When It’s Not Actually About the Tech: Simple Design-Focused Insight & Planning Tools for Technology-Based Library Services

Does this sound familiar? You’re the recipient of a new technology, and are comfortable running and maintaining it, but don’t know how to offer it as a service. Or, you’re already offering some technology-focused services, but they’re underutilized, confusing to users, or stressful for library staff. Service Design to the rescue! A lesser known cousin of the popular User Experience (UX), Service Design is more encompassing and holistic in its approach. Tools such as the creation of user personas or the holding of focus groups to gain insights from users, might be familiar to attendees of this conference. Two specific tools, Journey Maps and Service Blueprints, have been used to great success by the MSU Library and will be detailed in this session. This presentation will share practical information gained from hands-on experiences coupled with evidence and information from the field. Because we all share the common goal of providing technology-focused services that are useful, usable, and desirable, it is also the hope that attendees can contribute in a conversation focused on their own challenges and solutions to this topic

Price Determinants of Ranch Horses Sold at Auction in Texas

A hedonic pricing model was used to determine parameters affecting ranch horse prices at two Texas auctions. Color, sex, age-sex interaction, sale order, and consigning ranch were all found to significantly affect price. Sire analysis found that progeny performance records did not significantly affect price.auction, hedonic model, ranch horses, Demand and Price Analysis, Livestock Production/Industries, C01, Q10,

Survey Research on Little or no Budget: Practical Tips and Advice for Using the Internet to Conduct Surveys

The Internet is a medium that can be used to streamline the process of conducting survey research and offers advantages over traditional survey mediums like the face-to-face interview, telephone interview, and paper-based survey. Among the advantages are the potential for quick response rates via Web forms or e-mail, as well as monetary savings related to postage, stationary, or long-distance charges. In this article, we will provide practical tips for using the Internet for survey research as well as advice and lessons learned from our experience using the Internet to conduct a large survey project on little or no budget

Promoting mathematical communication and community via Blackboard

Major changes in mathematics pedagogy include writing as pedagogy and the role of community in learning. The classroom community is naturally extended by the use of online discussion boards. In this paper several models for student use of online discussion boards that have been successfully used to promote mathematical discourse are presented. Structured and unstructured examples that are easily adaptable and transportable to a variety of mathematics classroom settings are offered. These assignments facilitate student engagement and interaction outside of the classroom. Assessment, utility, and transferability are offered. Although the authors use the discussion boards provided by Blackboard, this particular software package is not necessary

Microbial residence time is a controlling parameter of the taxonomic composition and functional profile of microbial communities.

A remaining challenge within microbial ecology is to understand the determinants of richness and diversity observed in environmental microbial communities. In a range of systems, including activated sludge bioreactors, the microbial residence time (MRT) has been previously shown to shape the microbial community composition. However, the physiological and ecological mechanisms driving this influence have remained unclear. Here, this relationship is explored by analyzing an activated sludge system fed with municipal wastewater. Using a model designed in this study based on Monod-growth kinetics, longer MRTs were shown to increase the range of growth parameters that enable persistence, resulting in increased richness and diversity in the modeled community. In laboratory experiments, six sequencing batch reactors treating domestic wastewater were operated in parallel at MRTs between 1 and 15 days. The communities were characterized using both 16S ribosomal RNA and non-target messenger RNA sequencing (metatranscriptomic analysis), and model-predicted monotonic increases in richness were confirmed in both profiles. Accordingly, taxonomic Shannon diversity also increased with MRT. In contrast, the diversity in enzyme class annotations resulting from the metatranscriptomic analysis displayed a non-monotonic trend over the MRT gradient. Disproportionately high abundances of transcripts encoding for rarer enzymes occur at longer MRTs and lead to the disconnect between taxonomic and functional diversity profiles

All these rivers (a collection of poetry) &, Beyond the temple, beyond the pond : deep ecology and contemporary writing of the American West

