Responses to climate variability of the livestock sector in the north-west province, South Africa

Department Head: Hennie Scholtz.2002 Summer.Includes bibliographical references (pages 128-138).The goal of this study is to compare management drought strategies, including the use of climate forecasts, of livestock farmers in commercial areas with livestock farmers in adjacent communal areas within the western region of the North-West Province of the Republic of South Africa. In this rural semi-arid to arid region of the southern Kalahari, the majority of people make their living from animal production. It is shown that commercial farmers have a greater number of strategic options and greater accessibility to natural and human resources including pasture lands, water, and information. This research demonstrates that in this relatively homogeneous ecological setting, farmers' animal management responses to drought and use of climate forecasts are highly variable due to human factors such as culture, production goals, history, government policy, and market constraints. A human ecological framework is used to explain research findings and examine results within existing ecological, economic, ethnic, and historical constraints faced by local populations

Pharmacist of the Bench

The theory of this thesis is that U.S. Court of Appeals case decisions influence rule changes made by the FDA. My hypotheses are (1) Republican appointed judges will favor businesses more often than Democrat appointed judges, (2) when businesses are favored more than consumers the FDA will reduce regulation, and (3) when regulation is reduced there will be an increase in drug approvals. hypothesis 4 states drug approvals decrease when Democrats hold a majority. Hypotheses 1, 2, and 3 were all tested using a c2 analysis for the years 2010, 2011, 2015, and 2016. A descriptive analysis of FDA policy changes is also complete for hypothesis 2. Hypothesis 4 is tested using a time series analysis. Hypotheses 1 and 3 found support. However, the findings of hypothesis 2 suggest political make-up matters more than case decisions. Table 5 supports hypothesis 4, but table 6 does not

Some Properties of Partially Ordered Sets

It may be said of certain pairs of elements of a set that one element precedes the other. If the collection of all such pairs of elements in a given set exhibits certain properties, the set and the collection of pairs is said to constitute a partially ordered set. The purpose of this paper is to explore some of the properties of partially ordered sets

MULTI-UNIT ACCIDENT CONTRIBUTIONS TO U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION QUANTITATIVE HEALTH OBJECTIVES: A SAFETY GOAL POLICY ANALYSIS USING MODELS FROM STATE-OF-THE-ART REACTOR CONSEQUENCE ANALYSES

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission implemented a safety goal policy in response to the 1979 Three Mile Island accident. This policy addresses the question “How safe is safe enough?” by specifying quantitative health objectives (QHOs) for comparison with results from nuclear power plant (NPP) probabilistic risk analyses (PRAs) to determine whether proposed regulatory actions are justified based on potential safety benefit. Lessons learned from recent operating experience—including the 2011 Fukushima accident—indicate that accidents involving multiple units at a shared site can occur with non-negligible frequency. Yet risk contributions from such scenarios are excluded by policy from safety goal evaluations—even for the nearly 60% of U.S. NPP sites that include multiple units. This research develops and applies methods for estimating risk metrics for comparison with safety goal QHOs using models from state-of-the-art consequence analyses to evaluate the effect of including multi-unit accident risk contributions in safety goal evaluations

Anterior filtration angle width: A comparitive study of methods clincally used for anterior angle width evaluation

Anterior filtration angle width: A comparitive study of methods clincally used for anterior angle width evaluatio

Design and Performance of a Curved-crystal X-ray Emission Spectrometer

A curved-crystal x-ray emission spectrometer has been designed and built to measure 2–5 keV x-ray fluorescence resulting from a core-level excitation of gas phase species. The spectrometer can rotate 180°, allowing detection of emitted x rays with variable polarization angles, and is capable of collecting spectra over a wide energy range (20 eV wide with 0.5 eV resolution at the Cl K edge) simultaneously. In addition, the entire experimental chamber can be rotated about the incident-radiation axis by nearly 360° while maintaining vacuum, permitting measurements of angular distributions of emitted x rays

A pulsed, low-temperature beam of supersonically cooled free radical OH molecules

An improved system for creating a pulsed, low-temperature molecular beam of OH radicals has been developed. We use a pulsed discharge to create OH from H$_2$O seeded in Xe during a supersonic expansion, where the high-voltage pulse duration is significantly shorter than the width of the gas pulse. The pulsed discharge allows for control of the mean speed of the molecular packet as well as maintains a low temperature supersonic expansion. A hot filament is placed in the source chamber to initiate the discharge for shorter durations and at lower voltages, resulting in a translationally and rotationally colder packet of OH molecules