The Critical Target Audience: Communicating Water Conservation Behaviors to Critical Thinking Styles

Although water covers approximately 70% of the planet, only a fraction is fresh water, and even less is used as a major source of drinking water. With the continuous increase in the amount of water used in modern standards of living, the quantity of water available is decreasing. The public is beginning to understand water needs to be conserved and they must play a role in water conservation. While previous literature examined how the majority of messages were catered toward the cost-effectiveness of conserving water, this study proposed how using a specific audience attribute could affect behaviors. The purpose of the study was to determine if critical thinking style can be used in the development of future communication strategies to improve water conservation behaviors. The findings of this study provided evidence of a relationship between critical thinking style and the level of engagement in water conservation behaviors. Recommendations suggested targeting the two constructs of critical thinking style, information seekers and engagers, in two different ways. Since the seekers prefer to gather information by seeking the sources themselves, communicators should focus on developing quality information about water conservation and placing it in easily accessible communications channels for the information seeker. On the other hand, a different communications approach should be taken with the engagers, who prefer to learn through their environment. Communicators should focus on communicating to the engager through the environment in word-of-mouth situations using traditional means such as opinion leaders as well as social media

Water use in Florida: Examining Perceptions of Water use Based on Visual Images

Residents and decision makers often perceive information regarding water use differently. This is an issue in Florida where water quantity is a concern, and the distribution of accurate knowledge will be necessary to assist in effective conservation efforts. This study used two online surveys to gain insight into Florida residents’ and decision makers’ (county commissioners, county clerks and county managers) perceptions of water use based on visual images. Using non-probability opt-in sampling methods a total of 525 Florida residents’ responses were collected, and in a second survey 169 decision makers’ responses were collected. Respondents were asked to associate a specific water user, based on a visual, with high, moderate, or low water usage. A series of chi-square tests were used to compare and test for differences between Florida residents’ and decision makers’ perceptions, revealing that significant differences in perception did exist. The identification of these differences was used to develop recommendations for enhancing education and communication regarding water use

Testing the Usability of Communication Materials through Heat Maps in Online Survey Platforms

Usability tests can be used to enhance the communication strategies of agricultural organizations as they identify the use and value of a communications tool from a target audience’s perspective. Further, online survey methodology has provided a place where communicators can gather information from a diverse target audience. One way communicators can create a usability test in online surveys is through the use of heat map questions. Heat map questions provide a platform where agricultural communication professionals and researchers can identify how well a target audience uses a communication material. By merging heat maps and value-based questions, researchers and communicators can evaluate the usability and value of a communication material. Heat maps allow agricultural communicators to evaluate communication materials such as websites and iers, gather users’ feedback and identify strategies to enhance agricultural communication materials. This article provides steps to incorporate heat map questions into online survey, tips for using heat map tests, and methods to interpret heat map results

Proceedings of the 24th annual Central Plains irrigation conference

Presented at Proceedings of the 24th annual Central Plains irrigation conference held on February 21-22 in Colby, Kansas.Includes bibliographical references

Using the K-State center pivot sprinkler and SDI economic comparison spreadsheet - 2008

Presented at the 2008 Central Plains irrigation conference on February 19-20 in Greeley, Colorado.Includes bibliographical references

Lamm, Valluri, Jentschura and Weniger comment on "A Convergent Series for the QED Effective Action" by Cho and Pak [Phys. Rev. Lett. vol. 86, pp. 1947-1950 (2001)]

Complete results were obtained by us in [Can. J. Phys. 71, 389 (1993)] for convergent series representations of both the real and the imaginary part of the QED effective action; these derivations were based on correct intermediate steps. In this comment, we argue that the physical significance of the "logarithmic correction term" found by Cho and Pak in [Phys. Rev. Lett. 86, 1947 (2001)] in comparison to the usual expression for the QED effective action remains to be demonstrated. Further information on related subjects can be found in Appendix A of hep-ph/0308223 and in hep-th/0210240.Comment: 1 page, RevTeX; only "meta-data" update

Rotation-disk connection for very low mass and substellar objects in the Orion Nebula Cluster

Angular momentum loss requires magnetic interaction between the forming star and both the circumstellar disk and the magnetically driven outflows. In order to test these predictions many authors have investigated a rotation-disk connection in pre-main sequence objects with masses larger than about 0.4Msun. For brown dwarfs this connection was not investigated as yet because there are very few samples available. We aim to extend this investigation well down into the substellar regime for our large sample of BDs in the Orion Nebula Cluster, for which we have recently measured rotational periods. In order to investigate a rotation-disk correlation, we derived near-infrared (NIR) excesses for a sample of 732 periodic variables in the Orion Nebula Cluster with masses ranging between 1.5-0.02 Msun and whose IJHK colors are available. Circumstellar NIR excesses were derived from the Delta[I-K] index. We performed our analysis in three mass bins.We found a rotation-disk correlation in the high and intermediate mass regime, in which objects with NIR excess tend to rotate slower than objects without NIR excess. Interestingly, we found no correlation in the substellar regime. A tight correlation between the peak-to-peak (ptp) amplitude of the rotational modulation and the NIR excess was found however for all objects with available ptp values. We discuss possible scenarios which may explain the lack of rotation-disk connection in the substellar mass regime. One possible reason could be the strong dependence of the mass accretion rate on stellar mass in the investigated mass range.Comment: 12 pages, 7 figures, accepted for publication "Astronomy and Astrophysics

Harmonic maps from degenerating Riemann surfaces

We study harmonic maps from degenerating Riemann surfaces with uniformly bounded energy and show the so-called generalized energy identity. We find conditions that are both necessary and sufficient for the compactness in $W^{1,2}$ and $C^{0}$ modulo bubbles of sequences of such maps.Comment: 27 page

Quantization for an elliptic equation of order 2m with critical exponential non-linearity

On a smoothly bounded domain $\Omega\subset\R{2m}$ we consider a sequence of positive solutions $u_k\stackrel{w}{\rightharpoondown} 0$ in $H^m(\Omega)$ to the equation $(-\Delta)^m u_k=\lambda_k u_k e^{mu_k^2}$ subject to Dirichlet boundary conditions, where $0<\lambda_k\to 0$. Assuming that $$\Lambda:=\lim_{k\to\infty}\int_\Omega u_k(-\Delta)^m u_k dx<\infty,$$ we prove that $\Lambda$ is an integer multiple of \Lambda_1:=(2m-1)!\vol(S^{2m}), the total $Q$-curvature of the standard $2m$-dimensional sphere.Comment: 33 page