PhD ThesisThis thesis comprises a collection of poetry, All These Rivers, and a critical dissertation Beyond the Temple, Beyond the Pond: Deep Ecology and Contemporary Literature of the American West, which collectively explore the relationship between the literature of the American West and Deep Ecology. All These Rivers engages with the themes and tenets of Deep Ecology in its methods and principles of construction. It considers my relationship to the landscape of home, the Pacific Northwest, and how it is maintained and intensified by the process of writing my experiences into existence during a period of geographic isolation. The collection’s title responds to the many rivers in this region, but also alludes to the collection’s themes of origins, direction and cycles. The content and structure of this body of work demonstrate how nature and natural processes not only shape the landscape, but imprint upon the self. Voicing my complex relationship with this geography through the process of writing, re-mapping and recounting experiences, this collection seeks to collapse the distance between vast and intimate geographies, reconcile the wild and the civilized, and to reunify myself with home terrain. The critical component provides a context for reading this collection of poems and further explores of the relationship between Deep Ecology and contemporary Western American literature through critical readings of Annie Dillard’s Holy the Firm and Ellen Meloy’s The Last Cheater’s Waltz. Concluding this body of work, I embark on a brief critical reading of All These Rivers, suggesting that the process of writing the collection, and the poems themselves, engage in a practice of Deep Ecology

Probing pairing correlations in Sn isotopes using Richardson-Gaudin integrability

Pairing correlations in the even-even A=102-130 Sn isotopes are discussed, based on the Richardson-Gaudin variables in an exact Woods-Saxon plus reduced BCS pairing framework. The integrability of the model sheds light on the pairing correlations, in particular on the previously reported sub-shell structure.Comment: Proceedings of the XX International School on Nuclear Physics, Neutron Physics and Applications, Varna, Bulgaria, 16-22 September, 201

Soybean Meal Inclusion Rate Effects on Odor Intensity, Hydrogen Sulfide and Ammonia in Commercial Swine Production Units

Three commercial swine farms with side-by-side 1100- head finishing units were fed two diets with varying protein levels. Odor threshold, ammonia and hydrogen sulfide were collected from the pit fans. The high protein (HP) treatment averaged 1420 odor units compared to 1035 odor units for the low protein (LP) treatment, reducing odor by 27% (P= 0.02). Reduction in H2S concentration was not significant, averaging 0.92 ppm and 0.59 ppm for the HP and LP treatments, respectively (P = 0.09). Concentrations of NH3 were 12.3 ppm and 9.1 ppm for the HP and LP treatments, respectively (P =0.10). Seasonal differences in H2S (P= 0.002) and NH3 (P=0.05) were indicated but the cause of this difference was not diet related and could be due to a number of seasonally-related operation attributes. This study demonstrates that dietary manipulation by addition of synthetic amino acids replacing soybean meal is a method pork producers can use to decrease the odor intensity of their pork production site

Variability within individuals of plasma ionic magnesium concentrations

BACKGROUND: With the invention of the ion-selective electrode (ISE), ionic magnesium (iMg) is a common blood assay. This could be advantageous, as iMg is the biologically active form of Mg. There is some evidence that iMg has considerable within subject variability. RESULTS: Individual ranges averaged .08 mmol/L (range .05 to .14). Coefficients of variation (CV) ranged from 3% to 7% (mean 4%) while analytical variation was determined to be 2.3%. Biological variability thus accounts for almost half of the variability, which is clinically significant, as 9 of the 13 subjects recorded at least one value below a reference range of .46 – .60 mmol/L. A significant within-day variation (p < .001) was noted, with differences between 7:00 and 10:00 as well as 10:00 and 22:00. Between day variations were not significant (p = .56). CONCLUSIONS: A plausible explanation of this data is that iMg has a circadian rhythm. Thus, cautious interpretation of single iMg values is warranted until future research determines the nature of iMg variability