COSTS, YIELDS, AND NET RETURNS, COMMERCIAL NO-TILL COTTON PRODUCTION, MISSISSIPPI, 1999

An analysis of a 1999 sample of ten no-till producers indicates that over a reasonable range of cotton lint prices, no-till cotton production may result in larger net returns per acre than conventional tillage. However, the authors caution that additional analysis based on a larger sample of commercial no-till growers on better cotton soils is needed.no-till, spindle harvest, cost of production, yield, Production Economics,

ALTERNATIVE COTTON PRODUCTION SYSTEMS

Mississippi cotton farmers are adjusting to the current problem of low cotton price and high cotton production cost by modifying the way(s) they have traditionally grown cotton. This paper compares seven alternative production systems to the costs and returns associated with the conventional or traditional system labeled "solid cotton, 8-row equipment." Systems that combine wider equipment (less labor and machinery time per acre) with reduced tillage technology appear to offer opportunities to increase returns. Specific adjustments on individual farms will probably be dominated by the distribution of soil types.conservation tillage, ultra-narrow, no-till, skip-row, costs, returns, Production Economics,

THE IMPACT OF CURRENT COTTON PRICE AND PRODUCTION COSTS ON SKIP-ROW COTTON

According to conventional wisdom, low prices favor skip-row planting patterns while high prices favor solid planted cotton. Production costs have been trending upward for many years. Current high production costs have redefined the point at which a low price becomes a high price relative to skip-row versus solid planting pattern decisions. Growers considering a shift from solid to skip-row cotton must be able to produce high yields, more than 90% of the solid yield on a land acre basis.cotton, no-till yields, returns, Production Economics,

COSTS, YIELDS, AND NET RETURNS, COMMERCIAL ULTRA-NARROW ROW COTTON PRODUCTION, MISSISSIPPI, 1999

An analysis of a 1999 sample of 13 no-till producers indicates that over a reasonable range of cotton lint prices, ultra narrow cotton production may result in larger net returns per acre than conventional production practices. The largest percentage cost reduction is in fixed expenses. In general, total direct expenses per acre are also reduced, although UNRC usually results in higher seed and chemical expenses. UNRC has a lower total cost per pound compared to conventional cotton.UNRC, No-Till, cost of production, yield, stripper, harvest, Production Economics,

Recommendations for HER2 testing in the UK

Determining the HER2 status of breast carcinomas is a prerequisite for the use of the monoclonal antibody trastuzumab (Herceptin(R)), which has recently been licensed for the treatment of metastatic disease. This necessitates a test based on archival material. The preferred analyses are immunohistochemistry with fluorescent in situ hybridisation (FISH) as a follow up test for ambiguous results. Guidelines have been developed for standardised, well controlled procedures for the provision of reliable results. A group of three reference laboratories has been established to provide advice, quality assurance, and materials, where needed

Synthetic Observations of Simulated Radio Galaxies I: Radio and X-ray Analysis

We present an extensive synthetic observational analysis of numerically- simulated radio galaxies designed to explore the effectiveness of conventional observational analyses at recovering physical source properties. These are the first numerical simulations with sufficient physical detail to allow such a study. The present paper focuses on extraction of magnetic field properties from nonthermal intensity information. Synchrotron and inverse-Compton intensities provided meaningful information about distributions and strengths of magnetic fields, although considerable care was called for. Correlations between radio and X-ray surface brightness correctly revealed useful dynamical relationships between particles and fields. Magnetic field strength estimates derived from the ratio of X-ray to radio intensity were mostly within about a factor of two of the RMS field strength along a given line of sight. When emissions along a given line of sight were dominated by regions close to the minimum energy/equipartition condition, the field strengths derived from the standard power-law-spectrum minimum energy calculation were also reasonably close to actual field strengths, except when spectral aging was evident. Otherwise, biases in the minimum- energy magnetic field estimation mirrored actual differences from equipartition. The ratio of the inverse-Compton magnetic field to the minimum-energy magnetic field provided a rough measure of the actual total energy in particles and fields in most instances, within an order of magnitude. This may provide a practical limit to the accuracy with which one may be able to establish the internal energy density or pressure of optically thin synchrotron sources.Comment: 43 pages, 14 figures; accepted for publication in ApJ, v601 n2 February 1, 200

Palliation and life quality in lung cancer; how good are clinicians at judging treatment outcome?

A recent trial by the MRC Lung Cancer Working Party used physician assessments to compare two palliative schedules of radiotherapy in lung cancer. A prospective study has been undertaken on a subset of these trial patients to see how physician assessments of symptomatic relief and general condition correlate with patient perception of therapeutic response. In 40 patients followed up monthly from presentation until close to death, good agreement was found between doctors and patients on change in specific physical symptoms and overall physical condition. Doctors were poor judges of life quality at presentation but appeared able to identify relative improvement or deterioration in overall quality of life. In conclusion, physician assessments may constitute valid end-points for radiotherapy trials comparing palliative schedules in lung cancer

Influence of Spin Wave Excitations on the Ferromagnetic Phase Diagram in the Hubbard-Model

The subject of the present paper is the theoretical description of collective electronic excitations, i.e. spin waves, in the Hubbard-model. Starting with the widely used Random-Phase-Approximation, which combines Hartree-Fock theory with the summation of the two-particle ladder, we extend the theory to a more sophisticated single particle approximation, namely the Spectral-Density-Ansatz. Doing so we have to introduce a `screened` Coulomb-interaction rather than the bare Hubbard-interaction in order to obtain physically reasonable spinwave dispersions. The discussion following the technical procedure shows that comparison of standard RPA with our new approximation reduces the occurrence of a ferromagnetic phase further with respect to the phase-diagrams delivered by the single particle theories.Comment: 8 pages, 9 figures, RevTex4, accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.

Novel methods for spatial prediction of soil functions within landscapes (SP0531)

Previous studies showed that soil patterns could be predicted in agriculturally managed landscapes by modelling and extrapolating from extensive existing but related integrated datasets. Based on these results we proposed to develop and apply predictive models of the relationships between environmental data and known soil patterns to predict capacity for key soil functions within diverse landscapes for which there is little detailed underpinning soil information available. Objectives were: To develop a high-level framework in which the non-specialist user-community could explore questions. To generate digital soil maps for three selected catchments at a target resolution of 1:50000 to provide the base information for soil function prediction. To use a modelling approach to predict the performance of key soil functions in catchments undergoing change but where only sparse or low resolution soil survey data are available. To use a modelling approach to assess the impact of different management scenarios and/or environmental conditions on the delivery of multiple soil functions within a catchment. To create a detailed outline of the requirements for ground-truthing to test the predicted model outputs at a catchment scale. To contribute to the development of a high-level framework for decision makers