AFTER THE NIXON RESIGNATION WE STILL NEED REFORM!

Agricultural and Food Policy,

AGRICULTURE IN THE NATION'S POLITICS

Political Economy,

FARM POLITICS AND THE SEPARATION OF POWERS

Agricultural and Food Policy,

NOCTURNAL ARBOREALITY IN SNAKES IN THE SWAMPLANDS OF THE ATCHAFALAYA BASIN OF SOUTH-CENTRAL LOUISIANA AND BIG THICKET NATIONAL PRESERVE OF SOUTHEAST TEXAS

The southeastern United States is home to a diverse assemblage of snakes, but only one species, the Rough Greensnake (Opheodrys aestivus), is considered specialized for a predominantly arboreal lifestyle. Other species, such as Ratsnakes (genus Pantherophis) and Ribbonsnakes/Gartersnakes (genus Thamnophis), are widely known to climb into vegetation and trees. Some explanations given for snake climbing behavior are foraging, thermoregulation, predator avoidance, and response to flood. Reports of arboreality in snake species typically not associated with life in the trees (such as terrestrial, aquatic, and even fossorial species) usually come from single observations, with no knowledge of prevalence of the behavior. Here, we report on arboreality of snake species detected during 8 years of night surveys in the Atchafalaya Basin of south-central Louisiana and 5+ years of night surveys in Big Thicket National Preserve in southeast Texas. We recorded a total of 1,088 detections of 19 snake species between the two study areas, with 348 detections above ground level (32%). The Rough Greensnake and Western Ribbonsnake (Thamnophis proximus) accounted for nearly 75% of total arboreal detections among the two study areas. However, with one exception, all snake species detected more than once between both study areas had at least one arboreal detection. These observations demonstrate that snakes with widely varying natural histories may be found in the trees at night, and for some species, this behavior may be more common than previously believed

A gauge invariant chiral unitary framework for kaon photo- and electroproduction on the proton

We present a gauge invariant approach to photoproduction of mesons on nucleons within a chiral unitary framework. The interaction kernel for meson-baryon scattering is derived from the chiral effective Lagrangian and iterated in a Bethe-Salpeter equation. Within the leading order approximation to the interaction kernel, data on kaon photoproduction from SAPHIR, CLAS and CBELSA/TAPS are analyzed in the threshold region. The importance of gauge invariance and the precision of various approximations in the interaction kernel utilized in earlier works are discussed.Comment: 23 pages, 13 figs, EPJ A styl

Quantitative analysis of streaming protocols for enabling Internet of Things (IoT) audio hardware

Given that traditional music production techniques often incorporate analog audio hardware, the Internet of Things (IoT) presents a unique opportunity to maintain past production workflows. For example, it is possible to enable remote digital connectivity to rare, expensive and bespoke audio systems, as well as unique spaces for use as echo chambers. In the presented research, quantitative testing is conducted to verify the performance of audio streaming platforms. Results show that using a high-speed internet connection, it is possible to stream lossless audio with low distortion, no dropouts and around 30 ms round-trip latency. Therefore, with future integration of audio streaming and IoT control protocols, a new paradigm for remote analog hardware processing in music production could be enabled

Earth science data study

The research proposed in this contract concerning investigations of existing and planned Earth Science and Applications Division (ESAD) data management systems and research into utilities for the access and display of scientific data products was completed. A summary of this work is provided

Scalar Imperialism

The dual research goals of this dissertation are to first develop the geographic concept \u27scalar imperialism\u27 and use scalar imperialism to re-examine the expansion and continued superiority of Western capitalism in four systemic cycles of accumulation. Scalar imperialism is a concept that melds theories on the social production of scale with the dialectical relations between capitalism, imperialism, and the state. One significant aim of this research study is to bring imperialism back into the critical discussion on the social production of space, scale, and social relations under a globalized capitalist system. This research study adopts a long historical perspective and re-examines four hegemonic phases of capital accumulation, their broad scale changes and scalar relationality, and the concomitant scalar expansion of capitalism into a global system. The aim of this research is to better understand the production of spatial scale by hegemonic regimes that have expanded Western capitalism from its origins in fifteenth century Italian city-states to a world-wide system of economy under which geographical landscapes and social relations are persistently made and re-made to fit the needs of capitalism, capitalists, and capitalist states. Under the leadership of Italian merchant bankers to the Dutch, English and Americans, capitalism as a world system has expanded and dominated the social production of space, scale, and social relations. A vital characteristic in this expansion of capitalism is the use of imperialistic processes by both the hegemon and its subordinates to overcome barriers and contradictions in capital accumulation. While imperialism is internally related to the continued expansion and growth of capitalism, imperialistic activities also undermine the systemic health of capitalism by causing and deepening conflicts among states that disrupt the capitalist world-economy. Both contradiction and instability in the capitalist world-economy and its associated socio-political systems have historically driven the expansion of capitalism, but it has been an uneven process in which high finance and systemic chaos play prominent roles. For the purposes of this research, the examination of past hegemonic government-business complexes is relatively straight-forward, because the violence and turbulence in these periods are in the past. The case of the current hegemonic state --- the United States --- is an altogether different matter. The position taken in this study is that the U.S. has already undergone expansion, unsuccessfully battled contradiction, turned to financialization, and is tending towards systemic chaos. Material and discursive scale is the dynamic and malleable expression of social processes and relations. A scalar imperialism concept employs scale as the expression of the turbulent dialectical relations between capitalism, imperialism, and the state