The effect of rental rates on the extension of Conservation Reserve Program contracts

Given that the majority of conservation reserve program (CRP) contracts on approximately 36 million acres of enrolled land expire concurrently, re-enrollment decisions by farmers and the federal government have high budgetary implications. Using a survey of over 8,000 CRP contract holders, we apply an ordered response discrete choice model to explicitly model the range in rental rates over which the representative farmer may be ambivalent to renewing the CRP contract. Given the empirical results from the ordered response model, we estimate acreage re-enrollment as a function of the rental rate and compare them to results of a binomial choice model.CRP contracts; ordered probit; re-enrollment; respondent indifference

A Benefit Cost Analysis of a Soil Erosion Control Program for the Northern Watershed of Lake Chicot, Arkansas

Lake Chicot, a 5,025-acre oxbow lake created by the ancient meandering of the Mississippi River, is located near the town of Lake Village in Chicot County of southeastern Arkansas (Fig. 1). Today the lake is separated into a northern basin of 1,154 acres and a southern basin of 3,871 acres by a levee maintained by the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission (Fig. 2). The entire lake once offered excellent fishing and recreational benefits. But with channelization in the drainage basin and final closure of the Cypress Creek gap along the Mississippi River levee in 1920, drainage and flood waters from approximately 350 square miles of agricultural lands were diverted into Connerly Bayou and thus, ultimately, into Lake Chicot

Use Word’s Track Changes Feature to Provide Better Feedback while “Going Green”

Discover how you can use Microsoft Word’s Track Changes feature to provide your students with embedded feedback, whether grammatical, spelling-related, or simply comments – right from within the body of the Word document. “Go Green” by eliminating the need to print out every student document for grading and feedback purposes

The Costs and Benefits of Soil Erosion Control in the North Lake Chicot Watershed

Lake Chicot is divided by a levee into two basins, the high quality northern basin and the extremely polluted southern basin. Water quality in the northern basin of Lake Chicot is diminishing due to soil erosion. Costs for alternative control programs for the seventeen fare, 11,470 acre northern watershed were estimated. Twenty-nine combinations of rotations and best management practices were evaluated. Soil loss can be reduced almost 25 percent from 4.2 tons per acre to 3.2 tons per acre, while increasing net returns to farmers from $83.94 per acre to$107.28 per acre by altering present cropping patterns. A prohibition on fall plowing would result in an average net return of $106.28 per acre and reduce average soil loss to 2.9 tons per acre. An average soil loss restriction would be the most cost-effective policy, exclusive of administrative costs. Benefits of erosion control were estimated by the difference between the value of recreational participation on the northern basin and the value for the southern basin. Control programs were highly cost-effective

Vertical structure of anthropogenic zonal-mean atmospheric circulation change

The atmospheric circulation changes predicted by climate models are often described using sea level pressure, which generally shows a strengthening of the mid-latitude westerlies. Recent observed variability is dominated by the Northern Annular Mode (NAM) which is equivalent barotropic, so that wind variations of the same sign are seen at all levels. However, in model predictions of the response to anthropogenic forcing, there is a well-known enhanced warming at low levels over the northern polar cap in winter. This means that there is a strong baroclinic component to the response. The projection of the response onto a NAM-like zonal index varies with height. While at the surface most models project positively onto the zonal index, throughout most of the depth of the troposphere many of the models give negative projections. The response to anthropogenic forcing therefore has a distinctive baroclinic signature which is very different to the NA

Prezi: Engage Your Students with this Next Generation of Presentation Tools!

In a world where PowerPoint reigns supreme among presentation tools, Prezi is a unique offering that can allow you to create more dynamic presentations and better engage students. Create presentations that move and transform with text, documents, images, and movies using Prezi’s intuitive design features. After a brief crash course in how Prezi works, you’ll be able to create your own presentation show and test out your Prezi-nting skills

The effect of rental rates on the extension of Conservation Reserve Program contracts

Given that the majority of conservation reserve program (CRP) contracts on approximately 36 million acres of enrolled land expire concurrently, re-enrollment decisions by farmers and the federal government have high budgetary implications. Using a survey of over 8,000 CRP contract holders, we apply an ordered response discrete choice model to explicitly model the range in rental rates over which the representative farmer may be ambivalent to renewing the CRP contract. Given the empirical results from the ordered response model, we estimate acreage re-enrollment as a function of the rental rate and compare them to results of a binomial choice model

Justifying Breaking the Glass: How Accountability Can Deter Unauthorized Access

This research-in-progress study examines how accountability—the expectation that one will be required to answer for one’s actions, and justification—the requirement to give reasons for performing an action—can reduce instances of break-the-glass violations—can encourage compliance with data access policies. We examine whether justification can embolden users to break the glass in warranted situations, and deter users in inappropriate situations. We propose a series of lab experiments to test our hypotheses. We expect that our results will have implications for research on information security policy (ISP) compliance and practice

Demonstrating 24-hour continuous vertical monitoring of atmospheric optical turbulence

We report what is believed to be the first example of fully continuous, 24-hour vertical monitoring of atmospheric optical turbulence. This is achieved using a novel instrument, the 24-hour Shack-Hartmann Image Motion Monitor (24hSHIMM). Optical turbulence is a fundamental limitation for applications such as free-space optical communications, where it limits the achievable bandwidth, and ground-based optical astronomy, restricting the observational precision. Knowledge of the turbulence enables us to select the best sites, design optical instrumentation and optimise the operation of ground-based optical systems. The 24hSHIMM estimates the vertical optical turbulence coherence length, time, angle and Rytov variance from the measurement of a four-layer vertical turbulence profile and a wind speed profile retrieved from meteorological forecasts. To illustrate our advance we show the values of these parameters recorded during a 36-hour, continuous demonstration of the instrument. Due to its portability and ability to work in stronger turbulence, the 24hSHIMM can also operate in urban locations, providing the field with a truly continuous, versatile turbulence monitor for all but the most demanding of applications

Creativity Bento Box: a physical resource pack to support interaction in virtual space

The Creativity Bento Box is a physical resource pack, designed to support casual social interaction and break taking in an intensive, computer-mediated social activity. It was developed within the Creativity Greenhouse project, which piloted a mechanism to create research proposals and distribute funding at a distance. This involved facilitated phases of collaboration and competition over multiple days of computer-mediated work, where participants communicate and interact through a virtual world. During the iterative development process, the lack of time for socialising, the intense focus on virtual resources, and a lack of time spent away from the screen were reported as negative issues in feedback from participants. We report on the development of the Creativity Bento Box and how it helped to address these issues. By providing physical resources that contrasted with the properties of the virtual world, it supported people to socialise and take breaks from their primary activity, allowed them to include physical space and artefacts in their interactions, and provoked moves away from the otherwise intense focus on the computer. We reflect on the roles of the Bento Box as a gift, in bridging between physical and virtual contexts, its higher suitability during the earlier phases of ideation and group development, and its perception by participants as something ‘framed’. Through this, we highlight the underexplored potential of using physical, offline resources as a means to solve difficulties in distanced social interactions