HEDONIC ESTIMATION OF SOUTHEASTERN OKLAHOMA FORESTLAND PRICES

Forestland is a composite good, the price of which varies with its characteristics, such as its ability to produce timber and its proximity to markets. Sales of predominately forested land in southeastern Oklahoma were examined to better understand and quantify the influences of physical and spatial characteristics on sales prices.Land Economics/Use,

Improving Asteroid Remote Sensing by Examining Past Martian Methods

Deep Space Remote Sensing is an ever-evolving field. The very first missions into deep space were explorations that utilized trial and error, as humanity faced a new frontier of unknowns. Over these 70 years of deep space exploration, much attention has been given to our three nearest celestial neighbors: the Moon, Venus, and Mars. Mars, in particular, has been the target of much observation and study due to it being a target for future colonization. Meanwhile, the areas beyond Mars have had comparatively less focus. Asteroids and objects beyond Mars offer many new horizons for humanity to study. By using what we have learned from Martian observation and utilizing technologies that have proved their mettle in these endeavors, it can be possible to improve future missions beyond the “Red Planet.” This research will encompass a great deal of philosophy and data and offer a deep dive into the history and development of asteroid remote sensing. Research will also be done into Martian probes, which have enjoyed almost 70 years of development compared to a mere two decades for asteroid remote sensing, and how Mars Orbiters may offer insights into further ventures into the Asteroid Belt and beyond. The goal of this research is to bring a better understanding to how asteroid and planetary remote sensing could evolve by looking at the hardware, processes, and techniques used by Martian missions, and applying them to Asteroid and outer planet missions

Biblical Worldview Development While Learning Origins Science

The purpose of this hermeneutic phenomenology was to understand the lived experience of how homeschooled high school students integrate origins science into a biblical worldview. For this study, biblical worldview development is the process of faith development in either form or content through an individual’s understanding and application of the Bible. The theoretical framework guiding this study is Fowler’s faith development theory as it relates an individual’s physical, mental, and moral growth to the development of their worldview. This study sought to answer the following research question: how do homeschooled high school students integrate origins science into a biblical worldview? Participants were selected from homeschooled families from across the United States. Data collection included free word association documents, semi-structured interviews, and a focus group. The result of this study is a model for biblical worldview development that explains the lived experience of homeschoolers integrating origins science into a biblical worldview through the components of preparation, education, determination, and reflection. Parents significantly influence the components of the resulting model, causing participants to develop their worldview according to that of their parents. The resulting model for biblical worldview development aligns with the faith stages of Fowler’s faith development theory and supports the latter’s use as a worldview development theory

Reclaiming the Radical Economic Message of Luke

Of the four canonical gospels of the New Testament, the one most concerned with poverty, wealth, and the ethics of possession is Luke. It contains more economic material and a sharper message than do Mark, Matthew, or John. A centuries-long debate rages over just how revolutionary Luke’s message is. This dissertation employs redactional, literary, statistical, historical, and theological methodologies to recover Luke’s radical economic message, to place it in its ancient context, and to tease out its prophetic implications for today. It argues that Luke has a radical message of good news for the poor and a call for resistance to wealth. God is shown to favor the poor, championing their struggle for justice while condemning the rich and recommending a sweeping disposal of wealth for the benefit of the poor. This represents a distinct break from the prevailing ethics of the ancient Roman Empire and a profound challenge to the economic systems of the modern world. Generations of interpreters have worked to file down the sharp edges of Luke’s message, from scribes copying ancient manuscripts, to authors from the first few centuries of the Christian movement, to contemporary biblical scholars. Such domestication disfigures the gospel, silencing its critique of an economic system whose unremitting drive for profit and economic growth continues to widen the gap between the rich and the poor while threatening life-altering, environmental change. It is time to reclaim the bracing, prophetic call of Luke’s economic message, a message that warns against the destructive power of wealth and insists on justice for the poor, the oppressed, and the marginalized

Effective diffusion constant in a two dimensional medium of charged point scatterers

We obtain exact results for the effective diffusion constant of a two dimensional Langevin tracer particle in the force field generated by charged point scatterers with quenched positions. We show that if the point scatterers have a screened Coulomb (Yukawa) potential and are uniformly and independently distributed then the effective diffusion constant obeys the Volgel-Fulcher-Tammann law where it vanishes. Exact results are also obtained for pure Coulomb scatterers frozen in an equilibrium configuration of the same temperature as that of the tracer.Comment: 9 pages IOP LaTex, no figure

