CHARACTERISTICS OF AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS UNDERGRADUATE ADVISING IN THE WESTERN REGION

The quality of faculty advising has been a source of concern among students and faculty. As an initial attempt at addressing these concerns this paper summarizes the results of a faculty advising study in undergraduate agricultural economics programs. Various advising program characteristics among western schools are discussed and contrasted to schools in other regions. Interregional and interdepartmental variation was found in advisor resource allocation, advising program implementation, rewards and priorities, and evaluations of advising quality. Despite larger enrollments, smaller advising budgets, less support and lower rewards for advising, schools in the West reported advising quality comparable if not superior to that in other regions.Teaching/Communication/Extension/Profession,

CosmoDM and its application to Pan-STARRS data

The Cosmology Data Management system (CosmoDM) is an automated and flexible data management system for the processing and calibration of data from optical photometric surveys. It is designed to run on supercomputers and to minimize disk I/O to enable scaling to very high throughput during periods of reprocessing. It serves as an early prototype for one element of the ground-based processing required by the Euclid mission and will also be employed in the preparation of ground based data needed in the eROSITA X-ray all sky survey mission. CosmoDM consists of two main pipelines. The first is the single-epoch or detrending pipeline, which is used to carry out the photometric and astrometric calibration of raw exposures. The second is the co- addition pipeline, which combines the data from individual exposures into deeper coadd images and science ready catalogs. A novel feature of CosmoDM is that it uses a modified stack of As- tromatic software which can read and write tile compressed images. Since 2011, CosmoDM has been used to process data from the DECam, the CFHT MegaCam and the Pan-STARRS cameras. In this paper we shall describe how processed Pan-STARRS data from CosmoDM has been used to optically confirm and measure photometric redshifts of Planck-based Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect selected cluster candidates.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figures. Proceedings of Precision Astronomy with Fully Depleted CCDs Workshop (2014). Accepted for publication in JINS

Feasible Fumigant-Herbicide System Alternatives to Methyl Bromide for Bell Pepper Producers

With the current methyl bromide (MeBr) system for producing Georgia’s peppers being phased out, alternative fumigant and herbicide systems for producers are analyzed. Using stochastic dominance analyses, two alternatives exceeding MeBr’s yield and financial efficiency were identified. A programming model, incorporating simulation-optimization techniques, generated optimal production and financial plans. Results indicate potential economic viability under alternative systems vis-à-vis the traditional MeBr production system. The Telone II and Chloropicrin combination with Metham potassium may offer a viable substitute for MeBr.fumigant, herbicide, methyl bromide, multi-period programming, optimization, simulation, stochastic dominance, Agribusiness, Crop Production/Industries,

A Farm-level Approach to the Methyl Bromide Phase-out: Identifying Alternatives and Maximizing Net Worth Using Stochastic Dominance and Optimization Procedures.

Alternative fumigant and herbicide systems for Georgia's pepper farms are analyzed relative to soon-to-be phased-out methyl bromide system. Stochastic dominance analyses identify two alternatives exceeding MeBr's yield and financial efficiency. A programming model using simulation-optimization techniques provides important implications on the pepper farms' economic viability under these alternative systems.Crop Production/Industries,

AN ECONOMIC EVALUATION OF SOYBEAN STINK BUG CONTROL ALTERNATIVES FOR THE SOUTHEASTERN UNITED STATES

Methyl parathion or Penncap M (an encapsulated methyl parathion) are used extensively throughout the United States for controlling stink bug pests in soybeans, Glycine Max (L.) Merrill. However, this insecticide is highly toxic to mammals, birds, and non-target arthropods, and thus is less environmentally sound than other insecticides. For environmental and human health considerations, investigating alternative insecticides for control is desired. For this investigation, research based on field experimental data from Florida, Georgia, and Louisiana during the 1988 and 1989 growing seasons were employed. Results indicate that alternative, currently available, and less toxic insecticides may reduce producer costs, increase yield, and improve soybean quality. These alternative insecticides include Scout (tralomethrin), Karate (lambda-cyhalothrin), Orthene (acephate), and Baythroid (cyfluthrin). In terms of improved profits these alternative insecticides may dominate methyl parathion or encapsulated methyl parathion.Crop Production/Industries,

CLASSIFICATION OF RISK PREFERENCES WITH ELICITED UTILITY DATA: DOES FUNCTIONAL FORM MATTER?

Recently, several problems with elicited utility functions have emerged. This paper concerns a fundamental problem in risk preference classification with elicited data. For the sample in this research, different functional forms resulted in reversals in preference classifications. This paper suggests that preference classifications must be interpreted with caution.Research Methods/ Statistical Methods,

Circuit architecture explains functional similarity of bacterial heat shock responses

Heat shock response is a stress response to temperature changes and a consecutive increase in amounts of unfolded proteins. To restore homeostasis, cells upregulate chaperones facilitating protein folding by means of transcription factors (TF). We here investigate two heat shock systems: one characteristic to gram negative bacteria, mediated by transcriptional activator sigma32 in E. coli, and another characteristic to gram positive bacteria, mediated by transcriptional repressor HrcA in L. lactis. We construct simple mathematical model of the two systems focusing on the negative feedbacks, where free chaperons suppress sigma32 activation in the former, while they activate HrcA repression in the latter. We demonstrate that both systems, in spite of the difference at the TF regulation level, are capable of showing very similar heat shock dynamics. We find that differences in regulation impose distinct constrains on chaperone-TF binding affinities: the binding constant of free sigma32 to chaperon DnaK, known to be in 100 nM range, set the lower limit of amount of free chaperon that the system can sense the change at the heat shock, while the binding affinity of HrcA to chaperon GroE set the upper limit and have to be rather large extending into the micromolar range.Comment: 17 pages, 5 figure

Building a Socio-technical Perspective of Community Resilience with a Semiotic Approach

Situated in the diversity and adversity of real-life contexts facing crisis situations, this research aims at boosting the resilience process within communities supported by digital and social technology. In this paper, eight community leaders in different parts of the world are invited to express their issues and wishes regarding the support of technology to face social challenges. Methods and artefacts based on the Organisational Semiotics (OS) and the Socially-Aware computing have been applied to analyse and consolidate this data. By providing both a systemic view of the problem and also leading to the identification of requirements, the analysis evidences some benefits of the OS-based approach to consolidate perspectives from different real-life scenarios towards building a socio-technical solution

Birth, life and survival of Tidal Dwarf Galaxies

Advances on the formation and survival of the so-called Tidal Dwarf Galaxies (TDGs) are reviewed. The understanding on how objects of the mass of dwarf galaxies may form in debris of galactic collisions has recently benefited from the coupling of multi-wavelength observations with numerical simulations of galaxy mergers. Nonetheless, no consensual scenario has yet emerged and as a matter of fact the very definition of TDGs remains elusive. Their real cosmological importance is also a matter of debate, their presence in our Local Group of galaxies as well. Identifying old, evolved, TDGs among the population of regular dwarf galaxies and satellites may not be straightforward. However a number of specific properties (location, dark matter and metal content) that objects of tidal origin should have are reminded here. Examples of newly discovered genuine old TDGs around a nearby elliptical galaxy are finally presented.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures, invited talk at JENAM 2010 symposium on "Dwarf Galaxies", v2:reference and acknowledgements update