A bank examiner looks at agricultural lending

Agricultural credit ; Bank loans

Measuring the Hubble Constant with the Hubble Space Telescope

Ten years ago our team completed the Hubble Space Telescope Key Project on the extragalactic distance scale. Cepheids were detected in some 25 galaxies and used to calibrate four secondary distance indicators that reach out into the expansion field beyond the noise of galaxy peculiar velocities. The result was H_0 = 72 +/- 8 km/sec/Mpc and put an end to galaxy distances uncertain by a factor of two. This work has been awarded the Gruber Prize in Cosmology for 2009.Comment: Gruber Prize Lecture to be published in Transactions of the IA

Description of path-in-the-sky contact analog piloting display

A contact analog display called Path-In-The-Sky (PITS) integrates information on airplane attitude, airplane kinematic performance, navigation situation, and path prediction into one instrument. The pictorial format utilized in the PITS display concept was designed to reduce the required instrument scan and to simplify interpretation of informtion with the objective of reducing pilot work load. Described are the symbology of the PITS display, the coordinate systems used to generate the display, and the magnitudes of pertinent geometric characteristics selected during the display development. Also included are examples of the PITS display generated on a stand-alone graphics computer

Examining Student Severe Weather Behavior During a Hypothetical Tornado Scenario

Destructive severe weather events are an unfortunate reality of the United States’ unique geography. Each spring, the central and southeastern states are subjected to nature’s most violent localized storms, tornadoes. The 2011 tornado season received nationwide attention for two events: the April 27 outbreak was responsible for 348 fatalities from 292 confirmed tornadoes across 16 states, while the May 22 Joplin, Missouri, tornado was responsible for an additional 162 fatalities (Storm Prediction Center, 2011; Paul & Stimers, 2012). One of the most devastating single tornadoes of that outbreak was the Tuscaloosa, Alabama, tornado that claimed 64 lives along its 130-km track and ranked as an Enhanced Fujita scale category 4 (EF4). Urban sprawl in the United States exposes people to more events similar to what occurred in Tuscaloosa as developments increase in area and population size. The National Weather Service (NWS) continues to modernize its warning systems because inadequate warning for at risk populations is a major contributing factor to fatalities and death. However, there is little information available about the public’s response to these warnings in seeking adequate shelter. For this analysis, a survey was constructed to simulate a tornado event, similar to that of the April 27, 2011, tornado. Participants were provided with three levels of warning information (high, medium, and low), while only half were able to view a map of the tornado’s progress towards their location. Participants were asked to evaluate the situation by answering a series of questions at multiple intervals of the storm. The collected survey data will be used to analyze risk perception and shelter seeking behavior in relation to available warning information

King Kong: Reflections of Feminism Through Film Music

https://remix.berklee.edu/graduate-studies-scoring/1071/thumbnail.jp

Positive Connection Leads to Student Success

This study focuses on the impact of positive adult connections on high school students’ success. The data is from of one southern Maine high school with a population of 1,050 students. The data includes overall school-wide results of student connectedness, as well as in-depth results from nine student interviews. The researcher’s intent was to demonstrate the need for continued mentoring efforts for high school students. It does appear from this study that adult mentoring programs have a positive effect on student success. The study also indicates that further research regarding the impact of student mentoring programs in high schools is warranted and could be used to help refine or strengthen such programs. The Windham High School administration team is interested in bettering the current advisory program. The data from this study will help inform such improvements. Dedicatio

Examining Admission Factors in an MPA Program

This article presents an in-depth examination of the validity of the admission factors employed by a NASPAA-accredited MPA program. Admission factors are examined to determine if particular factors, or a set of factors, are most indicative of an applicant’s potential achievement in the MPA program as measured by a student’s final grade point average (GPA) in the program. The study uses truncated regression techniques to analyze student records in order to determine the relative significance of a set of commonly collected admissions information. We find that the best predictor of success in the MPA program, as measured by final GPA in the program, is the applicant’s undergraduate GPA. This finding brings into question the utility of much of the information collected in a typical MPA program application

Buying a herd boar

John W. Massey, R. K. Leavitt and John C. Rea (Department of Animal Science, College of Agriculture)Revised 12/81/8

Buying a herd boar

R. K. Leavitt, John C. Rea and John W. Massey (Department of Animal Husbandry, College of Agriculture)Rev. 5/78/10

Hybrid-learning for social design

Underlying causes of conflict, inequity, and injustice remain deeply entrenched in the lives of people ranging from impoverished villages to overpopulated megalopolises. To help address these complex issues, social design brings together designers from varying disciplines to address the needs of the community. While universities across the world recognize the need to introduce social design pedagogy into their curriculum, many programs remain confined within Western post-graduate education. In response, two multidisciplinary professors initiated a team-taught \u27Design for Social Change\u27 course in an undergraduate design program in Dubai, UAE. Open to students across disciplines, the course followed a hybrid-learning approach to planning, conducting, and evaluating learning activities. The methodology empowered students to determine their project interest, cooperatively build research, and value their diverse skills. This paper introduces the notion of hybrid-learning, collabor-active team-teaching in an interdisciplinary classroom, and applies the methodology to a social design course in the MENA region. This paper has been presented as part of the Tasmeem Exploration Platform during Tasmeem Conference, Doha, 2013