7,387 research outputs found
Communication Networks and the adoption of three farn practices
The report commences with a discussion of the diffusion and adoption model, and illustrates some of the research observations and practical outcomes that have emerged in recent years, An overview of social network research is presented as a means of understanding communication exchanges and providing data relevant to the diffusion debate. The communication and adoption studies are then reported in three separate sections in the order they were conducted. (A map of the location of the survey areas is shown in Figure I ) . The objectives, survey method, results and a summary are presented for each study.
A background to the dairy herd recording scheme is followed by an outline of the dairy industry itself. Two regions selected for the survey are discussed and compared.
The soil conservation study commences with an overview of soil degradation problems, government involvement and policy, and technical solutions to these problems. Consideration is also given to the importance of the human element in soil conservation policy and extension. The Central Wheatbelt (pattern of settlement, landscape, soils, vegetation, climate and land use) is described as a region. Many soil conservation problems exist here that can be generalized to other regions.
The minimum tillage enquiry first introduces the concept and technique of minimum tillage, its advantages and disadvantages. A history of the Jerramungup district, as well as details on physical aspects of the area and land use problems gives the setting of the study. Jerramungup (and the south coast region generally) is particularly prone to wind erosion and hence is valid area in which to study the diffusion of minimum tillage a technique which lessens wind erosion problems.
A final discussion compares conclusions of each study. in each are are dealt with. the three adoption situations by examining the The extension situation and communication factors Conclusions and recommendations are provided
Farmers\u27 use of agricultural information 1983
The Western Australian Department of Agriculture produces information for farmers which is disseminated through various mass media, The Australian Broadcasting Commission and commercial media outlets provide further agricultural information, In 1983 a telephone survey of cereal-sheep farmers was undertaken to determine what information sources were used by farmers, and how farmers used that information.
A number of information processing factors were taken from communication research literature, These were accessibility and availability; surveillance and exposure; selection; storage and retrieval. From within this theoretical framework, information sources such as farming magazines, radio and television programmes were examined.
Special attention was given to evaluating the performance of the following Department of Agriculture media: Farmnotes, Bulletins, Journal of Agriculture, Direct Mail Service, Agricultural Memos, Farming Today and radio broadcasts. There was considerable activity by farmers in surveillance, selection, storing and retrieving of information.
It was found that the availability and exposure of Departmental media to farmers was high, except for the Journal of Agriculture, It is recommended that the form and content of the Journal be reviewed, and the circulation of this and other information sources be further increased. Revision of the little used Agdex filing system is also necessary. Other recommendations include: greater recognition of the role of the farm family in information processing, the provision of \u27entertaining\u27 agricultural television programmes for rural communities, and the need for farmer awareness of information storage and retrieval systems.
Because the functions of the Direct Mail Service and Agricultural Memos were found to overlap, it is suggested that the use of these information sources could be studied further to test for redundancies in Departmental effort. It is also proposed that the Department should not commit itself to disseminating technical information through audio and video-tapes unless the effectiveness of these media can be demonstrated
Interpreting The Pollution Exclusion Clause In The Comprehensive General Liability Policy - Ohio\u27s Next Step
Our purpose here is to analyze the courts\u27 treatment of the pollution exclusion clause. From the context of insurance policy interpretation, decisions regarding the exclusion will be reviewed and placed in a national perspective. The Ohio decisions will be examined against the backdrop of current trends and the national consensus.
We conclude, for the reasons which follow, that the Ohio Supreme Court, when presented with the issue, should not adopt the findings of the Ohio appellate courts in interpreting the pollution exclusion clause, but should recognize that those decisions were wrong and follow the law which finds sudden and accidental not ambiguous. That is, the standard pollution exclusion clause is not ambiguous as drafted and the wording sudden and accidental should be accorded its literal and common meaning. These insurance coverage disputes should not be determined on the basis of the judicial canons of construction for insurance policies but on factual determinations in relation to these policies
QED in strong, finite-flux magnetic fields
Lower bounds are placed on the fermionic determinants of Euclidean quantum
electrodynamics in two and four dimensions in the presence of a smooth,
finite-flux, static, unidirectional magnetic field , where
or , and is a point in the xy-plane.Comment: 10 pages, postscript (in uuencoded compressed tar file
Failure of the Standard Coupled-Channels Method in Describing the Inelastic Reaction Data: On the Use of a New Shape for the Coupling Potential
We present the failure of the standard coupled-channels method in explaining
the inelastic scattering together with other observables such as elastic
scattering, excitation function and fusion data. We use both microscopic
double-folding and phenomenological deep potentials with shallow imaginary
components. We argue that the solution of the problems for the inelastic
scattering data is not related to the central nuclear potential, but to the
coupling potential between excited states. We present that these problems can
be addressed in a systematic way by using a different shape for the coupling
potential instead of the usual one based on Taylor expansion.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures, 1 table, Latex:RevTex4 published in J. Phys. G:
Nucl. Part. Phy
Mass zeros in the one-loop effective actions of QED in 1+1 and 3+1 dimensions
It is known that the one-loop effective action of is a quadratic in
the field strength when the fermion mass is zero: all potential higher order
contributions beyond second order vanish. For nonzero fermion mass it is shown
that this behavior persists for a general class of fields for at least one
value of the fermion mass when the external field's flux satisfies
. For the mass-shell renormalized one-loop effective
action vanishes for at least one value of the fermion mass for a class of
smooth, square integrable background gauge fields provided a plausible
zero-mass limit exists.Comment: Section IV has been amende
Improving the mass determination of Galactic Cepheids
We have selected a sample of Galactic Cepheids for which accurate estimates
of radii, distances, and photometric parameters are available. The comparison
between their pulsation masses, based on new Period-Mass-Radius (PMR)
relations, and their evolutionary masses, based on both optical and NIR
Color-Magnitude (CM) diagrams, suggests that pulsation masses are on average of
the order of 10% smaller than the evolutionary masses. Current pulsation masses
show, at fixed radius, a strongly reduced dispersion when compared with values
published in literature.The increased precision in the pulsation masses is due
to the fact that our predicted PMR relations based on nonlinear, convective
Cepheid models present smaller standard deviations than PMR relations based on
linear models. At the same time, the empirical radii of our Cepheid sample are
typically accurate at the 5% level. Our evolutionary mass determinations are
based on stellar models constructed by neglecting the effect of mass-loss
during the He burning phase. Therefore, the difference between pulsation and
evolutionary masses could be intrinsic and does not necessarily imply a problem
with either evolutionary and/or nonlinear pulsation models. The marginal
evidence of a trend in the difference between evolutionary and pulsation masses
when moving from short to long-period Cepheids is also briefly discussed. The
main finding of our investigation is that the long-standing Cepheid mass
discrepancy seems now resolved at the 10% level either if account for canonical
or mild convective core overshooting evolutionary models.Comment: 14 pages, 4 postscript figures, accepted for publication on ApJ
Letter
Constraints on Galaxy Bias, Matter Density, and Primordial Non--Gausianity from the PSCz Galaxy Redshift Survey
We compute the bispectrum for the \IRAS PSCz catalog and find that the galaxy
distribution displays the characteristic signature of gravity. Assuming
Gaussian initial conditions, we obtain galaxy biasing parameters
and , with no sign of
scale-dependent bias for h/Mpc. These results impose stringent
constraints on non-Gaussian initial conditions. For dimensional scaling models
with statistics, we find N>49, which implies a constraint on
primordial skewness .Comment: 4 pages, 3 embedded figures, uses revtex style file, minor changes to
reflect published versio
- …