Economic evaluation of alternative crop and soil management systems for reducing soil erosion losses on West Tennessee farms

The purpose of this study was to evaluate farm firm behavior and adjustment that might be expected when certain key factors related to soil conservation were allowed to vary over time. Three typical commercial upland crop producing farms located in the Deep Loess Soil Region of West Tennessee were selected for analysis. Enterprises considered for each farm were corn, soybeans, cotton, soybeans-wheat double-crop, meadow, pasture, and beef cow-calf. Up to 41 cropping systems were considered for each field on each farm. Basic crop alternatives included a wide range of crop management systems including various combinations of conventional tillage, contour tillage, cover crop, no-till, terraces, and various lengths of rotations. Potential soil loss for each cropping management system was estimated using the Universal Soil Loss Equation. Farm plans were developed for each of the three farms that would maximize discounted net returns with the upper limit on soil loss from erosion set alternately at 100, 25, 10, and 5 tons/acre/year. Alternative situations evaluated in the analysis also included three discount rates, five planning horizons, and variations in alternative crop management systems considered. Standard budgetary techniques were utilized in estimating costs and returns and investment and operating capital requirements for the various cropping systems and beef enterprise considered in the analysis. Linear programming techniques were used to determine optimum resource allocations and enterprise combinations that would maximize the discounted net returns to land, labor, and management. Based upon the assumptions and result of this study, through the use of no-till and double-cropping systems soil loss could be held at the 10-ton soil loss level with no effects upon net returns. The 5-ton level could be achieved with only a minor reduction in net returns (2-3 percent). When no-till and double-cropping systems were eliminated, the effects of soil loss constraints upon net returns were more pronounced. In this case net returns were estimated to be reduced by approximately 3-5 percent to achieve the 10-ton soil loss limit and by 25-30 percent to achieve the 5-ton soil loss level

The 2016 White Paper on German Security Policy and the Future of the Bundeswehr : An Analysis of its Positioning, Reception, and Conditions of Implementation

This study examines the new German 2016 White Paper on German Security Policy and the Future of the Bundeswehr. Updated for the first time in over a decade, the document reflects Germany’s reorientation of its security policy in order to become a global player. This study analyzes the White Paper to determine its contextual meaning, domestic as well as international support, and obstacles in the way of its implementation. Although the German Government is concerned about waning US influence and increased Russian activity, the German people are reluctant to let go of their nation’s foreign political restraint in light of a lingering feeling of historical responsibility going back their Fascist past and to WWII. The international and European reaction to the White Paper is largely positive and hails Germany as a defender of Western Liberalism. Russia is less enthusiastic and has embraced information warfare as a means of displaying its displeasure. The study finds that resolving these issues will prove critical for the practical success of failure in implanting the designs of the White Paper

Mapping Digital Media: Digital Media and Investigative Reporting

Analyzes how digital media are changing the reporting, composition, and distribution of investigative news; audience expectations; content providers' roles; and the ethical criteria for journalism, from objectivity to transparency about motives

Molecular Phylogeny of the Genus Houstonia and Allies in Rubiaceae

Houstonia (Rubiaceae) is a strictly North American genus of 24 species distributed from Mexico, throughout the United States, up to Canada. Houstonia has proven to be a taxonomically difficult genus since the Linnaean description of Houstonia and the related genera: Hedyotis and Oldenlandia in 1753. For over 250 years botanists have lumped and separated Houstonia from Hedyotis and Oldenlandia based on various morphological characters. The most recent circumscription of Houstonia (Terrell 1996) separated the genus into two subgenera with each subgenus containing two sections. Nuclear (ITS) and plastid (trnL-F, rps16) DNA sequences were used to build a molecular phylogeny depicting relationships within Houstonia and among the closely related genera Stenaria and Stenotis, all of which used to be considered Hedyotis. Separate and combined datasets show Stenaria is nested within the Houstonia lineage and therefore Houstonia, as currently circumscribed, is not a monophyletic lineage. These results disagree with the use of crateriform seeds to distinguish Houstonia (crateriform seeds) from Stenaria (non-crateriform seeds). It appears the most useful characters to define this group are the loss of chromosomes through the major clades as the Houstonia-Stenaria lineage radiated north and east in North America. Descending aneuploidy has been accompanied by slight modifications of the pollen aperture types from a simple endoaperture in Stenotis referred to as colporate type A with modifications in Houstonia-Stenaria resulting in compound aperture types referred to as colporate type B and colpororate

