A Report on the Seminar on Demand for Farm Products

This report includes papers presented and discussed at a seminar on demand for farm products, The seminar was sponsored by the Center for Agricultural Adjustment of the Division of Agriculture, Iowa State College, The seminar met for two hours per week for three months during the spring quarter. The seminar was organized to include about 60 members formally designated by the committee. These seminar members, as well as a formal discussant for each topic, evaluated the presentation at each session.https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/card_reports/1001/thumbnail.jp

Microstructural and continuum evolution modeling of sintering.

All ceramics and powder metals, including the ceramics components that Sandia uses in critical weapons components such as PZT voltage bars and current stacks, multi-layer ceramic MET's, ahmindmolybdenum & alumina cermets, and ZnO varistors, are manufactured by sintering. Sintering is a critical, possibly the most important, processing step during manufacturing of ceramics. The microstructural evolution, the macroscopic shrinkage, and shape distortions during sintering will control the engineering performance of the resulting ceramic component. Yet, modeling and prediction of sintering behavior is in its infancy, lagging far behind the other manufacturing models, such as powder synthesis and powder compaction models, and behind models that predict engineering properties and reliability. In this project, we developed a model that was capable of simulating microstructural evolution during sintering, providing constitutive equations for macroscale simulation of shrinkage and distortion during sintering. And we developed macroscale sintering simulation capability in JAS3D. The mesoscale model can simulate microstructural evolution in a complex powder compact of hundreds or even thousands of particles of arbitrary shape and size by 1. curvature-driven grain growth, 2. pore migration and coalescence by surface diffusion, 3. vacancy formation, grain boundary diffusion and annihilation. This model was validated by comparing predictions of the simulation to analytical predictions for simple geometries. The model was then used to simulate sintering in complex powder compacts. Sintering stress and materials viscous module were obtained from the simulations. These constitutive equations were then used by macroscopic simulations for simulating shrinkage and shape changes in FEM simulations. The continuum theory of sintering embodied in the constitutive description of Skorohod and Olevsky was combined with results from microstructure evolution simulations to model shrinkage and deformation during. The continuum portion is based on a finite element formulation that allows 3D components to be modeled using SNL's nonlinear large-deformation finite element code, JAS3D. This tool provides a capability to model sintering of complex three-dimensional components. The model was verified by comparing to simulations results published in the literature. The model was validated using experimental results from various laboratory experiments performed by Garino. In addition, the mesoscale simulations were used to study anisotropic shrinkage in aligned, elongated powder compacts. Anisotropic shrinkage occurred in all compacts with aligned, elongated particles. However, the direction of higher shrinkage was in some cases along the direction of elongation and in other cases in the perpendicular direction depending on the details of the powder compact. In compacts of simple-packed, mono-sized, elongated particles, shrinkage was higher in the direction of elongation. In compacts of close-packed, mono-sized, elongated particles and of elongated particles with a size and shape distribution, the shrinkage was lower in the direction of elongation. We also explored the concept of a sintering stress tensor rather than the traditional sintering stress scalar concept for the case of anisotropic shrinkage. A thermodynamic treatment of this is presented. A method to calculate the sintering stress tensor is also presented. A user-friendly code that can simulate microstructural evolution during sintering in 2D and in 3D was developed. This code can run on most UNIX platforms and has a motif-based GUI. The microstructural evolution is shown as the code is running and many of the microstructural features, such as grain size, pore size, the average grain boundary length (in 2D) and area (in 3D), etc. are measured and recorded as a function of time. The overall density as the function of time is also recorded

Facilitating Student Learning Through Contextualization

This Brief, based on a longer review that considers the hypothesis that low-skilled students can learn more effectively and advance to college-level programs more readily through contextualization of basic skills instruction, presents two forms of contextualization that have been studied: “contextualized“ and “integrated“ instruction. There is more descriptive work on the contextualization of basic skills than studies with student outcome data. In addition, many studies with quantitative evidence on the effectiveness of contextualization have methodological flaws that limit conclusions. Further, only a small number of studies are with college students. However, despite these problems, contextualization seems to be a promising direction for accelerating the progress of academically underprepared college students. The method of contextualization is grounded in a conceptual framework relating to the transfer of skill and student motivation; practitioners who use it observe positive results, and the available quantitative evidence indicates that it has the potential to increase achievement

