Economic Contribution of State Parks to the North Dakota Economy

North Dakota's state parks are an important part of tourism which is an important component of the infrastructure supporting the state's economy. The purpose of this study was to estimate the contribution of state parks to the North Dakota economy in the form of increased levels of business activity, employment, personal income, and tax collections.Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Economic Feasibility of Establishing a Flax Tow or Flax Shive Pelleting Plant in North Dakota

Agribusiness,

Fitting comparison between traditional five curve orthokeratologic lens and modified five curve orthokeratologic lens

Six subjects were chosen to evaluate the peripheral edge fits of the traditional jive zone orthokeratology lens with a second alignment curve fitted to the cornea and a new jive zone orthokeratology lens with a flattened second alignment curve. The lenses were ordered with parameters calculated from the Humphrey Atlas Computed Corneal Topographer and the OrthoTools software program. Second alignment and peripheral curve fittings were evaluated with sodium fluorescein and videotaped. The study shows all six subjects showed an increased peripheral edge clearance with modified lens design as compared to the traditional/ens design

Economic Feasibility of Utilizing Waste-Water Heat from Coal-Fired Electrical Generating Plants in Commercial Greenhouses in North Dakota

This study provides information on the economic feasibility of establishing commercial greenhouses utilizing waste-water heat in North Dakota.Production Economics, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

The Interdisciplinary Study of Genetically Modified Salmon and Their Effects on the Environment and Indigenous Communities

This project is an interdisciplinary view of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs), specifically GMO salmon, through a biological, anthropological, and economic lens. The interconnection of these disciplines is shown through looking at GMO salmon and aquaculture effects on the Lummi Nation and the environment, while taking a close look at the first company to be approved for GMO salmon for human consumption that occurred in 2015 and the processes that are involved for approval of GMOs. The essay, through a biological lens, will explore the importance of salmon and their role in the ecosystem. Through an anthropological lens a discussion of the Lummi Nation, the importance of salmon in their culture and the Cooke Aquaculture Spill that took place in 2017. Economically there will be the discussion of the Food and Drug Administration approval process and the economic impacts of introducing GMO salmon onto the market. To tackle complex issues, it requires the collaboration of multiple disciplines, otherwise a cohesive solution will never be reached

Interaction of replacing corn silage with soyhulls as a roughage source with or without 3% added wheat straw in the diet: impacts on intake, digestibility, and ruminal fermentation in steers fed high-concentrate diets

Six ruminally cannulated steers [475.0 ± 49.6 kg initial body weight (BW)] were used in a 6 × 3 incomplete Latin square design (six treatments and three periods), to evaluate the impacts replacing of corn silage with pelleted soyhulls as roughage in high-concentrate finishing diets containing 30% modified distillers grains with solubles. Treatments were based on increasing dietary inclusion of soyhulls and consisted of: (1) Control (0), roughage supplied by dietary inclusion of 20% corn silage [dry matter (DM) basis]; (2) 50% replacement of corn silage with soyhulls (50); (3) 100% replacement of corn silage with soyhulls (100), and the same three treatments repeated with 3% added wheat straw (DM basis) replacing corn in the diet (0S, 50S, and 100S, respectively). Absolute dry matter intake (DMI; kg/d basis) tended to decrease both linearly and quadratically (P ≤ 0.09) and proportional DMI (% of BW) decreased linearly (P = 0.04) with increasing soyhull inclusion but was not affected by the addition of straw in the diet (P = 0.68). Total tract digestibility of organic matter and crude protein were not affected by soyhull inclusion or added straw (P ≥ 0.32). Ruminal pH did not differ (P = 0.65) with increasing soyhull inclusion but increased with the addition of straw (P \u3c 0.01; 5.9 vs. 6.1 for no straw and straw, respectively). Molar proportions of acetate and butyrate decreased while propionate increased with increased soyhull inclusion (P ≤ 0.03; linearly and quadratically, respectively). Ruminal fluid kinetics were unaffected by either rate of replacement of corn silage with soyhulls or wheat straw inclusion (P ≥ 0.13). Decreases in DMI observed in this study would likely decrease finishing cattle performance and underscores the need for additional research before recommending this practice to cattle feeders

