Utilizing Nebraska Case Farms to Analyze Farm-Level Income and Policy Changes

Agricultural producers, professionals, and policymakers often look to long-run projections for the agricultural industry as they make business and policy decisions. They can look to three different baseline projections that are produced by the United States Department of Agriculture, the Food & Agricultural Policy Research Institute (FAPRI), and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). These baselines provide a 10-year outlook for the agricultural industry from prices and inventories for crops and livestock to international markets and income and expenditures. While this information provides insight into what direction agriculture may move, it can be hard to see the impact at the state and farm levels. The Rural and Farm Finance Policy Analysis Center (RaFF) works with FAPRI to produce state-level income projections. The Center for Agricultural Profitability at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln collaborates with RaFF under the leadership of Dr. Bradley D. Lubben and Tatum R. Brunkow to produce state-level analysis for Nebraska. Figure 1 comes from the Spring 2023 Nebraska Farm Income Outlook (Maltsbarger, et al. 2023) and provides information as to the drivers of Nebraska’s net farm income changes between 2021 and 2023

Femtosecond-Laser-Induced Spin-Polarized Electron Emission from a GaAs Tip

It is shown that focusing circularly-polarized 800 nm light pulses of 100 fs duration on the tips of p-GaAs crystalline shards having no negative electron affinity (NEA) activation results in electron emission that is both fast and spin-polarized. The 400 fs duration of the emission process was determined by pump/probe measurements. The three samples we investigated produced electron polarizations of 13.1(9)%, 13.3(7)%, and 10.4(2)%. Emission currents ranged between 50 pA and 3 nA with a sample bias of -100V and average laser power of 100 mW. The electron emission exhibited linear dichroism and was obtained under moderate vacuum conditions, similar to that of metallic tips. This source of spin-polarized electron pulses is "fast" in the sense that the electron emission process is of comparable duration to the laser pulses that initiate it.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure

Femtosecond-laser-induced spin-polarized electron emission from a GaAs tip

It is shown that focusing circularly polarized 800nm light pulses of duration 100 fs on the tips of p-GaAs crystalline shards having no negative electron affinity (NEA) activation results in electron emission that is both fast and spin-polarized. The 400 fs duration of the emission process was determined by pump/probe measurements. The three samples we investigated produced electron polarizations of 13.1(0.9)%, 13.3(0.7)%, and 10.4(0.2)%. Emission currents ranged between 50 pA and 3 nA with a sample bias of –100 V and an average laser power of 100 mW. The electron emission exhibited linear dichroism and was obtained under moderate vacuum conditions, similar to that of metallic tips. This source of spin-polarized electron pulses is “fast” in the sense that the electron emission process is of comparable duration to the laser pulses that initiate it

Spin- and angle-resolved photoemission studies of the electronic structure of Si(110)"16x2" surfaces

The electronic structure of Si(110)"16 x 2" double-domain, single-domain and 1 x 1 surfaces have been investigated using spin- and angle-resolved photoemission at sample temperatures of 77 K and 300 K. Angle-resolved photoemission was conducted using horizontally- and vertically-polarised 60 eV and 80 eV photons. Band-dispersion maps revealed four surface states ($S_1$ to $S_4$) which were assigned to silicon dangling bonds on the basis of measured binding energies and photoemission intensity changes between horizontal and vertical light polarisations. Three surface states ($S_1$, $S_2$ and $S_4$), observed in the Si(110)"16 x 2" reconstruction, were assigned to Si adatoms and Si atoms present at the edges of the corrugated terrace structure. Only one of the four surface states, $S_3$, was observed in both the Si(110)"16 x 2" and 1 x 1 band maps and consequently attributed to the pervasive Si zigzag chains that are components of both the Si(110)"16 x 2" and 1 x 1 surfaces. A state in the bulk-band region was attributed to an in-plane bond. All data were consistent with the adatom-buckling model of the Si(110)"16 x 2" surface. Whilst room temperature measurements of $P_y$ and $P_z$ were statistically compatible with zero, $P_x$ measurements of the enantiomorphic A-type and B-type Si(110)"16 x 2" surfaces gave small average polarisations of around 1.5\% that were opposite in sign. Further measurements at 77 K on A-type Si(110)"16 x 2" surface gave a smaller value of +0.3\%. An upper limit of $\sim1\%$ may thus be taken for the longitudinal polarisation.Comment: Main paper: 12 pages and 11 figures. Supplemental information: 5 pages and 2 figure

