" of currency and base velocities in 1981 is the image of corresponding "shift in the drift" of short-term interest rates. We interpret this as consistent with the hypothesis that the dramatic change in velocity patterns after WWII and in 1981 result from changes in inflationary expectations.