Impacts of crop insurance on cash rents

This study examines the degree to which net payments from federal crop insurance products impact cash rents paid for farmland. A spatial panel model is employed to control for spatial dependence and heterogeneity in cash rental rates. Results show that producers factor a statistically significant proportion of the value received from crop insurance into cash rents. However, the directly measurable rate is lower than found in previous studies. This result likely reflects the complexity in the relationship between losses and crop insurance rates, and the aggregation across producers in both measured rent and estimates of the net value of crop insurance to a producer. Further, the indirect effects of crop insurance and the ancillary impacts of a producer’s risk profile are difficult to identify independently due to the highly variable nature of crop insurance payments, and the smoothed nature of cash rental values. Nonetheless, even as the model removes much of the variation in the data, this analysis shows crop insurance is an important factor in a producer’s expected revenue, as cash rents are positively affected in counties that receive consistent and positive net value

Digitization workflows for flat sheets and packets of plants, algae, and fungi

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/141708/1/aps31500065.pd

Digitization Workflows for Flat Sheets and Packets of Plants, Algae, and Fungi

Effective workflows are essential components in the digitization of biodiversity specimen collections. To date, no comprehensive, community-vetted workflows have been published for digitizing flat sheets and packets of plants, algae, and fungi, even though latest estimates suggest that only 33% of herbarium specimens have been digitally transcribed, 54% of herbaria use a specimen database, and 24% are imaging specimens. In 2012, iDigBio, the U.S. National Science Foundation’s (NSF) coordinating center and national resource for the digitization of public, nonfederal U.S. collections, launched several working groups to address this deficiency. Here, we report the development of 14 workflow modules with 7–36 tasks each. These workflows represent the combined work of approximately 35 curators, directors, and collections managers representing more than 30 herbaria, including 15 NSF-supported plant-related Thematic Collections Networks and collaboratives. The workflows are provided for download as Portable Document Format (PDF) and Microsoft Word files. Customization of these workflows for specific institutional implementation is encouraged

The National Early Warning Score and its subcomponents recorded within ±24 hours of emergency medical admission are poor predictors of hospital-acquired acute kidney injury

YesBackground: Hospital-acquired Acute Kidney Injury (H-AKI) is a common cause of avoidable morbidity and mortality. Aim: To determine if the patients’ vital signs data as defined by a National Early Warning Score (NEWS), can predict H-AKI following emergency admission to hospital. Methods: Analyses of emergency admissions to York hospital over 24-months with NEWS data. We report the area under the curve (AUC) for logistic regression models that used the index NEWS (model A0), plus age and sex (A1), plus subcomponents of NEWS (A2) and two-way interactions (A3). Likewise for maximum NEWS (models B0,B1,B2,B3). Results: 4.05% (1361/33608) of emergency admissions had H-AKI. Models using the index NEWS had the lower AUCs (0.59 to 0.68) than models using the maximum NEWS AUCs (0.75 to 0.77). The maximum NEWS model (B3) was more sensitivity than the index NEWS model (A0) (67.60% vs 19.84%) but identified twice as many cases as being at risk of H-AKI (9581 vs 4099) at a NEWS of 5. Conclusions: The index NEWS is a poor predictor of H-AKI. The maximum NEWS is a better predictor but seems unfeasible because it is only knowable in retrospect and is associated with a substantial increase in workload albeit with improved sensitivity.The Health Foundatio

Religiousness, Race, and Psychological Well-Being: Exploring Social Psychological Mediators

Research and theory combine to suggest that the relationship between religious belief and psychological well-being should be more positive among Black than among White individuals. Further, this relationship should be mediated by social psychological aspects of religion that have positive implications for well-being, such as self-enhancing religious attributions and a positive social identity associated with one's religious affiliation. These predictions were examined in a sample of 66 Black and 59 White university students. Religious belief salience and psychological well-being were moderately positively correlated, but only among Black subjects. The relationship between religious belief and well-being was partially mediated by attributions to God that enhance life meaning and positive social identification resulting from one's religious affiliation, again only among Black subjects. Implications of these results for the self-maintenance of Black college students are discussed.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/69072/2/10.1177_01461672952110004.pd