Selling a Piece of the Farm Credit System

Agricultural Finance,

Growth of Large-Scale Credit Unions in Iowa: Implications for Public Policy

Over the past two decades, the financial services industry has experienced a significant increase in competition and internal rivalry. Driven by deregulation and advances in information technologies, many historical institutional distinctions among financial intermediaries have disappeared or blurred considerably. The fundamental assumption that has guided many of the policy changes is that consumers are best served when businesses offering the same services are allowed to compete within a similar regulatory or institutional environment. Despite this general leveling of the playing field, credit unions continue to operate under tax and regulatory rules that differ, in important ways, from most of the firms in the financial services industry. Many of the tax and regulatory distinctions arose in the early 20th century during a time when credit unions were being established to meet the needs of individuals or communities that could not or were not being adequately served by commercial banks. However, as the financial services industry has evolved, the justification for continuing or maintaining credit unions

Growth of large-scale credit unions in Iowa: implications for public policy

Over the past two decades, the financial services industry has experienced a significant increase in competition and internal rivalry. Driven by deregulation and advances in information technologies, many historical institutional distinctions among financial intermediaries have disappeared or blurred considerably. The fundamental assumption that has guided many of the policy changes is that consumers are best served when businesses offering the same services are allowed to compete within a similar regulatory or institutional environment. Despite this general leveling of the playing field, credit unions continue to operate under tax and regulatory rules that differ, in important ways, from most of the firms in the financial services industry. Many of the tax and regulatory distinctions arose in the early 20th century during a time when credit unions were being established to meet the needs of individuals or communities that could not or were not being adequately served by commercial banks. However, as the financial services industry has evolved, the justification for continuing or maintaining credit union

Novel Approaches to Broadband Transducer Design

Historically in the development of transducer technology, much emphasis has been placed upon advanced linear and annular arrays with little effort directed toward designing more efficient, broadband, single-element transducers, which are employed in most field applications. Southwest Research Institute funded an internal research project to investigate three novel approaches to efficient broadband transducer design: polarization control (1), pulse-shape control (2), and back-face concavity control (3).</p

Conceptual Design of a High-Resolution, Low Cost Topographic Mapping Mission

There is a need for space-based topographic mapping missions which are an order-of-magnitude less costly than the $100M-class missions currently planned by NASA and the commercial community. The Stereo Imaging Long-Look Satellite (STILLSAT), having a mass of approximately 100 kg, is designed for 5m instantaneous field of view (IFOV) to meet most of the topographic requirements of both the science and cartography community. The resulting Digital Elevation Models (DEM) are predicted to have 10m (absolute) contour intervals, geo-corrected by ground datum. Frame and panoramic cameras from Apollo 15, 16, and 17, as well as ESA\u27s Metric Cameras and the U.S. Large Format Camera have been cited by photogrammetrists as advantageous for topographic map production. The use of a CCD framing camera for stereo imaging was discussed by JPL in 1979 but dismissed because CCD technology was not yet mature enough. By capitalizing on recent advances in CCD technology and instituting a concept of shared stability and pointing responsibility between the bus and payload, it is now possible to consider such an advanced mission. This paper will focus on the system engineering trades resulting from mission requirements that dictate earth/satellite motion compensation to achieve very high spatial resolution, as well as off-axis cross track imaging to maximize target acquisition. The mission is approached from an integrated design paradigm wherein science, instrument, bus, and ground operations objectives are simultaneously weighed to achieve extremely low cost, low power, and reliable mission elements. The initial STILLSAT mission operations plan is to obtain multiple stereo images at base height ratios of 1.0 within targets-of-opportunity of 100km in diameter to support specific science objectives. STILLSAT is designed for line-of-sight pointing to within 0.1 degree and can image off-axis up to 20 degrees in the cross track direction. The total spacecraft and mission operations cost is expected to be well under$5M (not including launch) and is being initially proposed as a Student Explorer Development Initiative (STEDI) project to the Universities Space Research Association\u27s Advanced Design Program. A launch could occur within 24 months of go-ahead. Progressively advanced concepts of this approach will be discussed, those which can map much larger regions of the Earth through use of larger detector arrays and mosaicked images. It is even conceivable that a STILLSAT-derived single global mapping satellite or constellation of simpler satellites could provide worldwide coverage. This approach holds promise for both scientific and commercial applications

