An Economic Assessment of the 1999 Drought: Agricultural Impacts Are Severe Locally, but Limited Nationally

While the 1999 drought has had severe financial impacts on agricultural producers in the drought regions, its impact on U.S. agricultural production has been limited. The drought will reduce commodity receipts relative to 1998 by an estimated $1.29 billion. Estimated farm net income losses, including expected yield losses, increases in expenses, and insurance indemnities, will total$1.35 billion, about 3 percent of expected 1999 U.S. net farm income. Drought impacts in areas of the Northeast designated as extreme and severe drought are expected to reduce farmers' net income by nearly $840 million. The regions affected, the crops grown in those regions, the increased use of irrigation, and crop insurance coverage limited the drought's impacts on agriculture nationally. Drought also affects the rural population by reducing water supplies available for human and livestock consumption.Agricultural Finance, Farm Management,

Pneumothorax as a Complication of Radiation Therapy for Primary Lung Cancer

A case of spontaneous pneumothorax complicating irradiation for bronchogenic carcinoma is presented. Pneumothorax developed in a collapsed lung caused by a central bronchogenic carcinoma. The cause is presumably secondary to either a bronchopleural fistula by tumour or sudden expansion of the lung following irradiation. Various tumours of the lung have been associated with spontaneous pneumothorax, including metastatic osteogenic sarcoma 12 , eosinophilic granuloma 4 , teratoma 11 , other metastatic sarcomas 3 , lymphoma following radiation therapy 8 , and primary bronchogenic carcinomas 1,2,3,5,6,7,9,10 . We have encountered a case of spontaneous pneumothorax complicating irradiation for bronchogenic carcinoma. To our knowledge, this is the first report in the English radiologic literature, and the second, in the English literature, of a case of spontaneous pneumothorax following radiation therapy for proven bronchogenic carcinoma.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/75343/1/j.1440-1673.1976.tb02589.x.pd

Silicon web process development

Silicon dendritic web, a single crystal ribbon shaped during growth by crystallographic forces and surface tension (rather than dies), is a highly promising base material for efficient low cost solar cells. The form of the product smooth, flexible strips 100 to 200 microns thick, conserves expensive silicon and facilitates automation of crystal growth and the subsequent manufacturing of solar cells. These characteristics, coupled with the highest demonstrated ribbon solar cell efficiency-15.5%-make silicon web a leading candidate to achieve, or better, the 1986 Low Cost Solar Array (LSA) Project cost objective of 50 cents per peak watt of photovoltaic output power. The main objective of the Web Program, technology development to significantly increase web output rate, and to show the feasibility for simultaneous melt replenishment and growth, have largely been accomplished. Recently, web output rates of 23.6 sq cm/min, nearly three times the 8 sq cm/min maximum rate of a year ago, were achieved. Webs 4 cm wide or greater were grown on a number of occassions

Bloom-Gilman duality of inelastic structure functions in nucleon and nuclei

The Bloom-Gilman local duality of the inelastic structure function of the proton, the deuteron and light complex nuclei is investigated using available experimental data in the squared four-momentum transfer range from 0.3 to 5 (GeV/c)**2. The results of our analysis suggest that the onset of the Bloom-Gilman local duality is anticipated in complex nuclei with respect to the case of the protonand the deuteron. A possible interpretation of this result in terms of a rescaling effect is discussed with particular emphasis to the possibility of reproducing the damping of the nucleon-resonance transitions observed in recent electroproduction data off nuclei.Comment: revised version, to appear in Physical Review

Superscaling of Inclusive Electron Scattering from Nuclei

We investigate the degree to which the concept of superscaling, initially developed within the framework of the relativistic Fermi gas model, applies to inclusive electron scattering from nuclei. We find that data obtained from the low energy loss side of the quasielastic peak exhibit the superscaling property, i.e., the scaling functions f(\psi') are not only independent of momentum transfer (the usual type of scaling: scaling of the first kind), but coincide for A \geq 4 when plotted versus a dimensionless scaling variable \psi' (scaling of the second kind). We use this behavior to study as yet poorly understood properties of the inclusive response at large electron energy loss.Comment: 33 pages, 12 color EPS figures, LaTeX2e using BoxedEPSF macros; email to [email protected]

