Financial Performance Value-Added Dairy Operations in New York, Vermont and Wisconsin

Federal, state and local governments have funded various efforts to support value added agriculture, often implicitly assuming that the enterprises would be profitable and that the transition from commodity producer to producer-processor-marketer-distributor would be relatively easy. Some analysts (e.g., Streeter and Bills; 2003a, 2003b) have questioned both of these assumptions, noting that available aggregate data do not allow assessment of the financial performance of value-added enterprises. Our study collected detailed financial information from 27 value-added dairy enterprises with cows, goats or sheep in three states. These businesses processed and marketed cheese, fluid milk products and yogurt; 17 had begun processing during the previous three years. The financial information was used to develop income statements and balance sheets for both the milk production and the dairy processing and marketing enterprises. Our results suggest that value-added dairy is not a panacea: despite much higher revenues per unit milk produced or processed, mean net income for the processing enterprise and for the combined milk production and processing business were modest at best and often negative. More than half of the on-farm processors had negative net incomes from processing, and seven processing enterprises had negative net worth. On average, returns per cwt milk processed were $90 per cwt and$209 per cwt (for cow and goat/sheep milk producers, respectively) lower than the full economic costs of production and processing.small-scale dairy processing, value added, financial performance, profitability, Agricultural Finance,

Inclusion of non-spherical components of the Pauli blocking operator in (p,p') reactions

We present the first calculations of proton elastic and inelastic scattering in which the Pauli blocking operator contains the leading non-spherical components as well as the usual spherical (angle-averaged) part. We develop a formalism for including the contributions to the effective nucleon-nucleon interaction from the resulting new G-matrix elements that extend the usual two-nucleon spin structure and may not conserve angular momentum. We explore the consequences of parity conservation, time reversal invariance, and nucleon-nucleon antisymmetrization for the new effective interaction. Changes to the calculated cross section and spin observables are small in the energy range from 100 to 200 MeV.Comment: 24 pages, 4 figures, to be published in Physical Review

NASA OAST perspective

An advanced OTV is one of a number of advanced STS vehicles that the NASA OAST Space Systems Division Transportation Systems Office identified as candidates for future vehicle development. Vehicle requirements as well as technology needs and need dates were established and technology programs initiated to support those potential developments in a timely manner. It is assumed that advanced OTV will be space based and fully reusable for low cost operations, use aeroassist for return to low-Earth-orbit, and evolve to a man-rated system. The propulsion system will need to maintain high performance over a wide thrust range for mission flexibility, ranging from the transfer of large, acceleration limited structures from LEO to GEO, to demanding high reliability round-trip manned missions. Technology advances are needed in propulsion, aerobraking, low-gravity cryogenic fluid management, and in environmentally compatible, low-loss cryogenic tankage. In addition, diagnostic instrumentation for monitoring the health of on-board components and systems, and automated check-out capability will enhance low-cost space based OTV operations

C-Cl Bond Fission, Hcl Elimination, And Secondary Radical Decomposition In The 193 Nm Photodissociation Of Allyl Chloride

The primary photodissociation dynamics of allyl chloride upon excitation at 193 nm is investigated in a crossed laser-molecular beam scattering apparatus. Tunable vacuum ultraviolet (VUV) photoionization of the products provides a unique ability to learn about the secondary reaction products of the nascent photoproducts formed. The data show evidence for four significant primary reaction channels: a previously unidentified low kinetic energy C-Cl bond fission channel producing unstable allyl radicals, an excited state C-Cl bond fission channel producing Cl atoms with high translational energy, an HCl elimination pathway releasing significant energy to product translation to HCl and its momentum-matched mass 40 partner, and an HCl elimination channel producing low kinetic energy HCl products and predominantly unstable mass 40 products. The measured branching of these primary reaction channels of [all C-Cl] : [fast C-Cl] : [slow C-Cl] : [fast HCl] : [slow HCl] : [all HCl] is 1.00: 0.971: 0.029: 0.291: 0.167: 0.458 (where fast refers to the high recoil kinetic energy channels). The high internal energy allyl radicals formed in the slow C-Cl fission pathway of allyl chloride further dissociate/isomerize, as do the unstable mass 40 products formed in the HCl elimination pathways, and these products are investigated. Photoionization efficiency (PIE) curves of the HCl product suggest that a three-centered elimination mechanism contributes significantly to an observed HCl elimination reaction. (C) 2002 American Institute of Physics

