Exploring Farm Business and Household Expenditure Patterns and Community Linkages

Farm operators are an integral part of some rural economies. The businesses they operate often hire seasonal and full-time employees and purchase goods and services from local farm implement dealers, input suppliers, and financial institutions. Farm household spending on food, furniture and appliances, trucks and automobiles, and a range of consumer goods also support local jobs and retail businesses in some communities. Based on the 2002 agricultural census and the 2004 Agricultural Resource Management Survey, this paper explores the linkages between farm household/ business expenditures and local communities.Farm business expenditures, farm household spending, employment, community linkage, Consumer/Household Economics, Farm Management, Community/Rural/Urban Development,

Filling H-60 helicopter readiness shortfalls by streamlining and revising depot level maintenance procedures

MBA Professional ReportRecognizing the need to extend aircraft service lives, Naval Air Systems Command developed the Integrated Maintenance Concept (IMC). IMC was seen as an opportunity to integrate tasks over all levels of maintenance and balance the operational, engineering, and fiscal aspects of an aircraft's preventative maintenance program. Implementation of IMC has resulted in several unintended consequences, most importantly degraded readiness. Aircraft rebuild and in-process work required of squadron personnel interrupt maintenance at the squadrons and work stoppages interrupt flow at the depot. The result is wider variability in both processes, increasing inventory at the depot and squadron workloads, degrading operational availability by limiting aircraft inventory and interrupting production at the squadron. The authors built a simulation model using Arena software to test the hypothesis that assigning organizational-level tasks to depot personnel would reduce variability in the process, and thereby decrease cycle times and depot work-in-process inventory. We concluded that implementing our project at a cost of 1.4 million per year would be equivalent to having six additional aircraft, which implies savings of between 3 6 million and 150 million. Additionally, we concluded that the squadron labor freed from working on depot aircraft should result in increased operational readiness levels.http://archive.org/details/fillinghhelicopt1094510003US Navy (USN) authors.Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited

Solving Modal Equations of Motion with Initial Conditions Using MSC/NASTRAN DMAP

By utilizing MSC/NASTRAN DMAP (Direct Matrix Abstraction Program) in an existing NASA Lewis Research Center coupled loads methodology, solving modal equations of motion with initial conditions is possible using either coupled (Newmark-Beta) or uncoupled (exact mode superposition) integration available within module TRD1. Both the coupled and newly developed exact mode superposition methods have been used to perform transient analyses of various space systems. However, experience has shown that in most cases, significant time savings are realized when the equations of motion are integrated using the uncoupled solver instead of the coupled solver. Through the results of a real-world engineering analysis, advantages of using the exact mode superposition methodology are illustrated

Influence of Climate on Long-Term Recovery of Adirondack Mountain Lakewater Chemistry from Atmospheric Deposition of Sulfur and Nitrogen

In this study, we assessed temporal patterns and long-term trends in nitrate (NO3-), two forms of aluminum (inorganic, Ali, and organic, Alo), and dissolved organic carbon (DOC) concentrations in the water of 29 Adirondack Mountain, New York lakes, and the potential effects of ambient weather conditions (i.e., climatic variation) on these patterns and trends

Cooperation across Organizational Boundaries: Experimental Evidence from a Major Sustainability Science Project

Engaged research emphasizes researcher–stakeholder collaborations as means of improving the relevance of research outcomes and the chances for science-based decision-making. Sustainability science, as a form of engaged research, depends on the collaborative abilities and cooperative tendencies of researchers. We use an economic experiment to measure cooperation between university faculty, local citizens, and faculty engaged in a large sustainability science project to test a set of hypotheses: (1) faculty on the sustainability project will cooperate more with local residents than non-affiliated faculty, (2) sustainability faculty will have the highest level of internal cooperation of any group, and (3) that cooperation may vary due to academic training and culture in different departments amongst sustainability faculty. Our results demonstrate that affiliation with the sustainability project is not associated with differences in cooperation with local citizens or with in-group peers, but that disciplinary differences amongst sustainability faculty do correlate with cooperative tendencies within our sample. We also find that non-affiliated faculty cooperated less with each other than with faculty affiliated with the sustainability project. We conclude that economic experiments can be useful in discovering patterns of prosociality within institutional settings, and list challenges for further applications

Investigating the impact of design criteria on the expected seismic losses of an office building

Low Damage Seismic Design (LDSD) guidance material being developed by Engineering NZ is considering a design drift limit for multi-storey buildings of 0.5% at a new damage control limit state (DCLS). The impact of this new design requirement on the expected annual loss due to repair costs is investigated for a four-storey office building with reinforced concrete walls located in Christchurch. The LDSD guidance material aims to reduce the expected annual loss of complying buildings to below 0.1% of building replacement cost. The research tested this expectation. Losses were estimated in accordance with FEMA P58, using building responses from non-linear time history analyses (performed with OpenSees using lumped plasticity models). The equivalent static method, in line with NZS 1170.5 and NZS 3101, was used to design the building to LDSD specifications, representing a future state-of-practice design. The building designed to low-damage specification returned an expected annual loss of 0.10%, and the building designed conventionally returned an expected annual loss of 0.13%. Limitations with the NZS 3101 method for determining wall stiffness were identified, and a different method acknowledging the relationship between strength and stiffness was used to redesign the building. Along with improving this design assumption, the study finds that LDSD design criteria could be an effective way of limiting damage and losses

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PARAQUAT ACCUMULATION AND COVALENT BINDING IN RAT LUNG SLICES

ABSTRACT: Th