Assessment of Program Delivery to Small Farmers: Fax Information Center System at Satellite Locations

Due to the many variables associated with small and part-time farmers, such as widely ranging educational levels and available time applied to farming, effectively providing extension information to this group of farmers can be quite difficult. The use of innovative, program delivery methods for reaching small and part-time farmers has been tried in several North Carolina counties with variable success. One means of reaching these special audiences is a satellite information center at agribusiness or other locations away from the extension office itself. A fax request system prominently placed directly in these satellite locations has produced widely variable results in level of use from the perspective of requests for information originating from the centers. Yet, where the centers have been used for both an information request system and an informational bulletin board with timely information sent to the centers from Cooperative Extension for posting on the bulletin boards, the results have been very favorable. While many factors have been found to affect the success of individual locations, the fax satellite centers appear to be able to provide a niche for innovative program delivery by extension and can have highly beneficial side effects of positively marketing the extension programs in the respective counties

2018 Research & Innovation Day Program

A one day showcase of applied research, social innovation, scholarship projects and activities.https://first.fanshawec.ca/cri_cripublications/1005/thumbnail.jp

Physical characterization of main-belt Comet (248370) 2005 QN₁₇₃

We report results from new and archival observations of the newly discovered active asteroid (248370) 2005 QN173 (also now designated Comet 433P), which has been determined to be a likely main-belt comet based on a subsequent discovery that it is recurrently active near perihelion. From archival data analysis, we estimate g′ -, r′-, i′-, and z′-band absolute magnitudes for the nucleus of H g = 16.62 ± 0.13, H r = 16.12 ± 0.10, H i = 16.05 ± 0.11, and H z = 15.93 ± 0.08, corresponding to nucleus colors of g′ -r′ =0.50 ± 0.16, r′ -i′ =0.07 ± 0.15, and i′ -z′ =0.12 ± 0.14; an equivalent V-band absolute magnitude of H V = 16.32 ± 0.08; and a nucleus radius of r n = 1.6 ± 0.2 km (using a V-band albedo of p V = 0.054 ± 0.012). Meanwhile, we find mean near-nucleus coma colors when 248370 is active of g′ -r′ =0.47 ± 0.03, r′ -i′ =0.10 ± 0.04, and i′ -z′ =0.05 ± 0.05 and similar mean dust tail colors, suggesting that no significant gas coma is present. We find approximate ratios between the scattering cross sections of near-nucleus dust (within 5000 km of the nucleus) and the nucleus of A d /A n = 0.7 ± 0.3 on 2016 July 22 and 1.8 &lt; A d /A n &lt; 2.9 in 2021 July and August. During the 2021 observation period, the coma declined in intrinsic brightness by ∼0.35 mag (or ∼25%) in 37 days, while the surface brightness of the dust tail remained effectively constant over the same period. Constraints derived from the sunward extent of the coma and width of the tail as measured perpendicular to the orbit plane suggest that the terminal velocities of ejected dust grains are extremely slow (∼1 m s-1 for 1 μm particles), suggesting that the observed dust emission may be aided by rapid rotation of the nucleus lowering the effective escape velocity.</p

Search for Scalar Diphoton Resonances in the Mass Range 65−60065-600 GeV with the ATLAS Detector in pppp Collision Data at s\sqrt{s} = 8 TeVTeV

A search for scalar particles decaying via narrow resonances into two photons in the mass range 65–600 GeV is performed using $20.3\text{}\text{}{\mathrm{fb}}^{-1}$ of $\sqrt{s}=8\text{}\text{}\mathrm{TeV}$ $pp$ collision data collected with the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider. The recently discovered Higgs boson is treated as a background. No significant evidence for an additional signal is observed. The results are presented as limits at the 95% confidence level on the production cross section of a scalar boson times branching ratio into two photons, in a fiducial volume where the reconstruction efficiency is approximately independent of the event topology. The upper limits set extend over a considerably wider mass range than previous searches