Design, Fabrication, and Test of a 5-kWh/100-kW Flywheel Energy Storage Utilizing a High-Temperature Superconducting Bearing

The summaries of this project are: (1) Program goal is to design, develop, and demonstrate a 100 kW UPS flywheel electricity system; (2) flywheel system spin tested up to 15,000 RPM in a sensorless, closed loop mode; (3) testing identified a manufacturing deficiency in the motor stator--overheats at high speed, limiting maximum power capability; (4) successfully spin tested direct cooled HTS bearing up to 14,500 RPM (limited by Eddy current clutch set-up); (5) Testing confirmed commercial feasibility of this bearing design--Eddy Current losses are within acceptable limits; and (6) Boeing's investment in flywheel test facilities increased the spin-test capabilities to one of the highest in the nation

Patterns of Genome Evolution among the Microsporidian Parasites Encephalitozoon cuniculi, Antonospora locustae and Enterocytozoon bieneusi

Microsporidia are intracellular parasites that are highly-derived relatives of fungi. They have compacted genomes and, despite a high rate of sequence evolution, distantly related species can share high levels of gene order conservation. To date, only two species have been analysed in detail, and data from one of these largely consists of short genomic fragments. It is therefore difficult to determine how conservation has been maintained through microsporidian evolution, and impossible to identify whether certain regions are more prone to genomic stasis.Here, we analyse three large fragments of the Enterocytozoon bieneusi genome (in total 429 kbp), a species of medical significance. A total of 296 ORFs were identified, annotated and their context compared with Encephalitozoon cuniculi and Antonospora locustae. Overall, a high degree of conservation was found between all three species, and interestingly the level of conservation was similar in all three pairwise comparisons, despite the fact that A. locustae is more distantly related to E. cuniculi and E. bieneusi than either are to each other.Any two genes that are found together in any pair of genomes are more likely to be conserved in the third genome as well, suggesting that a core of genes tends to be conserved across the entire group. The mechanisms of rearrangments identified among microsporidian genomes were consistent with a very slow evolution of their architecture, as opposed to the very rapid sequence evolution reported for these parasites

ANALYSIS, OPTIMIZATION, AND IMPLEMENTATION OF A UAV-BASED WIRELESS POWER TRANSFER SYSTEM

Wireless power transfer is rapidly advancing in its ability to efficiently transfer power to a variety of devices. As the efficiency increases, more applications for these systems arise. Since magnetic resonant wireless power transfer can only transfer a small amount of power, most current applications only focus on powering low-powered devices. Wireless Sensor Networks are composed of many low-powered nodes which currently require human interaction to remain powered. We propose recharging a low-powered Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) with a magnetic resonant wireless power transfer system attached to a quadrotor Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV). This thesis addresses three main challenges with this method of powering a WSN. First, quadrotor UAVs are small and have limited payload capacities. Since a larger power transfer system generally results in better power transfer range and efficiency, we optimize the parameters of a wireless power transfer system for the small UAV. We show that, compared to our previous work, the power transfer coils\u27 quality factor can be nearly doubled while retaining the same mass. Second, the UAV needs very precise control to transfer power to a small WSN node. We use a the sensed magnetic field from the Wireless Power Transfer system coupled with a simulated optical flow system to show that we can localize to within 21 cm to transfer 3.38 W to the sensor node. Last, the UAV has significant power limits of its own. We show that by optimizing the speed of travel and optimizing the mass of the UAV\u27s battery, we can increase the range of the UAV from 3 km in the worst case to 9.3km in the optimal case. Adviser: Carrick Detweiler and Sebastian Elbau