Rural agglomeration : how does the distribution of people across rural America affect entrepreneurship?

Where people live affects a region's economy. Urban economists have long analyzed the effects of large and densely settled regions -- urban agglomerations -- on the local economy, finding that people and businesses in these places tend to benefit from low transportation costs, access to large labor and consumer markets, and knowledge spillovers. In this context, rural areas are largely considered to be the sparsely populated 'other' however, our experiences suggest that population distribution varies across rural America, with people in some rural regions densely clustered in small towns while people in other regions are thinly spread across the countryside. In this study, I develop a measure of the rural population distribution -- rural agglomeration -- and test its explanatory power in a regional entrepreneurship model to determine if rural counties where population is more clustered in towns benefit from the effects of dense settlement patterns described in the urban economics literature. This study contributes to the existing literature on entrepreneurship and regional economic development by applying the agglomeration economies concept to a rural context. Rural agglomeration is a new way to characterize rural regions and it may have important policy implications for rural businesses, infrastructure (e.g., broadband), and services (e.g., public education and healthcare).Includes bibliographical reference

Pindar and the enigmatic tradition

As an object of study, Pindar and riddles may seem a natural union of text and subject matter, since Pindar’s poetry is often judged by modern critics to be obscure. However, the notion of Pindar’s obscurity, a late critical development, says more about our own poetic tastes than the about cultural systems which produced epinician poetry. Contra Aristotle, speaking enigmatically in the ancient world did not constitute a lack or excess of signification but rather a specific and often successful mode of communication that was performed and enjoyed by many different kinds of Greek speakers. Therefore, by describing the Pindaric text in relation to the tradition of speaking enigmatically, my aim is not to “solve” the text. Rather, this study aims to further the valuable work of describing two kinds of associative networks in epinician poetry: logical structure and social meaning. As regards the first, I argue that enigmatic speech in Pindar is marked speech, which means that the text actively engages in signaling to the performance audience that it is enigmatic by devices such as narrative framing, signpost words, tropes such as the “cognitive road,” and the construction of an enigmatic speaker. On the second, I follow recent approaches to Pindar’s poetry which take seriously the social embeddedness of choral lyric. Thus I argue that the performance of enigmatic speech stages a series of dialogues: literary (Ch. 1), elite (Ch. 2), and communal (Ch. 3). Overall, the study advances a view of enigmatic speech, not as obscurity or window dressing, but as an expressive mode of speech that put diverse texts, individuals, and communities in conversation with one another.Classic

Population change and fiscal stress in Missouri's third class counties

"During the recent recession, local governments struggled to manage budgets as revenues dropped. Because the recession was deeper and longer than any in the past half-century, with a slower recovery, reserve funds were not sufficient. With lower revenue, the majority of local governments struggled to meet the needs and expectations of citizens. Since the Great Recession of 2008-2009, the budgets of local governments have not recovered at the same pace as the economy as a whole. The recession may have created greater demands for government services, and tax bases may have been affected by more cautious spending by businesses and consumers. Slow local budget recovery also may be due to state government decisions, such as changes in tax laws, stagnant or lower state aid, taxation constraints and increasing state mandated services (Aldag et al., 2017). An example of a state tax constraint is Missouri's Hancock Amendment, which limits both state and local governments' abilities to raise taxes. Elected local officials cannot raise taxes without voter approval (Kevin-Myers and Hembree, 2012). Finally, local governments' decisions on taxes and tax incentives have major impacts on their own revenues (White, 2017)."--Page 1.Written by Judith I. Stallman (Professor Emeritus, Agricultural and Applied Economics and Public Affairs), Austin Sanders (Master's student in Agricultural and Applied Economics)New 10/19Includes bibliographical reference

Paleobotany Supports the Floating Mat Model for the Origin of Carboniferous Coal Beds

