Questionnaires for Evaluating On-Farm Field Days

On-farm field days are a traditional educational tool used by Cooperative Extension Agricultural Agents/Educators. The field day is generally a day-long event held at a local cooperating farm and typically includes demonstrations of specific management practices. One of the most common ways to evaluate the impact of on-farm field days is with a post-event questionnaire. But the most challenging aspect of evaluating the field day is determining what to measure. Field day questionnaires often attempt to do too much. This article presents three straight-forward categories of questions as well as suggestions for questionnaire design and delivery

Evaluating Extension-Based Water Resource Outreach Programs: Are We Meeting the Challenge?

Attention from politicians and agency personnel, concerns over duplication in mission, privatization, and the push for competitive funding serve to increase the demand for evaluation and accountability in Extension education. In winter 1997-98, a survey was conducted with Cooperative State Research Education and Extension Service (CSREES) state water quality coordinators to assess the status of evaluation efforts related to water quality outreach projects. Survey results offer insight into when and how accountability issues are addressed throughout the life of a project

Wisdom from Experience – Thoughts from Stevick Award Winners

According to the website of the Christian English Language Educators Association (CELEA), which also publishes this journal: “The Earl W. Stevick Award honors members of the English language teaching profession who embody some of the characteristics of Dr. Stevick in their teaching, mentoring of teachers, scholarship, service to the profession, and living out the life of Christ in this profession.” To date, from 2017–2022 there have been six winners of this prestigious award. Given the collective wisdom they represent, we asked them to share with our readers key lessons they have learned over the course of their careers. Five of the six winners were able to contribute to this invited Forum, which we present in chronological order of receiving the award

Banner News

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Comparison of Blood Collected in Acid-Citrate-Dextrose and EDTA for Use in Human Immunodeficiency Virus Peripheral Blood Mononuclear Cell Cultures

Paired blood samples collected in acid-citrate-dextrose and EDTA were compared for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infectivity on the day of collection or after 1 day of storage at room temperature. No significant differences between the anticoagulants were observed. Culture positivity was significantly associated with HIV RNA viral loads for both anticoagulants

Where eagles soar: Fine-resolution tracking reveals the spatiotemporal use of differential soaring modes in a large raptor

Unlike smaller raptors, which can readily use flapping flight, large raptors are mainly restricted to soaring flight due to energetic constraints. Soaring comprises of two main strategies: thermal and orographic soaring. These soaring strategies are driven by discrete uplift sources determined by the underlying topography and meteorological conditions in an area. High‐resolution GPS tracking of raptor flight allows the identification of these flight strategies and interpretation of the spatiotemporal occurrence of thermal and orographic soaring. In this study, we develop methods to identify soaring flight behaviors from high‐resolution GPS tracking data of Verreaux’s eagle Aquila verreauxii and analyze these data to understand the conditions that promote the use of thermal and orographic soaring. We use these findings to predict the use of soaring flight both spatially (across the landscape) and temporally (throughout the year) in two topographically contrasting regions in South Africa. We found that topography is important in determining the occurrence of soaring flight and that thermal soaring occurs in relatively flat areas which are likely to have good thermal uplift availability. The predicted use of orographic soaring was predominately determined by terrain slope. Contrary to our expectations, the topography and meteorology of eagle territories in the Sandveld promoted the use of soaring flight to a greater extent than in territories in the more mountainous Cederberg region. Spatiotemporal mapping of predicted flight behaviors can broaden our understanding of how large raptors like the Verreaux’s eagle use their habitat and how that links to energetics (as the preferential use of areas that maximize net energy gain is expected), reproductive success, and ultimately population dynamics. Understanding the fine‐scale landscape use and environmental drivers of raptor flight can also help to predict and mitigate potential detrimental effects of anthropogenic developments, such as mortality via collision with wind turbines.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Conference of Microelectronics Research 2002

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