Ares I First Stage Booster Deceleration System: An Overview

In 2005, the Congressional NASA Authorization Act enacted a new space exploration program, the "Vision for Space Exploratien". The Constellation Program was formed to oversee the implementation of this new mission. With an intent not simply to support the International Space Station, but to build a permanent outpost on the Moon and then travel on to explore ever more distant terrains, the Constellation Program is supervising the development of a brand new fleet of launch vehicles, the Ares. The Ares lineup will include two new launch vehicles: the Ares I Crew Launch Vehicle and the Ares V Cargo Launch Vehicle. A crew exploration vehicle, Orion, will be launched on the Ares I. It will be capable of docking with the Space Station, the lunar lander, Altair, and the Earth Departure Stage of Ares V. The Ares V will be capable of lifting both large-scale hardware and the Altair into space. The Ares First Stage Team is tasked with developing the propulsion system necessary to liftoff from the Earth and loft the entire Ares vehicle stack toward low Earth orbit. The Ares I First Stage booster is a 12-foot diameter, five-segment, reusable solid rocket booster derived from the Space Shuttle's four segment reusable solid rocket booster (SRB). It is separated from the Upper Stage through the use of a Deceleration Subsystem (DSS). Booster Tumble Motors are used to induce the pitch tumble following separation from the Upper Stage. The spent Ares I booster must be recoverable using a parachute deceleration system similar to that of the Shuttle SRB heritage system. Since Ares I is much heavier and reenters the Earth's atmosphere from a higher altitude at a much higher velocity than the SRB, all of the parachutes must be redesigned to reliably meet the operational requisites of the new launch vehicles. This paper presents an overview of this new booster deceleration system. It includes comprehensive detail of the parachute deceleration system, its design and deployment sequences, including how and why it is being developed, the requirements it must meet, and the testing involved in its implementation

Fit Into College II: Physical Activity and Nutrition Behavior Effectiveness and Programming Recommendations

Purpose: To determine whether residency (living on campus versus off campus) was related to the effects of Fit into College on students’ health behaviors, and to understand interns’ perceptions of their roles in mentoring their trainees. Design: Pre-experimental, one-group, pretest-posttest design and a posttest focus group interview. Setting: University-offered health and internship courses. Subjects: Twenty-four students (trainees) participated in the intervention, nine of whom lived on campus. Five student-interns served as their mentors. Intervention: Fit into College was a 14-week intervention in which trainees teamed up with an intern to improve and/or maintain healthy nutrition and physical activity behaviors. Measures: Trainees’ nutrition and physical activity behaviors and perceptions were quantitatively assessed through surveys at preintervention and postintervention. Interns’ mentoring perceptions were qualitatively assessed through a focus group interview after the intervention. Analysis: Two-factor repeated measure ANOVAs and qualitative theme identification. Results: Regardless of their residency location, the trainees’ perceptions of the health benefits of eating fruits and vegetables improved during the intervention. However, for trainees living on campus, the intervention was not effective in increasing the number of fruits and vegetables consumed or the planning for food preparation. The interns perceived that they did not have adequate access to healthy foods, the knowledge or skills to prepare healthy foods, or the competency to teach food preparation strategies to their trainees. For trainees living on campus, the intervention was more effective in decreasing perceived exercise barriers than trainees living off campus. Conclusion: Future iterations of Fit into College may focus on 1) improving college students’ planning and preparation of healthy foods, 2) segmenting trainees into more homogeneous groups for the interns to tailor their areas of expertise (campus vs. off-campus and/or freshman vs. upperclass students), and 3) collaborating with university-partners to improve environmental conditions to promote physical activity and healthy nutrition

Perturbation theory for the effective diffusion constant in a medium of random scatterer

We develop perturbation theory and physically motivated resummations of the perturbation theory for the problem of a tracer particle diffusing in a random media. The random media contains point scatterers of density $\rho$ uniformly distributed through out the material. The tracer is a Langevin particle subjected to the quenched random force generated by the scatterers. Via our perturbative analysis we determine when the random potential can be approximated by a Gaussian random potential. We also develop a self-similar renormalisation group approach based on thinning out the scatterers, this scheme is similar to that used with success for diffusion in Gaussian random potentials and agrees with known exact results. To assess the accuracy of this approximation scheme its predictions are confronted with results obtained by numerical simulation.Comment: 22 pages, 6 figures, IOP (J. Phys. A. style