Influence of Soil Compaction on Nitrogen Volatilization in a Management Intensive Grazing System: Estimation of Gaseous N Losses Using Mass Balance in Intact Soil Cores

Increasing concern about the environmental impacts of greenhouse gases and PM 2.5 particulates has prompted many researchers to examine the processes of gaseous loss of nitrogen (N) from agricultural land. As agricultural production becomes more competitive and producers strive to become more efficient by reducing input costs, they will increasingly employ practices such as the rotational stocking, also called Management Intensive Grazing (MIG). MIG utilizes high animal stocking rates for short periods of time to efficiently harvest pasture crops. Unfortunately, MIG also produces relatively high concentrations of livestock excreta. This has caused intensive grazing practices to become a focal point of research concerning gaseous losses of N

Nursing Faculty Turnover: Recruitment and retention at Jones College

The nursing profession has been facing a deficit of nurses for many years (Denehy, 2000; Haddad et al., 2023, Mayo, 1944; Schorr, 1980; Theisen & Pelfrey, 1990). Nurses are an essential part of the medical care system. They are responsible for most of the functions associated with healthcare. The schools that train nurses are as much affected by the shortage as the industry itself. With fewer nurses in the medical field from which to draw, nursing schools have had a difficult time maintaining nursing faculty levels to meet the needs of the medical community. With nursing faculty shortages already straining a depleted system, voluntary turnover among nursing faculty exacerbates the situation. The reasons given by nursing faculty for voluntarily leaving the classroom varies. The current dissertation project reviews a substantial portion of the literature related to this subject. The practical application of a robust program of recruitment and retention at the local level will be enacted to reduce turnover among nursing faculty

Quid-pro-quo or no? Targeted electoral distribution in Brazil

Scholarship on clientelism typically defines the practice as the contingent exchange of goods and services for political support, but many fail to adequately consider, both theoretically and empirically, the quid-pro-quo aspect of this relationship. In this dissertation, I describe and document the differences between clientelism and other forms of targeted, non-contingent distribution, showing evidence that the two are distinct strategies that can coexist in the same electoral space. To explore this topic, I collected original qualitative and quantitative evidence from Brazil, a country whose politicians, for reasons not yet fully understood, employ a wide variety of campaign strategies. During the 2018 general elections, I spent months with legislative election campaigns, interviewed dozens of ordinary voters, activists, and community leaders, and implemented two original nationwide surveys which focused on a series of vignette and conjoint experiments. The empirical results provide three main contributions. First, I estimate that politicians offer handouts (non-contingent electoral gifts) just as often as they make vote buying offers (contingent electoral exchanges), though the former has only recently emerged as a concept in political science. The distinction is important, because results also show that the two types of distribution are targeted toward different types of voters (based on socioeconomic class). Second, I find that voters disapprove of nonprogrammatic forms of distribution that are coercive over voters' electoral decisions. This is the first empirical documentation that voters reject "perverse accountability," the idea that politicians monitor the voting behavior of their constituents. Finally, I find that voters who see few ideological differences between major parties are more likely to approve of and receive handouts. This provides support for a novel explanation of why politicians choose to give electoral gifts without demanding anything in return: handouts simply help candidates differentiate themselves when there are many competitors and/or ideological appeals are ineffective. Overall, this study significantly improves our understanding of citizen-elite linkages in middle-income democracies.LimitedAuthor requested closed access extension (OA after 2yrs) via Additional Restricted Access Extension for

Sula study revisited: 20-year post-fire regeneration in the southern Bitterroot Valley, Montana.

In the summer of 2000, a number of large fires burned in the southern Bitterroot Valley near Sula, Montana. Research was conducted in 2001 and 2003 in the fire-affected areas of the French Basin and Larid Creek areas in order to investigate the effects of environmental variables, fire severity, and post-fire management on vegetation regeneration. In 2020 these areas were remeasured to understand trends over time by evaluating the impact of these same factors 20 years post fire. The results showed that the effects of environmental variables, fire severity, and post-fire management on vegetation regeneration were varied. The most influential environmental variable to affect vegetation regeneration for understory species and overstory species was aspect. Fire severity was influential, with differences in overstory and understory severity impacting the distribution, presence, and percent cover of vegetation species. The most influential post-fire management activity was seedling planting. Results suggest that study areas that were affected by high severity fire are unlikely to return to pre-fire conditions without tree planting or other management activities. Further research should be conducted on the survival rate of planted seedlings in managed areas over time. Comparisons should also be made between natural seedling regeneration and planted seedling viability in burned areas over time. More research should be conducted on fire severity’s long-term effects on understory vegetation as these ecosystems return to a form of equilibrium over time

Solving an MRI spin relaxometry problem with parallel computing

MRI spin relaxometry is the process of recovering the spin density spectrum from the time samples of the spin signal for each pixel of a magnetic resonance image. Since healthy tissue exhibits different spin relaxation rates from diseased tissue, MRI spin relaxometry potentially has utility for diagnosing disease. However, recovering the spin relaxation rates involves solving an inverse problem which requires substantial computation. The computation\u27s running time can be reduced by processing the pixels in parallel on a parallel computer. A parallel program for solving the MRI spin relaxometry problem, SRSolve, was implemented in Java with MPI, its running time was measured on a 32-processor cluster parallel computer, and its performance was compared to the CONTIN program. CONTIN required about 44 sec on the average to solve one pixel and about 3600 sec to solve an entire 64x64-pixel test image (with 2,597 unmasked pixels) on the parallel computer. SRSolve required 3.04 sec on the average to solve one pixel and 263 sec to solve the entire image on the parallel computer

Currency Crises and Macroeconomic Performance

This paper presents some theory and evidence on the implications of sudden currency depreciations for output and inflation. It identifies some of the characteristics shared by countries which have suffered falling output in the aftermath of a currency crisis, and it presents a small model which rationalises aspects of this common experience. The model is then used to derive the optimal monetary policy response to a crisis. A key result is that a currency crisis which coincides with a banking crisis is more likely to depress output and may call for an accommodating monetary policy.currency crises; monetary policy