Doctors under the microscope: the birth of medical audit

In 1989 a UK government White Paper introduced medical audit as a comprehensive and statutory system of assessment and improvement in quality of care in hospitals. A considerable body of research has described the evolution of medical audit in terms of a struggle between doctors and National Health Service managers over control of quality assurance. In this paper we examine the emergence of medical audit from 1910 to the early 1950s, with a particular focus on the pioneering work of the American surgeons Codman, MacEachern and Ponton. It is contended that medical professionals initially created medical audit in order to articulate a suitable methodology for assessing individual and organisational performance. Rather than a means of protecting the medical profession from public scrutiny, medical auditing was conceived and operationalised as a managerial tool for fostering the active engagement of senior hospital managers and discharging public accountability. These early debates reveal how accounting was implicated in the development of a system for monitoring and improving the work of medical professionals, advancing the quality of hospital care, and was advocated in ways, which included rather than excluded managers

Towards evidence-based marketing: The case of childhood obesity

Contentious commodities such as tobacco, alcohol and fatty foods are bringing marketing under scrutiny from consumers and policymakers. Yet there is little agreement on whether marketing is harmful to society. Systematic review (SR), a methodology derived from clinical medicine, offers marketers a tool for providing resolution and allowing policymakers to proceed with greater confidence. This article describes how SR methods were applied for the first time to a marketing problem -- the effects of food promotion to children. The review withstood scrutiny and its findings were formally ratified by government bodies and policymakers, demonstrating that SR methods can transfer from clinical research to marketing

A proposed systems approach to the evaluation of integrated palliative care

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>There is increasing global interest in regional palliative care networks (PCN) to integrate care, creating systems that are more cost-effective and responsive in multi-agency settings. Networks are particularly relevant where different professional skill sets are required to serve the broad spectrum of end-of-life needs. We propose a comprehensive framework for evaluating PCNs, focusing on the nature and extent of inter-professional collaboration, community readiness, and client-centred care.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>In the absence of an overarching structure for examining PCNs, a framework was developed based on previous models of health system evaluation, explicit theory, and the research literature relevant to PCN functioning. This research evidence was used to substantiate the choice of model factors.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The proposed framework takes a systems approach with system structure, process of care, and patient outcomes levels of consideration. Each factor represented makes an independent contribution to the description and assessment of the network.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Realizing palliative patients' needs for complex packages of treatment and social support, in a seamless, cost-effective manner, are major drivers of the impetus for network-integrated care. The framework proposed is a first step to guide evaluation to inform the development of appropriate strategies to further promote collaboration within the PCN and, ultimately, optimal palliative care that meets patients' needs and expectations.</p

Measurement of ϒ production in pp collisions at √s = 2.76 TeV

The production of ϒ(1S), ϒ(2S) and ϒ(3S) mesons decaying into the dimuon final state is studied with the LHCb detector using a data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 3.3 pb−1 collected in proton–proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of √s = 2.76 TeV. The differential production cross-sections times dimuon branching fractions are measured as functions of the ϒ transverse momentum and rapidity, over the ranges pT &#60; 15 GeV/c and 2.0 &#60; y &#60; 4.5. The total cross-sections in this kinematic region, assuming unpolarised production, are measured to be σ (pp → ϒ(1S)X) × B ϒ(1S)→μ+μ− = 1.111 ± 0.043 ± 0.044 nb, σ (pp → ϒ(2S)X) × B ϒ(2S)→μ+μ− = 0.264 ± 0.023 ± 0.011 nb, σ (pp → ϒ(3S)X) × B ϒ(3S)→μ+μ− = 0.159 ± 0.020 ± 0.007 nb, where the first uncertainty is statistical and the second systematic