Half of New Hampshire Residents Buy Local Farm Food at Least a Few Times a Month, But Engagement Varies by County

Getting local farm food to customers in ways that make financial and logistical sense for both farmers and consumers has long challenged the growth of direct-to-consumer sales. And despite a surge of interest in local foods spurred by the pandemic, there have been few data sources available to farmers and local food advocates for measuring consumers’ contemporary engagement with local food systems and market types. In this brief, Jess Carson, Analena Bruce, and Isaac Leslie describe data collected in the May 2021 Granite State Poll and find that while more than 80 percent of Granite Staters report buying local farm food at least a few times a month (“occasionally”) in the past year, there is significant variation in engagement across the state. New Hampshire consumers along the Vermont border are especially likely to occasionally buy local farm food, while Coös residents report especially low rates. There is also a sharp divide in the types of markets that Granite Staters describe as easily accessible, and despite the pandemic, in-person options like farm stands and brick-and-mortar stores were most often identified as easily accessible. The authors suggest that their findings provide useful information for farmers and food advocates by revealing opportunities to widen and deepen New Hampshire customers’ engagement with local farm foods

Rural Dimensions of Welfare Reform

This volume presents a comprehensive look at how welfare reforms enacted in 1996 are affecting caseloads, employment, earnings, and family well-being in rural areas.https://research.upjohn.org/up_press/1178/thumbnail.jp

4-Methoxybenzaldehyde Pentafluorophenyl-Methylidenehydrazone

The crystal structure of the mixed azine C15H9F5N2O is described. The molecule has a high degree of planarity. The two phenyl rings deviate from perfect planarity by less than 2° and the dihedral angles between the ipso-C atoms and the azine bridge also show a minute deviation from planarity of less than 2°. The only dihedral angle that indicates any significant twisting is the dihedral angle about the azine bridge [C1-N1-N2-C8 174.8 (6)°], and even this one is relatively small. Face-to-face arene-arene contacts are the dominant intermolecular interactions. There are double face-to-face contacts in which the two phenyl rings of one mixed azine interact with the two phenyl rings of another mixed azine. There are also single face-to-face contacts where one phenyl ring of one mixed azine interacts with a phenyl ring of another mixed azine. In the double face-to-face arene-arene contacts, the pentafluorinated phenyl ring of one mixed azine always interacts with the methoxy-substituted phenyl ring of another mixed azine. In the single face-to-face arene-arene contacts, the interactions are always between two pentafluorinated phenyl rings or two methoxy-substituted phenyl rings

Quantifying non-star formation associated 8um dust emission in NGC 628

Combining Ha and IRAC images of the nearby spiral galaxy NGC 628, we find that between 30-43% of its 8um dust emission is not related to recent star formation. Contributions from dust heated by young stars are separated by identifying HII regions in the Ha map and using these areas as a mask to determine the 8um dust emission that must be due to heating by older stars. Corrections are made for sub-detection-threshold HII regions, photons escaping from HII regions and for young stars not directly associated to HII regions (i.e. 10-100 Myr old stars). A simple model confirms this amount of 8um emission can be expected given dust and PAH absorption cross-sections, a realistic star-formation history, and the observed optical extinction values. A Fourier power spectrum analysis indicates that the 8um dust emission is more diffuse than the Ha emission (and similar to observed HI), supporting our analysis that much of the 8um-emitting dust is heated by older stars. The 8um dust-to-Ha emission ratio declines with galactocentric radius both within and outside of HII regions, probably due to a radial increase in disk transparency. In the course of this work, we have also found that intrinsic diffuse Ha fractions may be lower than previously thought in galaxies, if the differential extinction between HII regions and diffuse regions is taken into account.Comment: 14 pages, 11 figures, accepted in Ap

Heliostat-field soiling predictions and cleaning resource optimization for solar tower plants

This paper presents a novel methodology for characterizing soiling losses through experimental measurements. Soiling predictions were obtained by calibrating a soiling model based on field measurements from a 50 MW modular solar tower project in Mount Isa, Australia. The study found that the mean predicted soiling rate for horizontally fixed mirrors was 0.12 percentage points per day (pp/d) during low dust seasons and 0.22 pp/d during high seasons. Autoregressive time series models were employed to extend two years of onsite meteorological measurements to a 10-year period, enabling the prediction of heliostat-field soiling rates. A fixed-frequency cleaning heuristic was applied to optimise the cleaning resources for various operational policies by balancing direct cleaning resource costs against the expected lost production, which was computed by averaging multiple simulated soiling loss trajectories. Analysis of resource usage showed that the cost of fuel and operator salaries contributed 42 % and 35 % respectively towards the cleaning cost. In addition, stowing heliostats in the horizontal position at night increased daily soiling rates by 114 % and the total cleaning costs by 51 % relative to vertically stowed heliostat-field. Under a simplified night-time-only power production configuration, the oversized solar field effectively charged the thermal storage during the day, despite reduced mirror reflectance due to soiling. These findings suggest that the plant can maintain efficient operation even with a reduced cleaning rate. Finally, it was observed that performing cleaning operations during the day led to a 7 % increase in the total cleaning cost compared to a night-time cleaning policy. This was primarily attributed to the need to park operational heliostats for cleaning

Intraocular pressure measurement in the conscious rat

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/74866/1/j.1600-0420.1999.770108.x.pd