Electrochemical Membrane Technology for Carbon Dioxide Capture from Flue Gas

© 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. To address concerns about climate change resulting from emission of CO 2 by fossil-fuel power plants, FuelCell Energy, Inc. (FCE) has developed Combined Electric Power and Carbon-dioxide Separation (CEPACS) system concept. The CEPACS system utilizes Electrochemical Membrane (ECM) technology derived from the Company's Direct FuelCell ® products. The system separates the CO 2 from the flue gas of other plants and produces electric power using a supplementary fuel. FCE is currently evaluating the use of ECM to cost effectively separate CO 2 from the flue gas of Pulverized Coal (PC) power plants under a U.S. Department of Energy contract. The overarching objective of the project is to verify that the ECM can achieve at least 90% CO 2 capture from the flue gas with no more than 35% increase in the cost of electricity. The project activities have included: 1) techno-economic analysis for an ECM-based CO 2 capture system applied to a 550 MW existing PC plant, 2) laboratory scale operational and performance tests of a membrane assembly, 3) performance tests of the membrane to evaluate the effects of impurities present in the coal plant flue gas, and 4) bench scale testing of an ECM-based CO 2 separation and purification system

Effects of Climate Oscillations on Wildland Fire Potential in the Continental United States

The effects of climate oscillations on spatial and temporal variations in wildland fire potential in the continental U.S. are examined from 1979 to 2015 using cyclostationary empirical orthogonal functions (CSEOFs). The CSEOF analysis isolates effects associated with the modulated annual cycle and the El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO). The results show that, in early summer, wildland fire potential is reduced in the southwest during El Nino but is increased in the northwest, with opposite trends for La Nina. In late summer, El Nino is associated with increased wildland fire potential in the southwest. Relative to the mean, the largest impacts of ENSO are observed in the northwest and southeast. Climate impacts on fire potential due to ENSO are found to be most closely associated with variations in relative humidity. The connections established here between fire potential and climate oscillations could result in improved wildland fire risk assessment and resource allocation

A comparison of agricultural systems at the Allee Research Center

The petrochemical-dependent agriculture that developed in the export-oriented economy of the 1970\u27s proved vulnerable to high energy costs and volatile export markets as well as detrimental to soil and water resources. This project was designed to compare a petrochemical-based, high-tillage, low-management cropping system (System I) with two alternative systems: a ridge-till, reduced fertilizer and pesticide, high-management system (System II) and a rotational, low-pesticide, low-fertilizer conventional tillage system (System III)

Bifurcations in annular electroconvection with an imposed shear

We report an experimental study of the primary bifurcation in electrically-driven convection in a freely suspended film. A weakly conducting, submicron thick smectic liquid crystal film was supported by concentric circular electrodes. It electroconvected when a sufficiently large voltage $V$ was applied between its inner and outer edges. The film could sustain rapid flows and yet remain strictly two-dimensional. By rotation of the inner electrode, a circular Couette shear could be independently imposed. The control parameters were a dimensionless number ${\cal R}$, analogous to the Rayleigh number, which is $\propto V^2$ and the Reynolds number ${\cal R}e$ of the azimuthal shear flow. The geometrical and material properties of the film were characterized by the radius ratio $\alpha$, and a Prandtl-like number ${\cal P}$. Using measurements of current-voltage characteristics of a large number of films, we examined the onset of electroconvection over a broad range of $\alpha$, ${\cal P}$ and ${\cal R}e$. We compared this data quantitatively to the results of linear stability theory. This could be done with essentially no adjustable parameters. The current-voltage data above onset were then used to infer the amplitude of electroconvection in the weakly nonlinear regime by fitting them to a steady-state amplitude equation of the Landau form. We show how the primary bifurcation can be tuned between supercritical and subcritical by changing $\alpha$ and ${\cal R}e$.Comment: 17 pages, 12 figures. Submitted to Phys. Rev. E. Minor changes after refereeing. See also http://mobydick.physics.utoronto.c