The Internet as a Digital Thirdspace: Evolving Representations of Asians and Asian Americans in Popular Culture

Ph.D.Ph.D. Thesis. University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa 201

Bright Ultraviolet Regions and Star Formation Characteristics in Nearby Dwarf Galaxies

We compare star formation in the inner and outer disks of 11 dwarf Irregular galaxies (dIm) within 3.6 Mpc. The regions are identified on GALEX near-UV images, and modeled with UV, optical, and near-IR colors to determine masses and ages. A few galaxies have made 10^5-10^6 Msun complexes in a starburst phase, while others have not formed clusters in the last 50 Myrs. The maximum region mass correlates with the number of regions as expected from the size-of-sample effect. We find no radial gradients in region masses and ages, even beyond the realm of Halpha emission, although there is an exponential decrease in the luminosity density and number density of the regions with radius. Halpha is apparently lacking in the outer parts only because nebular emission around massive stars is too faint to see. The outermost regions for the 5 galaxies with HI data formed at average gas surface densities of 1.9-5.9 Msun/pc2. These low average densities imply either that local gas densities are high or sub-threshold star formation is possible. The distribution of regions on a log Mass - log age plot is is usually uniform along log age for equal intervals of log Mass. This uniformity results from either an individual region mass that varies as 1/age or a region disruption probability that varies as 1/age. A correlation between fading-corrected surface brightness and age suggests the former.Comment: Astronomical Journal, in press for November 2009. 34 pages, 18 figures, 5 table

Google online marketing challenge and research opportunities

The Google Online Marketing Challenge is an ongoing collaboration between Google and academics, to give students experiential learning. The Challenge gives student teams US$200 in AdWords, Google’s flagship advertising product, to develop online marketing campaigns for actual businesses. The end result is an engaging in-class exercise that provides students and professors with an exciting and pedagogically rigorous competition. Results from surveys at the end of the Challenge reveal positive appraisals from the three—students, businesses, and professors—main constituents; general agreement between students and instructors regarding learning outcomes; and a few points of difference between students and instructors. In addition to describing the Challenge and its outcomes, this article reviews the postparticipation questionnaires and subsequent datasets. The questionnaires and results are publicly available, and this article invites educators to mine the datasets, share their results, and offer suggestions for future iterations of the Challenge

The Young Stellar Population of the Nearby Late-Type Galaxy NGC 1311

We have extracted PSF-fitted stellar photometry from near-ultraviolet, optical and near-infrared images, obtained with the Hubble Space Telescope, of the nearby (D ~ 5.5 Mpc) SBm galaxy NGC 1311. The ultraviolet and optical data reveal a population of hot main sequence stars with ages of 2-10 Myr. We also find populations of blue supergiants with ages between 10 and 40 Myr and red supergiants with ages between 10 and 100 Myr. Our near-infrared data shows evidence of star formation going back ~1 Gyr, in agreement with previous work. Fits to isochrones indicate a metallicity of Z ~ 0.004. The ratio of blue to red supergiants is consistent with this metallicity. This indicates that NGC 1311 follows the well-known luminosity-metallicity relation for late-type dwarf galaxies. About half of the hot main sequence stars and blue supergiants are found in two regions in the inner part of NGC 1311. These two regions are each about 200 pc across, and thus have crossing times roughly equal to the 10 Myr age we find for the dominant young population. The Luminosity Functions of the supergiants indicate a slowly rising star formation rate (of 0.001 Solar masses per year) from ~100 Myr ago until ~15 Myr ago, followed by a strong enhancement (to 0.01 Solar Masses per year) at ~10 Myr ago. We see no compelling evidence for gaps in the star-forming history of NGC 1311 over the last 100 Myr, and, with lower significance, none over the last Gyr. This argues against a bursting mode, and in favor of a gasping or breathing mode for the recent star-formation history.Comment: AASTex, 34 pages, 13 postscript figures. Accepted for publication by The Astronomical Journa