Profitability of Irrigated Improved Pecan Orchards in the Southern Plains

The objective was to determine if an irrigated improved pecan orchard is economical relative to agronomic systems commonly implemented by producers that have access to irrigation. Results show that the improved pecan orchard is more profitable than competitive enterprises after a twenty year time frame, but is sensitive to pecan price, pecan yield and attitude toward risk.Profitability, Irrigated, Pecan, Orchard, Southern Plains, Crop Production/Industries, Farm Management, Land Economics/Use, Production Economics, Risk and Uncertainty,

Property Tax Lids and the Effect on Kansas

Cross sectional time series data in a partial adjustment model examine local government behavior under an aggregate property tax levy limit and under Truth in Taxation in Kansas. Results indicate that the aggregate levy limit would have continued to restrict property tax revenue and spending had it not been replaced.Public Economics,

Orthogonality relations for conical functions of imaginary order

Orthogonality relations for conical or Mehler functions of imaginary order are derived and expressed in terms of the Dirac delta function. This work extends recently derived orthogonality relations of associated Legendre functions

Attributes Preferred and Premiums Offered for Naturally Produced Beef Cattle

A growing number of beef cattle producers in the US are using limited information to determine whether or not it would be economical for them to grow naturally produced cattle. The objective was to discover the attributes that marketing companies prefer for the naturally produced cattle they purchase, and to elicit the price premiums being offered for cattle that possess these attributes. Results of a phone survey of companies that purchase natural cattle show that 27 out of 32 companies report their willingness to pay a premium of $5.95/cwt for cattle that have never received antibiotics, ionophores, hormones or animal by-products.Key words: attributes, beef, cattle, naturally produced, premiums, Agribusiness, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, Livestock Production/Industries, Marketing,

Continuous quivers of type A (I) Foundations

We generalize type $A$ quivers to continuous type $A$ quivers and prove initial results about pointwise finite-dimensional (pwf) representations. We classify the indecomosable pwf representations and provide a decomposition theorem, recovering results of Botnan and Crawley-Boevey. We also classify the indecomposable pwf projective representations. Finally, we prove that many of the properties of finite-dimensional type $A_n$ representations are present in finitely generated pwf representations. This is the self-contained foundational part of a series of works to study a generalization of continuous clusters categories and their relationship to other type $A$ cluster structures.Comment: 29 pages. Revised to be a self-contained treatment with a focus on representation theoretic method

The genetic algorithm as a discovery engine: Strange circuits and new principles

This paper examines the idea of a genetic or evolutionary algorithm being an inspirational or discovery engine. This is illustrated in the particular context of designing electronic circuits. We argue that by connecting pieces of logic together and testing them to see if they carry out the desired function it may be possible to discover new principles of design, and new algebraic techniques. This is illustrated in the design of binary circuits, particularly arithmetic functions, where we demonstrate that by evolving a hierarchical series of examples, it becomes possible to re-discover the well known ripple-carry principle for building adder circuits of any size. We also examine the much harder case of multiplication. We show also that extending the work into the field of multiple-valued logic, the genetic algorithm is able to produce fully working circuits that lie outside conventional algebra. In addition we look at the issue of principle extraction from evolved data

Emulsification in binary liquids containing colloidal particles: a structure-factor analysis

We present a quantitative confocal-microscopy study of the transient and final microstructure of particle-stabilised emulsions formed via demixing in a binary liquid. To this end, we have developed an image-analysis method that relies on structure factors obtained from discrete Fourier transforms of individual frames in confocal image sequences. Radially averaging the squared modulus of these Fourier transforms before peak fitting allows extraction of dominant length scales over the entire temperature range of the quench. Our procedure even yields information just after droplet nucleation, when the (fluorescence) contrast between the two separating phases is scarcely discernable in the images. We find that our emulsions are stabilised on experimental time scales by interfacial particles and that they are likely to have bimodal droplet-size distributions. We attribute the latter to coalescence together with creaming being the main coarsening mechanism during the late stages of emulsification and we support this claim with (direct) confocal-microscopy observations. In addition, our results imply that the observed droplets emerge from particle-promoted nucleation, possibly followed by a free-growth regime. Finally, we argue that creaming strongly affects droplet growth during the early stages of emulsification. Future investigations could clarify the link between quench conditions and resulting microstructure, paving the way for tailor-made particle-stabilised emulsions from binary liquids.Comment: http://iopscience.iop.org/0953-8984/22/45/455102