Heavy Flavour in a Nutshell

Moriond QCD brings together particle physicists of varied interests. This review and introduction to heavy flavour physics is aimed at those not in the heavy-flavour field to describe the motivation and methodology of precision flavour physics, and introduce the most tantalising searches for new physics. The LHC experiments are expected to make great inroads into constraining the new physics parameter space and discover the new physics which I will argue \emph{must} be present to describe our observed universe.Comment: 46th Rencontres de Moriond, QCD and High Energy Interactions, La Thuile, March 20-27, 201

ANALYSIS OF GOVERNMENT FARM SUBSIDIES ON FARMLAND CASH RENTAL RATES USING A FIXED EFFECT SPATIAL DISTRIBUTED LAG MODEL AND A TRANSLOG COST MODEL

The objective of this study is to examine how factors such as government payments, soil productivity ratings, commodity selling price, corn and soybean production, and spatial attributes affect cash rental rates. Baseline estimates of the effects of government payments on cash rents are determined using a fixed effect, distributed lag model. The results of this model are compared to a distributed lag model that incorporates spatial effects. A second model estimates the impact of government subsides on farm cost structure. This is accomplished estimating a fixed effect, translog cost function that also incorporates spatial effects. The data used in the analysis is the Illinois Farm Business Farm Management (FBFM) Economic Management Analysis (EMA), containing more than five thousand Illinois FBFM clients annually from 1996 to 2001.Farm Management,

END-USER GAINS FROM INPUT CHARACTERISTICS IMPROVEMENT

Production Economics,

AGRICULTURAL AND RECREATIONAL IMPACTS FROM SURFACE FLOW CHANGES DUE TO GOLD MINING OPERATIONS

Nevada ranks third in the world in gold production. In order to operate the massive open pit gold mines, the State of Nevada granted mining companies a temporary permit to pump groundwater from near the open pits and dispose of it. Certain instream flows have nearly doubled relative to average historical flows in recent years. Following pit closure, surface flows will likely decline from historical levels. This study measures the impacts of these changing water supplies on downstream agricultural and recreational users. We argue that the creation of temporary changes in water rights for the downstream users would likely mitigate future losses both groups are expected to experience.Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Demonstration of a sterilizable solid rocket motor system, addendum

Technical emphasis was placed on characterization of a scaled-up batch of the improved propellant formulation and determination of the effects of dry heat sterilization on propellant integrity and structural response. The grain stress analysis was directed toward tailoring a fully-bonded grain to the calculated propellant allowable stresses and investigating various bond release concepts to relieve stresses incurred in thermal shrinkage following sterilization

COMPARING END-USE VALUES FOR NORTH DAKOTA HARD RED SPRING WHEAT VARIETIES

Markets for agricultural products may be inefficient when signals do not adequately reflect product characteristics important to market participants. Although preferences can be explicitly stated through price premiums or characteristic values can be determined via hedonic methods, the problem is compounded when product quality information is costly to obtain. Bundling of quality traits by variety can serve to signal product quality. A procedure is developed in this paper to derive the value of different varieties in meeting buyer demands. An application to the hard red spring market wheat both validates the ability of the procedure to distinguish among varieties, as well as provides empirical support to the existence of Akerlof's lemon market in the release of wheat varieties.Agricultural markets, product quality, distance functions, wheat, Crop Production/Industries, Marketing,

Drive mechanism for production of simulated human breath

Simulated breath drive mechanism was developed as subsystem to breathing metabolic simulator. Mechanism reproduces complete range of human breath rate, breath depth, and breath waveform, as well as independently controlled functional residual capacity. Mechanism was found capable of simulating various individual human breathing characteristics without any changes of parts