A review of the history of the debate on origin of Carboniferous coal shows the priority that autochthonists have placed on paleobotanical data and interpretation. New data and methodology are offered here for interpreting the paleobotany and paleoecology of dominant Carboniferous coal plants: tree lycopsids and the tree-fern Psaronius. Lycopsid and tree-fern anatomies are characterized by air-filled chambers for buoyancy with rooting structures that are not suited for growth into and through terrestrial soil. Lycopsid development included boat-like dispersing spores, establishment of abundant buoyant, photosynthetic, branching and radiating rhizomorphs prior to upright stem growth, and prolonged life of the unbranched trunk prior to abrupt terminating growth of reproductive branches. The tree fern Psaronius is now understood better than previously to have had a much thicker, more flaring, and further spreading outer root mantle that formed a buoyant raft. Its increasingly heavy leaf crown was counterbalanced by forcing the basally rotting cane-like trunk and attached inner portion of the root mantle continually deeper underwater. Lycopsids and tree-ferns formed living floating mats capable of supporting the trunks. Paleobotany of coal plants should now be best understood as supporting a floating raft that deposited the detritus that now forms Carboniferous coal beds

Historical Survey of the Floating Mat Model for the Origin of Carboniferous Coal Beds

For three hundred years geologists and paleobotanists have been attempting to describe the process that deposited plant material that formed Carboniferous coal beds. Autochthonous and allochthonous explanations in the early Nineteenth Century showed how scientific methodology becomes involved in coal interpretation. Autochthonous modelers used the paleobotany-strata-petrology-environment method to argue that coal is a terrestrial swamp deposit. Allochthonous modelers used the petrology-strata-paleobotany-environment method to describe coal as a subaqueous deposit. The two methodologies are best displayed at the end of the Nineteenth Century in the consensus autochthonists versus the French School allochthonists. Three depositional models have been offered for the origin of coal: (1) peat swamp model, (2) drift model, and (3) floating mat model. Many paleobotany questions about lycopods and tree ferns had not been solved at the end of the Nineteenth Century, but the “floating mat model” offered a very robust path to direct research. Unfortunately, at the beginning of the Twentieth Century when the uniformitarian paradigm prevailed, the floating mat model was intentionally suppressed. Now new data from coal petrology indicate that Carboniferous coal is detrital having accumulated underwater, not as a terrestrial swamp deposit. New data and methodology from paleobotany (Sanders and Austin, 2018) show lycopsids and tree ferns were capable of forming living floating mats able to support the trunks. Paleobotany of coal plants should now be best understood as supporting a floating raft that deposited the detritus that now forms Carboniferous coal beds. We present here for the first time a three-hundred-year historical survey of the notion that coal accumulated from floating vegetation mats

The Effects of Sport Specific, Governed, and Non-Controllable Focal Point on Female Vertical Jump Performance

Graduate Applie

Relationship between cellular response and behavioral variability in bacterial chemotaxis

Bacterial chemotaxis in Escherichia coli is a canonical system for the study of signal transduction. A remarkable feature of this system is the coexistence of precise adaptation in population with large fluctuating cellular behavior in single cells (Korobkova et al. 2004, Nature, 428, 574). Using a stochastic model, we found that the large behavioral variability experimentally observed in non-stimulated cells is a direct consequence of the architecture of this adaptive system. Reversible covalent modification cycles, in which methylation and demethylation reactions antagonistically regulate the activity of receptor-kinase complexes, operate outside the region of first-order kinetics. As a result, the receptor-kinase that governs cellular behavior exhibits a sigmoidal activation curve. This curve simultaneously amplifies the inherent stochastic fluctuations in the system and lengthens the relaxation time in response to stimulus. Because stochastic fluctuations cause large behavioral variability and the relaxation time governs the average duration of runs in response to small stimuli, cells with the greatest fluctuating behavior also display the largest chemotactic response. Finally, Large-scale simulations of digital bacteria suggest that the chemotaxis network is tuned to simultaneously optimize the random spread of cells in absence of nutrients and the cellular response to gradients of attractant.Comment: 15 pages, 4 figures, Supporting information available here http://cluzel.uchicago.edu/data/emonet/arxiv_070531_supp.pd