A cylindrically symmetric “micro-Mott” electron polarimeter

A small, novel, cylindrically symmetric Mott electron polarimeter is described. The effective Sherman function, Seff , or analyzing power, for 20 kV Au target bias with a 1.3 keV energy loss window is 0.16 ± 0.01, where uncertainty in the measurement is due primarily to uncertainty in the incident electron polarization. For an energy loss window of 0.5 keV, Seff reaches its maximum value of 0.24 ± 0.02. The device’s maximum efficiency, I/Io, defined as the detected count rate divided by the incident particle rate, is 3.7 ± 0.2 × 10−4 at 20 keV. The figure-of-merit of the device, η, is defined as Seff2 I/ Io and equals 9.0 ± 1.6 × 10−6. Potential sources of false asymmetries due to detector electronic asymmetry and beam misalignment have been investigated. The new polarimeter’s performance is compared to published results for similar compact retarding-field Mott polarimeters, and it is concluded that this device has a relatively large Seff and low efficiency. SIMION® electron trajectory simulations and Sherman function calculations are presented to explain the differences in performance between this device and previous designs. This design has an Seffthat is insensitive to spatial beam fluctuations and, for an energy loss window \u3e0.5 keV, negligible background due to spurious ion and X-ray production at the target

DEMONSTRATION SOLIDIFICATION TESTS CONDUCTED ON RADIOACTIVELY CONTAMINATED ORGANIC LIQUIDS AT THE AECL WHITESHELL LABORATORIES

The AECL, Whiteshell Laboratory (WL) near Pinawa Manitoba, Canada, was established in the early 1960's to carry out AECL research and development activities for higher temperature versions of the CANDU{reg_sign} reactor. The initial focus of the research program was the Whiteshell Reactor-1 (WR-1) Organic Cooled Reactor (OCR) that began operation in 1965. The OCR program was discontinued in the early 1970's in favor of the successful heavy-water-cooled CANDU system. WR-1 continued to operate until 1985 in support of AECL nuclear research programs. A consequence of the Federal government's recent program review process was AECL's business decision to discontinue research programs and operations at the Whiteshell Laboratories and to consolidate its' activities at the Chalk River Laboratories. As a result, AECL received government concurrence in 1998 to proceed to plan actions to achieve closure of WL. The planning actions now in progress address the need to safely and effectively transition the WL site from an operational state, in support of AECL's business, to a shutdown and decommissioned state that meets the regulatory requirements for a licensed nuclear site. The decommissioning program that will be required at WL is unique within AECL and Canada since it will need to address the entire research site rather than individual facilities declared redundant. Accordingly, the site nuclear facilities are being systematically placed in a safe shutdown state and planning for the decommissioning work to place the facilities in a secure monitoring and surveillance state is in progress. One aspect of the shutdown activities is to deal with the legacy of radioactively contaminated organic liquid wastes. Use of a polymer powder to solidify these organic wastes was identified as one possibility for improved interim storage of this material pending final disposition

The Nochar® Technology Deployment Program, Providing a Proven Method Worldwide for Waste Solidification and Stabilization

With the recent fall of the Soviet government and the decommissioning of defense plants in the U.S. DOE Complex, and the increasing worldwide emphasis on environmental restoration and controls, a critical need has developed for a proven ''off the shelf'' technology to deal with these enormous hazardous waste issues. While many new technologies are on the horizon and under development to handle complex waste streams, few of these offer immediate solutions. High technology polymers are an answer to present day needs that will allow immediate burial site disposal, above ground depository use for ''safe store'' applications, and stabilization and immobilization plans for safe transport or incineration at a later date

Precipitation Augmentation for Crops Experiment: Phase II, Exploratory Research, Year 1

NOTE: Appendix referenced on page 7-2 of the main report was not included in the original scan of the report, nor in the print copy in the University Library. The appendix was acquired from Nancy Westcott in 2019, and it is incomplete, lacking "Appendix B - Examples of Products Generated by the Forecasting/Nowcasting System"published or submitted for publicationis peer reviewedOpe

Foxp3 expression in human cancer cells

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Interleukin-7 Influences FOXP3+CD4+ Regulatory T Cells Peripheral Homeostasis

Mechanisms governing peripheral CD4+ FOXP3+ regulatory T cells (Treg) survival and homeostasis are multiple suggesting tight and complex regulation of regulatory T cells homeostasis. Some specific factors, such as TGF-β, interleukin-2 (IL-2) and B7 costimulatory molecules have been identified as essentials for maintenance of the peripheral Treg compartment. Conversely, Treg dependency upon classical T cell homeostatic factors such as IL-7 is still unclear. In this work, we formally investigated the role of IL-7 in Treg homeostasis in vivo in murine models. We demonstrated that IL-7 availability regulated the size of peripheral Treg cell pool and thus paralleled the impact of IL-7 on conventional T cell pool. Moreover, we showed that IL-7 administration increased Treg cell numbers by inducing thymic-independent Treg peripheral expansion. Importantly the impact of IL-7 on Treg expansion was detected whether conventional T cells were present or absent as IL-7 directly participates to the peripheral expansion of Treg after adoptive transfer into lymphopenic hosts. Our results definitively identify IL-7 as a central factor contributing to Treg peripheral homeostasis, thus reassembling Treg to other T cell subsets in respect of their need for IL-7 for their peripheral maintenance