Cost Efficiency Estimates for a Sample of Crop and Beef Farms

This paper examines the impact of specialization on the cost efficiency of a sample of crop and beef farms in Kansas. The economic total expense ratio was used to measure cost efficiency. The relationship between the economic total expense ratio and specialization was not significant.Farm Management,

Measuring the Productivity of Cattle Finishing

Livestock Production/Industries, Productivity Analysis,

Suppression of displacement in severely slowed saccades

Severely slowed saccades in <I>spinocerebellar ataxia</I> have previously been shown to be at least partially closed-loop in nature: their long duration means that they can be modified in-flight in response to intrasaccadic target movements. In this study, a woman with these pathologically slowed saccades could modify them in-flight in response to target movements, even when saccadic suppression of displacement prevented conscious awareness of those movements. Thus saccadic suppression of displacement is not complete, in that it provides perceptual information that is sub-threshold to consciousness but which can still be effectively utilised by the oculomotor system

The acute respiratory distress syndrome in 2013.

Acute lung injury and the acute respiratory distress syndrome are major causes of morbidity and mortality in critically ill patients. This review focuses on new developments in definitions, epidemiology, clinical and basic research, and promising new directions in treatment. There is new information about the potential contribution of environmental factors, especially exposure to cigarette smoke. Pathologic findings in ARDS have been limited to case reports of open lung biopsies and post-mortem studies but there is some new information from a recent pathology study relative to the frequency of diffuse alveolar damage and the severity of arterial hypoxemia. Further, therapy with lung-protective ventilation and fluid conservative protocol has improved outcomes, but several new trials are in progress to test several promising strategies

Jacques Lacan’s Signification of the Phallus and the photography of Robert Mapplethorpe

The recent exhibit of Robert Mapplethorpe’s work, “Implicit Tension” (January 25–July 10, 2019), at the Guggenheim, explores the artist’s obsession with the magical, the demonic, and the unveiled phallus. It is Mapplethorpe’s artistic obsessions, personified in the photographs of the X, Y, and Z Portfolios, as well as the deeply homophobic response his photography, even his name, evoke twenty years after his death, that make this recent exhibit an ideal space to reencounter key concepts from Jacques Lacan’s “Signification of the Phallus” in Écrits. For as Lacan (2002) points out “the phallus is the signifier of this very Aufhebung [sublation], which it inaugurates (initiates) by its disappearance. That is why the demon... springs forth at the very moment the phallus is unveiled in the ancient mysteries (see the famous painting in the Villa of the Mysteries in Pompeii)” (p. 277). This paper argues that the historically hysterical response to Mapplethorpe’s work, which culminated in the 1990 Cincin- nati obscenity trial, is created in part by the reenactment of this Aufhebung between signified and signifier, the splitting [Spaltung] that exiles us into the symbolic and initiates “the paradoxical, deviant, erratic, eccentric, and even scandalous nature of desire” (Lacan, 2002, p. 276)

Exploring Scholar--Practitioner Leadership: Superintendents\u27 Application of Theory to Practice in Texas Public School Districts

ABSTRACT This qualitative study was designed to investigate the methods of practice employed by Texas school superintendents who have completed a doctoral program centered on scholar–practitioner leadership. The purpose of this study was to explore and describe how serving superintendents apply their prior learning and knowledge to the articulation and translation of their district’s mission/vision. The study described how six serving superintendents translate theory to practice by inquiring how each participant articulates the district’s mission/vision. Through the analysis of face-to-face interviews, phone conversations, emails, and informal observations recorded in a researcher’s journal, four common elements of scholar–practitioner leadership practice were identified by the researcher. The four common elements of practice were: ensuring the district’s vision, mission, core values, guiding statements, and strategic plan is aligned from top to bottom throughout the district; creating trust and vision alignment with the school board; leadership team relationships and modeling; and inviting community input and creating partnerships. In addition, four common themes emerged as to how scholar–practitioner leaders apply theory to practice The four emergent themes were: creating programs and practices which support student success; reimagining roles and responsibilities across the educational system; change, inquiry, and research as a part of practice; and defining readiness

Bath's law Derived from the Gutenberg-Richter law and from Aftershock Properties

The empirical Bath's law states that the average difference in magnitude between a mainshock and its largest aftershock is 1.2, regardless of the mainshock magnitude. Following Vere-Jones [1969] and Console et al. [2003], we show that the origin of Bath's law is to be found in the selection procedure used to define mainshocks and aftershocks rather than in any difference in the mechanisms controlling the magnitude of the mainshock and of the aftershocks. We use the ETAS model of seismicity, which provides a more realistic model of aftershocks, based on (i) a universal Gutenberg-Richter (GR) law for all earthquakes, and on (ii) the increase of the number of aftershocks with the mainshock magnitude. Using numerical simulations of the ETAS model, we show that this model is in good agreement with Bath's law in a certain range of the model parameters.Comment: major revisions, in press in Geophys. Res. Let

INFLUENCE OF LAND TENURE ARRANGEMENTS ON GRAZING MANAGEMENT INCENTIVES

Land Economics/Use, Livestock Production/Industries,

The Clustering Of Galaxies Around Radio-Loud AGNs

We examine the hypothesis that mergers and close encounters between galaxies can fuel AGNs by increasing the rate at which gas accretes towards the central black hole. We compare the clustering of galaxies around radio-loud AGNs with the clustering around a population of radio-quiet galaxies with similar masses, colors and luminosities. Our catalog contains 2178 elliptical radio galaxies with flux densities greater than 2.8 mJy at 1.4 GHz from the 6dFGS survey. We find that radio AGNs with more than 200 times the median radio power have, on average, more close (r<160 kpc) companions than their radio-quiet counterparts, suggestive that mergers play a role in forming the most powerful radio galaxies. For ellipticals of fixed stellar mass, the radio power is not a function of large-scale environment nor halo mass, consistent with the radio powers of ellipticals varying by orders of magnitude over billions of years.Comment: 12 pages, 6 figure