The influence of wind forcing on the Chesapeake Bay buoyant coastal current

Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2006. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Physical Oceanography 36 (2006): 1305-1316, doi:10.1175/JPO2909.1.Observations of the buoyant coastal current that flows southward from Chesapeake Bay are used to describe how the thickness, width, and propagation speed vary in response to changes in the along-shelf wind stress. Three basic regimes were observed depending on the strength of the wind. For weak wind stresses (from −0.02 to 0.02 Pa), the buoyant coastal current was relatively thin, the front slope was not steep, and the width was variable (1–20 km). For moderate downwelling (southward) wind stresses (0.02–0.07 Pa), wind-driven cross-shelf advection steepened the front, causing the plume to narrow and thicken. For stronger downwelling wind stresses (greater than 0.07 Pa), vertical mixing dominated, bulk Richardson numbers were approximately 0.25, isopycnals were nearly vertical, and the plume front widened but the plume width did not change. Plume thickness and width were normalized by the theoretical plume scales in the absence of wind forcing. Normalized plume thickness increased linearly from 1 to 2 as downwelling wind stresses increased from 0 to 0.2 Pa. Normalized plume widths were approximately 1 for downwelling wind stresses from 0.02 to 0.2 Pa. The observed along-shelf propagation speed of the plume was roughly equal to the sum of the theoretical propagation speed and the wind-driven along-shelf flow.This work was funded by the National Science Foundation under Grants OCE-0095059, OCE-0220773, OCE-92-21614, and OCE-96-33013

Impact of COVID 19 on Higher Learning Community

The societal upheaval related to the COVID-19 pandemic was far-reaching and continues to impact individuals in both personal and professional ways. Attempts to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 included quarantining at home and temporarily closing schools, businesses, and other public spaces. As these disruptions of everyday life eased and restrictions were lifted, individuals and organizations alike are reflecting on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic continues to have differential effects across industry types. Higher education institutions (HEIs) are a particularly unique example as they serve as both an organization navigating employee needs as well as providing learning services and support to students who may also be working outside of classes. This study aimed to investigate the unique impact of the pandemic on employee and student experiences within a HEI. As part of a larger study, the current researchers sought to understand how higher education professionals (faculty and staff) and employed students navigated work during and since the peak of the pandemic. To measure the employment impact of COVID-19, a survey consisting of 43 items from established scales measuring work-family conflict (WFC and FWC), job demands, job autonomy, job stress, job insecurity, perceived supervisor and organizational support (PSS, POS), work engagement, and job satisfaction was administered to university employed staff (n = 133), university faculty (n = 118), and off-campus employed students (n = 379). ANOVAs with Welch homogeneity corrections were conducted to account for unequal variances between samples. Results revealed significant differences among students, faculty, and staff in their experiences of WFC, FWC, job demands, job autonomy, job stress, and work engagement. Students reported the highest levels of conflict and stress, and the lowest levels of autonomy and job satisfaction. Faculty and staff exhibited higher work engagement and job satisfaction despite experiencing high job demands, perhaps in part related to their higher reported levels of job autonomy and supervisor support. These findings underscore the urgency for targeted interventions to alleviate identified challenges. University-based support measures are recommended to help manage ongoing competing demands and work-related stress. These resources should be customized to meet the specific needs of each group and go beyond generalized campus counseling services and EAPs, towards a culture that demonstrates that the health and wellbeing of the campus community is valued. The data offer a comprehensive understanding of the complex impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on different employment groups within higher education, thereby extending the current literature

Implementing disruptive technological change in UK healthcare: exploring development of a smart phone app for remote patient monitoring as a boundary object using qualitative methods

Purpose Developing technological innovations in healthcare is made complex and difficult due to effects upon the practices of professional, managerial and other stakeholders. Drawing upon the concept of boundary object, this paper explores the challenges of achieving effective collaboration in the development and use of a novel healthcare innovation in the English healthcare system. Design/methodology/approach A case study is presented of the development and implementation of a smart phone application (app) for use by rheumatoid arthritis patients. Over a two-year period (2015–2017), qualitative data from recorded clinical consultations (n = 17), semi-structured interviews (n = 63) and two focus groups (n = 13) were obtained from participants involved in the app's development and use (clinicians, patients, researchers, practitioners, IT specialists and managers). Findings The case focuses on the use of the app and its outputs as a system of inter-connected boundary objects. The analysis highlights the challenges overcome in the innovation's development and how knowledge sharing between patients and clinicians was enhanced, altering the nature of the clinical consultation. It also shows how conditions surrounding the innovation both enabled its development and inhibited its wider scale-up. Originality/value By recognizing that technological artefacts can simultaneously enable and inhibit collaboration, this paper highlights the need to overcome tensions between the transformative capability of such healthcare innovations and the inhibiting effects simultaneously created on change at a wider system level