Growing and Direct Marketing Produce: Potential Hazards

Providing a safe food to the consumer requires a process that incorporates food safety from planting to harvesting. Fruit and vegetables growers that market locally are con¬fronted with the same food safety concerns as produce operations that distribute statewide, nationally, or even globally. Growers must first identify the potential food safety hazards related to their operation. Once the hazards are identified, a plan that addresses safe food handling must be implemented

Organic Production: Practices and Prevalence

In 1995, the United States Department of Agriculture is¬sued the following definition of organic production: Organic agriculture is an ecological production management system that promotes and enhances biodiversity, biological cycles, and soil biologi¬cal activity. It is based on minimal use of off-farm inputs and on management practices that restore, maintain, and enhance ecological harmony

Is the United States Claims Court Constitutional?

This article will deal with two major constitutional problems that have resulted from the creation of the Claims Court. The first issue is the constitutionality of the appointment of existing Court of Claims Commissioners to be judges on the Claims Court during a four-year transition period. By legislatively designating the persons who are to serve as judges on the new court, Congress has usurped the presidential appointment power. The second issue relates to the constitutional status of the Claims Court. The Court of Claims which it replaces was created under article III of the Constitution, and the judges on it were therefore entitled to life tenure and salaries that could not be reduced during their terms in office. The new Claims Court, on the other hand, is designated by Congress as an article I court; the judges are to be appointed for only fifteen year terms, and their salaries are subject to control by Congress. The new court exercises full judicial authority, however, and has jurisdiction over cases of national importance in which the government of the United States has a great financial stake. Although the analysis of this issue is far from simple, this author concludes that Congress has exceeded its constitutional authority by failing to comply with the requirements of article III of the Constitution in establishing the Claims Court

Administrative Quality Planning

The quality movement in American businesses is becoming increasingly popular. American businesses are now competing internationally for market and the Japanese are winning. American businesses have adopted various quality systems to help them become customer driven, assisting in the regaining of lost market share. Some companies have been successful in implementing a quality system, but most have fallen short of achieving the desired a quality operation. Most of the successful quality programs have come in manufacturing plants, but quality in the support services of the administrative levels have fallen short. Many manufacturing organizations approach quality implementation for the plant and products, and ignore support service departments. In some cases, they try to apply the same techniques for both plants and service. As a result, quality problems that exist at the administrative level are not addressed and resolved. A business does not become successful in today\u27s increasingly competitive environment by limiting continuous improvement to its manufacturing components. Techniques exist that can be used in service industries. They can apply to internal services to work towards continuous improvement . To help move quality practices through a company\u27s administrative services, a business should separate the needs of support services from those of the plant operations, by addressing those needs in a separate quality plan . It is this customization that will help businesses tackle the barriers that exist for implementing administrative quality. This project develops the idea stated above and provides a model of such a plan

Serving Safe Barbeques for a Crowd

At many gatherings—such as athletic or church events, summer festivals, county fairs, and family reunions—large amounts of ground beef barbeque (BBQ) are prepared. For many volunteers, “cooking for a crowd” is not a common practice and their kitchens are not equipped to cook large amounts of food. If you are called upon to be in charge of the BBQ for a large group or concession, consider the following safe food-handling techniques

The Final Merger of Black-Hole Binaries

Recent breakthroughs in the field of numerical relativity have led to dramatic progress in understanding the predictions of General Relativity for the dynamical interactions of two black holes in the regime of very strong gravitational fields. Such black-hole binaries are important astrophysical systems and are a key target of current and developing gravitational-wave detectors. The waveform signature of strong gravitational radiation emitted as the black holes fall together and merge provides a clear observable record of the process. After decades of slow progress, these mergers and the gravitational-wave signals they generate can now be routinely calculated using the methods of numerical relativity. We review recent advances in understanding the predicted physics of events and the consequent radiation, and discuss some of the impacts this new knowledge is having in various areas of astrophysics.Comment: 57 pages; 9 figures. Updated references & fixed typos. Published version is at http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.nucl.010909.08324

Black-hole binaries, gravitational waves, and numerical relativity

Understanding the predictions of general relativity for the dynamical interactions of two black holes has been a long-standing unsolved problem in theoretical physics. Black-hole mergers are monumental astrophysical events, releasing tremendous amounts of energy in the form of gravitational radiation, and are key sources for both ground- and space-based gravitational-wave detectors. The black-hole merger dynamics and the resulting gravitational waveforms can only be calculated through numerical simulations of Einstein's equations of general relativity. For many years, numerical relativists attempting to model these mergers encountered a host of problems, causing their codes to crash after just a fraction of a binary orbit could be simulated. Recently, however, a series of dramatic advances in numerical relativity has allowed stable, robust black-hole merger simulations. This remarkable progress in the rapidly maturing field of numerical relativity, and the new understanding of black-hole binary dynamics that is emerging is chronicled. Important applications of these fundamental physics results to astrophysics, to gravitational-wave astronomy, and in other areas are also discussed.Comment: 54 pages, 42 figures. Some typos corrected & references updated. Essentially final published versio

Consistency of post-Newtonian waveforms with numerical relativity

General relativity predicts the gravitational wave signatures of coalescing binary black holes. Explicit waveform predictions for such systems, required for optimal analysis of observational data, have so far been achieved using the post-Newtonian (PN) approximation. The quality of this treatment is unclear, however, for the important late-inspiral portion. We derive late-inspiral waveforms via a complementary approach, direct numerical simulation of Einstein's equations. We compare waveform phasing from simulations of the last $\sim 14$ cycles of gravitational radiation from equal-mass, nonspinning black holes with the corresponding 2.5PN, 3PN, and 3.5PN orbital phasing. We find phasing agreement consistent with internal error estimates based on either approach, suggesting that PN waveforms for this system are effective until the last orbit prior to final merger.Comment: Replaced with published version -- one figure removed, text and other figures updated for clarity of discussio

Food Preservation: Using a Boiling Water Bath Canner

Growth of the bacterium Clostridium botulinum in canned food may cause botulism—a deadly form of food poisoning. These bacteria exist either as spores or as vegetative cells. The spores, which are comparable to plant seeds, can survive harmlessly in soil and water for many years