The decline and dissolution of the Gilbertine Order

The Gilbertine order was unusual in that it was founded for both men and women who\ud lived in adjacent enclosures. The order had its origins in the Lincolnshire village of\ud Sempringham where St Gilbert founded the order in the 1130s. The canons followed\ud the rule of St Augustine and the nuns the rule of St Benedict. The history of the order\ud has been extensively researched by Brian Golding from its foundation until the\ud beginning of the fourteenth century. However, there has been little substantial\ud research on the order in the period from the fourteenth century until its dissolution in\ud 1539. This dissertation continues the work carried out by Golding and examines the\ud later years of the order’s history and its dissolution. The main themes of this work are\ud the recruitment of men and women into the order during the fifteenth and sixteenth\ud centuries, the spiritual lives of the nuns, the impact of the dissolution on the lives of\ud the men and women of the order, and their careers after the dissolution. The study will\ud show that in common with other religious orders there was a decline in the popularity\ud of the Gilbertines in the later Middle Ages, and also a relaxation of the rules the nuns\ud followed. In the period after the dissolution, the thesis will demonstrate that the social\ud and economic position of former Gilbertine canons was much better than that of\ud former nuns

Holocene-Neogene volcanism in northeastern Australia: chronology and eruption history

Quaternary and late Neogene volcanism is widespread in northeastern Australia, producing at least 397 eruptions covering more than 20,000 km2, including at least 20 flows over 50 km long. Despite this abundance of young volcanism, before this study numerous eruptions had tentative ages or were undated, and the area requires a comprehensive evaluation of eruption patterns through time. To help address these issues we applied multi-collector ARGUS-V 40Ar/39Ar geochronology to determine the age of four of the younger extensive flows: Undara (160 km long, 189 ± 4/4 ka; 2σ, with full analytical/external uncertainties), Murronga (40 km long, 153 ± 5/5 ka), Toomba (120 km long, 21 ± 3/3 ka), and Kinrara (55 km long, 7 ± 2/2 ka). Verbal traditions of the Gugu Badhun Aboriginal people contain features that may potentially describe the eruption of Kinrara. If the traditions do record this eruption, they would have been passed down for 230 ± 70 generations – a period of time exceeding the earliest written historical records. To further examine north Queensland volcanism through time we compiled a database of 337 ages, including 179 previously unpublished K-Ar and radiocarbon results. The compiled ages demonstrate that volcanic activity has occurred without major time breaks since at least 9 Ma. The greatest frequency of eruptions occurred in the last 2 Ma, with an average recurrence interval of <10–22 ka between eruptions. Activity was at times likely more frequent than these calculations indicate, as the geochronologic dataset is incomplete, with undated eruptions, and intraplate volcanism is often episodic. The duration, frequency, and youthfulness of activity indicate that north Queensland volcanism should be considered as potentially still active, and there are now two confirmed areas of Holocene volcanism in eastern Australia – one at each end of the continent. More broadly, our data provides another example of 40Ar/39Ar geochronology applied to Holocene and latest Pleistocene mafic eruptions, further demonstrating that this method has the ability to examine eruptions and hazards at the youngest volcanoes on Earth

A Shell of Thermal X-ray Emission Associated with the Young Crab-like Remnant 3C58

Deep X-ray imaging spectroscopy of the bright pulsar wind nebula 3C58 confirms the existence of an embedded thermal X-ray shell surrounding the pulsar PSR J0205+6449. Radially resolved spectra obtained with the XMM-Newton telescope are well-characterized by a power-law model with the addition of a soft thermal emission component in varying proportions. These fits reproduce the well-studied increase in the spectral index with radius attributed to synchrotron burn-off of high energy electrons. Most interestingly, a radially resolved thermal component is shown to map out a shell-like structure ~6' in diameter. The presence of a strong emission line corresponding to the Ne IX He-like transition requires an overabundance of ~3 x [Ne/Ne(sun)] in the Raymond-Smith plasma model. The best-fit temperature kT ~ 0.23 keV is essentially independent of radius for the derived column density of N_H = (4.2 +/- 0.1)E21 per cm squared. Our result suggests that thermal shells can be obscured in the early evolution of a supernova remnant by non-thermal pulsar wind nebulae emission; the luminosity of the 3C58 shell is more than an order of magnitude below the upper limit on a similar shell in the Crab Nebula. We find the shell centroid to be offset from the pulsar location. If this neutron star has a velocity similar to that of the Crab pulsar, we derive an age of 3700 yr and a velocity vector aligned with the long axis of the PWN. The shell parameters and pulsar offset add to the accumulating evidence that 3C58 is not the remnant of the supernova of CE 1181.Comment: 7 pages, 8 figures, 2 tables, Latex emulateapj style. To appear in the Astrophysical Journa