Locating the Variability of Soil Water Holding Capacity and Understanding Its Effects on Deficit Irrigation and Cotton Lint Yield

Precision irrigation equipment such as variable-rate center pivots is readily available to Tennessee growers and producers; however, little research exists describing its application to cotton grown in Tennessee. In order to optimize the use of variable-rate irrigation equipment and water resources, two experiments were performed to determine (1) whether or not ground-penetrating radar (GPR) and electrical conductivity (EC) measurements can be used to delineate variable-rate irrigation zones and (2) examine the response of cotton lint yield to varying rates and duration of irrigation. GPR and EC measurements were recorded, validated using soil cores, and used to identify the subsurface variability of soil texture, depth to a sandy layer (DTS), and soil available water holding capacity (AWHC) on a research location in Jackson, Tennessee. A strong, linear relationship between DTS and AWHC (R2=0.92) indicated that a high resolution map of textural differences would provide a good approximation of AWHC variability. Both AWHC and DTS were related (R2\u3e70%) to both GPR and EC data. Variable-rate irrigation zones representing textural and AWHC variability were successfully partitioned using a combination of GPR and EC data. Past cotton research regarding lint yield response to irrigation suggests that cotton irrigated on soils with a high AWHC might be negatively affected by the high irrigation rates required to maximize the yield of cotton grown on low AWHC soils. Using three major soil blocks identified using GPR and EC data, varying levels of irrigation rate and duration were applied to cotton grown on soils with a low, moderate, and high AWHC. Statistical analysis shows that cotton grown on low AWHC soils responded differently (p=0.06) to irrigation treatments than cotton grown on moderate and high AWHC soils. In 2011, irrigating at 1.5 inches per week from first bloom until cracked boll resulted in approximately 1081 pounds of lint per acre increase in low AWHC soils but only 167 pounds of lint per acre increase in high AWHC soils. Also, this irrigation treatment resulted in a significant (alpha=0.10) lint yield decrease below maximum yield for high AWHC soils

Online and postal data collection methods: a comparative study

Computer-mediated marketing research has been enthusiastically embraced by marketing organisations and those servicing them, for many reasons. While researchers using the Internet (Net) and World Wide Web (Web) in its early years reported benefits such as high response levels, there are now issues in this regard. This paper reports on the outcomes of a probabilistic study involving football club members (subscribers) involving both postal and online (e-mail invitation and HTML Web form) data collection methods. The paper reports differences in both the response pattern and demographic profile of respondents between the groups such as to warrant further examination of the methods used in online marketing research, and to suggest the need for further study.<br /

Developing co-production in professional sports : managing ritualized spectator behaviour for new teams

Our research suggests that for sport organizations, involvement in rituals is positively correlated with other positive business outcomes such as merchandise expenditure and game attendance. For sports marketing practitioners, the results indicate the importance of developing and managing consumption rituals tied to game day attendance, with a view to generating uncommon loyalty. New teams could be expected to have difficulties in building connections to their fans and developing long-term loyalty. Here, though, we see that inaugural members of a new team are already heavily active in pre and post game rituals. This study shows that sports marketers can be assisted in building attendance and retaining members by fostering and facilitating social rituals for fans on game days. Major sources of these rituals, in line with co-production, can include leveraging brand communities such as supporter groups, which were shown to arise in the absence of organized club-sponsored activities. In capitalising on the benefits of co-production, understanding ritualized groups and behaviors and how they evolve are particularly important for marketers of new teams given that once established, rituals are highly resistant to change

Profiling the sport consumption attitudes and behaviours of fantasy football players

Most sporting codes encourage participation in Fantasy Sport (FS), despite few making direct revenue from it. There is a lack of empirical evidence whether this is good practice, for although FS can increase involvement and education, it may also compete with other forms of sport consumption for consumers limited resources. This study begins to address whether FS competes with or&nbsp; complements sport consumption by comparing FS players with nonplayers. Data was collected from surveys (n=182) of AFL fans, with findings indicating FS players had higher tested measures of attitudes (e.g., team identification, commitment) and behaviours (e.g., game attendance, television viewing) related&nbsp; to the sport. What remains to be determined is causality, and suggestions on how to examine this are given.<br /