Dolphin morbillivirus infection in different parts of the Mediterranean Sea

Morbillivirus were isolated from Mediterranean striped dolphins (Stenella coeruleoalba) dying along the coasts of Italy and Greece in 1991. They were antigenically identical to the morbilliviruses isolated from striped dolphins in Spain in 1990

Hypertonicity-induced cation channels rescue cells from staurosporine-elicited apoptosis

Cell shrinkage is one of the earliest events during apoptosis. Cell shrinkage also occurs upon hypertonic stress, and previous work has shown that hypertonicity-induced cation channels (HICCs) underlie a highly efficient mechanism of recovery from cell shrinkage, called the regulatory volume increase (RVI), in many cell types. Here, the effects of HICC activation on staurosporine-induced apoptotic volume decrease (AVD) and apoptosis were studied in HeLa cells by means of electronic cell sizing and whole-cell patch-clamp recording. It was found that hypertonic stress reduces staurosporine-induced AVD and cell death (associated with caspase-3/7 activation and DNA fragmentation), and that this effect was actually due to activation of the HICC. On the other hand, staurosporine was found to significantly reduce osmotic HICC activation. It is concluded that AVD and RVI reflect two fundamentally distinct functional modes in terms of the activity and role of the HICC, in a shrunken cell. Our results also demonstrate, for the first time, the ability of the HICC to rescue cells from the process of programmed cell death

Measurement of the Nucleon Structure Function F2 in the Nuclear Medium and Evaluation of its Moments

We report on the measurement of inclusive electron scattering off a carbon target performed with CLAS at Jefferson Laboratory. A combination of three different beam energies 1.161, 2.261 and 4.461 GeV allowed us to reach an invariant mass of the final-state hadronic system W~2.4 GeV with four-momentum transfers Q2 ranging from 0.2 to 5 GeV2. These data, together with previous measurements of the inclusive electron scattering off proton and deuteron, which cover a similar continuous two-dimensional region of Q2 and Bjorken variable x, permit the study of nuclear modifications of the nucleon structure. By using these, as well as other world data, we evaluated the F2 structure function and its moments. Using an OPE-based twist expansion, we studied the Q2-evolution of the moments, obtaining a separation of the leading-twist and the total higher-twist terms. The carbon-to-deuteron ratio of the leading-twist contributions to the F2 moments exhibits the well known EMC effect, compatible with that discovered previously in x-space. The total higher-twist term in the carbon nucleus appears, although with large systematic uncertainites, to be smaller with respect to the deuteron case for n<7, suggesting partial parton deconfinement in nuclear matter. We speculate that the spatial extension of the nucleon is changed when it is immersed in the nuclear medium.Comment: 37 pages, 15 figure

The effectiveness of e-Learning on biosecurity practice to slow the spread of invasive alien species

Online e-Learning is increasingly being used to provide environmental training. Prevention measures including biosecurity are essential to reducing the introduction and spread of invasive alien species (IAS) and are central to international and national IAS policy. This paper is the first to evaluate the effectiveness of e-Learning as a tool to increase awareness, risk perception and biosecurity behaviour in relation to IAS among individuals conducting work activities or research (fieldwork) in the field. We surveyed participants (a mixture of students and professionals) before, and 6 months after undertaking an e-Learning course on IAS and biosecurity practices. Awareness of IAS and self-reported biosecurity behaviour increased after e-Learning among students and professionals. Students had a lower awareness of IAS than professionals before training (20% of students vs 60% of professionals), but after training students showed a greater increase in awareness which led to similar levels of awareness post-training (81%). Prior to training, risk perception was also lower amongst students than professionals (33% of students and 59% of professionals were aware of the risk that their activities posed to the accidental spread of IAS). There was no change in risk perception amongst professionals after training, however training led to a doubling of risk perception in students. E-Learning also led to an increase in reported biosecurity behaviour and cleaning practices and there were higher levels of biosecurity cleaning amongst professionals. The higher awareness and better biosecurity amongst professionals is likely to reflect their familiarity with the issues of IAS and day-to-day activities in the field. Our results suggest that e-Learning is an effective tool to raise awareness and encourage behaviour change among field workers and researchers in an attempt to reduce the risk of accidental introduction and spread of IAS