Plans for beginning farmers in southwest Iowa with comparison of farm and nonfarm income opportunities

How scarce resources, especially capital, should be allocated among different crop and livestock enterprises to maximize returns is an ever present problem for all Iowa farmers. It is a problem of particular importance to beginning farmers in southwest Iowa. They not only have limited funds with which to become established in farming but also have been faced with drouth and declining prices in recent years. Because of the magnitude of planning problems for young farmers, the Iowa Agricultural Extension Service initiated an educational program designed particularly to provide technical assistance and guidance in planning for this group. This research study had been designed to aid in these purposes and relates to problems of beginning farmers in southwest Iowa. Not only is guidance needed on the best organization of resources within the farm, but also an appraisal of income opportunities open to young farmers in farming and in nonfarm employment is needed to facilitate choice and adjustment. Information concerning optimum farm plans is needed to help farmers who wish to and should remain in agriculture to obtain greater profits. Information comparing farm and off-farm income is needed to facilitate choice by young farmers who may feel that income and welfare of their families might be increased by shifting to another occupation

Assessment of the face validity, feasibility and utility of a patient-completed questionnaire for polymyalgia rheumatica: a postal survey using the QQ-10 questionnaire.

BACKGROUND: The development of a patient-reported outcome measure (PROM) for polymyalgia rheumatica (PMR), a condition that causes pain, stiffness and disability, is necessary as there is no current validated disease-specific measure. Initial literature synthesis and qualitative research established a conceptual framework for the condition along with a list of symptoms and effects of PMR that patients felt were important to them. These findings were used to derive the candidate items for a patient-completed questionnaire. We aim to establish the face validity of this initial "long form" of a PROM. METHODS: People with a current or previous diagnosis of PMR were recruited both from the community and from rheumatology clinics. They were asked to complete the PMR questionnaire along with the QQ-10 questionnaire, which is a measure used to assess the face validity, feasibility and utility of patient healthcare questionnaires. RESULTS: A total of 28 participants with an age range of 59-85 years and a length of time since diagnosis from 4 months to 18 years completed the QQ-10. The overall mean "value" score was 79% (SD 12), and the mean "burden" score was 21% (SD 18). The free-text comments were analysed thematically and were found to focus on layout, content, where in the clinical pathway the questionnaire would be most beneficial, specific items missing and other areas for consideration. CONCLUSIONS: The high mean value score and low burden score indicate that the questionnaire has good face validity and is acceptable to patients. The questionnaire now needs to undergo further psychometric evaluation and refinement to develop the final tool for use in clinical practice and research

Torts

Covers cases on warrantless arrest (Kremer); on contributory negligence—absolute right to stop at a yellow light (Howe); on warning lights on the highway—absolute duty versus reasonable measures (Mackie); on automobiles—dangerous instrumentality doctrine—negligence (Lyness); on the tort liability of a building contractor to third persons injured after completion of work (Conger); and on silence as fraudulent concealment—vendor and purchaser—duty to disclose (Lyness

Dissipative Particle Dynamics with Energy Conservation

The stochastic differential equations for a model of dissipative particle dynamics with both total energy and total momentum conservation in the particle-particle interactions are presented. The corresponding Fokker-Planck equation for the evolution of the probability distribution for the system is deduced together with the corresponding fluctuation-dissipation theorems ensuring that the ab initio chosen equilibrium probability distribution for the relevant variables is a stationary solution. When energy conservation is included, the system can sustain temperature gradients and heat flow can be modeled.Comment: 7 pages, submitted to Europhys. Let

Diffraction of a superfluid Fermi gas by an atomic grating

An atomic grating generated by a pulsed standing wave laser field is proposed to manipulate the superfluid state in a quantum degenerate gas of fermionic atoms. We show that in the presence of atomic Cooper pairs, the density oscillations of the gas caused by the atomic grating exhibit a much longer coherence time than that in the normal Fermi gas. Our result indicates that the technique of a pulsed atomic grating can be a potential candidate to detect the atomic superfluid state in a quantum degenerate Fermi gas.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figure

The roles of motivation and ability in controlling the consequences of stereotype suppression

Two experiments investigated the conditions under which previously suppressed stereotypes are applied in impression formation. In Experiment 1, the extent to which a previously suppressed racial stereotype influenced subsequent impressions depended on the race of the target who was subsequently encountered. Whereas impressions of race-unspecified targets were assimilated to the stereotype following its suppression, no such effects were observed when the target belonged to the racial group whose stereotype had been initially suppressed. These results demonstrate that when perceivers are motivated to avoid stereo-typing individuals, the influence of a stereotype that has been previously activated through suppression is minimized. Experiment 2 demonstrated that these processing goals effectively reduce the impact of suppression-activated stereotypes only when perceivers have sufficient capacity to enact the goals. These results suggest that both sufficient motivation and capacity are necessary to prevent heightened stereotyping following stereotype suppression

Manipulating the critical temperature for the superfluid phase transition in trapped atomic Fermi gases

We examine the effect of the trapping potential on the critical temperature, $T_C$, for the BCS transition to a superfluid state in trapped atomic gases of fermions. $T_C$ for an arbitrary power law trap is calculated in the Thomas-Fermi approximation. For anharmonic traps, $T_C$ can be increased by several orders of magnitude in comparison to a harmonic trap. Our theoretical results indicate that, in practice, one could manipulate the critical temperature for the BCS phase transition by shaping the traps confining the atomic Fermi gases.Comment: 4 page

Object-oriented Programming Laws for Annotated Java Programs

Object-oriented programming laws have been proposed in the context of languages that are not combined with a behavioral interface specification language (BISL). The strong dependence between source-code and interface specifications may cause a number of difficulties when transforming programs. In this paper we introduce a set of programming laws for object-oriented languages like Java combined with the Java Modeling Language (JML). The set of laws deals with object-oriented features taking into account their specifications. Some laws deal only with features of the specification language. These laws constitute a set of small transformations for the development of more elaborate ones like refactorings