Exploring common and unique season ticket holder brand associations across professional sport teams

A number of studies have examined the role of brand associations in attracting fans and sponsors to sport organizations. Typically, these studies develop a list of attitudes, attributes and behaviors from past literature or through qualitative work, and then investigate the degree to which consumers associate those features with different sport teams. This process is problematic in two ways; a) the associations are unnaturally limited (e.g., 14 in Ross et al's, (2006) TBAS scale), removing variation between respondents and; b) by using the same set across all organisations, the insights into points of differentiation across teams are limited. While unique brand associations are said to be a major differentiator for products, a way to connect with particular individuals (i.e., where the 'personality' of the brand and person match) and a source of competitive advantage for organizations, the nature of past research often restricts data collection and analysis regarding possible unique points of differentiation. This study returns to free association as a means of eliciting brand associations from season ticket holders (STH) of a number of clubs in the same league, in order to examine the full range similarities and differences in the types of associations elicited both within and across teams

A comparison of online and postal data collection methods in marketing research

The widespread acceptance of the use of online techniques in market research necessitates appreciation of the relative advantages and disadvantages of these techniques over more traditional research methods. This paper reports on a study which directly compares online and postal data collection methods using the same survey instrument on two samples drawn from the same population of football club subscribers. The results confirm that the online and postal respondents are demographically different. Online data collection is shown to be less expensive per respondent and that data collection is faster, however, an overall lower response level is achieved relative to the postal data collection method. Of greater importance, though, are the findings that respondents seem to answer questions differently online than they do via postal methods. The conclusion here is that online data collection should not be treated as a direct substitute for postal data collection in every instance

The Goose - Step

https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mmb-vp/4210/thumbnail.jp

Monetary Policy-making in the Presence of Knightian Uncertainty

This paper explores the extent to which Knightian uncertainty can explain features of interest rate paths observed in practice that are not generally replicated by models of optimal monetary policy. Interest rates tend to move in a sequence of steps in a given direction, or remain constant for some time, rather than experiencing the frequent reversals that commonly arise from optimal policy simulations. We categorise the types of uncertainty that have been explored to date in terms of the decision-making behaviour they imply. From this, we suggest a more intuitively appealing formulation of Knightian uncertainty than the one that has previously been used in the analysis of monetary policy. Within a very simple optimal control problem, we show that our preferred formalisation is consistent with interest rate paths with periods of no change. This suggests that the presence of Knightian uncertainty may explain some features of monetary policy-makers’ behaviour.Knightian uncertainty; monetary policy

Patterns in participation: Factors influencing parent attendance at two, centre-based early childhood interventions

Interventions training parents of at-risk children have received considerable empirical support but their effectiveness is undermined by low attendance rates. This research sought to clarify why parents, even with the best of intentions, fail to follow through to full participation in workshop programs; and to provide insight into ways to improve parental engagement. We examined participation in Parents as Partners, a school-based, early childhood intervention. Demographic and ongoing educational, social, emotional and behavioural data for 136 parent-child dyads were gathered from parents, teachers and children. Mitigation of a wide range of factors previously identified as barriers to attendance was also attempted. A post-intervention survey was conducted to examine parents’ insights into their attendance patterns. Overall, 91 parents attended and 44 failed to attend any workshops. Higher parent education and SEI, and better child language skills were good predictors of attendance (87%), but poor predictors of nonattendance (42%). Additionally, parent-child dyad profiles suggested that children of nonattending parents were more likely to benefit from workshop content than attenders’ children. Survey data suggested that attenders organised their schedules to facilitate follow-through but nonattenders were unable to do so. Family characteristics and practical reasons were central, interacting factors affecting attendance. Parental self-organisation appeared to moderate follow-through and to stem from lifestyle constraints related to lower SEI and parent education. This produced high nonattendance rates in parents of children who most needed support. It is urgent to discover to what extent innovative delivery platforms currently being explored (e.g., internet/social media) can improve parental engagement