FORWARD MARKETING BEHAVIOR OF SOYBEAN PRODUCERS

Indiana, Mississippi, and Nebraska producers' forward pricing behavior was analyzed with Tobit models. Percent debt, percent soybean acres, risk aversion, market consultants, comfort level with futures and options, lenders' opinions, written marketing plans, crop insurance, and geographic location were significant in explaining the percentage of expected soybean production forward priced.Demand and Price Analysis, Marketing,

Spatial and Temporal Habitat Use of an Asian Elephant in Sumatra

Increasingly, habitat fragmentation caused by agricultural and human development has forced Sumatran elephants into relatively small areas, but there is little information on how elephants use these areas and thus, how habitats can be managed to sustain elephants in the future. Using a Global Positioning System (GPS) collar and a land cover map developed from TM imagery, we identified the habitats used by a wild adult female elephant (Elephas maximus sumatranus) in the Seblat Elephant Conservation Center, Bengkulu Province, Sumatra during 2007–2008. The marked elephant (and presumably her 40–60 herd mates) used a home range that contained more than expected medium canopy and open canopy land cover. Further, within the home range, closed canopy forests were used more during the day than at night. When elephants were in closed canopy forests they were most often near the forest edge vs. in the forest interior. Effective elephant conservation strategies in Sumatra need to focus on forest restoration of cleared areas and providing a forest matrix that includes various canopy types

The Nature Conservancy's Emiquon Nature Preserve Fish and Aquatic Vegetation Monitoring Annual Report

Key Ecological Attributes (KEA’s) for thefish and aquatic vegetation communities are used toevaluate theprogressof the restoration efforts at Thompson and Flag lakes of The Nature Conservancy’s Emiquon Nature Preserve.A total of 19 KEA criteria were monitored monthlybetween 4/21/2015-10/23/2015. Of thosecriteria set by the Emiquon Science Advisory Council, 15were met in 2015. The 2015water transparency values were within the desired range (Secchi depths no less than half the maximum water depth when a site is ≤1.5 m deep). However, when 2015results are compared to 2014, we see that the mean monthly transparencies for April-May were lowerthan the same period in 2014. In contrast,transparencies between June-Octoberwere higherthan the corresponding in 2014. Thus,while KEA criteria are being met, there is still room for improvement.The aquatic vegetation community in 2015 continued to be dominated by native aquatic plant species.Despite the dominance by natives, twoinvasive aquatic plants-Eurasian watermilfoilandcurly-leaf pondweedwere among the species collected in 2015.Eurasian watermilfoil and curly-leaf pondweed, while still not dominant,were found at moresites and at a higherdensity than in 2014.An invasive submersed aquatic vegetation species known as Egeria was collected for the first time in 2014 since restoration but was not observed or collectedin 2015.If this increase in densityof these non-natives is an on-going trend, then consideration may need to be given on how to manage theseinvasive plants.The fish community in 2015continuedto be dominated byan increasing number of native species. Despite this, the KEA goal of collecting ≥25 native fish species was not met.Bluegilldominated our catches in 2015whilecatchesof other desirable native fishes including freshwater drum, grass pickerel, and longnose gar were presentbut lowin numbers. Despite the low numbers of thesenative fishes, these were still the highest catches for these species ever observed at the Emiquon Preserve.Of the 21fish species collectedin 2015,only one non-native speciesconsisting of the common carpwas collected. Total common carp catchwas lower than 2014catches and wasthe lowest catch of this species since restoration.The Nature Conservancyunpublishednot peer reviewe

Self-Regulatory Depletion Increases Emotional Reactivity in the Amygdala

The ability to self-regulate can become impaired when people are required to engage in successive acts of effortful self-control, even when self-control occurs in different domains. Here, we used functional neuroimaging to test whether engaging in effortful inhibition in the cognitive domain would lead to putative dysfunction in the emotional domain. Forty-eight participants viewed images of emotional scenes during functional magnetic resonance imaging in two sessions that were separated by a challenging attention control task that required effortful inhibition (depletion group) or not (control group). Compared to the control group, depleted participants showed increased activity in the left amygdala to negative but not to positive or neutral scenes. Moreover, whereas the control group showed reduced amygdala activity to all scene types (i.e. habituation), the depletion group showed increased amygdala activity relative to their pre-depletion baseline; however this was only significant for negative scenes. Finally, depleted participants showed reduced functional connectivity between the left amygdala and ventromedial prefrontal cortex during negative scene processing. These findings demonstrate that consuming self-regulatory resources leads to an exaggerated neural response to emotional material that appears specific to negatively valenced stimuli and further suggests a failure to recruit top–down prefrontal regions involved in emotion regulation

RISE: a fast-readout imager for exoplanet transit timing

By the precise timing of the low amplitude (0.005 - 0.02 magnitude) transits of exoplanets around their parent star it should be possible to infer the presence of other planetary bodies in the system down to Earth-like masses. We describe the design and construction of RISE, a fast-readout frame transfer camera for the Liverpool Telescope designed to carry out this experiment. The results of our commissioning tests are described as well as the data reduction procedure necessary. We present light curves of two objects, showing that the desired timing and photometric accuracy can be obtained providing that autoguiding is used to keep the target on the same detector pixel for the entire (typically 4 hour) observing run.Comment: Published in PROC SPIE, vol 7014, 70416

Boundary Dissipation in a Driven Hard Disk System

A simulation is performed aiming at checking the existence of a well defined stationary state for a two dimensional system of driven hard disks when energy dissipation takes place at the system boundaries and no bulk impurities are presentComment: 5 pages, 7 figure

Complete Genome Sequences of Arcobacter butzleri ED-1 and Arcobacter sp Strain L, Both Isolated from a Microbial Fuel Cell

Arcobacter butzleri strain ED-1 is an exoelectrogenic epsilonproteobacterium isolated from the anode biofilm of a microbial fuel cell. Arcobacter sp. strain L dominates the liquid phase of the same fuel cell. Here we report the finished and annotated genome sequences of these organisms

Tension Pneumocephalus Related to Spontaneous Skull Base Dehiscence in a Patient on BiPAP

Spontaneous pneumocephalus is an uncommon phenomenon that may develop in patients with occult skull base defects. There have been reports of pneumocephalus occurring spontaneously in the setting of continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) use (1). Tension pneumocephalus represents a neurosurgical emergency where intracranial air is trapped with increasing pressures resulting in neurological deterioration (2). Previous literature has also documented the growing understanding of how obesity, elevated intracranial pressure (ICP), obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), and cortical skull thinning are associated with spontaneous tegmen dehiscence and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) leakage (3). Other mechanisms for spontaneous CSF leak include aberrant arachnoid granulation, congenital skull base dehiscences, increased abdominal and thoracic pressure resulting in reduced cerebral venous drainage, and age-related cortical thinning. In this report, we present the case of a bilevel positive airway pressure (BiPAP) user with an undiagnosed spontaneous tegmen dehiscence who developed spontaneous tension pneumocephalus